Rhetorical Knowledge Draft

When thinking about rhetorical knowledge and things I have learned about it this semester. Many things come to mind such as the argument analysis we worked on early in the semester. Which is a claim and evidence analysis. Also the use of the rhetorical triangle and appeals triangle. English 112 was about writing for an academic audience and crafting the message that appealed to your academic audience. Which in this case is my teacher. Learning about how to write for an audience was important and will be even more so in the future. Understanding the rhetorical triangle is a valuable tool to use in the future. Your audience may change from time to time and you have to understand and adapt to your audience. If you don't adapt you may lose credibility and the respect of your audience. We all know how important your ethos is in your academic and professional career.

In our first writing assignment of argument analysis we had to search the internet for an opinion article of something that interested us. I found an article about technology and how it was causing children to be less social. This opinion article was a claim and evidence based article. We were given a worksheet for analyzing this article. What we wanted to do was break this opinion piece into sections of claims. A claim is something the author states and then provides a reason and evidence to back it up. We also analyzed further to understand the appeals triangle. Every claim uses an appeal from the appeals triangle. Logos uses facts and numbers to back a claim up. Ethos is using your reputation to solidify a claim. Finally, Pathos uses emotion to spark attention to a claim. By breaking an article up into sections utilized prewriting of the writing process. It made writing the actual paper very easy. After using this worksheet the basis of writing an effective argument became very clear. You make your major claim. Then you provide your evidence as to why your claim is correct. You also understand what type of appeal can be used to be effective. I found that Pathos appeal were most effective to me. This assignment gave me valuable knowledge of the appeals triangle and how to understand an argument. By analyzing this argument it also made me aware how to make a valid argument myself. In order to understand and make a valid argument I also need to know my opinions aren’t necessarily right or good I need to understand the other side of the argument. Whether your argument is right or wrong the most valuable thing is that I learn more information about a certain topic.

Glancing at some of my notes I noticed alot of this semester was about understanding our academic audience. I’m the author and I have to craft my message to my specific audience. This is the rhetorical triangle at work. Understanding who my audience is going to be and what my audience wants to hear is important. I can make an example of this paper. You the teacher are trying to understand what I learned. The teacher being my audience gives me details about how this paper needs to be written. I take that information and began to craft my message. After publishing my message which would be this portfolio paper my audience gives me feedback. In this case feedback comes in the form of a grade. That is the rhetorical triangle it is a revolving process and comes full circle back to the author. Understanding how to craft the message for my audience is where the work is involved.