All About the Audience

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Mary Moreck
80507610
February 18, 2015

All About the Audience

An expository research paper comparing two genres in effort to express the importance
of audience in rhetorical situations and structure of different genres of writing.

RWS 1302
Rhetoric and Composition
W 10:30 AM 11:50 AM
Riley (Teach) Welcker

All About the Audience

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All About the Audience

Introduction
Different genres yield different results in various factors of writing, however even
with all the things you must consider when creating a rhetorical situation, audience is one
of the most important ones. I have dissected two different genres and gathered
information about their similarities and differences between their use of the three
rhetorical appeals for the purpose of showing how influential the audience really is in a
piece of writing.
Audience/Purpose
What I have done is chosen two genres that speak about the same topic from
different angles; that topic being the controversy of students and teachers listening to
music while studying or working. The first genre is a persuasive essay which mainly
targets students and teachers in an effort to sway their mindset on the topic. The second is
a journal entry; a more personal genre not specifically targeted at any anybody except the
writer, probably for the purpose of entertainment.
Ethos
The persuasive essay appealed to credibility heavily through the author being a
student. This gives the piece a sense of credibility because we assume that as a student,
the author must have personal experience with the topic and experience is huge in
credibility. Certain statements implied that he had done research to add to his writing.
This shows effort to show actual facts so that the paper would not be opinion-based.
Ironically however, the journal entry had a much stronger ethos appeal.

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The author is a blogger so it is assumed that he writes opinion pieces similar to
this one quite often. Not only this, but he is also a high school teacher so he knows
students and their strategies and he also knows their grades! His opinion is rather relevant
to the topic. He also clearly had prior research material knowledge and mentioned
famous names and theories. In other words; he showed that he knows what he is talking
about.
Logos
The logos appeal was huge for this topic and both authors used it more than
anything else. The persuasive essay author utilized it by explicitly stating his argument in
the conclusion. His audience was expecting an argument or some form of persuasion and
he gave them exactly that. He also mentioned personal experiences and logical points
including music volume, appropriate times for lyrics, and how music helps express
oneself. Besides the fact that these statements were simply logical, he used both student
and teacher points-of-view which made his logos appeal relatable and therefore
believable for his audience.
The journal entry did not portray as strong a logos appeal as the persuasive essay
did. The author was more interested in simply discussing his personal experiences with
music and work rather than trying to persuade anyone. He repeatedly referred to himself
as if he was speaking to and describing himself. This is logical for this genre because his
audience was himself and his writing fulfilled its purpose.
Pathos
The persuasive essay strategically begins by immediately drawing the reader in
during the introduction. It puts you into a soothing studying environment with music in

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his introduction by using the pathos appeal. The author used terms like comfortable,
isolating, peace, vividly, creative juices in order to achieve this. These words are
comforting to anyone who reads them really, and similar word choices are used
throughout the paper so the reader never loses that emotional appeal. To add to this, he
refers to teachers and students point-of-view to appeal to his audience members.
The journal entry author, on the other hand, refers to himself frequently instead
since he is more focused on writing for himself than targeting demographics. However,
he does take others into consideration with certain statements to help express certain
ideas. This makes potential outside readers more likely to relate to his work through the
pathos appeal.
Structure
The persuasive essay followed a paragraph form throughout the paper and the
author used short paragraphs and indented each one of them. He had a clear title at the
top and his margins were quite small, giving his paper a wide look. He had a
comforting color scheme using grey text for the main writing, sky blue for the title, and a
light grey background behind everything.
The journal entry also followed paragraph form but the author did not use
indentation along with it. His writing is in white, as is his title, and everything lies on a
green, almost distracting, background. His title is quite long as he seems to just be asking
the topic question to remember exactly what the journal entry is about upon coming back
to his journal and reading the title. The structure would not be found attractive by most
people looking for a reliable source to include in a piece of writing, however for the
intended audience of a journal entry, it serves its purpose.

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Conclusion
One would assume that the genres will be so different because of the fact that the
writers have taken different sides on the topic. Through careful analysis I have come to
the conclusion that it is more so the audience rather than angle which causes such a
variation. Both genres targeted their audience members through the rhetorical appeals so
that they could ensure the greatest success for the purpose of their writing.

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Works Cited
Coard, J. (2013, February 4). Distracting Music. Retrieved February 2, 2015, from
http://jeffcoard11.weebly.com/persuasive-essay.html
Wallace, A. (2012, October 12). Journal Entry: Do you listen to music when you study?
Why do you think it helps some people but is a distraction to others? Retrieved
February 2, 2015, from http://andywallacegbn.blogspot.com/2012/10/journal
entry-do-you-listen-to-music.html