Getting Started
This topic is the engine of your rhetorical analysis essay. While identifying a writer's choices is important, your commentary is where you demonstrate analytical thinking by explaining how and why those choices work. Mastering commentary solves the most common challenge in this type of writing: moving beyond simply listing devices to explaining their significance and impact on an audience.
What You Should Be Able to Do
Explain how a writer's specific rhetorical choices contribute to their overall purpose.
Analyze the intended intellectual and emotional effects of a writer's choices on a specific audience.
Write commentary that clearly connects a piece of evidence (a quote or paraphrase) to your analytical claim (your thesis).
Distinguish between summarizing a text and analyzing its rhetorical construction.
Build a coherent line of reasoning by ensuring your commentary consistently supports your thesis.
Key Moves and Effects
In rhetorical analysis, your goal is to explain how a writer constructs a text to achieve a specific purpose for a specific audience. Your commentary is the part of your essay where you do this explaining. It is the bridge between the writer's "what" (the evidence) and the "why" (the purpose and effect).
The Role of Commentary
Commentary is the analysis and explanation you provide for your evidence. It is your thinking on the page, where you show the reader of your essay that you understand the relationship between a writer's strategic choices and their goals. It answers questions like:
Why did the writer choose this specific word or phrase?
How does this choice make the audience feel, think, or react?
How does this specific choice help advance the writer's overall argument or purpose?
Effective commentary does not simply restate the evidence in different words. Instead, it reveals the strategic thinking behind the evidence.
Connecting Strategy to Effect
Every choice a writer makes is a rhetorical choice, or a strategy intended to have an impact on the reader. Your job is to explain the connection between that choice and its intended effect, which is the specific response (intellectual, emotional, or psychological) the writer wants to evoke in the audience.
To build this connection, your commentary should be a chain of explanation:
Identify the specific choice. (e.g., "The author uses a sharp, critical tone...")
Explain its immediate function. (...by describing the policy as 'a reckless gamble'...")
Analyze the effect on the audience. (...which encourages the audience to feel a sense of alarm and distrust...")
Connect it to the writer's overall purpose. (...thereby reinforcing her main argument that the policy is dangerously ill-conceived and must be rejected.")
This progression moves from a small, specific observation to a broader conclusion about the writer's purpose.
Building a Line of Reasoning
Your commentary is the glue that holds your essay's line of reasoning together. A line of reasoning is the logical progression of your ideas, where each point connects clearly to the next, all in service of your main thesis. In a rhetorical analysis essay, each body paragraph should focus on a specific aspect of the writer's strategy, and the commentary within that paragraph must consistently explain how the evidence supports that paragraph's main idea and, by extension, your thesis.
Without strong commentary, an essay is just a list of observations. With strong commentary, it becomes a cohesive and persuasive analysis.
Data and Organization Tools
A device-effect matrix can help you plan your analysis before you start writing. It forces you to think through the relationship between choices, their impact, and the writer's purpose, which is the core task of commentary.
Device–Effect Matrix
| Rhetorical Choice | Example from Text (Quote/Paraphrase) | Intended Effect on the Audience | Connection to Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Juxtaposition | Placing images of childhood innocence next to descriptions of industrial pollution. | Creates a sense of shock and moral outrage; makes the abstract problem feel personal and emotionally resonant. | To persuade the audience that industrial negligence has a direct and devastating human cost. |
| Formal Diction | Using precise, academic language like "empirical data" and "methodological rigor." | Builds the writer's credibility (ethos); makes the argument seem well-researched, objective, and authoritative. | To convince a skeptical audience that the writer's claims are based on fact, not just opinion. |
| Anecdote | Opening with a short, personal story about overcoming a specific challenge. | Fosters a sense of connection and trust (pathos); makes the writer seem relatable and human. | To establish a bond with the audience before introducing a complex and potentially divisive argument. |
Device and Evidence Bank
These are common rhetorical choices you might analyze. Your commentary should explain the specific effect of these choices within the context of the passage you are analyzing.
Diction: A writer's specific word choice. Commentary should explain why a particular word or type of word (e.g., clinical, emotional, formal) was chosen and what effect it has.
Syntax: The arrangement of words into sentences. Long, complex sentences can create a formal or thoughtful tone, while short, simple sentences can create a sense of urgency or clarity.
Tone: The writer's attitude toward the subject or audience. Your commentary can explain how diction, syntax, and imagery work together to create a specific tone (e.g., sarcastic, reverent, critical).
Figurative Language: Non-literal comparisons like metaphors, similes, and personification. Commentary should explain what is being compared and why that comparison helps the audience understand the writer's point.
Juxtaposition: Placing two contrasting ideas, images, or concepts side-by-side. This choice is made to highlight the contrast and prompt the audience to consider the relationship between the two things.
Anecdote: A short, personal story. Anecdotes are often used to make an abstract point more concrete and relatable or to build credibility with an audience.
Rhetorical Question: A question asked not to receive an answer, but to make a point or encourage reflection. Commentary should explain what thought process the question is designed to trigger in the audience.
Appeals: Techniques used to persuade an audience. These include appeals to logic (logos), emotion (pathos), and credibility/ethics (ethos). Your analysis should explain how a choice creates one of these appeals.
Skill Snapshots
Here are three examples of how to connect a strategy to an effect in your commentary.
Strategy: A scientist writing for a general audience uses a simple metaphor comparing a complex cellular process to a factory assembly line.
- Effect explained in commentary: By framing the intricate biological process in the familiar terms of a factory, the writer makes an intimidating topic accessible and understandable. This comparison empowers the non-expert audience, allowing them to grasp the core concept without being overwhelmed by technical jargon, thus furthering the writer's purpose of public education.
Strategy: A political leader repeats a key phrase—"a future of opportunity, not a future of doubt"—at the end of three consecutive paragraphs.
- Effect explained in commentary: The deliberate repetition, or anaphora, creates a powerful, rhythmic cadence that makes the phrase more memorable and inspiring. This structural choice drills the central message into the audience's mind, framing the leader's vision in positive, hopeful terms while subtly casting opponents as purveyors of negativity.
Strategy: A journalist uses stark, statistical evidence in the middle of an emotional narrative about a family's struggles.
- Effect explained in commentary: The sudden shift from a personal story to cold, hard data (logos) lends credibility and weight to the family's experience. This move prevents the audience from dismissing the story as a mere isolated incident, forcing them to recognize it as an example of a larger, verifiable problem and adding logical force to the emotional appeal.
Common Misconceptions and Clarifications
Misconception: "My commentary should just say what the quote means."
- Clarification: Commentary should go beyond summary or paraphrase. It must explain the strategic purpose of the evidence—why the author chose to phrase it that way and what effect that phrasing has on the audience's thoughts or feelings.
Misconception: "Identifying the rhetorical device is the most important part."
- Clarification: Naming the device (e.g., "This is a metaphor") is only a starting point. The analysis happens when you explain how that metaphor works and what it accomplishes in the context of the writer's argument.
Misconception: "The effect is always 'to persuade the audience'."
- Clarification: This is too vague. Your commentary must be more specific. How does the writer persuade? By making the audience feel angry? By building a sense of trust? By presenting an idea as common sense? By making a counterargument seem ridiculous?
Misconception: "I should describe my own personal reaction to the text."
- Clarification: Your analysis should focus on the intended effect on the text's target audience, not on you as a 21st-century reader. Consider who the writer was addressing and what their values and assumptions might have been.
Summary
Strong commentary is the core of successful rhetorical analysis. It is your explanation of the relationship between a writer's choices and their purpose. To write effective commentary, you must move beyond identifying devices and summarizing evidence. Instead, focus on explaining the specific function of a writer's choices—analyzing how they are designed to shape an audience's thoughts and feelings to advance an overarching argument. By consistently connecting evidence to effect, your commentary builds a clear and persuasive line of reasoning that demonstrates a deep understanding of the art of rhetoric.