Course Recap for Thursday, September 8, 2016

Rhetorical Situations

Today we discussed the elements of rhetorical situations.  A rhetorical situation is any set of circumstances that involves at least one person attempting to communicate information with another person  (including a future self).  Every rhetorical situation involves the following elements:

• Purpose
• Audience
• Medium
• Design
• Context

For more information, check out The Norton Field Guide's take on Rhetorical Situations.   These elements help us determine the rules for how we should communicate our message in any given situation.

We then examined these elements in the communications we frequently share on a regular basis in groups. For every piece you write in this class (or every piece you write ever truthfully), you will have to take into consideration the above elements. We examined these elements in blogs on our favorite subjects, which should give us some ideas on how we want to write our own blogs for this class.

Homework

• Write your first blog post.  Since it is your first post, you might want to introduce yourself and let your readers know what they can expect from your blog. Check the Blog Assignment Sheet for more information.  Due Friday, Sept. 10 by midnight. (Don't worry about commenting on others blogs.  We will discuss it more in Tuesday's class.)
• Read "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris (page 14) and "The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara (page 28) from Readings for Writers. Due Tuesday Sept. 13 in class
• Heads Up: Read Face by Alice Munro (posted underneath Class Documents) for Thursday Sept. 15 in class (it's a bit longer than the other two pieces, so you might want to get a head start).