The Rhetorical Situation

 Writing is a form of communication that involves five elements:
1) Author
2) Audience
3) Purpose
4) Topic
5) Occasion

    Writers keep different motives while writing, so their emphasis lies on certain elements of the rhetorical situation. For example in recording a memory and discovering oneself , focus get mainly on writer. Similarly, amusing, moving, and in conveying information, explaining something evaluating something, exploring ideas focus lies on subject matter or topic. But whatever the emphasis is, we cannot lose right of the other elements while giving emphasis on one element.

1) Author
    Writers have different habits. For example, some writers write slowly and others write quickly. Some do their best work in the early morning and others write best at night; some need a quite place and others write happily with music playing. So different writers write best in different environments.
Despite these differences, all good writers have at east one common characteristic i.e. they are readers as well as writers. They are writers in the sense that they constantly acquire new information while writing by discovering ideas for writing. More than this, they are readers of their own work especially in revising stage. So they consider their work not only from their own point of view but also from the point of view of readers. By doing all these, they shape their work thinking it as a form of communication between the writer and reader.

2) Audience
    Audience is one of the most important factors that need to be taken in to consideration while writing. It is because almost all writings are written thinking that somebody will read. Therefore experienced writers always need to keep audience in mind and they use language and tone accordingly. Whereas inexperienced writers often write as if they do not really expect anyone else to read what they have written. So from the view point of audience, writers can also be examined as experienced or inexperienced writers.
When we talk about audience, it often consists of two categories: a single individual whom the writer may or may not know and a large group that includes people whom the writer has never met. These two kinds of audience, according to him are particular audience and universal audience.

3) Purpose
     Purpose can be defined as motive or aim that a writer hopes to accomplish through the writing. In writing, purpose has close link with topic or they must match to each other. For example the purpose of a humorous essay is to amuse but the purpose of this kind of writing cannot be accomplished form the topic or subject like death or mourning. There are various purpose or motives for writing like to record a memory to discover oneself, to amuse others, to move others, to persuade others, to convey information, to explain something, to evaluate something, to explore an idea, to understand reading. Although the primary purpose of any argument is to persuade readers yet it can include some paragraphs about informing, amusing or moving. But one purpose should not conflict with another in the same work. Therefore, one work must have only one dominant purpose that will help to make the work coherent and unified.

4) Topic
    Subjects and topic are often used interchangeably. There can be many topics under a subject matter. A writer often begins with a subject and then narrows it down to a topic. For example, if a writer is writing an essay about the Second World War, then he or she cannot include everything that had happened in it. What they can do is, write about the attack on Pearl Harbor or the fire bombing on Tokyo.

    So, what we can understand from this example is that the subject contains many possible topics and every topic is a part of the subject. The purpose of narrowing down a subject in to a topic is to focus attention on something that a writer wants to see readers in detail. So, the topic of the above example i.e. the attack on Pearl Harbor contains a clear view of what exactly had happened in the area of the Second World War. One of the elements of writing well is to choose a suitable topic for the paper. A good topic leads to suitable length as well as something worthy. A writer can capture the interest of readers if he or she maintains an original topic for the writing.

5) Occasion
Writing is also influenced by where and when it occurs- what is called the occasion or context for writing. Writing an essay in class, for example may be very different from writing an essay out of class even though the author, audience, purpose and topic have remained the same.

Mechanics of Writing
    The goal of mechanics of writing is to make the writing precise and grammatically correct. It is directed to make the writing systematic and being concerned about how to be correct in spelling, punctuation, italics and so on. The mechanics of writing are the rules that must be followed while preparing research paper... Read More...