This document provides guidance on analyzing a scholarly article for a rhetorical analysis assignment. It begins with an explanation of how to integrate quotes from the text to support claims about the text. Then, it analyzes the exigence, motivations, and aims of Donald Murray's article "Response of a Laboratory Rat" through relevant quotes. The analysis of exigence discusses the context of writing process research at the time. For motivations, it examines quotes that explain Murray's willingness to participate. Finally, it identifies Murray's aims as helping readers understand writing processes and encouraging more humane research methods based on quotes from the article. The document concludes by advising the analysis of one element at a time using evidence from the text.

1. MAJOR ASSIGNMENT 3:
RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
OF A SCHOLARLY ARTICLE
Lecture Eight: Analyzing the Text

2. CONTENTS
• In this lecture, you will find:
• An explanation of how to integrate a quote from a text to
support a claim about a text
• My brief analysis of my source text’s exigence,
motivations, and aims
• A doggo

3. HOW TO INTEGRATE A QUOTE
• When you’re performing textual analysis (including rhetorical reading), you’re
basically saying, “I think the text means this based on this part of the text itself.”
• In other words, you’re giving the reader your interpretation of the text itself. Here’s
an example from an essay I wrote about David Ferry’s remarkable poem “That Now
Are Wild and Do Not Remember.”

4. HOW TO INTEGRATE A QUOTE (EXAMPLE)
Here is the text of the poem, for reference.
Where did you go to, when you went away?
It is as if you step by step were going
Someplace elsewhere into some other range
Of speaking, that I had no gift for speaking,
Knowing nothing of the language of that place
To which you went with naked foot at night
Into the wilderness there elsewhere in the bed,
Elsewhere somewhere in the house beyond my seeking.
I have been so dislanguaged by what happened
I cannot speak the words that somewhere you
Maybe were speaking to others where you went.
Maybe they talk together where they are,
Restlessly wandering, along the shore,
Waiting for a way to cross the river.

5. HOW TO INTEGRATE A QUOTE (EXAMPLE)
• In my analysis for a graduate school class on literature and trauma, I claimed that
this poem, because the speaker (this is literary-scholar-speak for the narrator) uses
so few specific words but relies so often on “someplace” and “elsewhere,” had
experienced a traumatic response to some event having to do with the “you” in the
poem.
• When you’re using part of a text to back up a claim about that text, the general
structure is to make the claim, then insert the quote, then provide an interpretation
of the quote and how it relates to your claim. I’ll show you what this looks like on
the next slide.

6. HOW TO INTEGRATE A QUOTE (EXAMPLE)
• “From its first line, Ferry’s poem presents the reader with a crisis not only of language but of
knowledge (claim): “Where did you go, when you went away?” (1) (quote—the numbers in the
parenthetical citations refer to the lines of the poem). The speaker, and therefore the reader,
lacks a fundamental understanding (interpreting quote, proving that a lack of knowledge exists
and is expressed in this line), and this uncertainty, which pervades the entire poem, catalyzes
the speaker’s inability to articulate an experience (interpretation of quote, proving that a lack
of language is expressed in this poem). His statement of this problem is quite overt: ‘I have
been so dislanguaged by what happened/I cannot speak the words that somewhere you/Maybe
were speaking to others where you went’ (9-11) (another quote). The problem of speaking is
bound up in the problem of knowing (interpreting the quote, connecting the problem of
knowing with the problem of language): we don’t know where ‘you’ went, but s/he is central to
the speaker’s break with language—it is the words s/he might be speaking that the speaker is
unable to utter (interpreting the quote; pointing out that the speaker could potentially have
had trouble speaking any words, but it’s the words that the poem’s ‘you’ might be speaking,
specifically, that are the problem here)

7. HOW TO INTEGRATE A QUOTE (EXAMPLE)
• This, then, is what you guys will be doing. It’s a different kind of integration of
quotes than you might be used to, since the kinds of quotes you deal with normally
back up an assertion about a topic that’s related to the text rather than the text
itself.
• I recognize that this kind of analysis can seem tricky. How do you spend an entire
paragraph interpreting one quote? The trick is to look for a lot of different quotes in
the text that support your idea, and then insert them between your interpretation of
them.
• So: In the next several slides, I’m going to show you some quotes from my article,
and I’ll label them with which part of the analysis I think they fit with: exigence,
motivation, or aims (see lecture one for an explanation of these).

8. ARTICLE ANALYSIS: MOTIVATIONS
“I have long felt the academic world is too closed.
We have an ethical obligation to write and to
reveal our writing to our students if we are
asking them to share their writing with us. . . . I
have also been fascinated by protocol analysis
research. It did seem a fruitful way . . . To study
the writing process. . . . In the absence of more
proper academic resources, I have made a career
of studying myself while writing. I was already
without shame. When Carol Berkenkotter asked
me to run in her maze I gulped, but I did not
think I could refuse” (137)
Here, the writer is explaining his
motivations. He’s telling us that he agreed
to do the experiment with Berkenkotter
(and, presumably, to write about it as well)
because of three things: he believes
teachers have an ethical obligation to share
their writing; he’s fascinated by protocol
research; and he already was the subject of
self-study. If I were writing an analysis of
Murray’s motivations, I would probably
start here, explaining that his motivations
were threefold, then explaining each one.

9. ARTICLE ANALYSIS: MOTIVATIONS
• The analysis of motivations doesn’t have to begin and end with the text. Since I
know some things about Donald Murray from my earlier research—for example,
that he is a writing teacher, a professional writer, a writing coach, etc.—I could (and
should!) include that information in my explanation of his motivations.
• That’s the rhetorical reading part. I can look at the text and understand the
motivations Murray articulates, but I can also bring in my knowledge of Murray as
a teacher of writing and extrapolate from there.

10. DOGGO BREAK!
This is Mercedes, my brother-in-
law’s other doggo. She’s getting on
in years, but she’s the sweetest lil’
Boxer girl you ever did meet.

11. READING BETWEEN THE LINES
• “When Carol Berkenkotter asked me to
run in her maze I gulped, but I did not
think I could refuse” (137).
• Here’s another trick to textual analysis:
subtext. Reading between the lines.
Notice that Murray talks about himself
using the language of lab rats. The very
title of the piece is “Response of a
Laboratory Rat.” He refers to rats
several times throughout the essay.
What does this suggest to you?

12. READING BETWEEN THE LINES
• Well, think about what a lab rat is. It’s something that gets acted upon; gets studied;
does what it’s asked; is physically incapable of complaining. A lab rat has no agency;
it has no ideas of its own; its entire existence depends on other people and their
needs. But, ultimately, a lab rat is a necessary part of knowledge-making. Does this
suggest that Murray thinks highly of his own ideas/agenda in this process? Not
really. But it does suggest that he understood the importance of this kind of research
and was willing to do some uncomfortable things in order to contribute to it.
• This would definitely go in my analysis of Murray’s motivations. I would find every
single instance in the text of this lab-rat language and tell the reader about it to
help them understand my interpretation.

13. ARTICLE ANALYSIS: EXIGENCE
• Because Murray himself doesn’t talk much about the
exigence (beyond “Berkenkotter asked me to run in
her maze”), I have to go back to Berkenkotter’s
article. There, I found this: “I met Mr. Murray at the
Conference on College Composition and
Communication meeting in Dallas, 1981. He
appeared at the speaker’s rostrum after my session
and introduced himself, and we began to talk about
the limitations of taking protocols in an experimental
situation. On the spur of the moment, I asked him if
he would be willing to be the subject of a naturalistic
study. He hesitated, took a deep breath, then said he
was very interested in understanding his own
composing process, and would like to learn more”
(124)
• Before this quote appears, Berkenkotter talks about
how the field of writing process (they call it protocol)
study had been limited to laboratory settings, and
that research had not yet been conducted on writers
in natural settings, like classrooms or their homes.
Berkenkotter suggested, citing other researchers,
that laboratory settings might be have a serious
affect on a person’s writing process (aha—a
theoretical framework!).
• So, that’s the exigence. Carol Berkenkotter wanted to
try a naturalistic writing study because none had yet
been conducted; she asked Murray if he would
participate; he said yes, for all the reasons listed in
the “motivations” slide.

14. ARTICLE ANALYSIS: EXIGENCE
• Remember that when you talk about exigence, you should refer to some of the
“historicizing the text” questions, such as when the text was published and what kinds of
conversations were going on in the field at the time. Since writing process studies were a
big thing in the late seventies and early eighties, I would, when talking about the
exigence of this article, explain that. I might even go out and find some external sources
that talked about the prevalence of this kind of research in order to help the reader
understand what Berkenkotter was responding to—that is, that there was a bunch of
writing process research, but all of it was in lab settings.
• Moreover, I would also talk about how the exigence for Murray’s article was the
existence of Berkenkotter’s experiment and his experience in it. In explaining that, I’d
probably use a combination of quotes from Murray and Berkenkotter.

15. ARTICLE ANALYSIS: AIMS
• I suspect that, of all the parts of the analysis, this one is going to be the trickiest to
figure out. The aim, remember, is what the author wants the article to do, the real
impact they want to have on the reader. Do they want the reader to understand
something? To adopt a new method of doing things? To view something in a different
way?
• In Murray’s case, his aim seems to be twofold: to help himself—and therefore the
reader—understand that people may not understand their own writing processes as
well as they think they do, and to help teachers understand that they need to do
different things when they teach writing. How can I tell that?

16. ARTICLE ANALYSIS: AIMS
• “I was far more aware of audience than I
thought I was during some of the writing.
My sense of audience is so strong that I
have to suppress my conscious awareness
of audience to hear what the text
demands” (139)
• Here, Murray is describing what he learned
about his own writing process that he didn’t
know before. This tells me that, because Murray
is a professional writer, he probably uses
writing as a way of making knowledge, or of
helping himself understand something. He also
clearly has some reason for publishing the
writing, which suggests that he also wants
other people to understand what surprised him
about his writing process. This suggests,
further, that he also wants others to understand
that they may not have as good an
understanding of their writing processes as they
thought.

17. ARTICLE ANALYSIS: AIMS
• “Finally, I started this process with a
researcher and have ended it with a
colleague. I am grateful for the humane
way the research was conducted. I have
learned a great deal about research and
about what we have researched. It has
helped me in my thinking, my teaching,
and my writing. I am grateful to Dr. Carol
Berkenkotter for this opportunity” (141)
• This is the last paragraph of Murray’s article.
What does he mean when he says this?
Obviously, he just wants to thank Berkenkotter,
which makes sense—she came up with these
ideas. But look at what he says about humanity:
“I am grateful for the humane way the research
was conducted.” Does this suggest that he
thinks other kinds of research might not be
humane? The fact that he brings it up, plus the
fact that he used inhumane language earlier in
the article (remember: lab rats), suggests that
one of his aims is to get people thinking about
the importance of humanity when conducting
research about the writing process.

18. ARTICLE ANALYSIS: AIMS
• What I said before, then, about his aims being twofold might have been wrong—they
seem, in fact, to be threefold, the third aim being to get other researchers thinking
about the humanity or inhumanity of their methods.
• Ah—I said that one of Murray’s aims was to tell teachers that they might rethink
the way they teach writing. I didn’t address how I knew that.

19. ARTICLE ANALYSIS: AIMS
• “We have an ethical obligation to write
and to reveal our writing to our students
if we are asking them to share their
writing with us. I have felt writers
should, instead of public readings, give
public workshops in which they write in
public, allowing the search for meaning to
be seen. I’ve done this and found the
process insightful—and fun” (137)
• Here, he actually states it outright: “we
have an ethical obligation.” But it’s not
enough, here, to understand the thing he
says, but what that implies, which is that
it isn’t enough for teachers simply to
understand that they have an ethical
obligation, but rather to act on that
obligation and enact these different
methods (i.e. workshops) in their own
classes. If he didn’t want teachers to do
these things, he would not have gone to
the trouble of writing it down.

20. ARTICLE ANALYSIS: BRINGING IT ALL
TOGETHER
• My suggestion, then, is to go through the article and look for one thing at a time: the
exigence, then the motivation, then the aims. Which parts of the text—which
particular words or sentences—demonstrate to you what these are? You may have to
read between the lines, as sometimes these things are not explicitly stated.
• In the next lecture, we’ll go a little more in-depth about the integration of quotes,
but remember: claim, quote, interpretation/elaboration.

21. WHAT’S NEXT?
• In the next lecture, I’ll cover more about the practical mechanics of quote integration
using MLA format.