Since this is super late, I can see where I went wrong. I haven’t done a great job of keeping up with due dates, therefore falling behind.

Therefore, this is going to be more of a revitalization paper. How do I plan to keep up with due dates better? Well, I plan to actually use my time wisely. My mother was just telling me I have an issue with doing that. I can check Canvas everyday and make sure I read thoroughly by chunking. Fridays, I don’t have class at all, so that can be a review day and I have two hours between my classes on Monday and Wednesday. Those two hours could be dedicated to at least one of your two class I am taking.

One of the difficulties is balancing both classes with the due dates. I thought that having two classes that have similar set ups would be easy, especially because I have only 12 credit hours. It has proved to be a challenge. I have one class on Tuesday and Thursday at night, so I have the WHOLE day that can be used for school work. Those days are never used for work because I need to better organize my schedule. I have managed to be organized with handouts and tangible things, but I have learned in college that organization goes beyond papers. Organization is important for time, as well. I need to set aside particular times for certain assignments.

Through not repeating mistakes I mentioned in paragraph one and making corrections that I also mentioned, I will hopefully become successful.

Writing creates new knowledge through ideas. People think of ideas and express them in their writing. This causes the writer to expand on the idea and research to gain more knowledge. In the same way writing helps the writer, it also helps the audience. The audience gains more knowledge by reading the ideas manifested and supporting facts researched.

Prior to this week’s reading I always thought knowledge came primarily from books and different forms of literature. The encyclopedia, atlases, Freud’s theories, animal studies, and geographical ideas are all found in writing. Writing existed long before the news, media, and television. Therefore I feel it’s more reliable.

Assia Watts

Dr. Murdock

English Comp.

Major Assignment 1

Genre, audience, and rhetorical situation work together to create dynamic pieces of literature. Genre is used to give the audience a briefing of what the article might be about or concern. A rhetorical situation occurs when the article describes an issue, and encourages the audience to act on it.

Bitzer describes rhetorical situation by using examples from pieces of literature. Bitzer uses Gettysburg Address, Churchill’s Address, The Declaration of Independence, and John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address to address the usage of rhetoric. He also states that each of them indicate a situation, but that does not mean there’s discourse. A rhetorical situation calls for discourse because there needs to be an issue with constraints. Therefore all those pieces don’t have a rhetorical situation.

Though it takes Bitzer a while to reach the main point of what rhetorical situation is, he eventually gets to the point and mentions speeches and settings. He says that persuasion is general, so audiences can be moved by a speech, at any time. He says this to explain that rhetorical situation and persuasive situation aren’t the same. Bitzer then drifts in to how rhetorical discourse must be established early in a story. He uses a metaphor concerning trees and soil to explain.

Bazerman discusses genre. He says they’re standard recognizable forms. Genre is a typification that gives a certain shape and meaning to circumstances . Bazerman states that genre is important to help us understand documents. Because genre is made by a fixed set of features, it doesn’t change from person to person meaning its standardized. Within genre, there’s also genre sets. Genre sets are groups of literature a particular author is likely to write.

Genre also is set by prototypes and archetypes. There’s certain things we expect to see in certain types of movies or books. These archetypes help us define and predict what will happen. When movies or books don’t use the standard expectations for each genre, it sometimes doesn’t do well. Therefore, genre plays an important concerning what people like, want, and expect.

Audience seems to be the broadest concept we’ve learned. There is no particular audience that will read an article, but there is a target audience. Scholarly articles target students researching a particular topic, but other people will read those articles as well for numerous reasons.

We discussed this with the Collins commencement speech. The target audience was the graduating class, but were they the other ones who heard the speech? Parents, teachers, friends, security, and faculty were other members of the the speech. Even the students in this class, have read the speech though we weren’t there. This poses the question of who was the audience, then?

Audience could be anyone, anywhere but the Google definition says audience is the spectators at a public event. I personally believe audience is much broader than that because if that was the only audience, the what am I. Isn’t my professor the audience that I am speaking with in this article? I define audience as a group of people who have read, heard, or saw a specific event including, stories, speeches, and concerts.

All these concepts helped me conclude a theory of writing. My theory of writing is that genre and rhetorical situation are two entities that work together to move the audience. They move the audience in different ways, though.

Rhetorical situation moves the audience to act, but genre moves the audience to read. To elaborate, if you like crime fiction, you will be moved to read or purchase a crime fiction book. One might even be moved to read a review of a crime fiction story. Genre and rhetorical situation have the potential to move the audience emotionally.

Rhetoric uses logos, ethos, and pathos to move people. Emotion, of course pathos, can help move the audience to act on an issue. Genre can move people emotionally, as well. A sad story about losing a loved one could be a memoir, a drama, or, simply, a non fiction. Those types of stories would definitely cause emotional disturbances or movements.

I haven’t thought about how these three things work together until now. This project has caused me to look back at our previous readings and make some conclusions.

The documentary and the writing by Anzaldua are similar because their target audiences are for people entering new territory. In the documentary, Wilcha was new to an office atmosphere, as far as being an employee with his own office. The people there dressed with buttom ups and dress pants, which was different than how a typical rock band member would dress. While in the Anzaldua reading, people from one culture are entering an atmosphere with another. Anzaldua speaks one language, while the other people speak a different first language.

Anzaldua helped me to see how diverse audiences can be. Anybody from any country might need help understanding different culture. When I specified a target audience for Anzaldua, it was really a hypothesis.

My first response to the articles was that they were in debt and informative concerning poetry. I highly respect H.D. and Lowell simply because they’re women following their passion for writing in very sexist times. Their dense lives outside of poetry was impressive and interesting. This gave a face behind the writing. Usually knowing a bit about an author can help understand what they write. It also helps understand why they might have had the passion for poetry they had.

I also was impressed by the way Lowell brought imagism to her poetry like the other two poets. This helps their contributions to modern poetry tie together because it provides one particular characteristic of poetry they all engaged in using. I noticed that Ezra seems to get more notoriety than the other two poets. It makes me wonder, is it because he really contributed more to modern poetry, or if he was just a male. Besides that, I noticed along with Imagism, he fathered Vorticism. This made me do a a little research into the meaning, and its a form of writing that related art to industrialization. It was also influenced by Cubism.

Naturalism and realism is in close relation… We can see both in the chapters. Carrie was traveling door to door looking for a job. She is determined even through rejection, she perseveres. A young woman growing and coming into a womanhood trying to find her place, is similar to the young animals fin ding their means of survival. This relates to the human’s animalistic instinct.

Sexual desires are referenced when Drouet is introduced in chapter 1. This also relates to animalistic instinct and how humans are shaped by nature. Reproduction is an important part of the natural world. Desire from one sex to another is apart of the natural world. It reminds me of the instinct of animals in nature. The male confronts the female and there is “tension.” Stereotypically, the female is more docile and she was in this instance.

Bitzer refers to rhetorical situation as natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and exigence. Rhetoric involves changes in reality that leads to persuasion. This means that in response to rhetorical situation, there is rhetorical discourse. Key terms used to define and explain rhetorical situation are exigence, audience, and constraints. Bitzer also used examples to define what rhetorical situation is.

Rhetorical situation to me is a set of issues that need solutions and the audience needs to persuaded to act. An example of rhetorical situation an article on environmental issues. The exigence is usually technology, fossil fuels, or garbage. These articles are usually trying to persuade the audience to switch to an alternative or not use those things. The constraints are usually the inconvenience caused by not using those things. For example, instead of throwing things away, one might be urged to recycle more or re-use bottles. While that seems like an easy task, the other articles might urge the world to not use fossil fuels, which has many constraints because we use them for a lot. Factories use them and so do cars.

Rhetorical situation relates to genre because rhetoric is only found in certain genres. Persuasive writing is usually found in non fiction articles. This also limits the amount of sub genres rhetoric can be found in. Fiction doesn’t call the audience to do anything. They can’t because what’s being discussed isn’t a real issue with real characters. A big part of rhetorical situation is the issue at hand and persuausion for the audience to act. Without those things, there is no rhetorical situation.

What I know about 20th century American literature is nothing. This should be an interesting and informative class. I suspect that I will gain a lot of new information.

Writing is the expression of emotions and thoughts on paper using words. Writing can also give instruction or describe ideas. Successful writing is defined as completing a thought or changing the topic with transitional sentences. Also, successful writing is using proper punctuations and proper terminology.

I see myself as a decent and sufficient writer. I use proper terminology, but sometimes I have trouble changing the topic properly or finishing a thought. I do not read as much as I used to, so I feel that my writing has depreciated.

Expressive, Repetitive, Tedious, Time Consuming, Intriguing, Detailed

I learned that when writing, it is important to consider audience and genre. Collins did an overlap of genres and he had a specific audience, although many others heard/read it. After reading that story, I noticed I missed a major part of successful writing. The revision I would like to make is adding that successful writing consist of making sure what you’re trying to convey/say is perceived that way by the writer.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

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