Rhetorical Situations and Analysis

Your rhetorical situation is finding the way to communicate with someone. You must factor in four elements: writer, reader, text, and medium. It is important to understand the situation you are writing for and how to approach it, such as writing a serious letter to someone who lost a family member, not a humorous letter. Rhetorical analysis is using what you’ve learned in the past to improve your future writing. Rhetorical analysis helps you answer important questions about why your writing a certain piece.


When I write online I think appeal mostly to pathos, I try to bring emotion and my own experiences to help the reader understand my knowledge of the subject. It is also important to include logos in writing, because actual evidence is often needed to add credibility to writing. Using both of these appeals helps combine facts with personal emotion and values.

Kairos is a propitious moment for decision or action, saying or doing the right thing at the right time.

I think that a modern concern for the weblog would be that people are more willing to say things when sitting behind a computer. If they were in front of the people reading what they are writing, they would not be as open.

Voyeurism is important to reading and writing because it gives a sense of reality. It can make the reader feel like they are really there.

What is the next blog type genre? Is virtual reality the next step in voyeurism? Will people begin to attempt less and less experiences as virtual experiences become more in depth?

The politicians attempting to make Obama look bad tend to use evidence without really analyzing the facts; they just try to make him look bad while holding back information that would make their facts pointless. They leave things unsaid that cause what Obama is doing to make sense, because they just want him to look bad. The first guy that asks Obama a question, Mike, uses a tone that tries to make Obama seem like a bad guy, almost like he is defending a victim in front of a judge. He is very empathetic towards the father without the job, he seems to be acting as though it is completely Obama’s fault he is unemployed. Obama uses a very confident tone to defend himself and strike down claims against him while making the claims seem completely foolish. Mike uses pathos in the first question he asks Obama, using the young African American boy and his father to try to appeal to people’s emotions. He is trying to make people think Obama is a bad person single handedly keeping this man from having a job. Mike also uses ethos when speaking about how past presidents have used the plan the Republicans would like to use with the taxes and unemployment issues. He does this to attempt to give credibility to their plan. Obama uses logos in his rebuttal of this claim, talking about how the loss of jobs in his first month came before his policies could be put into place.

My blog, for being about conspiracy theories, is surprisingly not too biased. When I think of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists I tend to assume they’re going to be completely sure they are right and refuse to see any way but their own, but this blog seems to just present its information without making its own claims. The blog uses quotes and credits its sources for all its information. A post about a missing report about Bush’s connections with the Saudis uses quotes from congressmen, saying the “document is “stunning in its clarity,” and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda’s attack on America. “Those twenty-eight pages tell a story that has been completely removed from the 9/11 Report,” Lynch maintains”. The blog seems to give information to let readers think for themselves, not just forcing crazy ideas into their heads.
I think the ideal reader for this website could really be anyone interested in actual news, not just the news that is present by news stations or any other forms of mass media. Someone who would want to receive news that they would not see on their local news station would find this blog helpful, not just crazy conspiracy theorists. I also think most people would at least find the blog interesting, they might not find the information helpful at all, but it really makes you think.
Conspiracy theorists are notorious for being crazy, government hating, stubborn people and I don’t believe this blog necessary follows that. Unfortunately, the posts tend to have no comments, and I had to go back to a post from August 29th to find the most recent comment. The comment was on a post about how Clinton could have captured Bin Laden back when he was in office but never did. The comment, which starts with “Hold on” questions this claim and defends Clinton. This is only one comment I saw, but it seems to me that people will not just believe any post the goes against the government and will actually give unbiased responses.
This blog works with its audience by presenting its information in a non biased way while using quotes and crediting its sources. It lets people make their own assumptions and ideas without forcing anything.

1. Gee defines literacy as control of secondary use of language. Secondary use of language includes speaking with schools, workplaces, stores, government offices, businesses, churches, etc. Gee believes that literacy is mastered through acquisition, not learning. It requires exposed to languages in natural and functioning settings.
2. This helped me understand that literacy is more than just the ability to read and write; it is more about understanding the language. I feel as though I have a good literacy story because I have received a good education.

Ong’s general argument is that there are great differences in the functional literate mind and a strictly oral mind, but the oral mind is nothing to be looked down upon. A functional literate mind will see a word in their head when asked about it, but someone with an oral background will think of the sound of the word. Someone with an oral background can manage this by using “its noetic operations it uses for mulaic structures and procedures that stick in the mind to complement and counteract the evanescent”. Being functionally literate is a very uncommon thing over the course of history, as “Of all the tens of thousands of languages spoken in the course of human history only a tiny fraction -Edmonson (1971: 323) calculates about 106- have ever been committed to writing to a degree sufficient to have produced a literature, and most have never been written at all”. With such few languages having been what we consider literate today, it is hard to overlook the actual amount of knowledge that someone can contain with a strictly oral background.

'And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.'
'What did you say?'
'I said we could have everything.'
'No, we can't.'
'We can have the whole world.'
'No, we can't.'
'We can go everywhere.'
'No, we can't. It isn't ours any more.'
'It's ours.'
'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.'

I like the style of writing Hemingway uses, he gives the description first, then just sticks with uninterrupted dialogue. It lets the story flow well. I also like the way he doesn't reveal what the man and woman are talking about, he leaves it a mystery.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/747509.pdf?acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true

1. The article discusses the differences between literacy, functional literacy, and functional competency. The author states that functional literacy should be kept distinct from functional competency. He says that literacy should not include skills or behaviors beyond those with printed materials. “Within a job related context, such as that of an editorial assistant or automotive mechanic, one needs to question whether reading abilities and the readability of various materials adequately represent the range of skills an individual needs to exhibit in order to successfully meet functional demands placed upon them.”

2. I think I can use this material to show that I may not have lacked the functional literacy to change the headlight; I may have just lacked the functional competency. There was no written instructions on how to change my headlight.