Defining the Rhetorical Situation
A good first step is to define the rhetorical situation that will shape the content, organization, style, and design of your document. Understanding the rhetorical situation means gaining a firm grasp of your document's subject, purpose, readers, and context of use.
Defining the Rhetorical Situation
To define the rhetorical situation, you should start out by asking the five-W and How Questions: who, what, why, where, when, and how.
• Who are our readers, and who else is involved?
• What do the readers want and need, and what do we want and need?
• Why do the readers need the information in this document?
• Where do they need the information, and where will they use it?
• When will the information be used, and when is it needed?
• How should we achieve our purpose and goals?
Once you have informally answered the Five-W and How Questions, you are ready to fully define the rhetorical situation. The Five-W and How Questions should give you an overall sense of your document's rhetorical situation. Now you can use that information to more firmly define your document's subject, purpose, readers, and context of use.
Spend some time taking notes on the following four issues:
Subject—What is the document about? What is it not about? What kinds of information will my readers need to make a decision or complete a task? What is the scope of the project?
Purpose—Why is this document needed? What does it need to achieve or prove?
Readers—Who are the readers of this document? What are their needs and interests?
Context of use—Where and when will this document be used? What physical, economic, political, and ethical constraints will shape this text?
As you begin the writing process, it is helpful to consider these four categories separately. In some cases, especially with larger documents, it is helpful to write down your answers, so you can keep yourself focused and on track.
With team projects, it is essential that you begin with a solid understanding of the rhetorical situation. Otherwise, your team will waste hours or days with false starts and dead ends.
Defining the rhetorical situation may seem like an added step that will keep you from writing. Actually, knowing your document's rhetorical situation will save you time and effort, because you will avoid dead ends, unnecessary revision, and writer's block.
Defining Your Purpose
Among the four elements of the rhetorical situation, your document's purpose is probably the most important. It is what you want to do—and what you want the document to achieve.
Your purpose statement is like a compass for the document. Once you have clearly defined it for yourself and your readers, you can use that purpose statement to guide your decisions about the content, organization, style, and design of your document.
When defining your purpose, try to express exactly what you want your document to achieve. Sometimes it helps to think of an action verb and then build your purpose statement around it.
Researching Your Subject
Solid research is your next step. While researching your subject, you need to gather information from a variety of sources, including the Internet, print documents, and empirical methods (e.g., experiments, surveys, observations, interviews).
Computers have significantly changed the way we do research in technical workplaces. Before computers, finding sufficient information was usually a writer's main challenge. Today, there is almost too much information available on any given subject. So, it is important that you learn how to manage information, sorting through all the texts, scraps, junk, and distortions to uncover what you need. Your documents should give your readers only the information they need to make a decision or take action. Leave out anything else.
