Rhetorical Situation In Literature

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The rhetorical situation of any work of literature is inherently important to both the reader’s understanding of the piece and the author’s ability to properly convey exactly what it is they want to get across. Two articles can be written about the same topic and be completely different in the way in which they are executed because of the elements of rhetorical situation. The articles “What Is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-Geeks” and “A Conspiracy of Fishes, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity” are both about the same topic, GamerGate, but are written in ways which highlight the differences they have in rhetorical situations. This is not to say that the two articles have absolutely…show more content…
The audience is an important element because it may affect the other elements by encouraging certain choices over others. After all, the ultimate goal for writing something is for readers to take interest and if you do not appeal to your target audience than it may have been a failure. With the wide range in the population from race to gender to groups, there are countless target audiences that one may consider appealing to when starting a text. In the case of the article on Gawker, the target audience is those who have access to the article, put simply, those who can access the internet, and more specifically, gamers and feminists (Hathaway, 2014). Now, the criteria of being able to access the internet may not be intentional, but it is just fact since the article is posted on a blog that can only be accessed online. The more focused audience goal may be the gamers and feminists, which makes sense because these are two groups of people who are directly affected by the issue the article is discussing, gamergate (Hathaway, 2014). The fact that the two articles share a topic lays the groundwork for why they may have a similar audience as…show more content…
The article featured in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media follows the criteria of a peer-reviewed academic journal very closely. There are footnotes which label the references the authors made during the text, evidence and statistics presented, and higher level diction being used throughout the whole article (Chess & Shaw, 2015). The language is very telling of the genre because many people who are not part of the academic field would not be able to understand this language or evidence because of the complexity of it. The genres of the two articles is the biggest difference because of the language, layout, and conventional differences between a pop culture blog and a peer-reviewed academic
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