USF Analyzing Rhetorical Situations in Different Writing Context Essay

Project Three Planning Activity

Developing your Analysis for Project Three will require you to first analyze the scholarly or professional written work in a discipline. If you haven’t already been focusing on your major field of study for your research in Project 2, now you should put your focus there. Or you can focus on any major you might be interested in, if you haven’t yet chosen one. To analyze, you’ll first want to consider our rhetorical/writing concepts from earlier in the semester, and how they help us understand what is written and how information is presented in certain ways for different purposes.

Assignment

Part 1 – 

First, revisit the concepts involved in understanding rhetorical situations. Consider the rhetorical situation in your own writing experiences in school or in your life – apply it to a movie you’ve seen, to the Canvas page you just accessed for the rhetorical situation PowerPoint, and to something you’ve written for school or some other purpose.

Complete this reflection exercise as you think about the rhetorical situation for each. Explain each rhetorical situation:

What are the audiences for each of those examples? List all audiences for each.

How would you define the genre of each – what are its conventions? A good way to think about the conventions of a genre is to consider what the audiences for each expect from the genre. Start with the movie, then the web site, then your own sample writing – what conventions of each are expected by a reader or “consumer” of each genre?

For example, a horror movie’s conventions might be blood and gore, suspense, and characters who always go somewhere they should not. Its purpose is to scare and entertain by scaring. It’s audience is broad, and is comprised of movie-goers who enjoy the genre – what can you assume about the audience?

Now think about your research essay from Project 2. What would you describe as its purpose? Movies are a bit more straightforward – they are often intended to entertain, although documentary films are a genre meant to inform or educate. Research essays might be more difficult to consider, but they do have a purpose or a role in the grander scheme of academic work. What was your essay’s role or purpose?

What other concepts of writing can you identify from the Rhetorical Situation that you can link to your Research Essay? Explain how any additional concepts might be important to use in Analysis for P3, and and also if they demonstrate a connection to your research essay in some way.

Look back to Project 1 and the exercises you did for that project – what writing concepts can you identify from across the semester that you might consider important to understanding your own writing? What did you do or write about that might fit with these concepts or this conceptual way of thinking about writing?

Part 2 –

In your major, or a discipline you choose for this project, conduct some quick research to find a few sources or publications that are somewhat representative of the discipline. A scholarly journal article that is relevant to the major, a web resource that is scholarly or professional and related to the major field, a report or other professional document of some kind — these are all examples of writing you might find depending on the major field, or the discipline. Review each publication/document you find and consider the rhetorical situation – what are the elements you can find in the publication that tell you about the rhetorical situation?:

1. Who is the intended audience, do you think? Is there more than one audience? Describe all the audiences you can identify, even if you’re speculating for this publication.
2. What is the purpose of the communication the publication or document is conveying? In other words, is there a message intended for the audience (or multiple messages)? What is that message? And therefore what is the purpose of communicating in this situation?
3. What is the genre, and why is the genre appropriate for communicating whatever content the publication is trying to convey?
4. What other writing concepts can you identify in each publication? Discuss what you see or surmise, and why? What tells you that a writing concept is being demonstrated or possibly demonstrated? Again, speculation is okay – you’re analyzing for these concepts, so use that knowledge and provide your best educated guess based on what you know about writing.
5. In reflecting on the writing concepts, and on each publication you’ve found, what are the connections you can make across them all? What are the similarities and differences you can identify? Do you see similarities in audiences, or genres, for example? Are there differences you might point out between a purpose for one and purpose for another publication? Reflect on all the similarities and differences you can find.