This assignment requires you to locate two to three pieces of professional writing in your field and analyze the rhetorical choices made by the writers. Your analysis will focus on the writers’ style, purposes, and conceptions of their audiences. Based on this analysis, you will compose an argument about the core rhetorical strategies employed in each document, and what those strategies tell you about writing in your field or discipline. Find two or three pieces of professional writing in your field or discipline. Read and annotate the pieces carefully to digest the content, and make some initial observations about the rhetorical choices each author makes. Consider specifically how the writers express their purposes, how they conceive their audiences, and how they address those audiences in order to achieve their purposes:
What is the rhetorical situation for each text? What is each writer trying to accomplish, and in what setting or context?
What are the genres for each text, and what seem to be their respective conventions?
How subtly or obviously are claims stated in each? How accurately are they stated?
How does each writer establish authority? What kind of research does each writer cite?
Sample Solution
