ABSTRACT
Evaluation, as a form of interpretation, requires you to articulate your evaluative criteria and take responsibility for your judgments. Your efforts in description and analysis are to stay “in the balcony”; to be as objective as this sort of project allows. However, as you move to interpretation and perhaps evaluation, your role in guiding listeners’ or readers’ thinking about rhetoric is substantial. At each stage of your study, keep in mind that your work is most useful if presented as well-grounded argument, rather than your reaction, or even “expert” opinion. Your evaluation is an argument offered in answer to critical questions about a rhetor’s demonstrated choices. Chapter 7 shows you how to find or construct then articulate evaluative criteria drawn from relevant theory.
