语言教学 | 普渡大学写作教学系列General Writing 20-The Rhetorical Situation(3)

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Rhetorical Situations (3) -- Text & Author and Audience & Purposes

Text

What is a Text?

The word “text” is probably the most fluid term in a rhetorical situation. Usually, the word “text” refers to a written or typed document. In terms of a rhetorical situation, however, “text” means any form of communication that humans create. Whenever humans engage in any act of communication, a text serves as the vehicle for communication. Three basic factors affect the nature of each text: the medium of the text, the tools used to create the text, and the tools used to decipher the text.

Medium of a Text

Texts can appear in any kind of medium, or mechanism for communicating. The plural of medium in this sense is media. Various media affect the ways that authors and audiences communicate. Consider how these different types of media can affect how and what authors communicate to audiences in various rhetorical situations: hand-written, typed, computer-generated, audio, visual, spoken, verbal, non-verbal, graphic, pictorial, tactile, with words, or without words (there are many others, of course). Some varied specific examples of media could include a paper, a speech, a letter, an advertisement, a billboard, a presentation, a poster-board, a cartoon, a movie, a painting, a sculpture, an email, a Twitter tweet, a Facebook post, graffiti, a conversation (face-to-face, on a cell phone, via text messages) . . . this list is nearly endless.

Tools to Make a Text

Every text is made with tools that affect the structure and content of a text. Such tools could be physical tools that range from very basic (such as the larynx, throat, teeth, lips, and tongue necessary for verbal communication) to very complex (such as a laptop computer with graphic-manipulating software). These tools could also be more conceptual tools that range from simple (such as implementing feedback from an instructor) to more complicated (such as implementing different kinds of library and primary research). The tools of communication often determine the kinds of communication that can happen in any given rhetorical situation.

Tools to Decipher a Text

Likewise, audiences have varied tools for reading, viewing, hearing, or otherwise appreciating various texts. These could be actual physical tools that would likewise range from very basic (like the eyes and reading glasses necessary to read) to very complex (like a digital projector and screen to view a PowerPoint presentation). Or they could be conceptual tools that could range from simple (childhood principles learned from parents) to more complicated (a master’s degree in art). The tools that audiences have at their disposal affect the ways that they appreciate different texts.

Author and Audience

What is an Author?

“Author” is a fairly loose term used to refer to anyone who uses communication. An author could be one person or many people. An author could be someone who uses writing (like in a book), speech (like in a debate), visual elements (like in a TV commercial), audio elements (like in a radio broadcast), or even tactile elements (as is used in making Braille) to communicate. Whatever authors create, authors are human beings whose particular activities are affected by their individual backgrounds.

Author’s Background

Many factors affect authors’ backgrounds. These can include age, gender, geographic location, ethnicity, cultural experiences, religious experiences, social standing, personal wealth, sexuality, political beliefs, parents, peers, level of education, personal experience, and others. All of these are powerful influences on what authors assume about the world, who their audiences are, what and how they communicate, and the settings in which they communicate. Gender, ethnicity, cultural experiences, sexuality, and wealth factors are especially important in analyzing rhetorical situations today. Many professionals in education, business, government, and non-profit organizations are especially aware of these specific factors in people’s lives.

What is Audience?

Like the term “author,” the term “audience” is also a fairly loose term. “Audience” refers to any recipient of communication. Audiences can read, hear, see, or feel different kinds of communication through different kinds of media. Also like authors, audiences are human beings whose particular activities are also affected by their specific backgrounds.

Audience’s Background

The same sorts of factors that affect authors’ backgrounds also affect audiences’ individual backgrounds. Most importantly, these factors affect how audiences receive different pieces of communication; what they assume about the author; and the context in which they hear, read, or otherwise appreciate what the author communicates.

Purposes

Authors and audiences both have a wide range of purposes for communicating. The importance of purpose in rhetorical situations cannot be overstated. It is the varied purposes of a rhetorical situation that determine how an author communicates a text and how audiences receive a text. Rhetorical situations rarely have only one purpose. Authors and audiences tend to bring their own purposes (and often multiple purposes each) to a rhetorical situation, and these purposes may conflict or complement each other depending on the efforts of both authors and audiences.

Authors’ purposes

In the textbook Writing Today, Johnson-Sheehan and Paine discuss purpose more specifically in terms of the author of a text. They suggest that most texts written in college or in the workplace often fill one of two broader purposes: to be informative or to be persuasive. Under each of these two broad purposes, they identify a host of more specific purposes. The following table is not exhaustive; authors could easily have purposes that are not listed on this table.

Table: Author Purposes

Informative	Persuasive
to inform	to persuade
to describe	to convince
to define	to influence
to review	to argue
to notify	to recommend
to instruct	to change
to advise	to advocate
to announce	to urge
to explain	to defend
to demonstrate	to justify
to illustrate	to support

(Johnson-Sheehan & Paine 17)

Audiences’ purposes

Authors’ purposes tend to be almost exclusive active if only because authors conscientiously create texts for specific audiences. But audiences’ purposes may range from more passive purpose to more active purposes.

Table: Audience Purposes

More Passive Purposes	More Active Purposes
to receive notice	to examine
to feel reassured	to quantify
to feel a sense of unity	to assess
to be entertained	to make informed decisions
to receive instruction	to interpret
to enjoy	to evaluate
to hear advice	to judge
to be inspired	to resist change
to review	to criticize
to understand	to ridicule
to learn	to disprove

The Role of Purposes

Authors’ and audiences’ purposes in communicating determine the basic rationale behind other decisions both authors and audiences make (such as what to write or speak about, or whom to listen to, or what medium to use, or what setting to read in, among others). An author’s purpose in communicating could be to instruct, persuade, inform, entertain, educate, startle, excite, sadden, enlighten, punish, console, or many, many others. Like authors, audiences have varied purposes for reading, listening to, or otherwise appreciating pieces of communication. Audiences may seek to be instructed, persuaded, informed, entertained, educated, startled, excited, saddened, enlightened, punished, consoled, or many, many others. Authors’ and audiences’ purposes are only limited to what authors and audiences want to accomplish in their moments of communication. There are as many purposes for communicating as there are words to describe those purposes.

Attitude

Attitude is related to purpose and is a much-overlooked element of rhetorical situations. But attitude affects a great deal of how a rhetorical situation unfolds. Consider if an author communicates with a flippant attitude as opposed to a serious attitude, or with drama as opposed to comedy, or calmly as opposed to excitedly. Depending on authors’ purposes, audiences’ specific qualities, the nature of the context, and other factors, any of these attitudes could either help or hinder authors in their efforts to communicate depending on the other factors in any given rhetorical situation. Like authors, audiences bring diverse attitudes to how they appreciate different pieces of communication. The audience’s attitude while reading, listening, observing, or whatnot affects how they receive and process the communication they receive.

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