D1tow

Theory of Writing

My theory of writing is that having a good understanding of the rhetorical situation makes you a more effective writer. That means that understanding your subject, audience, context, and personal character are crucial. WRIT 1122 was almost pretty much entirely based on learning about what the rhetorical situation was and how to find each component. But before that, the extent to which I understood the rhetorical situation came from what I learned in high school.

In my junior year English class, we spent a great deal of time going over the three appeals of rhetoric: ethos, pathos, and logos. Along with that, we read a book called Everything's an Argument that taught us about what each of the appeals meant.

The purpose of the class was to identify each type of appeal in any type of writing. We also learned that any type of writing, whether it be an advertisement, newspaper article, or even a movie trailer has some type of argument in it that uses one of the appeals.

From there, we learned how each of those appeals can be used in our own writing.

Ethos deals with character, or who you are as a writer. You use ethos when you want to show your audience that you know what you’re talking about and that they should listen to you. For example, experience in whatever topic you’re talking about gives you credibility and a stronger ethos appeal. A paper written about a medical condition is much more likely to be taken seriously if it were written by a doctor rather than a college student. Pathos deals with emotions. A good example of pathos appeal is the super depressing ASPCA commercials with Sarah McLachlan. That commercial uses images and the song to appeal to viewers’ emotions to persuade them to do something. The last appeal, logos, deals with logic and persuading by the use of reasoning. This can

simply be stating facts or giving data about a topic. Logos is probably the most effective appeal because it’s hard to argue against hard evidence.

After learning about all these different ways to make an argument, my theory of writing was that the most important part of writing was an effective argument. It made sense to me because this book that we read showed me how everything really is an argument and that if you could convince your audience of something, you’d be good to go. Before entering WRIT 1122, that was my theory or writing. Throughout last quarter, my theory of writing evolved from a basic understanding of the rhetorical situation, to a more comprehensive one. Instead of just the character (or ethos) part of the rhetorical situation, I learned about the other components: audience, context, and situation. In WRIT 1133, while my theory didn’t really evolve, this quarter was a chance for me to use what I learned in that high school English class and WRIT 1122 in new genres that I had never written in before. I had to appropriate what I had already learned for a new type of writing. In that way, my prior knowledge was an assemblage of sorts. My old knowledge was the rhetorical situation, and the new knowledge was these new genres we were writing in. I had never written a Lit Review before but I was instructed on how to write one. Same thing goes for the essay itself, given that it’s an “inquiry-based essay” where instead of trying to find the answer to our research question, we’re exploring all sides of our topic. In the past, I had written research papers where I needed to come up with an answer to the question I had proposed. Having this prior knowledge both helped and provided challenges. It helped because I the knowledge transfer wasn’t that far now that I’ve had a whole quarter to learn about the rhetorical situation. However, writing in a new genre like the Lit Review was challenging because I

found myself writing like it was a normal essay. I’ve written so many essays in my life that just I automatically wrote as if it were another one of them.

Another part of my theory of writing are my key terms: analyze, apply, and argue.

When creating any piece of writing, you must first analyze the rhetorical situation. You have to identify your audience, your subject, the context, and who you are as a person.

Then, you must apply everything you’ve analyzed to your writing such as establishing your character. The final step is argue. The argument won’t always be crystal clear. It will usually be subliminal, but I believe there is an argument in every type of writing.

I used my theory of writing and my key terms in my research paper, but more specifically with my primary research. I identified my audience as car fans and movie fans. This is what I considered when trying to figure out where to post my survey. I also established who my audience was in the paper itself. I talked about the subject I’d be researching and the purpose of my research. When looking back at the 1950’s, I explored what was going on in American pop culture at the time and the context of my topic. I also mentioned that I was a car enthusiast and avid movie-watcher, giving me some amount of credibility. I analyzed the situation, applied it to my writing, and argued my point.

In the future, I believe my theory of writing will be useful for any type of writing I’ll compose as I learned from this quarter that it can be appropriated for pretty much any type of genre. It can also be used for non-writing situations, such as interviewing for a job or debating with someone. This is especially true for establishing your character, as first impressions are often very important.