Throughout the semester in our class, we focused on many things in the class in order to help our writing. We were also able to use many strategies to then incorporate into our writing. One of these strategies was Rhetorical Analysis. Rhetorical Analysis is used in writing. When writing a rhetorical analysis you are asked to identify the strategies the author of any writing is using to persuade his/her audience. There are three main components of rhetorical analysis those are the writer/speaker, the audience, and the message the writer is trying to give. In order to correctly do a rhetorical analysis paper, you have to be able to know the message the author is trying to give their audience and the manner in which the author does it. As we kept on writing a rhetorical analysis in class I was able to understand how these three elements are so important. 

A rhetorical analysis is a manner in which you, the reader is able to identify what the writer/author is using as strategies in order to convey a message to the audience. During this semester I was able to do a rhetorical analysis on the article by Michael Paulson called “Lauren Ridloff Quiet Power: ‘My life had changed in every way’.” In this article, the author introduces Lauren Riloff, a 40-year old kindergarten teacher who has been deaf since birth. In this article, the writer talks about when Ridloff moved to New York, she then studied education at Hunter College. Ridloff’s first job was teaching kindergarten and first grade at Public School 347, this was a school Manhattan for children who are deaf, hard of hearing or who are born to deaf parents.

Lauren has 2 sons, she was both deaf and does consider her to be a stay at home mom. The writer in this article is shown to be very familiar with Radloff providing the reader with what she has gone through. This article is able to be able to make the reader have an emotional response to the writing.

While reading this article we are also able to have an idea of who the audience is, this being NY Times subscribers, deaf people, and perhaps theaters producers. We are also able to describe who the author is, a theater reporter for the New York Times.  There are many different types of messages that the author is trying to give to the readers. One may be how encouraging she is and the manner in which she was able to reach her dreams despite being deaf. 

I myself had an emotional response, I was able to admire Lauren Ridloff. Seeing and knowing everything she had to go through like quitting her job to be able to take care of her kids and she has become this amazing actress who is able to capture her audience. The message the author is trying to show in my opinion is how much of a brave, amazing and strong women Ridloff is.  

Doing rhetorical analysis on different articles or books were able to improve my writing and were able to help me understand the message the author/writer is trying to give and who their audience is. 

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