rhetorical analysis writing 101

Section 1—Describe the text: Spend time slowly and carefully describing the image. A reader should be able to visualize the image from your words without actually seeing it. Carefully highlight particular details that may have meaning, even if you aren’t sure about what those meanings might be. Section 2—Describe the context: Ask how the image was presented or displayed in a particular context. What other texts and images appear near it? What framing ask us to read the image in a certain way? What underlying ideas do these rhetorical choices reveal? What other things are in the cultural climate surrounding the image that might matter to interpretation? Use additional sources to cite evidence of context wherever possible. Section 3—Analyze the text: Look for patterns in the details you observed. Follow the analytical moves described in Writing Analytically. How might those rhetorical features of this image invite us to understand, relate to, make assumptions about, the subjects in the image? How might you consider one or more context of the image to help push your descriptions toward interpretations? To what extent does the photo (in a specific context) invite us to generalize from these individual details to some broader narrative about a place, a group of people, an issue, etc.?

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The picture describes a mental illness called bipolar disorder. The picture in itself is described as gothic by the use of zombie-like creatures in its presentation. The colors representing the image are black and white with different shades of each of the primary colors. The person in the picture who is supposedly a bipolar disorder patient is present as a zombie who seems to be in a lot of pain evident in his kneeling posture and the way his disfigured mouth appears to be screaming in agony.

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