Cornell Notes Topic: Rhetorical Situations Questions/ Key Points ● Why do authors create their works of writing? Date: 9/9/19 Notes: ● All writing is created with some sort of purpose or intention. ○ These purposes can range from entertainment, to persuasion, to informing the reader about a topic. ○ Typically, writing has more than one purpose too, but one purpose tends to take priority over the others. ● How does the intended audience of a written work factor into the content and delivery of the text? ● The purpose is typically how the author wants the readers or audience to feel after experiencing the work. ○ Not only does considering the audience effect the purpose of the text, but it also affects other aspects of the text such as length, phrasing, and genre. ○ Writing is always expected to meet the expectations of an audience. ○ Audiences can be categorized into three groups: ■ Known - People who the author knows the expectations of, or people known by the author personally. ■ Multiple - The work may be passed on to other people, and therefore would need to meet multiple peoples’ expectations. ■ Unknown - The audience’s expectations are not known by the author. ○ When considering an audience it is important to examine every important aspect of their background and circumstances in order to get an intended response. ● Why does the genre matter to a piece of written work? ● Genres are the category that the work itself falls in to establish the content, although it is not the work’s content itself. ○ For example, it could be a poem, letter, email, etc. ○ The genre is rather important because different genres could allow for or require different writing strategies to be used as compared to other possible genres. ● What is an author’s stance and how does it affect the content of the author’s written work? ● An author’s stance when creating a textual piece for work is the author’s opinion on the topic addressed. ○ Stance can provide the audience with insight into the author’s mindset based on the content of the text. ○ ○ ○ ● ● ● Why does the medium, or platform in which the work is presented, matter to the work, and how are different mediums viewed and distinguished? What is the design of a written work? What is Academic Writing, and what is expected for works that fall into said category? Stance is also closely linked to the text’s tone, which represents the author’s emotion portrayed by the text. Stance can also be adjusted according to the other aspects of the rhetorical situation in order to appeal to an audience more. ■ For example, the relationship to the audience is an important aspect for the author to consider when creating their stance, as some stances may come off as offensive. Sometimes stance may also be kept hidden in the writing to prevent some bias. ● Medium is the method in which a work of writing is presented. ○ Some examples of mediums are online documents, handwritten messages, news broadcasts, and printed books. ○ Every medium has specific characteristics that contribute to the appearance of the work, which is the work’s design. ■ Sometimes the required medium is given to an author to use, but it is also frequently decided by choice. ■ Design is also connected to the font of the text and the overall organization of the content. ● Academic writing is a situation in which an author can use their work to put their stance into a larger conversation about a topic. ○ Academic writing is typically based off of many sources for accuracy, which should be cited correctly and have a rather high level of believability. ○ A thesis should also be implemented to distinguish the work’s stance from other authors’ stances. ■ Then the thesis should be backed up with exceptional amounts of accurate evidence to both strengthen the stance or weaken opposing stances. ○ Academic writing also tends to be rather impersonal to the author, and should avoid the first person and passive language. ○ Abbreviations should be maintained at a minimum for academic writing. Summary: Whenever an author creates a piece of written work for any form of media and purpose, there are many aspects of the rhetorical situation to consider. Particularly, the audience is one of the most important components to consider, because an author wants to gear the content and structure of their work to evoke a specific kind of reaction. However, as the audience is an important aspect, the author also has to add their own opinions into the article through stance on the topic of the work, or through deciding the media and genre for the work to be found within. Some authors may specifically make work in the field of academic writing, where the author shares their opinion on an ongoing topic of conversation and supports it with concrete facts that separate it from other stances.
