Style Analysis

Analyzing Rhetoric
 Tone and attitude
• Created by diction, syntax and purposeful
se of details and images
 Diction
• Depends on topic, purpose and occasion
• Reader must understand connotation and
denotation
• Level of elaborateness and formality,
difficulty, technicality
• Shapes a reader’s thinking while guiding
reader insight into the author’s idiosyncratic
expression of thought” the writer’s voice
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• Scheme
Involving balance, interruption, omission,
repetition
Trope
Involving comparisons, word play,
overstatement, understatement, management of
meaning
• Figurative language
 Detail
Literal or factual description; concrete detail
Imagery
 Point of view
• Perspective from which an author presents
his subject
– 1st person narrator
– 3rd person limited
– 3rd person omniscient
– Stream of consciousness
 Organization
• Structure of the writing
 Syntax
• Syntax, sentence structure, phrasing
• Length controls emphasis
• Sentence variety, repetition, parallel
structure, rhythm, cadence
• Parallelism
• Loose, periodic
 Analyzing a text
• What is the problem or question that motivates the
author?
• What assumptions does the author bring to the
text?
• What contradictions do you find in the text/ Why
are they there? How dot hey affect your
understanding of the text?
• What evidence does the author use to support his
assertions? Why?
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• How is the text structured? How does the structure
affect your understanding of the writing?
• What rhetorical choices does the author make?
How do these choices help convey the meaning of
the text?
• What do you think are the key passages in the
text? Why are they important? How do they work
with the rest of the text to convey the writer’s
meaning?
• What assumptions do you bring to the text?