journal article critique is designed to have you evaluate a rhetorical or critical research article in the field of communication from a peer-reviewed academic journal. These types of research articles typically evaluate or theorize about public forms of discourse. For example, a rhetorical criticism may critique President Clinton’s State of the Union Address; a critical project may critique the dominant discourse of capitalism from a feminist perspective.
The article should analyze cultural or public discourse rather than data collected from individual participants or communication literature.
The article should typically be evaluative in nature (i.e., it makes judgments about the discourse).
There should be some dominant theory or paradigm guiding the critic in their evaluation.
Good sources for these types of articles include the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Argument and Advocacy, and Text and Performance Quarterly.
Assignment Requirements:
Specific requirements for the second journal article critique are, in some cases, vaguer than the first critique. However, the general principle remains the same: Briefly summarize the research article and then present a systematic evaluation of it. Specifically, the assignment criteria are as follows:
The topic of the article may be anything related to communication so long as it conducts research from a rhetorical and/or critical perspective. The article should come from a recognized scholarly source in communication.
Your critique should contain 6 major sections (please label and number these sections):
The source citation (full citation in MLA style)
Summarize the purpose and rationale of the research project
Describe the theoretical perspective used by the researcher and briefly describe the conclusions and implications articulated in the article
A detailed evaluation of the research article
See below for evaluation criteria
This section should comprise half of your document
A brief concluding paragraph summing up the critique
Approximately half of the critique should address the first 5 sections mentioned above while the other half should be your evaluation of the article. In other words, your evaluation of the article is equally as important as your summary of the article’s content.
Overall goal for a rhetorical critique: Figure out what the writer is trying to accomplish and identify what writing tactics he or she is utilizing to accomplish it.
Article Evaluation Criteria:
1. Is there a clear thesis or argument lined out? What does the author want to say about the text (movie, book, film, play, newspaper articles, etc) they are analyzing?
2. Has the author cited the pertinent, and only the pertinent, literature in their literature review (there will be one)?
3. In the discussion of the text, does the author have plenty of examples/evidence to support his or her claims?
What kinds of evidence do they use to support their claims?
Do these examples feel like they are the most valuable for making their point? In other words, do they have plenty of back up for their claims? Is the support they use any good?
What are the rhetorical/visual strategies do they suggest the text is using to make its point? What do they have to say about these strategies? Does this make sense? Are they stretching it?
4. Do they do a thorough job of putting the text in the appropriate context? In other words, do they identify who the texts audience is, who wrote it, when it was published/seen, etc.
7. Have any ideas been overemphasized or underemphasized? Is anything missing? Do you have questions that feel unanswered?
8. Should some sections of the manuscript be expanded, condensed or omitted?
9. What underlying assumptions does the author have? Critical and rhetorical articles often have the goal of critiquing the underlying notions of power in society, often with the hope for change. Do you see this in this article?
10. Has the author been objective in his or her discussion of the topic? (If not, is that a bad thing?)
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