Textual Rhetorical Analysis

In order to properly understand this author or his article it is important that one must understand the different strategies utilized in textual rhetoric. There are five major strategies that are exhibited in DiSalvo’s article; context, substance, style, organization and delivery. Rhetoric has been defined as the art of persuasion, and in order to be successful an author must be mindful of these five concepts. The author’s purpose for writing this article was to persuade those in the field of political science that this field has changed drastically and that its overall devolution has proved counter-productive to the scientific community. In order to persuade the audience DiSalvo would have to be successful in the utilization of the five strategies.

Context

               The context of this article would be lost on many who do not study or understand political science. While the author does give context in the form of a brief history and an overall summary of where the field has come from and gone to; he leaves a large amount of important contextual information out on the assumption that the audience is fairly knowledgeable in the field prior to reading his article. The spoken factors of context include the current state of affairs between political ideologies and the influence bestowed by the dominant ideology, which the author eludes to the fact that this knowledge is taken for granted; it has become parochially viewed as an acceptable and inevitable truth. This context provides a necessary precursor to understand the substance of the article.

Substance

             The substance of this article is essentially an informative persuasion about the legitimacy and validity or lack thereof in the field of political science. The author makes an assertion concerning the field’s legitimacy and then argues his viewpoint with supporting evidence. In his argument he condemns much of what is considered common knowledge. Because of what the author is arguing and how it initially viewed by the primary audience; it is necessary for him to produce enough evidence to not only defend his original assertion, but to counter typical would be arguments before they are made. Therefore, producing a complete argument; for example the author makes an assertion that the field of political science lacks the contrast between Realism and Liberalism, and this lack of critical comparative analysis is counter-productive. The author then defends this assertion with another by arguing this then leaves the reigning political regime unchallenged. The substance of this article is communicated well to the field by the author’s style.

Style

             The Author does not step far outside the box of typical academic writhing for this field. His word choice is solid and complex. While some of the information cannot be digested by the general population; the vast majority of the article is communicated in a simple enough manner for all students in the field to grasp. The author structured his sentences to be moderately lengthy for the most part; there are however a few sentences long enough to make up the body of a paragraph, but this is done without the audience feeling as though one is caught on a run-on sentence. With the author using a moderately lengthy sentence structure one will find a great deal of commas and semicolons in order to properly break up the text, but as I stated before the author is careful not to make his sentences feel like they run-on.

 

 

Organization

             DiSalvo organizes this article in a couple of ways; first, the article is organized the subject headings. With headings such as “A Short History” or “The Sources of Change” the audience can easily navigate through the article for what they are looking for. This method also works to prepare the reader for the next body of text. Second, the author approaches his article very pragmatically; he presents an introduction followed by a brief history, essentially a preface, so that the audience may have a greater understanding before he arrives to his initial argument. The author then makes his argument and follows it up with supporting evidence, and in order to let his assertions resonate he concludes by drawing a few mildly controversial assumptions.

Delivery

             The delivery of this article is very straight forward; the author does not provide any visuals because given the content visual rhetoric would not serve a purpose. Rather a visual could distract from the text and hinder the audience attention. Instead the article features dense bodies of text organized with subject headings; other than that there is not much to be said of the author’s delivery that has not already been addressed.

             The purpose of DiSalvo’s article was to persuade the minds of those studying political science to challenge the legitimacy of the current scientific community. He accomplished his goals quite well by utilizing all five of the analytical strategies; context, substance, style, organization and delivery. There are certain areas in which his arguments may have been more persuasive given additional evidence, but DiSalvo may not have wanted to stray too far from the intended subject. Overall this article proved to be both informative and persuasive; while leaving the audience with something to ponder.