Style Analysis for Rhetoric

Correctness
grammar
Clarity*
word choice
coherence
Appropriateness
high
middle
low
Embellishment
tropes
schemes






Because there has been implanted in us the power to persuade each other and to make clear
to each other whatever we desire, not only have we escaped the life of wild beasts, but we have
come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts; and generally speaking, there is
no institution devised by man which the power of speech has not helped us to establish.
-Isocrates

First, we are concerned with the rhetorical climate, the impact of our times upon what people
talk, and what people talk aboutSecond, we are concerned with the responsible and effective
practice of rhetoric in our times, with the character and behavior of listeners and speakers.
-J . J effery Auer


*Horner, Winifred Bryan. Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition. New York: St. Martins Press, 1988.
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Analyzing Prose: Clarity

Adapted from M. Jimmie Killingsworth,
Texas A&M University
What is style?
Depends upon your perspective:
For the writer, style involves the decisions (conscious or unconscious, principled or intuitive)
about what kinds of words to choose and sentences to construct.
For the reader, style involves the effects created by certain combinations of words and
sentences.
For the text, style comprises the patterns and relations of words and sentences.
For the language as a whole, or the culture it represents, style represents the means by which
individual writers, readers, and texts emerge within, among, and against the conventions of
usage and syntax that define the language and the social world.
I use my writing style to bring myself into being (not "express" so much as "construct")
communicate with others (not only persuade, but make connections of all kinds)
to practice the craft of writing (to make a beautiful or workable thing)
to fulfill the destiny of a language-using, social life-form (to be human)
to change the world (by making a historical record of experiences and ideas)





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is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.
2001 by Pat Sherbert. All rights reserved.

A Method for Stylistic Analysis

1. Imagine that there is normal language--that every sentence is a simple one (subject-verb-
[complement]) and that every word is used only according to the denotation given in the
dictionary. Now list every deviation from this norm that you can find in the passage you are
analyzing.

a) (optional) If you know the technical name for the deviation ("complex sentence," "inverted
subject and verb," "passive voice," "metaphor," "oxymoron," etc.), put it in your list.

2. For every deviation, list at least two other ways of communicating what the author seems to
be saying. Try to use "normal" language for one alternative. Then create another deviant
alternative.

3. Finally, speculate on why the author may have decided to use the original deviation. Reflect
on the ways that the style brings the author to life,
communicates or fails to communicate (including or excluding a particular readership),
creates beauty,
performs a social or cultural function,
and attempts to make an historical impact


Process: On the next page is a sample analysis. It does not even begin to exhaust the deviations in
the passage but merely selects a few.

Practice: On the empty table with the following the samples, list a few of the deviations omitted in
the sample analysis; then complete the analysis yourself.

After the sample, there are other various other passages and tables for you to practice the
process of analysis for both AP Language and AP Literature.


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is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.
2001 by Pat Sherbert. All rights reserved.

Sample Analysis
Passage to be analyzed:
Like the network of new highways proposed for the canyon country, these power plants are meant not for
current needs but for anticipated needs. Planting for growth, its called. The fact that planning for growth
encourages growth, even forces growth, would not be seen as a serious objection by the majority of Utah-
Arizona businessman and government planners. They believe in growth. Why? Ask any cancer cell why it
believes in growth.
--Edward Abby, Canyonlands and Compromises, 1971



Deviant Word, Phrase,
or Sentence

Normal Alternative

Deviant Alternative

Purpose or Effect of
Authors style?

network of new
highways (metaphor)

many new highways

web of new highways

Unlike web which
connotes something
natural, network
suggests an elaborate
technological system


are meant not for current
needs but for anticipated
needs (passive voice,
inversion of positive and
negative complements, use
of quotation marks)

the developers intend to
meet anticipated needs, not
current needs

the developers care
nothing about the needs of
the people and the land in
its present state but want
only to create needs that
have to be satisfied in the
future

Passive voice allows the
writer to put roads in the
subject position for
emphasis and cohesion
with previous sentence; the
inversion puts anticipated
needs at the end of the
sentence so that it can be
explained in the next
sentence; the quotation
marks distance the authir
from the quoted phrase,
creating irony.


Planning for growth, its
called. (Inversion of
complement, quotation,
contraction, substitution of
expletive it for agent in
subject postion)

The developers call the
process of meeting
anticipated needs
planning for growth

Planning for growth is
the terminology used by
the developers.

Putting the complement
first makes the transition to
the previous sentence;
quotation sets up the
troublesome phrase to be
interpreted later in the
passage; the contraction
creates an informality
typical of the perona(the
natural man); the omission
of the agent keeps the
focus on the idea of
growth, which is being
criticized.
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Passage for Analysis:

Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory,
stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of
our nature.
--Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 1861

Deviant Word, Phrase, or

Sentence

Normal Alternative

Deviant Alternative

Purpose or Effect of
Authors style?





























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is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.
2001 by Pat Sherbert. All rights reserved.

Passage for Analysis:

I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being called an extremist. Was not J esus an extremist in love-
""Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an
extremist for justice--"Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty strem." Was not Paul
an extremist for the gospel of J esus Christ--"I bear in my body the marks of the Lord J esus."So, after all,
maybe the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
--Martin Luther King, Letter from a Birmingham J ail, 1963



Deviant Word, Phrase, or
Sentence

Normal Alternative

Deviant Alternative

Purpose or Effect of
Authors style?


























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is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.
2001 by Pat Sherbert. All rights reserved.

Passage for Analysis:

The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and
philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices
of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune
that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning
them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
--Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962



Deviant Word, Phrase, or
Sentence

Normal Alternative

Deviant Alternative

Purpose or Effect of
Authors style?



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is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.
2001 by Pat Sherbert. All rights reserved.

Passage for Analysis:

When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in
the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of the sky above us was the color of ever-changing violet
and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our
bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark
muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gantlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back
doors of the dark dripping gardens where odors arose from the ashpits to the dark odorous stables where a
coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to
the street light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner we hid
in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed.
--J ames J oyce, "Araby"



Deviant Word, Phrase, or
Sentence

Normal Alternative

Deviant Alternative

Purpose or Effect of
Authors style?




























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is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.
2001 by Pat Sherbert. All rights reserved.

Passage for Analysis:

As the corpse went past the flies left the restaurant table in a cloud rushed after it, but they came back a few
minutes later.
The little crowd of mourners-all men, and boys, no women--threaded their way across the market
place between piles of pomegranates and the taxis and the camels, wailing a short chant over and over again.
What really appeals to the flies is that the corpses here are never put into coffins, they are merely wrapped in
a piece of rag and carried on a rough wooden bier on the shoulders of four friends. When the friends get to the
burying-ground they hack an oblong hole a foot or two deep, dump the body in it and fling it over it a little of
the dried-up, lumpy earth, which is like broken brick. No gravestone, no name, no identifying mark of any
kind. The burying-ground is merely a huge waste of hummocky earth, like a derelict building-lot. After a
month or two no one can even be certain where his own relatives are buried.
--George Orwell, "Marrakech"



Deviant Word, Phrase, or
Sentence

Normal Alternative

Deviant Alternative

Purpose or Effect of
Authors style?



























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is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.
2001 by Pat Sherbert. All rights reserved.

Passage for Analysis:

It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and
scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select
street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that
neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton
wagons and gasoline pumps--an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join
representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and
anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of J efferson.
--William Faulkner, "A Rose For Emily"

DeviantWord,Phrase,or
Sentence

NormalAlternative

DeviantAlternative

PurposeorEffectof
Authorsstyle?

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is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.
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Analyzing Prose: Embellishment

AP Language and Composition Alternative Assignment
J ohn f. Kennedy Inaugural Address
Read Kennedys Inaugural address, looking for schemes and tropes in the speech. Then complete the
following assignment, using columns for your response like those in the example:
(You must list and explain at least 5 different and significant schemes and/or tropes.)
Specific Scheme/ Trope Example Your Interpretation

Antithesis

We observe today not a victory
of a party but a celebration of
freedom.

Emphasizes that the election
transcends petty politics and
recognizes triumph of
democracy; removes
individuality and promotes
importance of democratic
ideals; removes from field of
politics in an effort to promote
national unity.
























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is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.
2001 by Pat Sherbert. All rights reserved.

AP Literature and Comp Alternative Structure Assignment

Read this adapted version of Lincoln's "Mystic Cords," looking for schemes and tropes in the
speech. Then complete the following assignment, using columns for your response like those in the
example:
(You must list and explain at least 5 different and significant schemes and/or tropes.)

Mystic Chords
Adapted from Lincoln
The mystic chords of memory
Stretching from every battle-field
And patriot grave
To every living heart and hearthstone
All over this broad land
Will swell the chorus of the Union
When again touched
As surely they will be
By the better angels of our nature

Poetry: Sometimes defined as any metrical composition; Wordsworth said that the opposite of
poetry was factual or scientific writing, and modern theoreticians tend to agree with
him. By making wide use of the connotations and interrelations of words, poetry
presents much that is beyond the expressive ability of prose. Though some critics have
maintained that the aim of poetry is to produce pleasure and others that it is to give us a
unique sort of knowledge, there is considerable agreement that poetry represents an
emotional and intellectual experience.
LITERARY TERMS-A DICTIONARY






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is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.
2001 by Pat Sherbert. All rights reserved.

Specific Scheme/ Trope Example Your Interpretation

Metaphor

The mystic chords

This choice of a chord, a
combination of three or more
notes that blend harmoniously
when sounded together, defines
Lincoln's hope for a united
purpose for the lives lost on the
battlefield as for a stronger
Union.