Who am I writing for? What are the audience's beliefs and assumptions?
- My target audience for my essay is other psychology students. Besides parents, we are the group that would be most interested in this controversy.
- Psychologists are interested in well-being and mental health. Any issue that negatively impacts someone's mental health is something that we are are concerned about, especially when children are involved.
- It's not guaranteed that every psychologist or psychology student opposes physical punishment, but they would have a hard time refuting the research that shows how detrimental spanking is to children.
- Even if they agree with the argument that is being made in the article, they might disagree with my stance that the article could be more effective. To counter this, I need to be sure that I use direct quotes and a evidence from the text to analyze the effectiveness of the rhetoric.
- What is important is that if a behavior that is more harmful than good, it should be scrutinized and analyzed. Even though the article provides some statistics, I think it may be important to find more in-depth research to supplement those cited in the article.
 |
| Image by french_skippy. "trib_adm_0007."Uploaded 11/12/11 via Flickr. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license. |
How might they react to my argument?
- I think most psychology students would be sympathetic to the issue, and would probably agree that the argument is mostly effective. While emotional appeals are not as effective in most other disciplines, it is essential in psychology to understand why people are passionate about the issue. It may be helpful if I were to find a personal story that could illustrate the issue.
- Most psychology students would agree that the article is ineffective with it's use of statistics, but does a good job of using evidence and expert sources.
- My main purpose is to explain and dissect the rhetorical situation of my article. In doing so, I can use the shared beliefs that most psychology students have, and use those to explain why the argument is affective.
- I think that using both appeals to logic and emotion, I can reach my audience. Explaining how spanking affects mental health also will be a good bridge to use.
Reflection:
Isabel and Jayni's topics are much more scientific and technical than mine, so I will likely focus on different rhetorical strategies than they will. They will probably have to give more background information to contextualize their piece, whereas I can jump into my analysis quicker and more easily.
All of have similar rhetorical situations, because we are writing our essays for people that are probably in agreement with the articles that we are using. I would be interested to see someone who has a topic that evenly splits their audience with some students opposing the article's stance.
We all have similar amounts of information and all focus on the same type of things in our posts, so I don't think I need much more analysis for this post.
Your post its interesting because you have a very specific audience with a lot of knowledge on the topic. I noticed that even though your audience is very specific, the reaction you project them to have (being sympathetic) is what I would guess any audience to be on your topic. I wonder how their sympathy will differ from average people who read your essay because your audience has much more knowledge behind the topic. Nice job on this post.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting, yet understandable, how different our audiences are. My target audience is physiology students. Even though we are both writing to incoming students about rhetorical strategy, our conclusions will likely be very different. For example, people in my field refer to studies, experts, and other credible sources more than they appeal to emotion.
ReplyDeleteI like how your article can actually apply to any audience, especially parents or families because it deals with he ethics of physical punishment. I agree that the most effective arguments for this project will be logos and pathos because the audience is new students. I'm excited to read what you come up with!
ReplyDeleteI think that you are correct when you say that most of your audience would agree with you and oppose violence. This differs from my audience because I believe that I will get a split reaction where some agree and some disagree.
ReplyDeleteViolence is something that not a lot of people would stand up for, So yes not a lot of people will oppose your topic simply based on that. Like Carter my audience will have a very split reaction so we will experience different reactions entirely.
ReplyDelete