hi I'm Don Knight an English teacher from Westfield Indiana today we're going to talk about the rhetorical analysis essay hopefully you joined me for the last video where we kind of got a start on this prompt and talked about thesis statements you can still watch this video without that but it's not a bad idea to watch that one first and get some of that preliminary information today we're going to delve a little deeper into the organization or line of reasoning we're going to look at how to select evidence how to embed evidence and depth of commentary and sophistication so we worked with the 2019 prompt last time I'm going to read this aloud so that we're all on the same page as far as the prompt goes in 1930 mohandis Mahatma Gandhi led a non-violent March in India protesting Britain's Colonial Monopoly on and taxation of an essential resource salt the salt marches it came to be known was a triggering moment for a larger Civil Disobedience movement that eventually won India independence from Britain in 1947. shortly before the Salt March Gandhi had written to this Roy Lord Irwin the representative of the British crown in India the passage below is the conclusion of that letter read the passage carefully then in a well-written essay analyze the rhetorical choices Gandhi makes to present his case to Lord Irwin so the last time we talked about what the prompt is asking us to do and that we need to know two specific things the rhetorical choices Gandhi makes in order to present his case to Lord Irwin we also looked for what those rhetorical choices were we found that there were some if-then statements that stood out and those are the ones we see in yellow here we also saw that there was word choice like between equals Fellowship equally suited to both common good mutual help that conveyed a tone um that was amicable and then we saw if you see that green arrow at the word but we see a tone shift and then we saw words like cruel Monopoly disfigured and we ended up with this almost warning um from Gandhi to Lord Irwin and so we saw this shift from amicable to admonishing or warning we also looked at paragraph five and did the same thing we looked for those places where we found if statements we found the tone shifted however so at the beginning of this paragraph he's talking about not wanting to embarrass Lord Irwin and then we have an uh however and then he says not to deflect him from his course and warns that he'll be making this letter that outlines all of the things Indy or that Britain did to India published So based on that we wrote a thesis that directly answered the prompt it did both of the things we chose the right thesis that did both of the things it analyzed the specific rhetorical choices that were made and talked about the specific message that Gandhi was conveying so that thesis statement ended up being Gandhi uses tone shifts from amicable to admonitory and if statements to convey his message to Lord Irwin that Britain needs to stop its poor treatment of India and to treat it as an equal instead right that brings us to line of reasoning so our thesis is always the basis for our line of reasoning and what you see here is a really basic outline for the rhetorical analysis essay we start with an introductory paragraph um that can include a little bit of context or background that might include the rhetorical situation like we talked about in the last video the people place time events that are occurring to give some context and then the thesis statement is how we probably want to end that introductory paragraph then we have body paragraphs and each body paragraph has to be focused on supporting that thesis statement so you'll notice here body paragraph one we have one reason the thesis is valid body paragraph two another reason the thesis is valid so we're always focused on that thesis statement you can have more than two body paragraphs but remember since this is a timed essay you don't want to overdo your body paragraphs and write yourself out of a good essay two really well written body paragraphs would be better than three just okay ones um part of those body paragraphs we can't just say here's a reason why my thesis is valid we also want to show it with specific evidence and we'll talk about selecting specific evidence today as well and then explaining what that evidence means how it supports the thesis and then finally the conclusion this is another place because it's a timed essay we don't want to spend too much time we can do a really quick summary if that's all we have time for if we have more time we might get to the so what and and get into some implications and I'll talk about what that means a little bit later on all right so for this particular essay our introduction might include context about the Salt March that it's 1930 the conflict between India and Britain Gandhi Lord Irwin those elements of the rhetorical situation we talked about and then we get into our thesis statement and then our body paragraphs need to focus on that thesis so I might say Gandhi uses tone shifts from amicable to admonitory to convey his message because that's one of the devices that stood out to me and conveying the message and then body paragraph two I might focus on those if statements that I talked about that stood out in conveying the message so I want to make sure that again I'm focused on the thesis and using those rhetorical devices that stood out so let's talk a little bit more about body paragraph one then with evidence selection the evidence we select is really important um we don't want to just look for any evidence of any rhetorical device we want specifically those that stood out in terms of helping convey the message um and we want to show with the evidence that that's the case so when I'm talking about tone shifts there were two specific places that I saw in paragraph four after the butt we went from calm to admonishing and that was Illustrated through those word choices that we saw that went from common good and equals to cruel and Monopoly and evils and then another specific example of that tone shift was in paragraph five after however it started off with Gandhi saying I don't want to cause you embarrassment and then after the tone shift he said he doesn't want Lord Irwin to deflect him from his course and if he does he's warning him he will publish the letter so we see very definite tone shifts here so those are going to be specific pieces of evidence that show how tone shift helps convey message and then we want to talk about commentary so we don't want to just say the evidence and we don't want to just summarize that evidence in our commentary it's where we use our voice to explain how the specific piece of evidence supports the claim and so a couple of things we want to say we don't just tell we don't just summarize it helps to think maybe starting even in just your head you don't have to write it out but thinking this shows that and then getting into your commentary what it shows what does it show what does that tone shift show that helps reveal the message you want to try to think about using two to three sentences that helps Force you out of the summary a little bit and you want to include the rhetorical situation that's where we get into depth and sophistication so it's not just that Gandhi was using this it was that he was using it for a specific audience Lord Irwin and what do we know about Lord Irwin he was a representative of the British crown and so we want to include some of those things in that commentary as well that's where we get well beyond summary and into sophistication all right so um we're going to look at that first piece of evidence with but as our tone shift and look at a sample just the first half of this paragraph if we were writing it here's what it might look like starting with a claim and then getting into some of the rhetorical situation so let me read it out loud first and then we'll talk about what some of these colors on the screen mean Gandhi uses shifts in tone from amicable to admonitory to convey his message to Lord Irwin that Britain must stop its poor treatment of India and treat it as an equal instead one of the ways he does this is through his specific word choice he begins with a calm tone that includes phrases like between equals and fellowship these along with his choices of the phrase common good show Lord Irwin the benefits to Britain of treating India as an equal Gandhi is likely appealing to Irwin's logic and to his obligation as a representative of the British government to consider what is best for Britain Gandhi's message is even stronger through a shift in tone as it is juxtaposed with words that illustrate Britain's past treatment of India one that includes evils is cruel and is a monopoly Gandhi warns that if Lord Irwin does not deal with this evil he will instruct his co-workers to disregard the provisions of the salt loss all right so what we saw here was the claim Gandhi uses shifts in tone from amicable to admonitory to convey his message and then we get to a specific example the shift in tone with but and how word choices are part of that but then notice in the commentary how we're explaining about Lord Irwin about how he's a representative of the British government about the idea of Britain treating India as an equal part of that message that's being conveyed and so all of these elements are part of that rhetorical situation and this is how we add that depth and sophistication to our commentary right now the last thing I want to talk about before I give you a chance to do a little writing um is how to embed evidence because we don't want to just drop it in as these just quotes by themselves we want to embed it so first we're going to look at a couple of the common mistakes we see one is when students use a full quote um and you'll see we're going to use the same quote from the passage for each of these examples so it's a pretty long quote um and if we just drop it in as a direct quote with no explanation no introduction that's called a floating quote we definitely don't want that it's just the quote itself you'll notice there are quotes and that's it we don't even see Gandhi says another common mistake we see is just that the quote is too long our voice should be Central to this essay so again adding Gandhi writes means this isn't a floating quote but we still have a really long quote here and we don't really need the whole quote to get the gist of what's happening in this passage so now we'll look at how we can embed evidence in a better way one we can paraphrase it so if if we don't lose the strength of the quote by paraphrasing it or putting it in our own words paraphrasing is one really good choice so if you look at the screen Gandhi warns Lord Irwin that if Irwin does not deal with the evils of the British government Gandhi will instruct his peers to disregard the sauce we've we've paraphrased and it's much less cumbersome in our essay that we don't have that big long quote in there another way we can do this is using a segment of the quote and embedding it at the beginning of a sentence so we could say but if you cannot see your way to deal with these evils Gandhi warns Irwin then he will tell his peers to disregard the salt walls so we have part of the quote and then partial paraphrase we can do the same thing but in the middle of the sentence Gandhi warns Irwin if you cannot see your way to deal with these evils then Gandhi will instruct his peers to disregard the salt laws or obviously at the end Gandhi warns Lord Irwin that if he does not deal with the evils outlined in this letter then Gandhi will tell his peers to disregard the provisions of this thought loss or finally you can use more than one segment throughout the sentence along with some paraphrasing Gandhi warns Lord Irwin if you cannot see your way to deal with these evils then Gandhi will instruct his peers to disregard the provisions of the salt laws okay so those are just some better ways to embed evidence and again that shows that element of sophistication okay so as I said it's your turn so I have the first part of this paragraph done for you now it's your turn to add the second piece of evidence that shift in tone with however so you'll finish including the specific piece of evidence and including the commentary trying to weave in some rhetorical situation and remember that you want to try to embed the evidence and not just drop it in in a direct quote all right so your turn just pause here and when you're ready hit play to continue all right and then if you want some more practice you can do the same thing except write an entire body paragraph for body paragraph two using those if statements that we talked about earlier and again you can pause here and write that paragraph and just hit play whenever you're ready remembering again that you're including not just the examples but practicing in the commentary and trying to get to that rhetorical situation and practicing embedding your evidence all right so to recap um remember to organize your essay around a thesis for a solid line of reasoning to select evidence that illustrates the choice and helps convey the message so we want to answer both parts of that thesis we're not just dropping in examples and direct quotes we're embedding evidence into the sentence and we don't just summarize in our commentary we explain how the evidence supports the claim using the rhetorical situation all right thank you so much for joining me I hope you'll join for the next video we're going to talk about argument essays and just a reminder to be kind to yourself and to others thanks so much