Stefani Hancock English composition Dr. Andrus September 28, 2016 Connection of Concepts Genre, audience, rhetorical scheme they at some points have very similar points in all texts from Anzaldua s How to Tame a Wild Tongue to Russel and Yanez s Big picture people because all of the text have similar points, to get the authors point across about the different ideas that their texts are about, and they explain the terms that they talk about in ways that help readers to understand writing and to better understand texts. The theory of writing needs all three terms in some form to have a cohesive and understandable text that the reader can read and have an idea of who and what the writer wanted when they wrote the text, and the purpose as to why they wrote it. Genre is used to describe categories of written texts that have recognizable patterns, syntax, techniques, and, or conventions. That definition in better and more clear terms mean that genre is used in a paper to describe different types of writing with different styles to differentiate between other papers. Genres and their systems help us make sense of what's happening. They allow us to do certain kinds of work that are otherwise impossible. (Russel and Yanez 16). Russel and Yanez s text helps us to get a clearer view on how to shape genre to use in different types of writing, so that everything doesn t get lost to the reader.
Genre in writing shapes the text and gives a certain style to it that can help explain the way that the text is being taken because without some type of genre It s hard to read a college text. Without genre college writing is not as composed and better advanced than high school writing, because genre helps to convey what the writers point of view is when they write, genre just make a point a little or a lot clearer. These stabilized - for - now genre systems, evolved over time, can explain much about the ways students and teachers perceive and do their work. (Russel and Yanez 16). This passage tells us that genres are manipulated and shaped to fit into certain texts so that the writer can show the reader what the point of the paper is. Without genre college texts can be difficult, but when you understand the genre that the author used when writing the text, the reason for the paper makes a bit more sense. There are unofficial and official rules/norms, some of which are expectations, conventions for using writing in the university and in the discipline of academic history genres. (Russel and Yanez 7). The rules for the types of genres change when the writer manipulates it, but the basic rules stay the same as the base genre that was used. Throughout writing the rules of the genre that are being used can change with the meaning. And therefore the genre rules were different. the genre rules require that one not treat history as if one could move past interpretation to final and absolute historical truths and writing about the past in the critical ways that professional historians do. (Russel and Yanez 12) This section of the text gives an idea of the rules that were used to make a paper. Russel and Yanez use a genre style that describes to the reader all of the ways that they could use genre in writing and how others have miss used their genres. Knowing the audience for a particular essay is important because it determines the content that will appear in the writing. The definition of audience in writing is the group of people you want to educate or persuade. The jury is not a random and scattered audience but a selected and
concentrated one; it knows its relation to judge, defendant, counsels; it is instructed in what to observe and what to disregard. (Bitzer 14). This is an example from Bitzer s the rhetorical situation, he used a trial where the lawyer is there to give a speech as to why or why not the defendant is or is not guilty of the criminal act that was committed, to describe the audience that the lawyer speaks to which in the example is the judge, jury, and the witnesses that are present. Audience has different degrees of who listens or reads the text. In that example the jury was the actual and target audience while the judge and all of the other attendees to the trail are the actual audience too because they were there to listen to the speech and the defendant is the evoked audience because they are being represented. The author of papers can have a specific group of people targeted to read the paper but then there are others who read the paper that were added audience. So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity I am my language. (Anzaldua 82). Anzaldua references an audience of people who are different from her ethnicity while also referencing people that talk bad about her. She wrote about experience throughout her life and all of the ways that her speech changed when she talked to different people. Anzaldua addresses the reader sometimes when she wants to make aa point that she feels that is an important fact that they should know. For a people who are neither Spanish nor live in a country in which Spanish is the first language; for a people who live in a country in which English is the reigning tongue but who are not Anglo; for a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard (formal, Castilian) Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language? (Anzaldua 78). Anzaldua directly references the people she evokes, all the people that speak different languages, because she wants others to know that
she wasn t the only one of her people that were discriminated against and told they couldn t speak their native language as a child. She wants the people who judge her to learn the way she was treated throughout her life and how her whole persona and attitude changed from all of the situations that she was put through as a child to adult hood. Chicano Spanish is considered by the purist and by most Latinos deficient, a mutilation of Spanish. (Anzaldua 78). Anzaldua went through a lot in her life and she told her past with her audience in mind, she explained how Chicano Spanish was viewed as mutilating Spanish. She told us that being what she was, was as difficult as anybody else s if not a lot more because true Spanish speakers not just Americans judged Chicanos. The situation changed how she acted around others if she was with Chicanos she felt more in her element because she could speak the language that felt comfortable to her because it was her chosen language, but when she knew she was in the presence of someone who wasn t Chicano she changed how she acted as to not make herself feel as though she was being judged. Los Chicanos, how patient we seem, how very patient. There is the quiet of the Indian about us. We know how to survive. When other races have given up their tongue we've kept ours. (Anzaldua 85). This passage shows that Chicanos survive and adapted so they don t have to change who they are to appease others. Rhetorical situation may be defined as a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence (Bitzer 8). Rhetorical situation in easier terms is when a statement is said in a manner of a question that doesn t need an answer. In any rhetorical situation there will be at least one controlling exigence which functions as the organizing principle: it specifies the audience to be addressed and the change to be effected. The exigence may or may not be perceived clearly by the rhetor or other persons in the situation. (Bitzer 9). This passage shows that when the statement is made there should be a change in the
situation that could help the reason why the statement was made, and hopefully save what was there before the situation happened. There are different types of rhetoric used in writing but rhetorical situation is widely used in other forms of writing. In contrast, imagine a person spending his time writing eulogies of men and women who never existed: his speeches meet no rhetorical situations; they are summoned into existence not by real events, but by his own imagination (Bitzer 11). This section of his text Bitzer shows that a rhetorical situation can be used when writing about fictional characters because they don t exist. So you see rhetorical situation in almost if not all of fiction writing that is out today. Besides exigence and audience, every rhetorical situation contains a set of constraints made up of persons, events, objects, and relations which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence. (Bitzer 10). Like any type of writing there has to be rules that need to be followed rhetorical situation is one of them. Rhetorical situations exhibit structures which are simple or complex, and more or less organized. A situation's structure is simple when there are relatively few elements which must be made to interact; (Bitzer 14). This section of the paper shows that when writing a rhetorical situation, it can be simple or complex but it has to be organized. When it s a simple situation don t overdo it use the K.I.S.S. method it helps when you try to extend the paper and you start using things that don t have the same situation. All three texts have a somewhat clear term that it writes about and explains the necessary tools you need to approach writing with them. With genre its always needed to write a clear paper and you need to figure out the necessary rules that go with that genre and follow with them throughout the whole paper. You need to have a clear audience in mind when writing so you can format the paper with a clear objective. When using a rhetorical situation know the
guidelines and don t overdo or overthink all of the steps, they are clear if you know the correct way to look for them and the best ways that you should use them. All three authors described all of the ways you can use the terms and different examples to use them with in papers and in other situations where they are needed. Keep all of the terms clear when writing, so as not to jumble up the reason for writing the paper and the purpose of the paper.
Reflection The process of writing the paper was difficult for me because it was a new way of writing a paper that I haven t done before successfully. The peer reviews helped me to give what I hope was useful tips, and in the process of doing the reviews I figured out different ways that I could improve on my own paper. The reviews that I got were very helpful because it gave a new opinion on my paper that wasn t my own so I could find out the sore spots in my paper that I didn t know was there. Approaching this essay, I used the knowledge that I had gained in class to construct what I believe was a fairly passable paper for a first rough draft. But I knew from the beginning that I would take the reviews with a grain of salt because I had no idea if something didn t fit that well, or if I needed to reconstruct my paper. I had a little experience using more than one text in a paper, but not enough because it did take me a bit to figure out the construction of the paper. Using the texts in my paper where hard because I had to figure out what I could do with them. With rhetorical situation I used The rhetorical situation by Bitzer was an easy text to use because reading the text I could easily find out what pieces of text I could use in my paper. With audience I had a bit of a hard time using the Anzaldua text because it took me a while to find fitting pieces to use but when I figured out what I could use I flew threw it. Genre was the hardest of the three because the text I used that was by Russel and Yanez, it didn t make any sense to me at all, so I definitely struggled. Using the terms in the past they were never in one paper that I could recognize. Using genre in the past I didn t really know how there were different types of writing so I just kind of
wrote and didn t think about the way I was writing. Audience wasn t my strong suite because I always wrote with my teacher in mind and didn t think about how I could change everything to make it sound better with having another audience in mind and that it would be a bit easier to write. I don t think I have ever thought about using rhetorical situations in papers, I don t know if I have ever used it in my papers before. I plan to use the ideas that the texts gave me for future writing because all three texts had to do with writing, and the ways to doing a paper correctly, even though Anzaldua didn t write about audience it gave me incite about how I should construct a paper with a specific audience in mind. Going into draft number 2, I elaborated more on some topics where I lacked somethings like how someone could benefit from knowing how to use the terms and how knowing the terms helps people be a lot more receptive to college texts that they might encounter. I also cleared up on some sentences that got muddled when I was writing, and couldn t find when I first read over it when I finished writing.
Work Cited Gloria Anzaldua How to Tame a Wild Tongue Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers 8th edition, 2008 Lloyd F. Bitzer The Rhetorical Situation Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1.1, 1968 David R. Russell and Arturo Yañez Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians': Genre Systems and the Contradictions of General Education Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives. February 1, 2003