What are the three basic steps in analyzing an artifact?

1. SELECTING THE ARTIFACT
The first step would be selecting the artifact. This entails you find a piece of work that meets the appropriate standards in selecting your artifact. The artifact you chose must me something that you are interested in. The reason why is because selecting something that you are motivated about will make sure you have the right tools available in doing your best at analyzing your artifact to the fullest. The last standard would be to select an artifact that is by a rhetor so that it is easy to access background information about the.

2. ANALYZING THE ARTIFACT
Secondly Analyzing the artifact which includes three major steps reconstructing the context in which the artifact occurred, application of the five canons to the artifact and assessing the impact of the artifact on the audience.
The first step would be investigating about the rhetor's background information. This helps you get a better feel for what the rhetor's point of views are and why he was motivated about this subject. The best I thought to describe this idea was it is putting you in the rhetor's shoes.
The second step is applying the five canons to the artifact. The best way I thought to describe this process would be organizing a public speech. The basic steps even end with what the audiences memory of the speech and what they got out of the presentation.
The final step is having the critic judges the actually rhetoric by trying to interpret what the goal of the rhetoric. They do this by analyzing a response.

3. WRITING THE ESSAY
The final step is putting all your information from your previous steps and actually writing the essay. It is a five step process that is the basic writing structure for writing any essay. It includes the introduction, the description of the artifact and its context, a description of the method of criticism,a report of the findings of the analysis and finally a discussion of the contribution the analysis makes to rhetorical theory.