Mid-Term Reflection
Before I came to CCNY, I had a solid foundation of rhetorical situations as well as the other terms that follow. However, this approach strengthened my knowledge on this specific way of writing and how to analyze it. Analyzing the rhetorical situation is outside of writing, it is present in our daily lives. I’ve used it numerous times because it is necessary to communicate your thoughts and feelings through words. A conversation between one another is a rhetorical situation because the audience is your conversation partner and you are the “author”. Tone is the way you are expressing your words such as calmy, angrily, etc. The purpose is the reason why you are having the conversation in the first place. Your stance is your view on the specific topic and the medium and genre is the method of communication. Are they emailing a conversation? Are they talking in person? By understanding the purpose behind each term, it has allowed me to analyze a certain situation that I am present in which helps me break down the rhetorical situation. Outside of this class, it can help me break down writings by finding specific aspects such as audience, tone, author, purpose, and the other components of a rhetorical situation.
Inquiry-Based Essay Reflection
The inquiry-based essay was an entirely different structure than I had practiced throughout my years in middle and high school. The specific model essay I had chosen was structured into sections where they would categorize their ideas such as their methods of finding and gathering data, their perspective of the topic, etc. Throughout this process, I learned more about how important diction can alter the tone of the essay. The tone can differentiate an inquiry-based essay into a persuasive essay, because if you speak more about one stance more positively than the other it reflects directly onto the audience. At first, I approached the essay with the mindset of keeping the essay unbiased and not choosing a specific stance; however, I realized that an inquiry-based essay is one where an individual formulates a conclusion depending on the facts that you provide in the essay.
The audience for my inquiry-based essay was focused on the civilians in the United States who are unaware of the statistics and procedures necessary for a person to purchase a firearm. Therefore, I made the tone of the essay to be informative instead of persuasive/informal since my purpose is to inform the audience on certain facts on the topic where they may not be well-informed. The genre was in the form of an article since articles are flexible in structure, enabling me to create certain sections dedicated to specific aspects of the topic. Peer review was a tremendous help when it came to the audience. Classmates would identify if they felt like they were included in the audience that I mentioned previously or if they felt as if the essay was excluding them in any sort of way. It’s difficult for authors to know if they are going to attract their intended audience and appeal to them which is why peer review was helpful. In addition, gathering research and synthesizing it with my ideas were the most crucial part in my essay since it differentiates an essay from a summary. It was a novel experience where I would have to take a stance after presenting all the facts. This slight difference was confusing since it was similar to a persuasive speech in that both take up an argument and present facts. However, a persuasive speech is when someone presents an argument and backs it up with evidence favoring their side.
Compositions of Two Genres Reflection
My audiences for both of my compositions were people who were against or unaware of the gun regulations. In both of my compositions, I have mentioned strongly that the gun restrictions currently are not sufficient enough to be deemed safe for our country. I determined this because on my inquiry-based essay, there was a lot of evidence that backed up the argument that the gun control laws were ineffective, which made my speech and poem lean more towards the lacking legislations and more on fixing the problem at hand. The two genres I have decided to work with were the speech and poem genres. Since my topic did include some grim pieces such as deaths of loved ones and such, I’ve decided that a poem and a speech were great for appealing to emotions in the audience. By appealing to the audience’s emotions, I have a greater chance of having them take my compositions with an open mind. Emotional appeal was the biggest factor when it came to the reasons behind my genre choices. I wrote my speech as a way of informing the audience that our system is lacking while my poem was focused on a story-like structure with the beginning introducing it but I slowly got into the evidence behind my argument. What sets these compositions apart from the other works in the same genre is that poems are virtually unique since there are so many types of poems and the different formatting. As for my speech, I’ve utilized emotional appeal and diction in order to put weight into my words so that the audience will be able to understand the gravity of the situation when I verbalize my speech
Final Reflection
Out of all the rhetorical terms we have utilized throughout this semester, the ones who impacted my writing the most were audience and tone. Audience has many factors which creates a lot of depth in writing and especially allows you to tailor your writing to a specific group of people. This was extremely helpful when it came to my compositions in two different genres since I wanted to make my writing more specific to a certain group of people. By knowing my audience well enough, I am able to create a desirable effect through my writing by taking into account their stance, age, race, ethnicity, political beliefs and more. In addition to the audience, the tone is an important factor to consider when writing pieces regarding a certain point of view. When stance is involved, tone can make the argument more persuading or dissuading, more aggressive or understanding. There are many possibilities that can be achieved with tone alone. Tone was used mainly in my Inquiry-based research essay and my two compositions in varying genres because they both included a stance. In my research essay, I was keeping a neutral tone and only providing facts which eventually reached a conclusion. In my other compositions, I’ve decided to go for a persuading approach where my goal was to convince the other side of the argument. This altered my diction in my writing. In my other speeches I have written, I have written with a persuading tone and a neutral tone as well. The purposes of these speeches determine what tone I implement. In the future, I will continue to use tone and the knowledge of my audience in order to produce a satisfactory reaction from the audience.
