Rhetorical Situation unit test
A test on this unit alone, marked as a percentage and a letter grade — for the test your class is actually sitting, rather than for May. Answer everything, then submit once: seeing the answer to question 3 before attempting question 4 makes the final percentage meaningless.
Rhetorical triangle
Tone
Rhetorical situation: what changes when it changes
Context beyond date
Exigence
Kairos in practice
Borrowed ethos
Purpose
Ethos
Kairos
Primary vs secondary audience
Logos
Short answer 1. Define or explain: Analyzing a visual text
3 ptsShort answer 2. Define or explain: Rhetorical situation
3 ptsShort answer 3. Define or explain: Constraints
3 ptsShort answer 4. Define or explain: Establishing ethos without asserting it
3 ptsFree response
6 ptsRHETORICAL ANALYSIS (Question 2, 6 points). The passage is from the introduction to David Treuer's 2012 nonfiction book Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life. Treuer is a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, a tribal nation in Minnesota; the book draws on research and personal experience to explore the history of reservations and the issues facing Native Americans who live on them. (A reservation is an area of land governed by a tribal nation in what is now the United States.) The passage, described (read the released passage at AP Central for the full text): Treuer opens with the roadside sign welcoming drivers to the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, then observes how quickly a driver passes it — the pines, swamps, and lakes are the same on both sides, yet something is different, "hard to say exactly what." He widens outward: signs like this stand across America, marking roughly 310 reservations (the Bureau of Indian Affairs cannot say exactly how many — a detail he notes wryly); reservations range from areas larger than Rhode Island or Delaware ("named after a tribe that was pushed from the region") down to plots smaller than their own signs; most are poor, a few wealthy — the Seminole bought the Hard Rock Café franchise, and the Oneida helped renovate Lambeau Field. He then argues directly that reservations and their residents are "as American as apple pie, baseball, and muscle cars" — but that unlike apple pie, "Indians contributed to the birth of America itself": the Oneida fed Washington's troops at Valley Forge, the Iroquois Confederacy served as a model for the Constitution (and, he adds slyly, for Marx and Engels), and Native soldiers have served disproportionately in every American war, down to a Minnesota company, including Indians from northern reservations, that was among the most-deployed units of the Iraq War. He closes on a paradox: though Indian land is 2.3 percent of the country and most Americans will never knowingly meet an Indian, Americans remain captivated by Indians, who run through the story America tells about itself from the first Thanksgiving to Little Bighorn. Write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Treuer makes to develop his argument about the contributions that Native Americans and their communities have made to the United States. You should: present a thesis analyzing the writer's rhetorical choices; select and use evidence to support your line of reasoning; explain how the evidence supports it; demonstrate understanding of the rhetorical situation; and use appropriate grammar and punctuation.