Rhetorical Situation
This collectively refers to the exigence, purpose, audience, context, and message of a text.
What is rhetorical situation?
Writers' perceptions of theses guide the choices they make.
What is an audience's values, beliefs, needs, and backgrounds?
Writers convey their positions through one or more of these. They should provoke interest and require a defense.
What are claims?
These provide information for an argument, and some are more reliable or credible than others.
What are sources?
Not all arguments explicitly address it, but yours should.
What is a counterargument?
What a writer hopes to accomplish with their writing. There may be more than one.
What is the purpose of a text?
Writers make these in an attempt to relate to an intended audience’s emotions and values.
What are rhetorical choices?
Writers defend their claims with these crucial items.
What are evidence and reasoning?
The ways writers must acknowledge the intellectual property (words, ideas, images, texts, etc.) of others.
What is giving credit through attribution, citation, or reference?
In order to enhance their credibility.
Why do argument writers address opposing arguments and contradictory evidence?
This includes the time, place, and occasion
What is context?
Writers use these in an attempt to relate to an audience. They must be shared and understood by the audience to advance the writer’s purpose.
What are comparisons (e.g. similes, metaphors, analogies, or anecdotes)?
Facts, anecdotes, analogies, statistics, examples, details, illustrations, expert opinions, personal observations, personal experiences, testimonies, or experiments.
What are types of evidence?
The main, overarching claim a writer is seeking to defend or prove by using reasoning supported by evidence.
What is a thesis?
Writers accept all or a portion of a competing position or claim as correct, agree that the competing position or claim is correct under a different set of circumstances, or acknowledge the limitations of their own argument.
How do writers concede a point?
The intended recipients of a text. They may have shared as well as individual values, beliefs, needs, and backgrounds.
What is the audience of a text?
Writers’ choices regarding these influence how the writer is perceived by an audience and may influence the degree to which an audience accepts an argument.
What are syntax and diction?
Strategically selected evidence that relates to an audience’s emotions and values, and increases a writer’s credibility
What strengthens the validity and reasoning of an argument?
When a source shows a limited perspective and fails to consider other evidence.
What is bias?
Writers offer a contrasting perspective on an argument and its evidence or provide alternative evidence to propose that all or a portion of a competing position or claim is invalid.
How do writers rebut a counterclaim?
The part of the rhetorical situation that inspires, stimulates, provokes, or prompts writers to create a text.
What is exigence?
Because audiences are unique and dynamic, writers must consider these when making choices of evidence, organization, and language in an argument.
What are the perspectives, contexts, and needs of the intended audience?
Writers use this to introduce and explain the source material and evidence that supports their argument and claim.
What is commentary?
This requires consideration, explanation, and integration of others’ arguments into one’s own argument.
What is synthesis?
Writers demonstrate, using evidence, that all or a portion of a competing position or claim is invalid.
How do writers refute a counterclaim?