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RHETORICAL SITUATION
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Considering the Audience

Enduring Understanding (RHS-1)
Individuals write within a particular situation and make strategic writing choices based
on that situation.

Consider this situation. Your junior prom is Saturday night. Your friends are
going to a local diner afterward, and you want to join. However, you typically have
a curfew of 11:00 p.m., so you need to convince your parent or guardian to extend
KEY POINT your curfew. You have a motivation, a goal, and an audience.
You think about how to persuade your audience. Depending on whom you
Writers make choices are asking, you might offer to help around the house, point out that you have
in an attempt
to appeal to an always abided by the curfew, or even give reassurances that you will be safe and
audience’s emotions, responsible. In short, you make specific choices that will help you achieve your
reason, or to establish goal (extending your curfew) depending on your audience. Indeed, this is exactly
their own credibility. what writers do when they develop their arguments.

Writers Know Their Audience

When writers develop a text, they will consider and analyze their audience —
particularly its values, beliefs, needs, and background. This analysis helps a writer
make better choices about how to relate to that audience’s beliefs and values.When
considering audience, writers might ask themselves questions such as: What is my
relationship to the audience? Do they know me?
• How does this audience likely feel about the issue?
• What does the audience already know about the issue? What additional
information does the audience need to better understand the issue?
• What values and beliefs does this audience likely hold about the issue?

Rhetorical Appeals
Whether arguing or persuading, writers try to motivate or connect to their audience
through appeals. In the study of rhetoric, there are three primary appeals, which are
often called by their Greek names: ethos, logos, and pathos. To convince or relate
to an audience, writers establish their credibility (ethos), develop their reasoning
(logos), and influence the audiences’ emotion (pathos). In persuasive arguments
especially, writers often make direct appeals to the emotions of their audience.
Writers create these different appeals by choosing certain words, sentence
structures, stories, examples, details, and other evidence that they believe will
relate to the audience. These choices may appeal to an audience’s emotions or

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