The Guidance of the Rhetorical Situation

Dear Journal,

Today, I asked myself what my theory of writing was. When I first was asked that question at the beginning of my English 110 course, I had a generic answer. My answer to that question was to follow the instructions given by the professor which also means follow the rubric. I really didn’t know how to analyze different sources, however, with the help of Professor Harris, I was able to identify many different parts of a piece of writing. This helped me to start to get a better understanding of what my theory of writing was.

For the first week of class in English 110, we started to talk about the rhetorical situation and what it was. We went in depth into the different parts of the rhetorical situation. We talked about who the author is and if the author is credible, the purpose, the audience, the subject, the genre, and the stance. All these make up the rhetorical situation. At this point, I started to analyze different sources and was able to identify these key elements of the rhetorical situation. This was the first piece of knowledge in the course that helped to change what my theory of writing was.

Our first assignment for the year was a source-based essay based on a social issue of our choosing. I picked air pollution in China because that was on my mind at the time of the assignment. We were tasked with finding information on air pollution from different genres. When we first talked about genres, I was limited in the thought of it. I thought genres were reading genres that the professor was talking about. This wasn’t the case at all because I learned that anything that expresses one’s thought can be a genre, for example an Instagram post can be a genre. The author chooses the best genre that will help get the message that they want to get to the audience. For this assignment, however, we were exploring different genres. This helped me to get exposed to some different genres that I haven’t seen before in high school. Using the database provided I was able to find many sources that were related to my social issue. For example, we need reliable scholarly articles and the database gave us those credible sources as well other genres. I was able to get a better understanding of what genre was now and this assignment really helped me to figure out what genres to choose from my future assignments.

For my social issue of pollution in China, I chose an open source from online with a simple google search. In order to have a strong argument on your social issue, you will need sources that can support your argument and are reliable. This where the rhetorical situation comes in where you look in depth into each source. According to my first essay, “The genre is a researched based article because it provides data and diagrams on research done the air quality of China over the years” One of the first things that I identified in my first essay was the genre. Then I identified all the other elements of the rhetorical situation for this source. What I liked about this source was that it was a website that included a about page with the purpose. Also included a page with all the people that work to make these articles and their credentials, this is how I knew that this website was reliable. It was good practice for the upcoming assignments to be able to identify the rhetorical situation. For future assignment I will be using the rhetorical situation unconsciously. This assignment was the most influential to my theory of writing because it helped me figure out how to use the rhetorical situation.

The second essay that was written in my English 110 class, I was given a choice to choose a model essay and somewhat mirror that essay with my own social issues. This time I used the skills that I obtained from the first essay of rhetorical situation to help me build my argument in the research paper. I had a research question and had used information that I gathered from different sources using the database that I used in the first assignment. Now that I had a better understanding of what it meant to write something, I was able to better prepare myself before even starting this essay.

The rhetorical situation didn’t just apply to the sources that we analyzed but also to the writing that we did. This essay made me realize that because I was thinking of the best way to present my ideas to my audience. This outline that I created in my notebook allowed me to organize my ideas better than before where I used to organize my ideas in my mind. This new-found strategy in approaching a writing assignment was effective in getting all my ideas all sorted out and into one piece of paper instead of all over the place in my head. This made sure that my audience understood what I was writing clearly and in an effective manner.

The next assignment was my favorite assignment because we got to choose our own two genres and create something that shows our social issue through that genre. I ended up choosing a political cartoon and a subway ad as my genre. In my mind, these two genres were chosen because to me they felt the best way to reach my audience. I also thought that these genres would best get my stance through to the audience. Once again it is seen that the rhetorical situation is used to help me develop my ideas in a way that will be most effective to the audience. According to the composition in two genres, “This political cartoon takes the stance that the people of China are being affected by pollution in China and their whole economy revolves around non-renewable resource” I was able to clearly get my stance across to the audience because of how the political cartoon was presented, I used the term PM2.5 which is an air born particle from air pollution as a way to target my audience of political leaders. They are well educated and will know exactly what the political cartoon is talking about.

I was able to use information from previous writings to help me guide myself in finding terms that will better target my audience and PM2.5 was one of those terms. For the second genre which was a subway ad, I changed the audience to be middle age working citizens because they are the ones that are really being affected by air pollution and they can do something about it. In my ad, I used emotion to make sure that the audience understood the purpose of the ad. The purpose was another part of the rhetorical situation and for this ad, I wanted to persuade the audience into acting and how I did that was appealing to their emotion with the quote, “Think about future generations/ Wouldn’t you want them to live in a city without wearing a gas mask?” This quote was used to make people realize how serious air pollution can be.

At this point of the semester, I was aware what was expected of me and had mastered what the rhetorical situation was. I was able to just not use the rhetorical situation to analyze sources, but also implement it into my own writing. It can be said that with the addition of the rhetorical situation that was taught to me during this semester was the key to my theory of writing. It was the missing piece that completed my theory of writing. When writing a piece of writing one should follow with first organizing their ideas into an outline on paper. Get the sources that support their argument and make sure that those sources are reliable. You should then be able to use the rhetorical situation and analyze each source. Then use the rhetorical situation to guide oneself when writing a piece.