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Hey y'all, it's me the one and only Mr. Fraley with another episode in our series of discussing how to vertically analyze a written text. Is it the coffee? Or is it me? You decide? Sometimes I can't even tell you no. Okay. Anyway, let's let's continue our discussion. The Rhetorical Situation. When you compose a rhetorical analysis essay of a written text, you must examine how an author uses language to achieve a particular response from readers from an audience. However, your task is a little more complicated than it might appear at first, you will actually be examining how an author uses language to achieve a particular response from readers. Given the specific context in which the writer produced the text. You see that addition there, it's not just examining use of language to achieve response. It's how an author uses language to achieve a particular response from readers. Given the specific context in which the writer produced the text. Given the specific context in which the writer produced the text, I'd like you to hinge your understanding. On two of the words that I've just said. Those two words are specific context. This specific context is called the text rhetorical situation. The specific context is the text rhetorical situation, that's why we call it as such the rhetorical situation aka this specific context includes a few things. It includes the author's audience, subject matter, purpose, and the occasion for writing, audience subject matter, purpose and occasion for writing in your paper, assuming that your paper is a rhetorical analysis essay, you will assess how the writer manipulates language to meet the needs of the rhetorical situation and achieve their goals for the text. So examples, always useful. Let's look at a brief example because it may help explain why understanding the rhetorical situation of a source text is essential to composing an effective rhetorical analysis essay. Our example is this. Suppose your source text is a set of instructions for installing a new hard drive on a computer. Your task is to evaluate how well the instructions achieve their intended purpose. The first thing you notice is that the instructions are full of undefined technical terms, IDE cables, jumper selectors, drive rails boot drives these terms not defined. So are the instructions effective? Well, upon consideration you would have to conclude that the answer is it depends. It depends. If the instructions are written for someone who is already well versed in computer tech, then they may be fine. If they are written for a novice computer owner, they may not be so effective. This reduced effectiveness when identified and incorporated into our rhetorical analysis plays an important role because we're required to evaluate the writing and light of its purpose and intended audience. These are two crucial elements of the text rhetorical situation. So the purpose of the text in this example is easily identifiable. The text is a set of instructions, what do instructions do? What is their rhetorical function, they provide detailed information telling how something should be done, operated or assembled. They define an operation and put it into effect, or at least create the potential for them to be put into effect by the participation of some audience, the reader. What about audience, it's a little more complicated because we have to handle the difference between intended audience and the converse. The converse is not only or necessarily the unintended audience, but instead reserves a place slash possibility for determining whether or not an audience is either specified or somehow inherent.
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If the audience is specified in the text. It's easy, because you know, we're literally told who they are, are supposed to be the intended audience. But if the audience is not specified in the text, then it becomes a little more complicated to try and identify who the audience is or who the audience is supposed to be intended to be. In either case, Having a good understanding of rhetorical situation can help us understand more about the audience not only in general but in the specific context of the particular piece of writing, or idea even in question. Now, to push this idea even further, I'd like to return to something we talked about in a previous episode, scene and situation. But now this time, we're going to bring in a third term. What is that third term? It's genre. So we now have seen situation and genre. Let's give a brief definition of each term before moving on. Starting with scene, a scene is the overall setting. The overall setting where communication happens among groups of people with some shared objectives, or writing classroom is a scene. So as a restaurant, kitchen, a chat room, even an editorial page, even a genre more on that last point very soon. From scene, we go to situation. A situation is not that guy from the real world, but the rhetorical interaction happening within a scene. Once again, the situation is the rhetorical interaction happening within a scene. For example, students and teachers discuss readings and respond to each other's writings, cooks and servers discuss food orders. People in a chat room or chatters discuss whatever's, you know, being talked about, they discuss topics that interest them. And editorial writers use the editorial page to discuss their opinions or share their viewpoints on current issues. So that's situation. Now our third term genre, a genre is a common way of responding rhetorically to a situation. So following suit with our examples, in the case of a classroom, a genre might be class discussions, or writing prompts. The class discussion is a genre of the classroom. The writing prompt is a genre of the classroom, particularly most likely a writing classroom. And in the restaurant kitchen, we could have the genre of the meal order, you know, the the little chits C H I T, those little tickets that are printed out. Whenever the server puts the order into the system or communicates it to the kitchen. Those things are printed out with information necessary for the continued operation of the restaurant. And in the case of the chatroom, chatroom postings. Those postings are the vehicles that continue the conversation and also give shape to and define the chat room in general, but also in particular, if it's a certain kind of chat room. And just by the way, I do realize that the term chat room is kind of outdated. But it's easy to catch this up to the present moment by replacing chat room with, you know, whatever app or platform. So it could be instead of using the term chatroom, we use Twitter. That's a platform, it's also an app. Another example, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, you name it, take your pick, the operative principle is essentially the same. And then of course, we have our final example of the editorial page. And of course, the editorial page is a place which holds space for the editorial.
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It's the genre too. And you know, I guess the editorial page could also be a scene, considering that a scene is a place in which communication happens. But maybe this is a complicated argument because a scene is a place in which communication happens among groups of people with some shared objectives. A scene is the overall setting, a place where communication happens among groups of people with some shared objectives. This is actually sort of an awkward transition to talking about each of our terms in detail, but you know, just just go with it. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Okay, here we are at scene. We begin with scene because it is the overarching term. The overarching term the overall setting, but more specifically, a place in which communication happens among groups of people with some shared objectives. Examples of a scene range from a large tax accounting firm to a small business from a classroom to a sorority house from a doctor's office to a peace rally. From a baseball game to a bar to a criminal trial, how do we get there? But anyway, they're all scenes to name but a few scenes are everywhere. And our mission should we choose to accept it is to explore the way communication happens in a variety of scenes, from academic scenes to workplace scenes to public scenes to Well, I guess even movie scenes, you know, we could totally go there. We could, maybe we will, we shall see. Anyway, continuing where we were, certainly not all scenes are so obviously physical as a doctor's office or a ballgame. The place the quote, unquote place of a scene can extend across well defined physical spaces. For example, if you consider the college or university that you are attending, or maybe habits ended in the past, as one scene, or as a clear physical place, you can then recognize also that it also participates in a larger academic scene. And think of this larger academic scene as a place of academia. And you know, think of place here as having air quotes. But a quote, place, unquote, of academia, can reach across multiple colleges, multiple universities, it can reach throughout the world. And within this larger academic scene, or a number of different disciplinary scenes, examples of disciplinary scenes would be like English, History, Geography, chemistry, physics, you know, pretty much anything you can major in. And these scenes consist of groups of people who have their own bodies of knowledge, not only their own bodies of knowledge, but they deal with different facts, different theories, they have their own research methods, their own ways of communicating with one another, all of which reflect their shared objectives, which is generally to advance and convey understanding of their subject matter of a subject matter. If you're a student in one of these classes, say if you're a student in a psychology class, then you might learn to write a case study. If you're in a biology class, maybe it's a lab report, chemistry, maybe a lab report there too, but a little bit different because it's a different disciplinary field. And if you're taking an awesome English class, you may learn how to write different kinds of essays of Yeah. You know, whichever field it is, whatever scene of discipline that you're participating in.
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The kinds of writing that you do in particular scenes will reflect their scenes, to some degree will reflect their scenes. What might this reflection look like? Well, it might meet certain special expectations in terms of use of evidence, the kinds of evidence that are considered good to use, or appropriate or correct. Even special terminologies. There's one, special styles formats, all kinds of content based disciplinary identifiers. Let me offer you an illustration here. Suppose that you are taking a class and architectural history. This class will familiarize you with its current state familiar familiarize you with a specific subject matter, styles of architecture throughout the ages, landmark buildings and ideas of influential designers. You will also gain knowledge of the economic and social forces that have shaped architectural structures, as well as the beliefs and values of architects and others who participate in the larger architectural scene, such as their struggles with the social and the ethical issues of preservation. In order to feel comfortable in this scene and function effectively in it, you will need to become familiar with the participants language. So that means use of terms, their use of terms like rectilinear design, or the distinctions between concepts, such as shingle style versus stick style. And then finally, you will need to become familiar with the methods of communicating within this scene, perhaps by writing Architectural Descriptions of buildings, following guidelines set by the National Register of Historic Places to do so. To participate effectively in this academic scene, you must participate in its rhetorical practices. And that's the key idea here. To participate effectively in this academic scene or any scene, you must participate in its rhetorical practices, practices which reflect the group's shared objectives. Again, the rhetorical practices are those those practices which reflect the group's shared objectives. Also think of this. Just like in movies, one scene may lead to a next to another scene, a different scene. So like what the actor Demmick scene that we just talked about there, maybe extending overlapping scenes that can be moved to and moved through. So, like the architecture scene, as students move from architecture classes, for example, to architecture firms, which are a different set of scenes, but still kind of sharing the same subject matter. The workplace scene of the architecture firm, resonates, but also extends the concepts and rhetorical practices that were integral to the definition of the previous scene. And workplace scenes too, are also places where communication happens among groups of people with some shared objectives. Actually, your ability to succeed in the workplace depends on your ability to use the language of the scene in appropriate ways. Right? That is to say, to achieve its shared objectives, use of the language of the scene in appropriate ways, is equivalent to achieving its shared objectives, participating toward those ends, whether you're asked to write an email to your co workers to promote the company picnic, you know, whatever it is a sales letter to clients to promote a new product, whatever scene based practice it is, it contributes to the continued structuration of the scene. And, you know, practices can change, they can be modified, or what's defined as appropriate, may be altered or redefined, you know, modified in some way, perhaps even recontextualized. But this doesn't necessarily take away from
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the scene itself as a definable space or, or entity of practice, I guess you could say, any kind or or form of character is susceptible to modification, to adaptation to alteration to evolutionary change, in general. Whatever the case may be, your ability to succeed within it still will depend on your ability to use the language to use its language appropriately, just like in academic scenes, same thing, academic scenes, they're specialized disciplines. You know, the workplace scene is also made up of smaller scenes, sub disciplines, or specialties operating as a component scene scenes or sub scenes, you know, within a larger context, which would be the kind of next level up of taxonomy. Classification, I guess, what's not really classification, you know, it's just scale it scale. The point is that the extended workplace scene, or the workplace scene as extension of academic scene, is also made up of smaller scenes. The workplace scene has its various departments, it has its social organizations, whose specialized ways of communicating reflect their own shared objectives. So even in those smaller levels of scene, there are a set of shared objectives and they relate to the shared objectives and the larger scene and the larger context, but they are uniquely identifiable. So think of an engineering firm. For example, an engineering firm represents one workplace seen within it, though, are different departments. You've got human resources, design others, you know, all of these departments are housed within the firm, just like the rooms in your house or wherever are components of what you would collectively refer to as your house. Likewise, a firm has departments. Specifically an engineering firm will have specific engineering departments and with engineers emphasis on form, precision and technical detail. And employee in an engineering firm will need to know how to produce an organized and detailed technical report, title sheet, table of contents, List of Figures definition of the problem, design, presentation, letter of transmittal, and closure all of these conventional elements that define the technical report and the field of engineering as a certain writing genre. And in order to handle that technical report, you'll need to become familiar with the the information that should be contained within each section of the report. It's just like we saw with the language of architecture, you know, the shared technical knowledge of engineers is expressed through a shared language. A mechanical engineer is likely to be familiar with a gearbox design, and a gearbox design itself. may involve type terms meaningful to other members of this scene terms such as input, output RPM or torque. But these terms would mostly be meaningless to those outside the scene, and if not meaningless, at least observed to be associated with a particular scene. So we've looked at academic scene we've looked at workplace scene, outside of and often interacting with academic and workplace scenes. Groups exists at various levels in civic or public scenes. So that's the next one public scenes. And similarly, they also work to achieve different kinds of shared objectives. Let's look at an example of a public scene. If you've ever observed the criminal trial, you would have seen a scene you would have seen the scene that involves a place the courtroom in which communication happens among groups of people. You've got the judge, the jury, the lawyers, the defendants, the plaintiffs, the witnesses, the court reporter, the bailiffs many different roles, groups of people, and the communication happening among them is all contributing toward some set of shared objectives, most generally, to reach some kind of verdict and more ideally, to seek justice through a fair trial. The combination of the courtroom, the participants, and the shared objectives is what constitutes, in general, the criminal trial as a scene. And remember, what would constitute a situation within this scene is interaction among the place, or the participants interacting within or with the place itself with each other, that sort of rhetorical involvement, and then directed toward the satisfaction or maybe not satisfaction, but completion of the shared objectives constitutes a rhetorical situation.
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So you know, that's one public scene, and other public scenes, maybe larger public scenes, such as those political groups. They do work to elect their candidates and to achieve their agendas by using certain materials, you get pamphlets, news releases, fundraising letters, various kinds of texts that can be used to spread in their own language, information about pertinent political issues. And then you've got things like community action groups, they can be created to stop the closing of a local elementary school to promote the use of the public library. You know, they they exist in particular scenes and use language in particular ways to achieve their particular objectives. I think the public scene is the least clearly defined. Because it's so often a morphus. And they can be quite large to a public scene can be quite large. And perhaps the larger a scene becomes the less clearly definable it becomes two. And then the categories of academic workplaces and public scenes may not be clearly distinct either. Scenes overlap quite often they really do. But distinguishing out, at least in some part between academic workplaces and public scenes, is useful, because we may be helped in our understanding of how to act within them. And more specifically, to the point for our purposes of understanding how to write within them, but also how to write about them, perhaps to compose an effective rhetorical analysis, right? mean doing that composing an effective rhetorical analysis requires us again, to evaluate the writing, or whatever it is in light of its purpose and intended audience, which are two crucial elements of the text rhetorical situation. And because understanding attacks rhetorical situation is so fundamental to writing this type of essay, this rhetorical analysis, it's really worthwhile to examine each element in isolation. And that is where we're going to pick up in the next episode.