Writer/Designer: Chapter 2

 

I found myself quite captivated by the Writer/Designer chapter for this week’s reading. The chapter focused specifically on how to rhetorically analyze a form of media in order to better explain the effects of the author’ choices. As I have said before, I am in the process of relinquishing my crutch of textual analysis as I make my way through this course; however, seeing the various ways that the rhetorical criticism that I already teach in my classroom not only remains applicable in the world of multi-modal production but could also serve to help my students apply the skills from my course to other media helped to shoe yet another benefit to teaching in a multi-modal classroom. The “Rhetorical Situation” that the chapter discusses as being comprised of audience, purpose, context, and genre fall directly in line with the way we discuss both literature and their own writing; furthermore, the text explains that “texts need to be created for a purpose, to persuade an audience toward change in some way.” IN addition to linking to Corbett’s focus on the importance of audience in Palmeri’s text, this quote represents a giving of attention not just to the written words, but to the authoritative power of them to persuade an audience, a notion nearly verbatim from our rhetorical writing unit.

               Another aspect of the chapter that I found interesting was when this idea of audience is applied to the genre of music. The chapter explains the idea of a song writer keeping in mind their particular audience, but also listeners that make up the individual parts of their sub-genre. For example, a “pop-country” song writer must write for the “pop-country” genre, but must also keep in mind those in the audience of “pop” listeners as well as “country” listeners individually. I think this might account for the incredibly difficult task song writers face whose collection of works span a considerable period of time. Their success or failure becomes less dependent upon their skills as a writer and more reliant upon their ability to walk this tightrope of audience.

               Lastly, the chapter discusses the idea of “implied” or “actual” audience. This comes to light when considering sites like Wikipedia (i.e the author of the article could be anyone). The chapter suggests—and I agree—that sites of this nature must be visited with a careful consideration of purpose; does it matter for the task at hand that the information is not from a scholarly source? This idea of the implied author as opposed to the actual one comes to fruition in considering companies and the true authors of their advertisements; however, the difficulty comes in when the message must remain linked to the company or the implied author. This reminded me of the literary distinction between the author and the narrator—the author must remain separate from the implied voice of the narrator.