A response to "Rhetorical Situation"

Jessica Padilla
February 2, 2012
WRT 235
Instructor MacKnight
Reading Response

Purpose is everything

          Bullock's "Rhetorical Situation" outlined some very crucial points that every writer should think about before they start writing. As Bullock states, the very first question a writer should ask before they begin is "Why"? Why are they writing? What is their purpose? Some may want to write just to share their opinions and interests with others while some may want to write in order to provide people with information about a certain topic. Once you have an idea of what your purpose might be you can then start thinking of how you are going to present your thoughts in a way that will capture the audience's attention.

          Purpose is what you need to start but in order to get people to read your work and be interested in it you need to keep them in mind while you write. Bullock writes that some of the things you need to think about while writing is who you are trying to reach and what their interests might be. Finding out what their interests are can be accomplished easier if you know your audience's background. Also, you need to keep in mind the language and tone that you use as it may affect your relationship with them. With purpose and an idea of the type of audience you want to capture you can decide on a genre and a stance that will help gain the interest of readers. Lastly, you have to decide on the appropriate medium or design to convey what you have written to your targeted audience.

          Purpose, audience, genre, stance, and design are all necessary in order to be successful. They are all related and can influence each other so one must take care not to focus on some while ignoring or forgetting about the others. I believe that keeping these principles in mind will help improve my writing. They are especially important now that I will need to design a blog that will be for an audience. Just because they may be interested in my topic does not mean they will be interested in what I have to day about it so I will definitely need to practice these points if I want to be a better writer and capture their attention.