Thinking Rhetorically (Everyone's an author)

To think rhetorically means you have to be open to listening to other people, for starters. You need to be understanding of the people you are listening to, and really pay attention to what they have to say. Once you hear their views, you have to think about why the hold those views, what is their life like, what is the context of the situation they are in, ect. After listening and thinking about another person’s point of view, you create your own opinion of the situation, which was probably influenced by what the person you talked to said.

A rhetorical situation is an event in which a rhetorical speech takes place, and it takes note of everything. The audience of a rhetorical situation is whoever the speech is intended for, as a speech would sound different if it was for a six year old compared to a thirty year old. The purpose in a rhetorical situation is what your goal is. Why are is the speech being made? Stance, is well, the stance you have on the topic your talking about. If the speech is informative, you should try to be objective. The context of the situation deals with what is already known about the topic, and how you are working on it. If you don’t have a lot of time, your project could suffer. The medium and design of a rhetorical situation deals with how to present your project. Should it be spoken? A poster? A handout? The project lead needs to decide which is the best course for their project.  The genre in a rhetorical situation deals with how to organize your project, whether it should be casual, formal, or somewhere inbetween.

Watson and Crick understood what the demographic of Nature would be, and thus used mainly ethos, which is making sure you are a credible source, to show their audience that they knew what they were talking about. By analyzing the demographic of Nature, they were better prepared to match their writing for the target audience.  

As we are learning in this class, writers need to have a voice. If they are writing about something they have only studied in books and haven’t actually thought about being in a position like that, they can sound drastically different that how they might want to sound. Thinking rhetorically lets them better understand the subjects they are writing about, and allows them to critically think about their writing more than they normally would.

Doing your homework in the sense of this article means to analyze the information you can find about the topic, and then synthesize the information you have learned to make a conclusion. In the example of buying a car, you would want to analyze the data such as MPG, color, cost, brand, ect. Then, after analyzing it, you would pick what is best suited for your needs. A personal example would be picking a college, analyze the colleges to see which have your majors, how far away they are, cost, and then synthesize the information to choose which one you want to attend.

Thanks for reading!