Script: My Writing as A Rhetorical Act
Every piece of writing is constituted by a rhetorical situation. There is an audience to whom you are writing; a purpose for composing; a stance that you adopt, a genre you write in and conventions you tend to follow. Moreover, your writing is always composed in a particular context—in the morning on your way out the door when you are tired and in a hurray or labored over for days drafted and then revised multiple time. All of these elements shape your writing in one way or another.
In an upcoming assignment, you are being asked to consider a piece of writing you recently composed and to analyze it in terms of the rhetorical situation. The piece of writing that you choose might be a text you wrote on your phone to your boyfriend or girlfriend, a grocery list that you quickly jotted down while standing in the kitchen, an email you wrote to a professor about enrolling in your class, or even a novel that you’ve been working on. You’ll then write 2-3 paragraphs, using the rhetorical situation as a framework for analyzing your own writing as a rhetorical act.
Let me give you an example: Just yesterday, late in the evening, I realized that I was out of half and half for my morning coffee, so I decided I better run to the grocery. I figured I’d just as soon get a few other things, so I poked my head in the refrigerator to see if there was anything else I needed. I pulled out a scrape piece of paper and quickly jotted down a list of items that I wanted to pick up from the grocery. Here’s how I might analyze this using the rhetorical situation as a framework for analysis.
Well, my audience is me. If I were sending my husband then he would have been the audience, but I was going by myself this time. This meant I could abbreviate. I mean I knew what I meant by H & H. My purpose for making the list was so that I would remember what I needed. My stance was pretty serious and strait forward. Though if I had been more energetic, I might have made little funny pictures to cheer myself up. In that case, my stance would have been humorous. The genre? Well this is a grocery list, and even a grocery list has conventions. I listed the groceries that I needed in a column and when I got to the store, I placed a check mark beside each of the items on my list as I slipped them into my cart. Finally, the medium. I used a piece of yellow legal pad paper. I could have used my cell phone, but I didn’t this time. This was going to be a quick trip so it took me less time just to jot it all on paper. All of these elements shaped my writing in one way and not another. If any one of these factors would have been different than it’s likely my writing would be too.