Running  Head:  Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle
The Importance of the Rhetorical Triangle
When Writing for Business and Government
Brent Neumeier
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle
Abstract
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Using the Rhetorical Triangle as an organizational scheme this paper will discuss ways in which audience, purpose, and rhetorical situation are treated, described, and illuminated in these seven readings. The readings covered in this paper are: Fred Reynolds’ advice about workplace writing, Carl Herndl’s research team’s findings about failures in organizational communication, Sam Dragga’s research on ethical perceptions among technical writers, Jack Selzer’s theorizing about the effects of “intertextuality” on workplace writing, Anthony Pare’s study of the problems caused by discourse regulations in the workplace, Couture and Rymer’s research on situational exigence, and Jaime
MacKinnon’s study of the ways writers develop on the job. This paper will examine these seven writings using personal experiences and discuss the points of the Rhetorical
Triangle and how each point is theorized in each reading. The paper will discuss the way each study informs the understanding of audience, purpose, and rhetorical situation.

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle
Introduction
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The Rhetorical Triangle is extremely important when writing or presenting an argument. The Rhetorical Triangle defines who the audience is, the purpose for the message, and the rhetorical situation in which the message is being presented. A writer or presenter must first define the audience by looking at the writer’s social relationship to the reader, the attitudes about the message, any arguments or warrants of the message or any concerns, worries, or responsibilities of the audience. The purpose for the message deals with what the author wants from the message. The rhetorical situation consists of any other important elements or special circumstances within the setting.
When writing for business and government some general tendencies and techniques are extremely important, as are discourse regulations and failures, ethics, intertextuality, planning and revising, and rhetorical skills. All of these are essential when it comes to how writing gets done in an organization, whether it be a professional career writer composing a formal report, or a professional employee writing as part of his or her job. The formal workplace writing studies of: What Adult Work-World Writers
Have Taught Me..., Understanding Failures in Organizational Discourse…, Is This
Ethical, Intertextuality and the Writing Process, Discourse Regulations…, Situational
Exigence, and Becoming a Rhetor, all focus on how writing gets done in a business or government organization.
In these seven workplace-writing studies the authors produce ideas that show the impact of social forces in professional writing, discuss implications and applications in the work of professional writers, and show the importance of members of a discourse

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle     community. This can be seen in the seven writings by the writers, audience and their language as it pertains to discourse communities and the rhetorical triangle. All these readings discuss, analysis, and examine important technical and social issues in writing for the workplace.
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The first formal workplace writing study: “ What Adult Work-World Writers Have
Taught Me About Adult Work-World Writing”, illustrates Fred Reynolds’ writing education journey through some twenty years of teaching, leading, and educating students in higher education and in the professional workplace. He has taught real world writing techniques to employees of The Atlantic Group, Boeing Military Airplane
Company, and the Labor Relations Division of Norfolk Southern Corporation to name a few. Reynolds was hired by these companies and asked to “help them improve their employees’ writing skills” at all educational levels (Reynolds, p. 4). The chapter centers on adult work-world writers and how they affected his teaching and writing.
The reading focuses on the general tendencies, strategies, and techniques for adult work-world writers. Reynolds gives document writing samples or “Goofs”, as he calls them, and how to correct these errors. Some common “Goofs” are the wrong tone in a message, the bloated style or a letter that “goes on and on about nothing”, and the onesentence solution (Reynolds, p. 11). Other errors or goofs are odd verb situations, the use of numbers, and the confusion of similar words, like affect and effect. Reynolds gives some of the most common errors in work-world writing like poor planning, misspelled words, and the “comma-set/semicolon pattern” (Reynolds, p. 23). These physical real world examples throughout the article help the reader see and understand the errors that commonly happen.

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle     5
The rhetorical triangle can be seen in this chapter. For this chapter the audience is future writers or any writer in the workplace. The purpose of this chapter is for writers to be aware of these common “Goofs” and how to address those errors. The rhetorical situation is any other element in the chapter, like Reynolds’ expertise in writing, covering over twenty years.
Reynolds writes, “writers tend to underestimate the complexity of the task facing them, and overestimate their ability to manage it” (Reynolds, p. 5). This can be connected to a personal story in my career in television as a news photographer for Fox
News. During that time, I worked daily with news reporters who instead of writing their news story, would simply copy and paste the already written news story from the national wire copy. I would see this done again and again by producers, reporters, and directors.
The second formal workplace writing study: “ Understanding Failures in
Organizational Discourse, The Accident At Three Mile Island & The Shuttle Challenger
Disaster,” examines the communication problems with an issue that led up to this tragedy. The authors Carol Herndl, Barbara Fennell, and Carolyn Miller review, study, and analyze five memos written by professional employees between the Engineering branch and the Nuclear Services branch at Babcock & Wilcox, the builder of the reactor used in the challenger shuttle. The failure to communicate effectively was partly due to social structure within the written communication in these memos.
This study focuses on how communication was misinterpreted, overlooked, and misunderstood by investigating “the relationship between communication and social structures” between employees within this organization (Herndl, p. 280). This miscommunication or failure to communicate at Babcock & Wilcox is based on a study

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle     6   that is broken into three different phases: formal linguistic analysis, pragmatic analysis, and argument analysis. These three examinations portray an accurate analysis of “the notion that subgroups within an organization may be differentiated not only by their work relationships but also by the way they use language” (Hwendl, p. 280). The researchers did not specifically find “social structure” as the issue here. The authors of the memos did not present warrants in their arguments. The fact that there was so much at stake in this circumstance, the timing, and the launch had already been postponed twice so the authors felt they could be fired if this launch was delayed again. The point of this reading is that we, as writer, must do everything we can to get the message across.
The rhetorical triangle can be seen in this chapter by the author’s use of the pragmatic analysis and argument analysis . The audience for this topic is any professional that writes in his or her workplace. The purpose is to show the importance of getting the message across without adding social interference. The rhetorical situation is that miscommunication can happen at all levels.
The central theme of this chapter improved my understanding of writing, as I did not see social structure interfering with written communication before but it truly is an issue. I would like to do a little study of my own. I would like to have students write a memo on a topic but have the students first write the memo to a friend and then write the memo to me, the teacher. Then I would like to compare the two memos on the same topic but written in very different styles, comparing the difference in social structure between the two.
The third formal workplace writing study: “ Is This Ethical?” examines a national survey taken in the early 1990's of technical communicators and teachers "regarding their

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle     7   perspectives on the ethics of various document design scenarios" (Dragga, p.255).
Author Sam Dragga creates and administers a survey composed of seven questions. The seven questions deal with ethics in the form of writing for a business or in a technical setting. The seven questions can be divided into seven subjects: resume writing, a pie chart, a photograph, an evaluation, a proposal, a line graph, and a warranty example.
Each question builds a scenario in which the reader or person taking the survey will rate the scenario based on his or her ethics. The ratings go from, one being completely ethical and five being completely unethical.
“Is it ethical?” mostly depends on the intentions of the writer or communicator.
If someone writing a document chooses green to build a line graph but has no intention to emphasize a specific number in the line graph, then that is fine. However, if someone places LIFETIME WARRANTY in big red letters on the front of the box and a small paragraph in tiny print on the back of the box, then there is an intention to trick the customer into believing he or she is getting a lifetime warranty. It misleads the buyer into thinking he or she has a lifetime warranty.
The rhetorical triangle can be displayed in this chapter by the findings, and the explanations of ethical decisions by the respondents. These three factors prove the point that practices of document design do, in fact, influence the reader. The audience for this topic is technical writers and communicators. The purpose for this reading is to inform communicators and technical writers of the rhetorical power and ethical obligations he or she has when designing, writing and laying out an article. "The ability to design information gives the technical communicator a new rhetorical power and imposes new

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle     ethical obligations on using that power (Dragga, p. 256).
The rhetorical situations that
Dragga uses in his writing are the seven scenarios.
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This survey on principles and practices in document design proves that manipulation is done by communicators in designing a document to make a specific point, but I would argue that to me that part of creating a piece of writing. Would you ask a painter not to use a specific color on his or her painting? I do agree with Dragga that we, as creators, must have ethics when creating a document; but how is page design or document design different than adding a picture to a textbook? The issue is when the writer has a motive or an intention to mislead the reader, which again has happened for a long time and will continue to happen.
The fourth formal workplace writing study: Intertextuality and the Writing
Process, written by Jack Selzer comes from the idea that all thoughts originate somewhere and no thoughts, or piece of writing, or text is original. All texts “are intertextual; they are created and consumed in relation to other ones” (Selzer, 1998, p.
178). Selzer demonstrates the idea that no text or idea is original by the Shakespeare play
Hamlet and by multiple authors on a single written project, book, or manuscript.
Selzer mainly focuses around writing with text and demonstrates how all text, whether it is a sentence, paragraph, or novel is composed by intertext within that body of work. This intertextuality within a sentence or paragraph is made up of other ideas, other text, or quotes. “Every text is an intertext; other texts are present in it, at variable levels, in more or less recognizable forms” (Selzer, 1998, p. 174). Selzer explains how written pieces like books, chapters, or technical manuscripts never have just one author and this further explains the idea of intertextuality.

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle     9
The rhetorical triangle can be seen in this chapter. For this chapter the audience is any professional writers or technical writers. The purpose of this chapter is for Selzer to inform the reader of the intertextuality involved in the writing process and how to locate intertext in writing samples. Seltzer argues his rhetorical situation that no text or idea is original and all text comes from intertext.
This improved my understanding of writing by giving me the knowledge that no piece of writing or text is original. All text originates somewhere. “Text in their entirety are transpositions of other texts and are understood in relation to those others, whether writers and readers are aware” of them or not (Selzer, 1998, p. 173). With that being said, I think that by having knowledge of intertextuality, a reader can look for these forms of intertext within a document and be aware of this.
The fifth formal workplace writing study: Discourse Regulations and the
Production of Knowledge, describes “the relationship between discourse regulations and knowledge by drawing on the writing experiences of a team of social workers attached to the juvenile court system in Quebec” (Pare, 1998, p. 111). The author, Anthony Pare, studies and reviews the context and methods these social workers use when writing a
Predisposition Report (PDR) for adolescents that get picked up by the law. Pare breaks his study of these PDR’s into two sections: the admissible evidence and the inadmissible evidence. These sections introduce the idea that discourse regulations “determine what can and cannot be discussed” in the evaluation of an adolescent (Pare, 1998, p. 112).
Pare begins the study with an adolescent who is found guilty of a crime. Pare reviews and studies the writing of the social worker that writes the PDR for that specific adolescent. The social worker “takes the offending adolescent on as a client” conducting

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle     10   interviews with family members, employers, friends etc. (Pare, 1998, p. 113). This portion is sort of like a pre trial. The social worker acts as a lawyer conducting his or her questions to prove a point that the adolescent is improving his or her behavior or continuing to misbehave.
The rhetorical triangle can be seen in this chapter. For this chapter the audience is any author that must use discourse regulations or guidelines to create, write, and produce knowledge for a community. The purpose of this chapter is to inform the audience of the purpose for these regulations and why a community needs these regulations. In this specific chapter the rhetorical situation is a juvenile court system in Quebec.
There are some great issues in this chapter and some problems with the way I see discourse regulations shaping a community’s knowledge. Sometimes “only one side of the community generally has been exposed, the side that encourages, includes, and protects” (Pare, 1998, p. 112). This is good as it protects the citizens of the community, creates laws and rules, etc. but what about the views of the other side? Another issue I see with regulating discourse is that “by controlling discourse, the community controls knowledge” and this can “determine the way a group and its individual members think”
(Pare, 1998, p. 113). Control is not always good. An example of this is legalizing gay marriage or marijuana. The rules, laws, and regulation of the discourse community on these two topics have produced knowledge to the members of the community that these should be illegal. However, is it not a free country?
The sixth formal workplace writing study: Situational Exigence, the authors,
Barbara Couture and Jone Rymer, compare planning and revising in the writing process between two groups of writers using two scenarios of writing. The two groups of writers

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle     11   studied for this chapter are professionals who write in their jobs and career writers, whose task is specifically to write. The two writing categories are the writer’s functional role and the importance of the writing task. The goal of this study is “to identify some situational exigencies, or key contextual elements, that shape the process of workplace communication” (Couture, 1998, p.4).
The survey showed that “writing tasks of career writers and professionals differ in major ways” (Couture, 1998, p.9). One difference is that professionals who write as part of their job tend to create the knowledge on their own; for example, a scientist would write a document from his own knowledge. A career writer would create a document
“directing or reporting the activities of others, such as a user manual” report or memo
(Couture, 1998, p.9).
The rhetorical triangle can be seen in this chapter. For this chapter the audience is any writer in the workplace, whether it is a professional who writes in his or her job or a career writer. The purpose of this chapter is for writers to know the similarities and differences in composing processes on the job. The rhetorical situation of the authors is to show and compare these differences showing “a writer’s functional relationship to writing” (Couture, 1998, p.19).
The observation I connected within this survey study leans more toward the professional who writes in his or her profession than the career writer. A career writer has an obligation to write, which is the primary purpose for a career writer. As a career writer, that individual should revise and plan their writing with less interference from social collaborative writing. That is his or her job. However, a professional who writes in his or her field might not be a good writer.

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle     12
The final formal workplace writing study: Becoming a Rhetor, Developing
Writing Ability in a Mature Writing-Intensive Organization , examines a study of ten writing employees at the Bank of Canada. The analysis compares the writing of these ten employees when they began their job and then again some ten to twenty months later.
Becoming a Rhetor looks at writing as it pertains to educated working adults vs. a college student writer, where “development is primarily school-based” (MacKinnon, 1993, p.
41).
The four areas the chapter discusses are the attitudes and beliefs regarding writing, knowledge of the social and organizational context of writing, the writing process, and the written product. Some issues learned by the participants in attitudes and beliefs are better terminology and improved style. Issues learned from the participants in the writing process are reacting to feedback and discussing writing with colleagues.
Some topics learned by the written product are to not overburden the reader with details.
The rhetorical triangle can be seen in this chapter. For this chapter, the audience is educated working adult writers. The purpose of this chapter is to compare the writing of these writers in the beginning of their job and ten to twenty months later. The rhetorical situation is to convince readers that there is a difference between writing in an academic setting and in a work related setting. The author also wants to show the changes in writing the first week of work to the writing some months later after spending some time in the discourse community.
An observation that I connected with in this situation is that I love to write creative writing or nonfiction, especially when working on my undergraduate degree.
However, when I got into the real world of writing for a career, I never got to write

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle     13   creatively. I feel the same as the participants in the research study. “For many participants, this was reflected in a change from viewing the major function of writing as
‘to inform people about events and ideas’ to the more dialogic sense of getting ‘reaction to ideas in hope of producing more research’” (MacKinnon, 1993, p. 48).
Conclusion
The seven readings give their readers or audience the fundamental elements supported by the rhetorical triangle: the audience, purpose, and rhetorical situation. All workplace writers should use the rhetorical triangle to shape and guide their argument when writing a document. By defining the audience, the purpose of the document, and any special circumstances with in the rhetorical situation the author can better produce a final written product.
Not only do the seven readings help their audience using he rhetorical triangle but also give important information as well. The readers of these texts will learn to avoid
Reynolds top “Goofs” in workplace writing, be aware of communication problems within a social discourse community, and rely on the ethical decisions demonstrated in Draggs’s writing. The readers learn about Selzer’s intertextuality, Pare’s discourse regulations, and Couture and Rymer’s situational exigence along with MacKinnon’s study of the ways writers develop on the job. Each of these situations use the rhetorical triangle to prove their unique points on how to become a better writer in the workplace.

Importance  of  Rhetorical  Triangle
References
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Couture, Barbara & Rymer, Jone. Writing in the Workplace. Situational Exigence,
Composing Processes on the Job by Writer’s Role and Task Value. Southern
Illinois University Press. p. 1-20
Dragga, Sam. (1996) Third Quarter"Is This Ethical?" A Survey of Opinion on
Principles and Practices of Document Design. Technical Communication. p. 255,
256, 258, 259, 262,
Herndl, C., Fennell, B., Miller, C., Understanding Failures in Organizational Discourse
The Accident at Three Mile Island and the Shuttle Challenger Disaster. p. 279-
304
MacKinnon, Jamie. Becoming a Rhetor Developing Writing Ability in a Mature Writing-
Intensive Organization. City College of CUNY. p. 41-55
Pare, Anthony. Writing in the Workplace. Discourse Regulations and the Production of
Knowledge. Southern Illinois University Press. P. 111-123
Reynolds, Fred. What Adult Work-World Writers Have Taught Me About Adult Work-
World Writing. City College of CUNY. p. 2-23
Selzer, Jack. Writing in the Workplace. Intertextuality and the Writing Process. Southern
Illinois University Press. P. 171-180