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Writing for Your Audience: Strategies for Effective Communication

This article discusses the importance of writing for your audience and provides strategies for creating effective ethos and pathos in your writing. It also explores the concepts of one-sided versus multi-sided arguments and how to accommodate different views.

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Writing for Your Audience: Strategies for Effective Communication

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  1. Class 18 • Midterm discussion • Writing for your audience • Assign • Midterm exam—10/25 • Term paper approach—11/1 Mary Jean Harrold

  2. Writing for Your Audience Mary Jean Harrold

  3. Logos, Ethos, Pathos Logos Logical structure of reasons and evidence in an argument; make argument internally consistent and logical; find best reasons, support them with best evidence Ethos Audience’s confidence in the writer’s credibility and trustworthiness; present self effectively; enhance credibility Pathos Audience’s sympathies---both real and imagined; make reader open to message; appeal to reader’s values and interests Mary Jean Harrold

  4. Creating Effective Ethos Be knowledgeable about your issue • Use examples, personal experience, statistics, empirical data, etc. Be fair • Fairness to alternative views • Understand and emphasize with other points of view Build a bridge to your audience • Ground argument in shared values and assumptions Mary Jean Harrold

  5. Creating Effective Pathos Use concrete language • Specific details add interest Use specific examples and illustrations • Provide evidence; give presence and emotion Use narratives • Grabs attention and leads to claim Choose words, metaphors, and analogies with appropriate connotations Mary Jean Harrold

  6. Meatrix: Does it create effective Ethos? • Knowledgeable about issue • Fair • Bridge built to audience Pathos? • Concrete language • Specific examples and illustration • Narratives • Words, metaphors, and analogies with appropriate connotations Mary Jean Harrold

  7. Accommodating Your Audience • One-sided versus multi-sided arguments • Understanding your audience • Treating different views • Appealing to a supportive audience • Appealing to a neutral or undecided audience • Appealing to a resistant audience Mary Jean Harrold

  8. One-sided versus Multisided Arguments • Types of arguments • One-sided… • Multisided… • Research suggests when to use each Mary Jean Harrold

  9. Understanding Your Audience (1) • Book suggests placing audience on scale • May need to “invent” your audience strongly supportive strongly opposed Mary Jean Harrold

  10. Understanding Your Audience (2) • Try to assess what audience knows • Audience for term paper?? • Other examples of audiences for whom you may write??? • Determine level of background to give • Too little leads to?? • Too much leads to?? • Determine level of formality • Use of “I” or “we” or another actor • Use of active or passive voice • Understanding audience may take more time than researching topic!! Mary Jean Harrold

  11. Understanding Your Audience (3) • Understanding audience is problem for professional rhetoricians (e.g., politicians, advertising executives, researchers) • So people since the time of the Sophists have developed a variety of “tricks” to use for assessing and understanding the audience Mary Jean Harrold

  12. Understanding Your Audience (4) • Most of the time, you know the audience because you’re part of the audience • If you’re part of the audience, what will you know about them? • Examples?? • If not part of audience, don’t consider individuals, but consider an abstraction of theaudience—what they know, what they expect, how they will react • Examples?? Mary Jean Harrold

  13. Understanding Your Audience (5) • Understand discourse conventions • Flow of words for that interpretive community who somehow set the rules • How can you find out about discourse conventions? • What are some examples of interpretive communities and their discourse conventions? Mary Jean Harrold

  14. Treating Different Views (1) • Appealing to a supportive audience • What approach should you use? • What are some examples? • Appealing to a neutral or undecided audience • What approach should you use? Mary Jean Harrold

  15. Treating Different Views (2) • Appealing to a supportive audience • What approach should you use? • What are some examples? • Appealing to a neutral or undecided audience • What approach should you use? • Toulmin argument: • claim • reason (grounds to support reason) • warrant (backing to support warrant) Mary Jean Harrold

  16. Treating Different Views (3) • Rebutting evidence—how? Mary Jean Harrold

  17. Treating Different Views (4) • Appealing to a resistant audience • Delayed thesis • Rogerian Mary Jean Harrold

  18. Discussion in Groups of 5 Watch the Meatrix • What is the thesis of the Meatrix? • Does this argument create effective ethos? If so, how? Be specific. • Does this argument create effective pathos? If so, how? Be specific. • What type of audience does it target? Explain? • Suppose the audience is resistant, give an outline of either a delayed-thesis or Rogerian argument for the same thesis Mary Jean Harrold

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