Rhetorical Analysis WS: Intro Thesis Frames
Here are some sentence frames that you can use to write a thesis statement that presents the author’s purpose and key rhetorical strategies:
- To convince the audience that ______, [author] ______.
- In [text], [author] aims to ______. [Author] uses ______ to ______.
- By using ______, [author] ______.
Here’s a sample thesis statement for each sentence frame:
To convince his audience that they have a responsibility to disobey unjust laws, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses criticism and argues his point from both legal and religious perspectives.
In his 1744 speech, Chief Canassatego aims to persuade the British colonists to cooperate more with each other and with the Iroquois Confederacy. He uses courtesy, metaphorical language, and references to history to encourage political unity.
By using vivid imagery and word choice, Helen Keller allows her audience to share her experience of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Specific verbs help readers understand the author’s purpose more accurately. Here are some examples of verbs you could use in your thesis:
- convinces
- urges
- inspires
- exposes
- attacks
- provokes
- Canassatego. Speech at Lancaster courthouse. 1744. Indian Treaties Printed by Benjamin Franklin, 1736-1762, edited by Carl Van Doren and Julian P. Boyd, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1938, archive.org/details/indiantreatiespr00vand/page/78.
- Keller, Helen. Letter to the New York Symphony Orchestra. 1924. Letters of Note: Volume 2: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 2016.
- King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” 1963. The Atlantic, Feb. 2018, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/letter-from-birmingham-jail/552461/.