This first one I have linked to a bunch. BYU did a great job with their rhetoric pages.
This second one is the Writing Center from Texas A & M and they offer some good advice for writing in general and specifically for writing a rhetorical analysis, though what they offer could easily fall into the 5 paragraph essay precipice if you aren’t careful to sidestep it.
These two links are from the same university and offer a great example of rhetorical analysis and some tips for conducting a rhetorical analysis as well as helpful writing tips in general. The one thing I will say though, is that the example essay commits a few egregious style errors. I gagged at least three times. Still though, the analysis is good.
And then there’s this one that even cites Bitzer!
More (pilfered) food for thought:
A complete rhetorical analysis requires the researcher to move beyond identifying and labeling in that creating an inventory of the parts of a text represents only the starting point of the analyst’s work.
From the earliest examples of rhetorical analysis to the present, this analytical work has involved the analyst in interpreting the meaning of these textual components–both in isolation and in combination–for the person (or people) experiencing the text. This highly interpretive aspect of rhetorical analysis requires the analyst to address the effects of the different identified textual elements on the perception of the person experiencing the text.
So, for example, the analyst might say that the presence of feature x will condition the reception of the text in a particular way. Most texts, of course, include multiple features, so this analytical work involves addressing the cumulative effects of the selected combination of features in the text.”
(Mark Zachary, “Rhetorical Analysis.” The Handbook of Business Discourse, ed. by Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini. Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2009)
EXAMPLE
Starbucks not just as an institution or as a set of verbal discourses or even advertising but as a material and physical site is deeply rhetorical. . . . Starbucks weaves us directly into the cultural conditions of which it is constitutive. The color of the logo, the performative practices of ordering, making and drinking the coffee, the conversations around the tables, and the whole host of other materialities and performances of/in Starbucks are at once the rhetorical claims and the enactment of the rhetorical action urged. In short, Starbucks draws together the tripartite relationships among place, body and subjectivity. As a material/rhetorical place, Starbucks addresses and is the very site of a comforting and discomforting negotiation of these relationships.
(Greg Dickinson, “Joe’s Rhetoric: Finding Authenticity at Starbucks.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Autumn 2002)
These are resources for you. Explanations. Go-to guides. Use them. Use them, I say!
Yeah, Write. 