Assignment #12 - Rhetorical Analysis

           The article “Inventing the University”, wrote by David Bartholomae (1986) and published in the Journal of Basic Writing, talks about the challenges that involve being a new writer.  The author’s focus is how the new writers must seem themselves as “authority” toward theirs audience, by writing their essays as they are experts on the issue, and not like a student write for a professor. Moreover, Bartholomae argues that the university and teachers should present the writing for the students not just in “introductory courses”. For those analyses, the author analyzed 500 essays wrotes by “basic writers”.

            Bartholomae evaluate and used some essays as examples to base his arguments. The article talks about how students should evolve written in order to improve the rhetoric surrounding the audience. The author’s purpose is to show a new center of attentions for the new writers, that isn’t based only on the sentence structure, but also in how the writers learn to write for their own, with “effort” and trying something unfamiliar. In the beginning of the article, Bartholomae talks about how students approach their speeches. This introductory part of the articles makes the article seems like a guide for a new writer analyzes his own writing skills. After some paragraphs was possible see that Bartholomae was criticizing the way the writing is presented to students, and through the analysis of the essays, he showed how students can improve their ability to writing at the university. These facts make the audience clear: students (mainly new writers), and especially English’s teachers, since the authors used “we” several times to refer to how teachers must approach new writers. The rhetoric of the article is based in logos, since the author build his arguments in a rational and logical way. Besides, it is possible identify the use of ethos, when the author gives for himself credibility (because he is an English teacher), and also with use of good sources.