Today we discussed the elements of rhetorical situations. A rhetorical situation is any set of circumstances that involves at least one person attempting to communicate information with another person. Every rhetorical situations involves the following elements:
- Purpose
- Audience
- Stance
- Genre
- Medium/Design
- Context
For more information, check out The Norton Field Guide's take on Rhetorical Situations. We then examined these elements in the communications we frequently share on a regular basis in pairs. For every piece you write in this class (or every piece you write truthfully), you will have to take into consideration the above elements.
Homework
- Find a blog on a topic you care about. After reading a few posts on the blog, identify the rhetorical elements of that blog (audience, purpose, stance, medium/design, context). This should be typed and emailed to me by the beginning of class Friday.
- Read "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris (page 14) and "The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara (page 28) from Readings For Writers. For each story, pick one character and write down a list of words you would use to describe that character, along with evidence from the text that proves your point. For instance, if you think a character is kind, briefly tell us what you read in the text that led to that conclusion. Also keep in mind as you read the rhetorical elements we discussed and how they are functioning in the pieces because we will discuss them in our next class. This can be handwritten.
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