Rhetoric

Rhetoric

Are you struggling with your writing skills? Would you like to improve your writing by adding more excitement and structure? If yes, then you need to learn about rhetoric! Rhetoric is the art of effective or persuasive speaking and writing, especially with the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. Rhetoric can also be defined as an ethical art that begins with deep and intense listening and that searches for mutual understanding and common ground as an alternative to voice and war. (Lunsford et al 5)

Rhetorical Situations

Rhetorical situations are what create your paper or make your paper what it is. There are seven key rhetorical situations: genre, tone, purpose, stance, medium/design, context, and audience. Every rhetorical situation presents its own constraints and opportunities, and as an author you need to think about your own situations. Every writing you will do will present different challenges each time. Genre will all depend on if you were assigned a specific genre, if not you can choose your own genre and if that’s the case consider your purpose before deciding on genre. Tone is quite possibly the most important aspect of a paper. Tone will not only set the mood of your writing, but it will also get the reader into your writing. Also once you set the tone don’t think about changing it, you want to maintain the same tone throughout your writing. When you define the purpose of your paper it will help influence every other rhetorical situation in your paper. Stance is your view on the subject of your writing, this is where you really need to pick a side. When including stance into your writing you need to consider do you know the audience, how do you want them to see you, and what tone you want to have. (Lunsford et al 22) If you get to choose your medium and design which one will work best for your audience and purpose? Print? Spoken? Digital? Some combination? (Lunsford et al 23) When using context you need to consider what else has already been said about your topic and how that will affect how you convey it to your audience. Lastly audience can be one of the most important rhetorical situation because that is where you can write your paper to control what they want to hear. Consider who your audience is, how they are like or unlike you, what your relationship is with them, and what they already know about your topic. Just keep in mind whenever your writing if you hone your rhetorical situations throughout the paper it will greatly improve.

Ethos, Logos, Pathos

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos are all words that were derived from Greek. Ethos is character in Greek, logos is Greek for words, and pathos is Greek for suffering or experience. Ethos is defined as convincing by the character of the author. One of the problems of argumentation is to project to the audience that you, the author, are someone worth listening to and that you are respectful and credible. Logos is persuading by the use of reasoning. Present your point as you would present structure. The best way to use pathos is by using rich evocative language and to include plenty of metaphors, adjectives, and vivid imagery. When using ethos you need to give credit where credit is due, its like when you get something done you would thank someone who influenced you to do that task or to finish that task.

Persuasion

When it comes down to it persuasion is what will sell your paper or make it a bust that no one wants to read. If you can persuade the audience to your point of view or at least if you can persuade them to listen to you, you have the audience for the whole paper. The audience’s attention must be grabbed from the beginning because if not they might lose interest in the work and quit reading it.

Works Cited

Lunsford, Andrea, Michal Brody, Lisa Ede, Beverly J. Moss, Carole Clark Papper,

Keith Walters. Everyone’s an Author with Readings''. New York: Norton, 2013.''