RHETORIC AND TERMS IN WRITING

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RHETORIC AND TERMS IN WRITING
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Rhetoric - the Art of Using Language Effectively
or Persuasively
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The Rhetorical Situation

• Writer
• Purpose
• Audience
• Topic
• Context

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WRITER

• FACTORS WHICH CAN AFFECT YOUR WRITING INCLUDE
• Your age
• Your experience
• Your gender
• Your location
• Your political beliefs
• Your parents and peers
• Your education

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PURPOSE

• Purpose the effect you wish to have on your
  intended audience. Major purposes for writing
  include
• Expressing your feelings
• Investigating a subject and reporting your
  findings
• Explaining an idea or concept
• Evaluating some object, performance, or image
• Proposing solution to a problem
• Arguing for your position and responding to
  alternative or opposing positions
• Entertaining the audience

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AUDIENCE

• Audience To Whom are you Writing?
• Many of the same factors which affect the writer
  also affect the audience
• Age
• Social class
• Education
• Past experience
• Culture/subculture
• Expectations

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CONTEXT
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VOICE TONE
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VOICE TONE

• Voice and Tone reflect YOUR attitude about your
  subject and your audience.
• VOICE is WHO the audience hear talking in your
  paper, and TONE is the way in which youre doing
  the writing
• Serious
• Informative
• Formal/Informal
• Humorous

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DICTION STYLE

• Style is a term for the effect a writer can
  create through attitude, language, and the
  mechanics of writing. A consistent choice of
  patterns and word choices will result in a
  coherent and harmonious style supporting the
  content
• Diction is a choice of words and informality or
  formality of a style based on word and pattern
  choices

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DICTION (Continued)

• Dont pad your writing - avoid terms with
  nearly identical denotations
• Talented and gifted to persecute and oppress
• Avoid informalities, be aware of the differences
  between standard written English (used in most
  scholarly and professional communication) and
  writing that permits the use of slang,
  colloquialism, or deliberately irregular
  grammatical constructions as in fiction,
  poetry, drama, etc.

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DICTION (Continued)

• Avoid the use of I feel, I think, I believe,
  to me, etc. its usually unnecessary. It also
  makes a statement sound more like an unfounded
  "opinion" than a well-considered and supported
  argumentative position. Do without such
  superfluous phrasing wherever you can, especially
  when it undermines the strength of an argument.
• Avoid using contractions (he's, she's, it's,
  let's, we're, you're, they're, isn't, aren't,
  weren't, he'll, she'll, they'll, don't,
  shouldn't, wouldn't, couldn't, I'm, I'll, I've,
  you've, we've, etc.) as they are too casual.

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UNITY COHERENCE

• Unity is the development of a single controlling
  idea usually presented in a thesis statement.
  Each sentence should develop this central idea
  and should not get off the main topic of
  discussion.
• Coherence is a connection between thoughts and
  the order of the content within a piece of
  writing. In Latin, coherence basically means to
  stick together.

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COHERENCE (Continued)

• To make your essay coherent you may use the
  following tips
• Repeat key words. Using synonyms may help as
  words are markers
• Use pronouns for important nouns
• Use demonstratives This policy , that
  event, etc.
• Use transitional words to link the thoughts and
  signal the type of relationship between the
  thoughts therefore, moreover, however
• Establish logical order to the paragraphs and
  sentences within paragraphs such as cause to
  effect, or general to particular

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Figurative Language

• Metaphor
• Simile
• Analogy
• Personification

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Metaphor

• A metaphor makes an implicit comparison between
  dissimilar ideas or things without using like or
  as
• You are a hog. War is hell.
• She was very old and small and she walked slowly
  in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from
  side to side in her steps, with the balanced
  heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a
  grandfather clock.
• -Eudora Weltry
• To take full advantage of the richness of a
  particular comparison, writers sometimes use
  several sentences or even a whole paragraph to
  develop a metaphor.

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Simile

• A simile is an explicit comparison between two
  essentially different ideas or things that uses
  the word like or as to link them.
• You eat like a hog. Life is like a box of
  chocolates.
• I walked toward her and hailed her as a visitor
  to the moon might salute a survivor of a previous
  expedition.
• - John Updike

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Analogy

• Analogies usually involve explaining one idea or
  concept by comparing it to something else. An
  analogy is typically a complex or extended
  comparison. Unlike a true comparison, which
  analyzes items that belong to the same class,
  analogy pairs things from different classes that
  have nothing in common except through the
  imagination of the writer.
• Admittedly capital punishment is not a pleasant
  topic. However, one does not have to like the
  death penalty in order to support it any more
  than one must like radical surgery, radiation, or
  chemotherapy in order to find necessary these
  attempts at curing cancer. Ultimately we may
  learn how to cure cancer with a simple pill.
  Unfortunately, that day has not yet arrived.
  Today we are faced with the choice of letting the
  cancer spread or trying to cure it with the
  methods available, methods that one day will
  almost certainly be considered barbaric and
  would certainly delay the discovery of an
  eventual cure. The analogy between cancer and
  murder is imperfect, because murder is not the
  "disease" we are trying to cure. The disease is
  injustice. We may not like the death penalty, but
  it must be available to punish crimes of
  cold-blooded murder, cases in which any other
  form of punishment would be inadequate and,
  therefore, unjust. If we create a society in
  which injustice is not tolerated, incidents of
  murderthe most flagrant form of injusticewill
  diminish.

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Personification

• In Personification, the writer attributes human
  qualities to ideas or objects.
• The moon bathed the valley in a soft, golden
  light.
• -Corey Davis
• Indeed, haste can be the assassin of elegance.
• - T.H.White
• Blond October comes striding over the hills
  wearing a crimson shirt and faded green trousers.
• - Hal Borland