0:00
So we're going to focus on the ironic moment. And writers motivating occasion, some questions to ask about that focus might be things like what motivated the writer to produce this piece? That's one thing you could ask what motivated the writer to write it? And then another question. This is more complex, more contextual, what social, cultural, political, legal or economic conversations? Does this argument join? So let's, you know, think about how those questions might be framed another way further explained, for the first question can be further explained by looking at what the writers purpose was and composing the text. Simple as that. And then the second question, what social, cultural, political, legal or economic conversations does it join? You can explore that further by looking at the context in which the text was produced. And then thinking about the various factors that may have influenced the writers decision to compose this argument in this particular way. So yeah, I guess you could kind of boil it down to why did they write what they wrote? Right? For both, maybe sort of, but that's a little bit too reductive. But you know, if you're trying to do the shorthand, that's essentially what it's about. So how would we apply these couple of questions? What motivated the writer to produce this, this piece? Well, as the writer of responding to a bill in Congress, a speech by a political leader, or a local event that provoked some kind of controversy, what we're trying to find is, if it's in response to something, it's not always that simple, but a lot of the time it is. So is it responding to something. And if you can identify that and articulate what it is, there's a different sort of perspective that can emerge from being able to see the prompt and the response together, the prompt and the response seem together are kind of a third way to view it. And once you start becoming accustomed to seeing that or looking for that, which is a sort of entity, that is the whole conversation, rather than just one side of it, or rather than just this side, or that. So rather than two elements, there's the unified entity produced from the conversation of those two elements together. Not to sound you know, too, metaphysical here, when we're talking about how to do a vertical analysis. But that sort of level of reading, is, I think, what you should seek or try to become attune to if not just able to detect. What I'm saying is it's sort of a one plus one equals three situation, you know, and that's meant to be catchy. It's not meant to be mathematically accurate, obviously. But if you think about it, if you've got one entity, say, a particular text responding to another entity, say, prompt, or whatever it is, that provoked a response, those two in conversation, are a conversation or that conversation is neither one nor the other. But a third thing, so one plus one equals three. All right, so I'm going to bring it back down, I feel myself starting to float away a little bit with that sidebar there. So anyway, if you're asking the question, what motivated the writer to produce this piece? You know, just figure out what it's responding to, and then learn about that and see how the response fits in to the the situation that it's engaging with? And what about that second question, what social, cultural, political, legal, economic conversations does this argument join? Basically, kind of staying at the surface level here. You would, you might ask an application is the writer addressing cultural trends, such as the impact of science or technology on values, you know, something like that? And then we'll move on now to what to focus on next.
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And I promise I'll go quicker this time. So after the chaotic moment, and the writers motivating occasion or not necessarily after but just at some point, you want to talk about the rhetorical context, what's the purpose and audience right? So some questions to ask here about purpose and audience Well, this one is pretty straightforward. The the questions to ask about the focus of purpose and audience as it concerns rhetorical context are simply what is the writers purpose? You may have already gotten some kind of answer to this. Maybe the answer to this by thinking about the ironic moment and motivating occasion. And then after answering what is the writers purpose? Who is the intended audience? Now, all right, I know I said, I'm not going to go in as much on this point of focus as I did before, but I think I am maybe even further because it's important to wrestle with audience for a little, a little while, at least. So I want to think about audience in two different ways present two perspectives about it. So the first one is going to be sort of the textbook, what you've probably heard before kind of perspective. And then the second one will essentially challenge the assumptions that the first one relies upon, not to presuppose already, but you know, we'll get there. Alright, so here's the first perspective, the traditional when we talk about audience, we somehow understand that effective argument depends on the writers rhetorical understanding of audience. And then a writers analysis of a targeted audience will take place and include things like demographic data, political ideology, and what some scholars would call intersectional positioning, which means things like race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity. And then there's a host of other factors too. The writers goal, though, is to walk in their audience's shoes, to see where they are coming from to understand their values, assumptions and beliefs. Although writers have arguments occasionally preach to the choir, that as they address people who already hold the beliefs that they do, they usually want to reach people who hold alternative views, or otherwise skeptical of the writers position. So effective arguers will try to base their arguments on audience based reasons that appeal to the targeted audiences underlying beliefs, values and assumptions. And that's the first perspective okay, I'm not gonna say anything about it yet. Let's think about audience in a different manner for a minute. So the notion of audience is embroiled with purpose normally, and probably that's true for the most part. But what is an audience? And not only that? How do we know who the writer intends for theirs to be? And does a writer have to intend their writing before a certain audience? So sure, a writer can explicitly or implicitly, identify or construct an intended audience, but simply assuming or asserting that an intended audience contains all of the same categories or percentages? Or is even composed of actual human beings? Is it best a forced interpretation? If we look into the rhetoric from another angle, asking instead, how does the writer's choice of rhetorical strategies enable the target audience to identify themselves with the writer's cause, and further enable their participation in the movement toward change can help us to move into the fissures between audience and other? Still, though, what is an audience? And how do we determine the audience of a particular text? Well, all discourse builds upon a situation for participants to talk about an audience has to accept that situation. And in regards to writing to say that a text arrives to an audience means the no writer can compose in a vacuum. The goal of purpose drives the writer to create a text in which they establish a discourse with others. And this text attempts to make sense in a define situation that it encounters from moment to moment, the situation may be an accidental one or purposefully defined as the intended audience for the text itself. But within this particular situation, it is important to note that the writers discourse is reliant on a repertoire of discursive possibilities, which exists largely as categories of values and assumptions onto which others gravitate.
9:41
Think about that. Let me say that again. It is important to note that the writers discourse is reliant on a repertoire of discursive possibilities, which exists largely as categories of values and assumptions onto which others gravitate So what this means is that the writers rhetoric is always more than the words on paper. It's also how the words interact with the world around them. Right? I mean, this is sort of obvious, but I think it's very helpful to articulate it. So for example, like think about when you're in a situation, where you're going to write an email reminder to someone, and they're supposed to do a certain thing, you identify it to thing by a category, you know, due date, or whatever. And if you don't have that category, you can't put the stuff in there, right. So it has to be a category. And when we talk about an audience, it's a situation in which the writer identifies their own position, but also a position of their address, see, because they're trying to reach out to them, right. Even if you're talking about a personal letter, you still have someone else in mind, regardless, that's what you're writing down to, or who you're writing to. So in order for you to say, Hey, thanks for the birthday card, I really appreciated it, it's sort of like you're reflecting back in an old conversation. Well, they knew it was your birthday, and they knew they were sending a card. So they already knew that you would appreciate it probably, but you have to write it down, you have to write it down for the record. But then you're also engaging them in a new way, because you're writing to them engaging in a discourse with them and documenting that you appreciated the card. So you're really engaging them through the text. So a text when it arrives to someone is, is always sort of engaged. It's always sort of engaging them in a new way. Because it's asking them to interact with it. And oh, my goodness, you guys, this, this is so important for so many other things we're going to be talking about as well. Audience means others. And it's not necessarily others in the sense of the people who are external to the writing, a text audience can be internal to the text, or sometimes even a product of the text itself. You know, we'll we'll talk more about this later. But for now, all of this is to say that an audience is not a given. And to assume otherwise only produces a dangerously limited view of both rhetorical situations, and the possibilities for change that they might enable. So in other words, if we think about an audience in this way, it opens up a whole new world of opportunities for us to reimagine the possibilities for who or what an audience might be. Now, going back up through the rabbit hole, let me reiterate once more, that the writers discourse is reliant on a repertoire of discursive possibilities, which exists largely as categories of values and assumptions onto which others gravitate. So now we can, I think come to a clear understanding, or at least extend our understanding and to saying that our writers rhetorical choices must be made with an eye not just to what is rhetorically effective in the moment, but also to the ways that their discourse might activate and be activated by the values and assumptions of their audience. So audience matters to the writer in a number of ways, it matters to the writer in terms of what they're trying to do. It matters to the writer in terms of what they're trying to say, it matters to the writer in terms of how they want the audience to interact with the text, or how they want the text to create this kind of arena of action that is likely to produce interaction and therefore produce an audience.
13:59
So we're talking about these categories, right? A writer's rhetorical choices both lose and find definitions between categories of the audience and the other, or whatever kind of values and assumptions that might be contained or encoded. Within the text itself, whether it be in the rhetoric, the diction, the the ump, behind, you know, whatever it is, the the audience is not just a static, given thing that the writer works with. It's, it's something that's always changing, like the categories and it's something that the writer is always working with. I mean, categories, as I'm sure you know, are fluid ever changing, and they're negotiable. They're always in the process of becoming in a writer should know that and associate an audience frankly. But what does this mean for the author? And this idea that categories are fluid, ever changing negotiable and always in the process of becoming? Well, first, it means that any audience is constituted in ways that are never static to the audience is never a complete definable entity. There are exceptions, of course, a historical audience. But then if it's the case of an historical document, that we're defining an audience by, then, by rereading the document, we're also becoming the audience to it and therefore, in the present of it and not locked in not static, we're dynamic, because the text is still an existing objects, right? How quickly do we get to philosophy with this? And so yeah, any audience, the one for the text writers audience, any audience is always in the process of becoming, it's always in flux. Second, it means that any audience is, in a sense, always already an implied audience. So the writer doesn't start from scratch, and their attempts to communicate with an audience. They already are engaged in a communicative act, however limited or undefined, that may be just by writing. And finally, it means that the audience is never just one thing. This is what is likely to trip most people up I think audiences or audiences are always multiple, even one audience is always multiple, in the sense of an audience being composed of different individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives. But you know, maybe in the case of writing the email to a single person, you could make an argument that the audience, there's not multiple, but then again, our discussion about if the email turns into a string of replies, then you even though you're the same person receiving the message each time are, in a sense, a different audience each time you look at it, because when we look at it at that kind of detail, it becomes highly debatable. And that's not the norm that we're going to encounter with rhetorical analysis anyway. So saying that audiences are always multiple is a definition that's mostly functioning within the framework of rhetorical analysis. So you know, that's what we're doing here anyway, talking about that. But an audience, being multiple, composed of different individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives, is significant because it means that a writer can never appeal to a single uniform audience. A significant because it means that a writer can really never appeal to a single uniform audience. So what implications does this have for rhetorical analysis? Well, you know, there's nothing new here, it means that a rhetorical analysis of a text needs to take into account the ways in which the text constructs an audience. So how is the text creating that center of gravitation that's coalescing as idealistically uniform of an audience as it might desire, or have envisioned is maybe a safer way to think about it.
18:54
The traditional perspective on audience assumes that a writer can target a particular audience and then use rhetorical strategies to appeal to their underlying values and assumptions. But this perspective overlooks the ways in which the text produces multiple audiences, and the impossibility of appealing to a single uniform entity. So I've rhetorical analysis of a text needs to take into account the ways in which the text constructs an audience and the ways in which that audience is multiple and diverse. That's that's really the take home point here. Rhetorical Analysis of attacks needs to take into account the ways in which the text constructs an audience and the ways in which that audience is multiple and diverse. And, on that note, I'd like to thank you all for listening, my audience, whoever you are, or may already be your turn out to be or even if it's just a whole lot of me. We'll see you next time.