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Option 2: Write a letter to a celebrity to encourage rhetorical identification.
Task: Write a letter using techniques of rhetorical identification, then analyze that letter.
Read the following source on Burkean approaches to identification: “Identification” as a Key Term in Kenneth Burke’s Rhetorical Theory. Pay particular attention to Burkes’ strategies for building identification, including deliberate identification, identification through antithesis, and identification by an assumed “we.” You can find short descriptions of these in the paragraph that starts with “Burke describes the most obvious case…”
Choose a B-List celebrity (someone you don’t know well). Research their history.
Then write a 400-word letter to them. Encourage them to identify with you by using each of Burke’s types of identification. Use this identification to convince them to do something you want them to do. Ideally, try to use each identification strategy multiple times (you want the letter to focus on rhetorical identification).
Once you are done with the letter, label each instance of your use of identification using parenthetical citations such as (antithesis), (assumed we), and (deliberate identification). As mentioned in Step 3, try to use and label each strategy multiple times.
Finally, write a 350-word analysis at the end evaluating your own letter. Which form of identification is most likely to be successful? Why? Will the letter encourage self-persuasion? Will the letter as a whole work? Explain your answer based on Burke’s theory.
http://ac-journal.org/journal/vol1/iss3/burke/quigley.html ==== Identification as a key term in Kenneth Burke rhetorical theory
