Rhetorical Situations

My rhetorical situation was when I was assigned to compose a poem for a creative writing class in college. We were given the freedom to choose how to write the poem, influencing our choice of purpose, audience, genre, stance, and media. 

With no definite purpose assigned, I was inspired to choose something I found fascinating: sound. My purpose was to have my audience feel and see sound, influencing how I wrote it. I used vivid phrases such as “richness of the bass marches to the beat.”

The audience was known as well as college aged, so I did not want to be too simplistic or complicated in my writing either, presenting the poem with simplicity and short lines to help the reader understand: “each sputter, hum, and squeak.”

Trying to communicate something abstract helped me to decide on the genre of poem, influencing the style of writing.

Curiosity influenced my stance in writing the poem: exploring sound and trying to show the readers my interest, gave the poem a tone of passion and respect with lines such as: “listen closely.”

Having the poem written rather than read was to help my classmates contemplate the words. Additionally, I capitalized sounds like “MUSIC” in order to have them further reflect, utilizing my use of media.  

All of these characteristics of the rhetorical situation influenced greatly what, how, and to whom I wrote the poem.

Lastly, I failed to adapt the poem to the rhetorical situation in that there were times I used very dense vocabulary. This aspect may have overcomplicated the poem, confusing the younger audience I wanted to reach.