Kathleen Alonzo

Mr. Soeth

English 3AP

January 27, 2011

REHUGO Analysis – Reading

A. “In Search of the Good Family” By: Jane Howard

B. Thesis: In the article the author’s main thesis revolves around the characteristics that make up conventional families and new kinds of families significant to communities.

C. Evidence: “These new families, to borrow the terminology of an African tribe (the Bangwa of the Cameroons), may consist either of friend of the road, ascribed by chance, or friends of the heart, achieved by choice.” The author brings out ethos as she uses the credibility of the Bangwa Tribe. Howard tells of how the Bangwa Tribe makes up their own families with different individuals within their tribe. She states that their tribes consist of friends of the road or ascribed by chance, which in other words means friends who happen to go to same school, work, or live near you. “A few of my life's most tribally joyous times, in fact, have been spent with people whom I have yet to see again.” The author uses pathos to provide readers with an appeal to emotion describing how she once felt joy when she spent time with people whom she will see again. These people whom she will yet see again would be considered as family.

D. Rhetorical Strategies: “Call it a clan, call it a tribe, call it a family.” Howard uses repetition as an introduction to her article and with the repetition readers can infer what her main thesis of the article could be. Using the repetition of the phrase “call it”, it implies no matter what terminology you use to describe family, clan or tribe they all mean the same thing. “1. Good families have a chief, or a heroine, or a founder.” This sentence from the passage is 1 out of the 10 paragraphs she uses for patterns of development. Using patterns of development gives the author a method of organization or arrangement to organize an entire text. In this case, Howard organizes this paragraph along with the other 9 paragraphs, in the order on the importance of the different roles and characteristics founded in a family.

E. Citation:

Shea, Renee Hausmann., Lawrence Scanlon, and Robin Dissin. Aufses. The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing and Rhetoric. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. Print.