Essays
“The essay becomes an exercise in the meaning and value of watching a writer conquer their own sense of threat to deliver themself of their wisdom.” - Vivian Gornick
Introduction
The essay, not to be confused with that of the written assignments, is a strange mixture of genres such as short stories, letters, articles, papers and anecdotes. Even if the definition of the essay is quite vague 1, the purpose of the genre is quite clear; to present the author's argument. Consequently, the author will often seek to entertain, persuade, inform or educate the reader, as well as establishing his or her ethos. Well-known writers and authors have tried their hand at the genre and examples include F. Scott Fitzgerald 's What I think and Feel at 25 (1922), George Orwell 's Shooting an Elephant (1936) and Virginia Woolf 's Death of The Moth (1942).
ANALYTICAL TOOLS
Lasswell's Model of Communication
Most analysis models regarding articles and communication in general, revolve around the sender-receiver relationship as well as the message or intention of the text. Who says what to whom with what effect? was the original question posed 2 by Harold D. Lasswell, thus leading to Lasswell's Model of Communication being conceived.
Toulmin's Model of Argument
In 1958, the English professor and philosopher Stephen Toulmin released his book The Uses of Argument in which he proposed Toulmin's Model of Argument as a way of perceiving argumentation. Toulmin's thesis 3 was that for a good argument to succeed, it would need to provide justification for its claim.
TOULMIN'S MODEL OF ARGUMENT
What claim is the receiver exposed to? Basically, there are three different types of claims; values, facts or policies. Values obviously refers to the values of the sender, but also other concepts such as morale and ethics are considered. Facts is related to facts and finally, policies revolves around rules, laws and political decisions.
Example: Barack Obama is an American citizen. (fact)
What ground or data does the sender have to support the claim? As implied by the name, data is also about information, facts and empirical evidence.
Example: Barack Obama's birth certificate states that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. (data/empirical evidence)
Warrant defines the rule, premise or general point of view, that accepts or validates the claim.
Example: Since Hawaii is a state within the United States and the Constitution declares that everybody born within U.S. borders is a citizen, then we can safely infer that a person born in Hawaii is a U.S. citizen. (warrant)
Claim, grounds and warrant are the basic pillars of Toulmin's model of argument, however, another expanded edition also exists. This edition also includes other terms such as backing, qualifier and rebuttal.
Source: Purdue University and Westmont College.
The Rhetorical Pentagram
The rhetorical pentagram was invented by the Roman statesman Cicero, who designed the model to explain the communication between human beings. An important detail of the pentagram is the connection between each point. The points are connected to suggest correlation 15, meaning that if one of the points is changed the other points will also be affected.
