Rhetorical analysis: how to analyze ethos, logos, pathos and kairos

This guide is for high school students preparing for AP English Language, and for college students in writing and communication courses. It includes a worked analysis of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. It belongs to our series on essays and sources, whose hub is what is a thesis statement.

What is rhetorical analysis?

Rhetorical analysis is the study of how a text persuades: what the writer wants, who they are addressing, and which choices they make to get there. Aristotle defined rhetoric as the ability to see, in each case, the available means of persuasion [1]. A rhetorical analysis works backward from a finished text to those means.

It is not a summary and not a review. Compare three sentences about the same speech:

Only the third explains how the text works.

What are ethos, logos and pathos?

They are Aristotle's three modes of persuasion: through the speaker's character (ethos), the audience's emotions (pathos) and the argument itself (logos) [1].

Two cautions. First, the appeals overlap: a statistic about deaths carries pathos as well as logos. Name the dominant appeal and say how the others support it. Second, "the author uses pathos" is not analysis. Say which words create which feeling, and why that feeling serves the purpose.

What is kairos?

Kairos is the right moment: the sense that a text fits its time, place and occasion. It is a Greek term for timeliness that rhetoric teachers add to the three appeals. A speech has strong kairos when the occasion gives its words extra force: a memorial, an election, a disaster, an anniversary.

Ask: why this text now? What did the audience already know, fear or expect at that moment? Would it work as well a year earlier or later?

What is the rhetorical situation?

The rhetorical situation is the context that calls a text into being: in Lloyd Bitzer's account, an exigence (a problem that discourse can change), an audience able to act on it, and constraints that shape what can be said [2].

Purdue OWL describes the rhetorical situation with similar elements, including the author, audience, purpose and setting [3]. Use whichever model your instructor prefers; the point is to analyze the text in its context.

What is SOAPSTone?

SOAPSTone is a checklist for the rhetorical situation: Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject and Tone. It is widely used in AP English classes as a pre-reading step.

SOAPSTone is a planning tool. Do not structure your essay as six paragraphs, one per letter.

How to write a rhetorical analysis in seven steps

1. Read the text twice. Once for what it says, once for how it says it.
2. Map the rhetorical situation with SOAPSTone or Bitzer's three elements.
3. Find the purpose in one sentence: "The speaker wants [audience] to [think or do] [something]."
4. Mark the choices. Underline appeals, repeated words, shifts in tone, structure (where the text turns), and sentence patterns.
5. Group the choices into two or three strategies that do most of the work.
6. Write the thesis: speaker + purpose + strategies + effect on the audience.
7. Draft body paragraphs that each analyze one strategy: quote, explain how it works, connect it to the purpose.

Worked example: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Lincoln delivered the address on 19 November 1863 at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg. Edward Everett gave the main oration first, and it lasted about two hours; Lincoln's speech is about 270 words long [4]. Five manuscript copies survive and their wording differs slightly; quotations here follow the Bliss copy, the version most often reproduced [4].

Strategy 1: Ethos through humility and "we"

Lincoln never uses "I". He speaks as one of "us", and he lowers his own role: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." A president claiming that his words do not matter builds credibility with a grieving audience, because it puts the soldiers above the speaker. The irony, that these lines are among the best remembered in American speech, does not weaken the move at the time it was made.

Strategy 2: Logos through a chain of reasoning

The speech is built as an argument in three time frames: past ("Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal"), present ("Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure") and future ("that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom"). The logic runs: the nation was founded on a proposition; the war tests whether it can survive; therefore the living must finish the work. Lincoln also redefines the occasion. He says the living "can not dedicate", "can not consecrate", "can not hallow" this ground, because the soldiers already have. The reasoning moves the duty from the ceremony to the audience: "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work."

Strategy 3: Pathos through birth and death imagery

The speech opens with birth ("brought forth", "conceived") and closes with rebirth ("a new birth of freedom"). Between them sit the dead who "gave their lives that that nation might live" and "the last full measure of devotion". The imagery turns grief into purpose: the deaths become the price of the nation's renewal, which only the living can make worthwhile, "that these dead shall not have died in vain".

Strategy 4: Kairos and brevity

A cemetery dedication, months after a battle with heavy losses and with the war's end not in sight, gave Lincoln an audience ready to ask what the deaths had been for. After a two-hour oration, a speech of about two minutes stood out. Its brevity fits the occasion's humility, and the closing triad, "government of the people, by the people, for the people", gives the audience a line short enough to carry home.

Example thesis statements

Each thesis names the speaker, the purpose, the strategies and the effect. These are examples written for this guide.

• Strong: "In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln turns a cemetery dedication into a call to finish the war, using humble, collective ethos and imagery of birth and death to move the audience's duty from honoring the dead to completing their 'unfinished work'."
• Strong: "Lincoln's argument in three time frames, from the founding to the war to a 'new birth of freedom', reframes the Civil War as a test of the nation's founding proposition, giving a grieving audience a reason to keep fighting."
• Weak: "Lincoln uses ethos, pathos and logos in the Gettysburg Address." (Names the appeals but says nothing about purpose or effect.)
• Weak: "The Gettysburg Address is a powerful and moving speech." (An opinion, not an analysis.)

For more on strong and weak thesis statements, see what is a thesis statement.

Rhetorical analysis essay outline

1. Introduction
   • The rhetorical situation in one or two sentences (speaker, occasion, audience).
   • Thesis: purpose, two or three strategies, effect.
2. Body paragraph 1: first strategy
   • Topic sentence naming the strategy and its effect.
   • Quotation or close paraphrase.
   • Commentary: how the choice works on this audience, and how it serves the purpose.
3. Body paragraph 2: second strategy (same pattern)
4. Body paragraph 3: third strategy or the text's turn (same pattern)
5. Conclusion
   • What the strategies achieve together.
   • Why it mattered at that moment, or what it shows about persuasion.

Organize body paragraphs either by strategy (as above) or by the order of the text (opening, turn, close). Following the text's order works well for short speeches whose structure is part of the argument, such as the Gettysburg Address.

Using rhetorical analysis on the AP Lang exam

The rhetorical analysis question is the second of three free-response questions on the AP English Language and Composition exam: students analyze how a writer's language choices contribute to the purpose and meaning of a nonfiction passage [5]. The free-response section lasts 2 hours 15 minutes, including a 15-minute reading period, and the exam is fully digital [5].

Two habits that help on timed essays:

• Use verbs that say what the writer does: "reframes", "concedes", "contrasts", "invites", "dismisses". "Uses" says nothing.
• Tie every quotation to the purpose. After each quote, write a sentence that begins "This choice..." and finishes with its effect on the audience.

The synthesis question on the same exam needs a different skill; see how to write a synthesis essay.

Common mistakes

Rhetorical analysis checklist

1. Have you named the speaker, occasion, audience and purpose in the introduction?
2. Does the thesis state the purpose and two or three specific strategies?
3. Does each body paragraph analyze one strategy with a quotation?
4. Does every quotation have commentary that links it to the purpose?
5. Have you used precise verbs instead of "uses" and "shows"?
6. Have you avoided judging whether the argument is right?
7. Are your quotations exact, and from a named version of the text?

How to write a rhetorical analysis with AI for Research

AI for Research does not write your analysis. It helps you find context and scholarship, check your structure, and cite correctly. Reading the text closely and arguing how it works is your job.

1. Find context and criticism (free). Search scholarly work on your speech or essay in Find Papers: historical studies of the occasion and rhetorical criticism of the text. Read what you cite; context sources are often secondary sources, while the speech itself is the primary source.
2. Get a cited overview of the context. Deep research answers a background question, such as how a speech was received, with citations you can open. Check them against the sources.
3. Check your plan. The essay writer produces a thesis and outline with the analytical essay type. Compare it with your plan to spot a missing strategy or a paragraph that summarizes. Many courses forbid submitting AI-written text, so follow your rules.
4. Revise in the editor. Draft in the AI writing editor and format your sources with the citation generator, which is free on every plan.

The free plan includes 45 credits a month; search and citations cost nothing. See pricing. Limits: scholarly search will not find every op-ed or advertisement you might analyze, and no tool replaces your own close reading of the text.

FAQ

What is a rhetorical analysis?

A rhetorical analysis is an essay that explains how a text tries to persuade its audience, and how well. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with the writer, you identify the rhetorical situation, the writer's purpose and the choices they make, such as appeals to credibility, emotion and logic, structure and word choice, and you argue how those choices serve the purpose for that audience.

What are ethos, pathos and logos?

They are the three modes of persuasion Aristotle describes in the Rhetoric. Ethos is persuasion through the speaker's character and credibility. Pathos is persuasion through the emotions the speech stirs in the audience. Logos is persuasion through the argument itself: reasons, evidence and logic. Most strong texts combine all three, and a good analysis shows how they work together.

What is kairos in rhetoric?

Kairos is the right or opportune moment, and the sense of fitness to that moment. A speech uses kairos when it draws its force from the timing and the occasion, such as a dedication, a crisis or an anniversary. In an analysis, ask why this text was effective at this time, for this audience, and whether it would work the same way on another day.

How do you start a rhetorical analysis essay?

Open with the rhetorical situation in one or two sentences: who wrote the text, when, for which audience and in response to what. Then state your thesis, which names the writer's purpose and the main choices they use to achieve it. Avoid opening with a dictionary definition of rhetoric or a summary of the whole text.

What is SOAPSTone?

SOAPSTone is a reading checklist for the rhetorical situation: Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject and Tone. You fill in each element before you analyze a text, so your essay rests on who is speaking to whom and why. It is widely taught in AP English classes as a first step, not as the structure for the essay itself.

What is the difference between rhetorical analysis and literary analysis?

A literary analysis interprets the meaning of a work of fiction, poetry or drama, often through themes and imagery. A rhetorical analysis examines how a nonfiction text, such as a speech, essay, letter or advertisement, tries to persuade a specific audience at a specific moment. The first asks what the text means; the second asks how it works on its readers.

Next steps

• Write the claim at the center of your essay: what is a thesis statement.
• Practice the other source-based AP question: how to write a synthesis essay.
• Tell the text from the commentary: primary vs secondary sources.
• Judge the context sources you find: how to evaluate source credibility.
• Cite the speech and your sources: how to cite evidence.

Sources

1. Aristotle. Rhetoric (W. Rhys Roberts, Trans.). Book I, chapter 2 (1355b–1356a). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924. Also: Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse (G. A. Kennedy, Trans., 2nd ed.). Oxford University Press, 2007.
2. Bitzer, L. F. (1968). The rhetorical situation. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1(1), 1–14.
3. Purdue OWL. The rhetorical situation. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/rhetorical_situation/index.html
4. Library of Congress. The Gettysburg Address (exhibition, including the five known manuscript copies). https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/gettysburg-address/
5. College Board, AP Central. AP English Language and Composition exam. https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-english-language-and-composition/exam (checked 14 November 2026)