1. Who am I writing for? What are the audience's beliefs and assumptions?
My intended audience includes any new students to the education field, but it can also expand to my professor and classmates. My audience is analyzing the rhetoric used, while the actual text is positioned towards a different set of people. The author's audience are the people who frequently read The New York Times. After researching the demographics of the people who read the specific newspaper, I concluded that this may have some affect on the writer's overall purpose and message.
2. What position might they take on this issue? How will I need to respond to this position?
The writer's audience will most likely agree with a need for change, but they might not agree with the correlation between performance and salary that the article weighs so heavily. But, I do know that the majority, if not all, of the audience values education, and he reminds them of this fundamental belief. I am writing to an audience that will hopefully react positively to my analysis and will be able to understand my argument.
3. What will they want to know?
The readers will want to know an explanation to the blatant statement that the title provides, "Pay Teachers More." They will want to know the article's primary argument and the actions that the text calls for. They will also want to see how I analyze and critique the author's text.
4. How might they react to my argument?
Some might agree fully with my argument, while others might think differently. I want them to acknowledge the things that the author accomplishes, while also recognize the need for more information and context. Hopefully, they will agree with me by the end of the analysis.
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| Mohammad Jangda. "Audience at Humanities Theatre." 03/05/2007 via Flickr. Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 Generic License. |
I am trying to appeal to my audience's central beliefs regarding rhetoric, and how it is appropriately used. This could be done by providing evidence, using a relaxed, yet professional tone of voice and mentioning past experiences in regards to writing a rhetorical analysis. If I effectively accomplish these three things, then I will be able to connect to my audience.
6. Are there specific words, ideas, or modes of presentation that will help me relate to them in this way?
If I use the rhetorical strategies, ethos, pathos and logos to analyze the article, then that will help me relate to my audience. Also, if I provide some context that the author does not include, then this will help me keep the audience engaged.
--Jenny Bello
REFLECTION:
After reading my classmates' posts, I can see that we all have some questions and reservations about this project. Originally, I was confused on the intended audience and purpose of my analysis, and that reflected in this blog post. Reading through Bre's and Rachel's blog posts helped me answer some of these questions for myself in my own writing, as well as address somethings that they might have been missing. I reminded Bre that the purpose of this assignment was to analyze the rhetoric and how the author is arguing his point, not to present the argument itself. Also, reading Rachel's post reminded me of the importance of presenting my analysis with an unbiased view point, that is neutral towards the issue.
I now realize that this blog post was fully developed and that it just needed a little help with specific details. I think I properly address who the audience is and what they are looking for, but I originally was misled with the assignment as a whole. After revising and reading through this post, I can fully understand what the assignment is asking me to do.
It sounds like you have a very good idea of who your audience is and how you will appeal to them in Project 2. One thing to keep in mind is that there is a set audience part of the prompt for Project 2 that you might want to check out. In a sense, this audience might be similar to the ones you've already described, however they are specifically meant to be in your field, and basically clueless when it comes to analyzing. I completely focused on the Project 2 required audience, and forgot to mention classmates and our professor! Good job, keep up the hard work!
ReplyDeleteAlso, you may want to go look back at the Project 2 breakdown and rubric to make sure you're on track about how you should be writing for Project 2. The purpose of the project is to educate new students on the rhetorical strategies that are used in sources from your field. This is a fantastic analysis, but it may not be on-topic.
DeleteThank you for this tip! I was honestly unsure of who we were aiming this analysis towards, so this helps a lot!
DeleteHi Jenny! I too was confused on how we were supposed to do this analysis. I chose to analyze the audience of the actual text and how I would address their concerns, etc. to it. This way of analyzing really helped me. It looks like you did a little bit of both analyzing the texts audience as well as the audience for the project itself. I think you'll have no problem moving forward, you have a good plan!
ReplyDeleteI think we had sort of similar approaches to analyzing or audiences! It is sort of hard to understand exactly who our audience is in this situation, or what we are trying to achieve in providing them. I am not sure if we both answered these questions wrong or right but we both sort of mentioned using informal tones to show our audience that we understand their confusions about the topic or argument.
ReplyDelete