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Jared Rodriguez

Professor Gardiakos

ENC1102

08 September 2020

Reading Response 1

While analyzing a text, everyone forms their own view and perspective which

differentiate from one another. There are many factors that play a role to aid the reader in

forming their own view and perspective while analyzing a text. Some of those factors include,

genre, rhetorical situation, and audience. These factors play an important role while reading a

text as they are part of the reason why everyone has a different view while reading a text. Its

beneficial to have different views on things as we can come together and see the same

information from different perspectives and learn from it.

Writers often organize and categorize their works, and this is known as genre. Readers

can utilize genre by knowing what type of work that they are about to read before indulging in it,

and so that they can become more familiar with the work. Genre as described in the book is, “…a

form of discourse recognizable as a common set of structural or thematic qualities.” (Naming 39)

This supports what was stated earlier on how genre can categorize works into groups that share

similar qualities. There are many different ways that authors can use genre to organize their

writings. First off, they can group their work into genres such as romance, mystery, crime,

fantasy, and etc. These different genres help the reader in understanding more about what they

are about to read. An example of genre affecting the way a text is analyzed is if someone were to

read a crime novel, and they despise crime because they used to be a police officer, they would

most likely analyze the text negatively. Now, if the same reader loves mystery novels and picked
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up a mystery book, the reader would most likely analyze the test positively as they are interested

in the genre they chose.

Rhetorical situation is basically the context, or a set of circumstances in that a text comes

out of. Rhetorical situation can be utilized so that the readers can comprehend the writing and the

reasoning behind why the writer incorporated certain text into his work. There are many ways

rhetorical situation is used. For instance, one way that it is used, in advertisements, is to persuade

people to buy a certain product because it would “make their life so much easier”, or in a speech,

it could be used to persuade somebody that a certain agenda is true and needs more attention. To

use rhetorical situation most efficiently, the three main points have to be utilized. These points

consist of, “…writer (speaker; rhetor), audience (receiver, listener, reader), and text (message)

…” (Naming 20) Also, if the reader were to consider rhetorical situation, they could get a more

developed understanding of the text that is being read, why the text exists, and what the goal of

the text is. Doing so effects the way the text is analyzed as you are more educated on what the

text consists of.

The people that view and consume one’s work is considered the audience. The audience

is very important to the writer as the writer can incorporate certain things into the writing that

can cater to the audience. Things that the writer could change can be the content, the mood, as

well as the tone. In the book it states, ”Scholars in rhetoric and writing studies have extended this

understanding of audience, explaining how writers can address audiences that is, actual, intended

readers or listeners-and invoke, or call up, imagined audiences as well” (Naming 21) This shows

that the audience plays a very important role, and without it, the writing will be very different as

it isn’t catering towards anyone. An example of this could be a writer having an audience that

persists of only Republicans. With that, the writer would know not to say anything that would
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cater to Democrats as there are no Democrats in the audience. Audience can affect the way text

is analyzed because the people within the audience have different views and perspectives on

certain topics although they are all viewing the same content.

I have personally run into all of these three concepts and have gained experience along

the way. With genre, I had a project my senior of high school where I had to write three different

papers that revolved around the same genre. This was a very interesting project to partake in and

it really challenged my writing abilities. The genre that I revolved around was mystery and it was

a three-part series that had a wicked ending. Over the summer I had ENC 1101 and I completed

an essay that was about rhetorical situation. I learned a lot about it while doing the essay and did

a lot of research on it, so it was refreshing to see it again in the reading. Rhetorical situation was

the most interesting topic that I learned about while taking ENC 1101. Lastly, my junior year of

high school I had to perform a speech in front of the high school soccer team. Since I knew who

my audience was, I made sure I added jokes that catered toward them so I could make the

audience like me and be more willing to listen to what I have to say. I made funny soccer jokes

during my speech and had the whole entire audience laughing. After my jokes I noticed that the

audience was very attentive to what I was saying.

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Works cited

Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Elizabeth A. Wardle. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of

Writing Studies. Utah State University Press, 2016.