Theory of Writing
The first thought that came in my head when I heard my professors ask me to write my theory of writing, the first assignment pop up in my mind. At first, I was thinking about how will I come up with that. Writing is writing, it’s as simple as that. Moreover, I have no idea what ‘Rhetorical Situation’ is and how to apply it to my writing style. Although, I have no idea what it is, I researched it up and found out that Rhetorical Situation can be separated into 3 parts. First is exigence which is about why the writer is writing that context, and the reason behind that context. Second is purpose which is what the writer is seeking from the audiences, whether if the writer is trying to persuade or inform the readers you will be able to tell that by analyzing the purpose. Lastly is genre which is how the context present to the audiences.
I also have to mention that Pathos, Logos, and Ethos should be consider while writing the Rhetorical situation. 3 Logics are the simplest way to communicate or to persuade the readers. As the Pathos is “the emotional appeal, means to persuade an audience by appealing to their emotions”, as the Pathos is by playing the the readers emotions, the writer should be able to make the readers feel emotional, or conformable (SLCC English). Ethos can be apply by using author’s credibility or trust. In order to apply Ethos, the writer must be well known, or at least have some back up since it requires credibility of the writer to communicate to the readers. Lastly, Logos which is using logics to convince the audiences or readers to believe what the writers have written. Citations must be used for Logos since it’s based on the logics and evidences.
My theory of writing is very simple. I will try to adapt my writing style by adapting tone to the essays that I have to write. Academic tone is a professional type for writing, so we can not mention yourself and third person as I, me, he, or she. However, I believe a good academic tone is about using claims and evidences to inform the readers to believe what you are doing, and narrative style might be apply to that for the smoothness. I still believe we could find a uniqueness of each person’s writing even in academic essays. I believe the tone and languages will be the key to tell. Because language is easiest way to recognize the characteristic of the writers.
The other type of writing that I write the most is narrative style of writing. I usually write a lot of paper in this style because this type of writing is the best at explain about ourselves or showing the characters about who you are and what you want. Many books I have read, and I remembered one of them was written in narrative style and it is very smooth. I got into it very easy, and I also believe that a good narrator will be able to persuade or convince the readers to believe what the narrator is writing about. I think if you have found your uniqueness in your writing, or you love what you are writing, it won’t be hard to reach the goal of your writing.
How do I adapt the Rhetorical situation to my style of writing? It’s very simple for me as I always express my feelings, thoughts, opinions of what I have known about the topic when I write if it’s not for the academic. I believe when we have to write something, we tend to express our feelings into our writing if it’s not for an academic, or professional type of writing. Because the tone that we use for writing can be the key to determine whether you are showing yourself as yourself, or not. Once my teacher said to me, “Writing style is like a characteristic of each person”, and I totally agree with her because when I have to do the peer review, or something that requires me to read someone’s contexts I find that the style of writing aren’t the same for each person. Like each person always have their own favorite words, compositions, or even the tone. I always find that each person will their own specific style of writing that it can not be copied.
As aforementioned, I believe when we have to write something out on a paper, most of the time we just express our feelings plus we might add some evidences and claims to persuade readers. I think I could not say that I don’t have my own theory of writing. As I said, writing is like a signature of each person, and it can tell you what your characteristic is like. For example, a research essay, this may tell what you know or what you don’t really know, and since academic tone must be apply. You might not be able to express your characteristic, or yourself to the essay. But what you could do is you can trick the readers that you really know about the topic really well but covering your weaknesses in your essay. That’s why Pathos, Ethos, and Logos are created for. However, I think we can not drastically change our signature or style of writing since we will keep stick with our style we first learnt, and we adapt our style or changing it to make it appropriate to the format but the original of our writing style will still be on the contexts. The more we write, the better of style our writing will be.
Works Cited
“Ethos, Logos and Pathos: The Structure of a Great Speech.” Farnam Street, 21 Nov. 2016, fs.blog/2016/11/ethos-logos-pathos/.
SLCC English. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Open English @ SLCC, 1 Aug. 2016, openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/the-rhetorical-situation/.
