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Summer Bradshaw

Unit 2 Project

English 1010

Rhetorical Strategies

Analyzing writing rhetorically seems like a weird and confusing concept. Rhetorical

means to break down a writer’s words and see why they said them to the audience. It is not a

summary of the words although that is an easy thing to do. When analyzing writing it is easy to

start to summarize what the author wrote but analyzing rhetorically is going into more depth. We

are analyzing why the author would write what he did for the audience. Why the author said

what he said and if he did it at a specific time to capture the audience.

Some ways to start analyzing writing rhetorically would be to ask questions. “Why would

the writer say that when he did?” or “What does that paragraph do to the audience? Does it

change their perspective?” Every question we ask is going to be about the writer talking to the

audience. The rhetorical strategies that authors use are claims of fact and value, arrangement of

ideas, style: diction, tone, and voice, storytelling, description, and imagery, use of empirical

evidence, and invoking authority or credibility. I will explain a couple of the strategies I am

going to use to analyze “Blue Collar Brilliance” and “Shop Class of Soulcraft.”

The first rhetorical strategy I feel both writers use a lot in their writing is the strategy of

storytelling, description and imagery. I feel a lot of writers use these strategies because it helps

the audience to relate to what they are writing about. Writers use storytelling to keep the

audience reading. I know I feel I am relating to the author more when I put a personal story in

the writing. Description helps the audience to imagine what the author is writing about. I much

rather read a book that is describing every detail to me, so I feel like I am in the story. Imagery
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tells the audience what to feel when they are reading. Imagery uses your five senses to capture

you and get you to keep reading.

Here are some examples from “Blue Collar Brilliance” and “Shop Class of Soulcraft”

that support my first rhetorical strategy storytelling, description and imagery.

“I began working as an electrician’s helper at age fourteen, and started a small electrical

contracting business after college, in Santa Barbara. In those years I never ceased to take

pleasure in the moment, at the end of a job, when I would flip the switch. “And there was light.”

It was an experience of agency and competence. The effects of my work were visible for all to

see, so my competence was real for others as well; it had a social currency. The well-founded

pride of the tradesman is far from the gratuitous “self-esteem” that educators would impart to

students, as though by magic (Crawford).”

The author tells this story to show the audience that he is an experience electrician and he

has seen the joys of fixing electrical problems for people. I feel that the author uses this story to

attract people’s attention and help them to relate to the story. The author shows that he has had

experience in what he is writing about which shows credibility also. I would trust someone that

has worked as an electrician for years and years over someone who has not.

Blue Collar Brilliance also has some examples of the rhetorical strategy of storytelling,

description, and imagery. Rose starts with a story about his mother who is working in a

restaurant as a waitress. He is telling this story to prove his whole point of the paper which is that

people without degrees can still succeed and are still very smart despite what most people

believe now a days.

“My mother, Rose Meraglio Rose (Rosie), shaped her adult identity as a waitress in

coffee shops and family restaurants. When I was growing up in Los Angeles during the 1950s,
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my father and I would occasionally hang out at the restaurant until her shift ended, and then we’d

ride the bus home with her. Sometimes she worked the register and the counter, and we sat there;

when she waited booths and tables, we found a booth in the back where the waitresses took their

breaks (Rose).”

The purpose of the author writing this passage is to convince the audience that just

because his mother was a waitress does not mean that she wasn’t very competent and able to

succeed. Rose goes onto say that he feels his mother was able to work as a waitress if she did

because of her ability to work with people and read them. He feels that it takes a special person

to work in that field and his mother was one of them.

The second rhetorical strategy I feel both authors use in their writing is invoking

authority or credibility. As I mentioned before in the text Crawford uses credibility in his

writing. He says he was an electrician for years and ended up doing that during college. That

helps his credibility because that means he is very experience in what he is writing.

“I began working as an electrician’s helper at age fourteen, and started a small electrical

contracting business after college, in Santa Barbara. In those years I never ceased to take

pleasure in the moment, at the end of a job, when I would flip the switch. (Crawford).”

This is the beginning of the quote from above, but I feel it is necessary to show the

credibility of this author. He clearly has a lot of experience and uses that in his writing.

In Blue Collar Brilliance the author talks about his school experiences and how he had a

really hard time in school. He had a very hard time in grade school but was able to get into a

college. He says that it was bumpy, but gradually he realized that it was fulfilling. He did

graduate from college which means that he did get a degree which doesn’t help prove his point
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of his paper, but I feel it was necessary to show that even if you do struggle in school you can

still be successful if you put in some effort.

“My freshman year was academically bumpy, but gradually I began to see formal

education as a means of fulfillment and as a road toward making a living. I studied the

humanities and later the social and psychological sciences and taught for 10 years in a range of

situations—elementary school, adult education courses, tutoring centers, a program for Vietnam

veterans who wanted to go to college. Those students had socioeconomic and educational

backgrounds similar to mine. Then I went back to graduate school to study education and

cognitive psychology and eventually became a faculty member in a school of education (Rose).”

This is a form of credibility because he did struggle through school, but he was able to

overcome the struggle and get into college because it was important to him. Rose said that both

of his parents dropped out at an early age to support their families. I feel that they were both very

competent people and if they didn’t have to do that and could get an education they would have

as good of a chance as anyone to be successful in that way. Since they were not able to do that,

they found a different way to be successful and I feel that says a lot more about a person.

In conclusion, I feel that both of these authors did a great job of capturing their audience

and keeping their attention. We were able to find multiple examples of rhetorical strategy in their

writing. Both authors told stories and use imagery to keep the audience from getting bored. They

used the credibility that they had to show that they knew what they were talking about. I feel that

those are the best strategies to keep people reading and from not getting too bored while reading.
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Works Cited

Crawford, Matthew B. “Shop Class as Soulcraft.” The New Atlantis, 2006,

www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft.

Rose, Mike. “Blue-Collar Brilliance.” The American Scholar, 31 Aug. 2018,

theamericanscholar.org/blue-collar-brilliance/#.XT4vAOhKjIV.