But What Does It Do? Rhetorical Analysis with David Jolliffe

Dr. David Jolliffe walked through the origins of his widely shared rhetorical framework, how he teaches it today, and why every rhetorical analysis is itself an argument. 

Key Takeaways

• Every analysis is an argument. Students must claim what a text is doing, then support that claim with evidence from the writer's choices.
• Ask "what does it do?" Spotting a metaphor or parallel structure is only the start. Students need to explain what that choice does for the argument, the writer's credibility, or the audience.
• Writers don't "use" logos, ethos, or pathos. They develop those appeals through their choices. Jolliffe has dropped the Greek terms in favor of plain descriptions.
• Start from the top. Jolliffe begins with the text's main idea and its unspoken assumption (the enthymeme), then works down to the choices that support it.
• Give it time. Jolliffe spends nearly the whole first semester on rhetorical analysis and holds off on exam practice until about November.
• Students already do this. Everyday texts, chats, and billboards are easy entry points before tackling longer works.

Session Summary

Where the framework came from

Jolliffe first sketched the framework around 1994 while serving as an AP reader. Many AP teachers had literature training but little background in rhetoric, so he wanted a single picture of how the parts of an argument fit together. He never named it himself; a friend, Bernie Phelan, first posted it as "Jolliffe's Rhetorical Framework," and the name stuck.

The original version has three layers:

1. The rhetorical situation: exigence, audience, and purpose. These terms come from Lloyd Bitzer's 1976 essay on the rhetorical situation.
2. The appeals: to the writer's character and credibility, to the structure of the argument, and to the audience's emotions and stage of life.
3. Surface features: organization, structure, and form, plus diction, syntax, imagery, and figurative language.

Arrows run both up and down. Abdon noted that analysis often moves bottom-up and writing your own argument moves top-down. Jolliffe prefers to teach top-down even for analysis: first ask what the argument is, then look for the choices that support it.

Jolliffe's example: in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2, Claudius speaks in carefully balanced sentences. That parallel structure is not just a device to label. It builds his credibility and says, in effect, "I'm in charge here."

Why rhetorical analysis sits at the center of AP Lang

Jolliffe argued that every part of the AP English Language exam draws on rhetorical analysis:

• The multiple-choice questions are largely rhetorical analysis questions.
• The rhetorical analysis essay asks for it directly.
• The argument essay asks students to build an argument that would hold up if someone analyzed it with the framework.
• The synthesis essay works like the argument essay, with sources added.

Abdon added that AP Literature's Question 3 is now called the "literary argument" for the same reason: students must make a claim, not summarize. He also explained that the Greek terms were removed from the AP course description because students kept writing "the writer uses logos" without explaining how.

Thinking about audience

Both presenters stressed that students rarely think about who they are writing for. When no audience is given, Jolliffe tells students to write for an educated, curious reader who doesn't already know what they know. Abdon puts it the same way: "Your audience is not me."

Jolliffe also distinguishes a text's primary, immediate audience from its secondary, mediated audiences. Students reading "Letter from Birmingham Jail" today are a secondary audience, not the people King was originally addressing.

The revised framework

Jolliffe's current version uses the AP exam's own language and groups everything into three areas. He shared a handout built around teachable questions for each. 

Rhetorical situation

• Context: What are the time and place, and how do they shape the text?
• Speaker: What rights or qualifications does this person bring? Why should we believe them? Jolliffe asks students the same question about their own first argument essays: "Why should I believe you?"
• Exigence: What was sticking in the writer's craw? What motivated them to write?
• Audience: Who is the primary audience? Who are the important secondary audiences?
• Purpose: What does the writer intend to do? Purpose always starts with "to" plus a verb: to persuade, to amuse, to rectify.

Rhetorical effects

• Main idea: Identify the enthymeme, the argument's unspoken assumption. Jolliffe frames it as claim, data, unspoken "because."  For example, a billboard showing a smiling older man on a Harley reads only "Your wife called. She said it's okay." Students can work out the claim and the unstated assumption that connects it to the image.
• Appeal to the writer's character and credibility (ethos).
• Appeal to the audience's emotions and stage of life (pathos).
• Tone: the writer's attitude toward the subject, which can shape both credibility and emotional appeal.

Rhetorical choices

• Organization: How many parts can the piece be divided into, and what does each part do for the main idea? (Jolliffe tells students the number of parts is up to them.)
• Details: examples, descriptions, and narratives that support tone, credibility, and emotional appeal.
• Diction: how would you describe the word choice? His cautionary example is a student who wrote, "When my feline expired, I waxed lachrymose."
• Syntax: sentence length and structure, such as piled-up cumulative sentences.
• Imagery and allusion: not just what picture is painted, but what that image does.
• Figurative language: schemes and tropes such as alliteration, metaphor, and metonymy.

Jolliffe said he no longer leans on acronyms for these categories, since they tend to confuse students and teachers alike.

Abdon's classroom tools: "Put your finger on it" and What, How, Why

Abdon shared two handouts that build on Jolliffe's work. His core point: students often jump straight from "here's an interesting word" to "this appeals to the audience," skipping the reasoning in between.

His approach breaks the reasoning into three steps:

1. What: Put your finger on a specific choice in the text, such as a word, a sudden sentence fragment, or a shift.
2. How: Explain how that choice creates an effect. This is the commentary, and it can't be pointed to; it has to be explained.
3. Why: Connect that effect to the appeals and the writer's purpose in this rhetorical situation.

He also shared the rhetorical situation model used in the AP course description (from Glenn and Gray's St. Martin's Handbook), with three student questions added: Why do or should I care about this? Why do or should I trust this person? What makes sense about this?

Start with everyday rhetoric

Abdon introduces rhetorical analysis with a pair of text-message chats from his textbook: the same girl explains the same situation first to her mom and then to her best friend. Students compare the choices and their effects. He said he used to open the year with "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and now recommends starting with a short excerpt instead.

Q&A Highlights

Is the framework meant to show the order in which you teach rhetorical analysis?

Not exactly. Abdon uses it as a concept map showing how surface choices create effects, how those effects build appeals, and how the appeals tie back to the rhetorical situation. Jolliffe added that students can enter the framework anywhere. If they start with an appeal, though, they must go down into the choices to find evidence for it.

My students lack the language to talk precisely about rhetorical choices. How can I get them there faster?

Jessica DiIorio described students giving vague readings of Sonia Sotomayor's 2022 speech to law students. Jolliffe's answer was "What's the hurry?" He spends the fall building the framework and vocabulary before introducing the exam, so students learn to write real arguments rather than exam answers. Abdon agreed that this slow work is the work. He recommends the What, How, Why routine and noted that knowing technical terms matters less than explaining effects. Both suggested vertical teaming so that concepts are introduced before 11th grade; Abdon described a district that teaches the first two AP Lang units in the second half of sophomore year.

My students confuse exigence and purpose. How do I separate them?

Jolliffe said exigence gives rise to purpose. His example: what's sticking in his craw is that Arkansas has no unified policy protecting renters facing eviction. His purpose is to get that policy changed.

Can imagery go beyond "painting a picture"?

Yes. Jolliffe said students should ask what an image does: whether it stirs anger, conveys tone, or supports the main idea.

Closing Thoughts

Jolliffe's parting advice: remind students they are not just taking an exam. They are real writers addressing real audiences, with a real exigence and a real purpose.