Rhetorical Analysis of Writing Purposes PDF

# Purpose 1 All writing has a purpose. We write to explore our thoughts and emotions, to express ourselves, to entertain; we write to record words and events, to communicate with others, to try to persuade others to believe as we do or to behave in certain ways. In fact, we often have several purpo...

# Purpose 1 All writing has a purpose. We write to explore our thoughts and emotions, to express ourselves, to entertain; we write to record words and events, to communicate with others, to try to persuade others to believe as we do or to behave in certain ways. In fact, we often have several purposes at the same time. We may write an essay in which we try to explain something to an audience, but at the same time we may be trying to persuade that audience of something. Look, for example, this passage from a 2012 New York Times op-ed essay by economist and editorial columnist Paul Krugman about social and economic trends among "the traditional working-class family" - declining rates of marriage and of male participation in the labor force and increasing numbers of out-of-wedlock births. Krugman asserts that the primary reason for those statistics is a "drastic reduction in the work opportunities available to less-educated men:" > Most of the numbers you see about income trends in America focus on households rather than individuals, which makes sense for some purposes. But when you see a modest rise in incomes for the lower tiers of the income distribution, you have to realize that all yes, all of this rise comes from the women, both because more women are in the paid labor force and because women's wages aren't as much below male wages as they used to be. > > For lower-education working men, however, it has been all negative. Adjusted for inflation, entry-level wages of male high-school graduates have fallen 23 percent since 1973. Meanwhile, employment benefits have collapsed. In 1980, 65 percent of recent high-school graduates working in the private sector had health benefits, but, by 2009, that was down to 29 percent. > > So we have become a society in which less-educated men have great difficulty finding jobs with decent wages and good benefits. > > -Paul Krugman, "Money and Morals" # Rhetorical Situations Krugman is reporting information here, outlining how the earnings and benefits of less-educated men have dropped over the last forty years. He is also making an argument, that these economic setbacks are the cause of the social ills among working-class Americans and not, as some would have it, the result of them. (Krugman, writing for a newspaper, is also using a style - including dashes, contractions, and other informal elements - that strives to be engaging while it informs and argues) Even though our purposes may be many, knowing our primary reason for writing can help us shape that writing and understand how to proceed with it. Our purpose can determine the genre we choose, our audience, even the way we design what we write. ## Identify your purpose While a piece of writing often has many purposes, a writer usually focuses on one. When you get an assignment or see a need to write, ask yourself what the primary purpose of the writing task is: to entertain? to inform? to persuade? to demonstrate your knowledge or your writing ability? What are your own goals? What are your audience's expectations, and do they affect the way you define your purpose? ## Thinking about Purpose * What do you want your audience to do, think, or feel? How will they use what you tell them? * What does this writing task call on you to do? Do you need to show that you have mastered certain content or skills? Do you have an assignment that specifies a particular strategy or genre - to compare two things, perhaps, or to argue a position? * What are the best ways to achieve your purpose? What kind of stance should you take? Should you write in a particular genre? Do you have a choice of medium, and does your text require any special format or design elements?