Rhetorical Analysis of a Commercial

1. What makes a commercial good or bad? Make a brainstorming list of

qualities that good commercials have. This list may evolve into the criteria
you will use to evaluate the advertisement in your essay's thesis statement.

2. Please select one of the advertisements listed later in this Blackboard

lesson.

3. Think about the commercial. Ask yourself the following questions, and jot
down your answers on scratch paper. Your answers on this scratch paper
may give you some supporting details for the body of your essay. In other
words, the answers to these questions may provide your essay's prewriting.

What type of people make up this audience? How do you know? (Try
not to answer, "This commercial is for a general audience." You may
have more to write about if you can be more specific about the age,
gender, and socio-economic make-up of the intended audience.)
The primary purpose of a commercial is almost always to persuade
viewers to buy something. Does this particular commercial have a
secondary purpose? If so, what is it?
Look over Considering its use of Rhetorical Appeals on pages. 260-
261 of How to Write Anything. In which specific ways does this
commercial use pathos?
How specifically does it use logos?
How does it use ethos? Use details, if possible.
Do you know when this commercial aired on television? If so, how
does the commercial use kairos? Does the time of airing let you know
anything about the commercial's intended audience?
Look over Avoid Logical Fallacies" on pages 375-377 of How to Write
Anything. Do any of these emotional appeals appear in the
commercial? If so, do they help or hinder the advertisement's pathos?
How?
Based on these questions, how well do you think this commercial
works to achieve its purpose?
4. Remember that the purpose of this essay is not to give your opinion on
the product or service being advertised, but to analyze the rhetoric of the
commercial.

5. Write the preliminary thesis statement in one sentence. You should

identify the advertisement by its title (the restricted topic) and make your
essay's main point in your thesis statement. Because this essay is
evaluative, the main point should tell the reader your claim (in this case,
your opinion about whether the commercial is effective or not).
Here is a formula you might follow in your thesis statement:

___________(commercial's name) + adverb (synonym for effectively or

ineffectively) + verb (encourages, persuades, convinces, or a similar term)
+ whom (the intended audience) + to do what.
6. Decide which evidence and which details should be included in your
essay. For example, you may choose to discuss some of the following points:

intended audience
intended purpose
classical appeals (pathos, logos, ethos, kairos)
Fowles's Basic Appeals (sex, affiliation, nurture, and so forth)
Then, find details in the commercial that support the idea you will make in
each paragraph. For instance, consider the music (or lack thereof), the
characters, the humor (or lack thereof), the colors, and any other supporting
evidence you observe. Jot down your ideas to use as you continue to write
your paper.

7. Determine the method of organization that best suits your purpose and
evidence.

Choose to use either a chronological or an emphatic order. A

chronological order analyzes the parts of the commercial in the order
in which they occur: what happens first, what happens second, and so
forth. An emphatic order analyzes the parts of the commercial by
placing the criteria in order by importance with the most compelling
point last.
Make a scratch outline for the essay's body. Be sure that your plan
uses one point per body paragraph. If you have three points to make,
your essay will have three body paragraphs. If you have four points to
make, your essay's body will contain four points. Five points means
five body paragraphs. If you only have two points to make, watch the
commercial again to find more to say about it.
Delete any ideas that do not closely fit with the supporting points in
your essay. It's not necessary to write everything you know about the
commercial, but only the points that give evidence for opinion in your
thesis statement.
Plan a catchy strategy for your essay's introduction and a way to
conclude the essay that does not restate the points in the essay's
body. For more information, please review the lecture in Unit 1 Lesson
2.
8. Write the first draft of the essay. Your essay must be at least 450 words
long, but no more than 1000 words long. If your essay is too short, decide
whether you will add another point to the essay's body, add more supporting
details, or both. If your essay is too long, delete some of the less important
parts. Be sure to use quotation marks around any exact words from the
commercial and to make a Work Cited. (Instructions for how to cite your
commercial will be give later).

9. Revise the first draft.

As you revise, be sure that this essay is consistently in the third

person. Try highlighting every instance of I, me, my, mine, myself,
we, us, our, ourselves, you, your, yours, yourself, and yourselves you
see, and then modify the sentence so that it does not use these first
and second person pronouns. Remember that for this essay, any use
of these words (except inside a quotation) is considered an error.
Be sure your paragraphs are well unified, which means having one
topic per body paragraph. If you have three points to make, you
should have three body paragraphs. If you are making more than
three points, you will need more than three body paragraphs.
Each paragraph should have a topic sentence that gives the
paragraph's main point. Highlight this topic sentence. If you find a
paragraph without a topic sentence, add one. Then, remove the
highlighting from all the body paragraphs.
The English language uses the present tense for two reasons. One is to
write about what is happening now. The other is to write about events
or conditions that happened in the past, are happening now, and are
probably going to happen in the future. Because your commercial
could have been viewed yesterday, can be viewed today, and probably
will be viewable tomorrow, be sure that you write about the
commercial in the present tense.