Major Assignment 1

Haley Cunningham

Professor Murdock

English 1001

January 31 2020

            Rhetorical situation, genre, and audience are the three main things that are vital to writing any text.

            First I would like to go over genre. Bazerman goes over genre in the most detail out of all of the other texts. Genre is not just a way to categorize texts, but it also helps us communicate with each other and understand others with speech acts.  Bazerman stated “ One way we can help coordinate our speech acts with each other is to act in typical ways, ways easily recognized as accomplishing certain acts in certain circumstances.” This shows how genre can effect how people respond to each other and how they’re treated. Genre invites social activity, when everyone is doing something you want to join in too. Genre is a gateway to conversation and interaction which is why it is vital to have in any piece of writing. I feel like Bazerman had brought this into his book to not only tell everyone the importance of genre but the importance of communication and human interaction.

            Secondly, I’d like to tell you about audience. When writing anything you always have an intended audience, who you want to read your writing. There can also be multiple audiences for different pieces. Bitzer says “… a rhetorical audience consists only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and being mediators of change.” This quote is showing how the audience can be persuaded to do something from the writers words. This goes hand and hand with Bazermans explanation of social and systems of activity. Writing is a way to provoke change, persuade an idea, and to think about something in a different perspective. This is proven in “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by having three main audience, the people who had the same experiences, the dominant culture, and students. She was provoking change for dominant culture and teaching students about her experiences to let them see it in their lives today.  I feel like writing about something in detail, letting readers know what you had to go through, and connecting with them helps your cause even more.

            My last point would be rhetorical situation. This is important because it is also a part of genre. Like I said genre leads to conversation, rhetorical situation is just a part of the conversation. Bitzer tells us, “Although rhetorical situation invites response, it obviously does not invite just any response. Thus the second characteristic of rhetorical situation is that it invites a fitting response,..” This is showing the more emotional side where people take this into a social setting and use their own words. This brings in the illocutionary act from Bazerman, what you intend the other person to recognize. Understanding their tone of voice and movements to give them a fitting response to what they had said to you.

            Therefore you need all three components to make a successful piece, genre, audience, and rhetorical situation.