ENGL 1301 Rhetorical Analysis Outline Assignment

Instructions: Following the example of Dr. Nelson in the Rhetorical Analysis Outline Demo video, organize
your analysis of the rhetorical situation and rhetorical strategies and appeals of your peer reviewed journal
article. Complete each chart with information from your rhetorical analysis notes worksheet in order to plot
what you need to discuss in each section of your essay.

Section 1: Introduction

a. Introduce the peer reviewed journal article and relevant facts about the context of its production:
Author(s) Mario Slugan
Topic / Title “Fiction as a Challenge to Text-Oriented Film Studies.”
Journal New Review of Film and Television Studies
Name
Audience Scholars in film studies who are focused on text-oriented fiction film and what constitutes as
fiction.
Date 20 October 2022

b. Provide a brief, summative description of the argument of the peer reviewed journal article:
Article’s Slugan argues that the categorization of fiction in text-oriented must consider extratextual
Argument features to be accurate. Slugan states, “Whether something is fiction or not […] is not
defined solely through authorial intention and/or textual features” (433). When fiction is
wrongly categorized it “may lead to both misunderstanding of audience experience and
ethical problems alike” (426). Slugan expands his argument by claiming “the difference
between fiction and nonfiction is not whether something refers to the real world or not […],
but whether we are mandated to imagine it” (432).

c. Identify (1) your evaluation of the article’s rhetorical effectiveness in supporting its argument and (2) why
the article is rhetorically effective / ineffective (this will be your controlling idea):
Controlling [Assertion] because [Reason].
Idea
Mario Slugan’s article is mostly persuasive because it presents ideas from other experts in
the field and multiple examples of loosely defined fiction applied to films in support of its
argument.

Section 2: Body Paragraph 1

a. Describe the main point for body paragraph #1 that helps you prove your controlling idea (rhetorical
strategy / appeal + rhetorical effectiveness evaluation):
Point 1 Hawkes provides multiple definitions of fiction from other experts in the field to support his
argument, effectively appealing to both logos and pathos throughout his article.

b. Identify the specific evidence from the peer reviewed journal article that supports the above point:
Quoted Other expert’s ideas…
Evidence 1
 “One influential strand of psychoanalytic film theory running from Brecht did speak
of cinematic illusion or ‘impression of reality’ where, due to the conflux of the
properties of the apparatus, the medium, and the realist narrative form, spectators
 were at least momentarily said to have been fooled into believing the content of
fictional representations” (443).
 “According to Odin, in the fictional mode the spectator constructs the actual
enunciator as Searle’s nondeceptive pretender” (436).
 “A scholar who was initially relatively close to this institutionalist approach but went
on to espouse intentionalism on par with Currie and Wilson is Noël Carroll.” (433).

Counterarguments…

 “But these ideas have been criticized extensively by cognitivists and psychoanalytic
theorists alike and have lost currency. Cognitivists have pointed out that there is no
need for recourse to incompatible or wavering beliefs to describe the impression of
reality” (444).
 “But there are deceptive pretenses which are fictions” (436).
 “According to Nichols, re-enactments are fictional representations. But this cannot
be the case for a couple of reasons. The first is that this is a textual feature and as
such is neither necessarily fictional nor necessarily nonfictional” (440-441).

c. Explain how the specific evidence supports the above point:

Explanation 1 Because fiction defined in text-oriented film is a highly theorized topic in film studies,
multiple definitions and ideas of the role fiction takes in films, as well addressing the holes
in these claims, helps in making Hawkes argument more effective.

Section 3: Body Paragraph 2

a. Describe the main point for body paragraph #2 that helps you prove your controlling idea (rhetorical
strategy / appeal + rhetorical effectiveness evaluation):
Point 2 Slugan uses multiple examples of films that cannot be strictly defined as fiction throughout
his article, effectively appealing to pathos to support his argument.

b. Identify the specific evidence from the peer reviewed journal article that supports the above point:
Quoted  “The insistence on fictionality of all such films is misplaced because it conflates the
Evidence 2 fact that the world of fiction like the one depicted in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz,
1942) is different from the world of documentary such as the one in Roger & Me
(Michael Moore, 1989)” (430-431).
 “But it is undeniable that if a film is made from hand-drawn pictures, then at the very
least it is a documentary recording of those hand-drawn pictures and may even be a
documentary of whatever those drawings depict as is the case with The Sinking of
the ‘Lusitania’ (Winsor McCay, 1918)” (431).
 “Conversely, TV shows like The Office (BBC 2011–13) and films like The Blair
Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, 1999) make extensive use of
documentary aesthetics. Yet they constitute fictions, nonetheless” (429).

c. Explain how the specific evidence supports the above point:

Explanation 2 Slugan uses these examples to show that some films cannot be neatly placed into the fiction
box without stepping out the lines. If this is the case, then fiction must be categorized with
many gray areas or reevaluated completely.

Section 4: Body Paragraph 3

a. Describe the main point for body paragraph #3 that helps you prove your controlling idea (rhetorical
strategy / appeal + rhetorical effectiveness evaluation):
Point 3 Slugan is less persuasive in supporting his argument when using rhetorical strategies that
appeal to emotion.

b. Identify the specific evidence from the peer reviewed journal article that supports the above point:
Quoted
Evidence 3 Sudden switch to first person pronouns…

 “Consider a situation in which I wish to convey to my friends how my speech at my

relative’s wedding appeared. I stand in front of them, take a glass, and make the
speech anew. To the best of my recollection this is a reasonable reconstruction of the
event and as such a nonfictional representation of the same. […] I could also be
completely misrepresenting how my speech looked like in order to, say, present
myself as wittier than I was, but this would not make the re-enactment fictional – it
would just make it a deliberate misrepresentation” (441).

c. Explain how the specific evidence supports the above point:

Explanation 3 The example in which Slugan uses to appeal to the audience’s emotion is not what makes it
ineffective, but rather the sudden shift of tone in which he switches to first person pronouns.
Slugan switches back to a third person point of view again shortly after and in no other point
of his article does he use first person pronouns again, this makes the appeal to pathos
through first person pronouns feel out of place in his article as there where other times
where he appeals to pathos in a more effective way.

Section 5: Conclusion

a. Reiterate (1) your evaluation of the article’s rhetorical effectiveness in supporting its argument and (2) why
the article is rhetorically effective / ineffective:
Controlling Despite the out of place use of first-person pronouns,
Idea
[Reason]. Therefore, [Assertion].

Mario Slugan’s article presents ideas from other experts in the field and multiple examples
of loosely defined fiction applied to films in support of its argument. Therefore, it’s mostly
persuasive.

b. Describe why your evaluation about the relative effectiveness of how the author(s) uses rhetorical strategies
and appeals to support the article’s argument is important / significant:
Importance Fiction in film theory, if to be taken as a serious topic of discussion must then be evaluated
in a credible and respectable manner.

c. Describe what readers should do with this knowledge:

Implications Readers should think back to films they’ve seen and theorize for themselves on whether or
not that film was strictly fiction.

Section 6: Work Cited

Reference Pattern:
Last Name, First Name. “Article Title.” Journal Title, vol. #, no. #, year, pp. ##-##. Database Name, doi
number or stable url.

Your Reference for the Peer Reviewed Journal Article:

Slugan, Marion. “Fiction as a Challenge to Text-Oriented Film Studies.” New Review of Film and Television
Studies, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 427-450. Killiam Library, DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2132072