Wysocki & Lynch, Chapter 3

In chapter 3 of Wysocki & Lynch we are presented with various strategies for effectively communicating a rhetorical situation. I visited the web page that the book suggested but I was unable to find anything of interest. The first few sections of chapter 3 basically explain that arguing is a social activity, and the purpose of an argument is generally to get someone(s) to modify their position on a particular subject. The purpose of an argument as supplied by Wysocki & Lynch is "shifting someone's level of belief in or adherence to a position or attitude: through argument". Now this might seem somewhat redundant, but based on the traditional idea of what an argument is "a statement, reason, or fact for or against a point" (link), Wysocki & Lynch's definition addresses the purpose more than the argument itself. 

Chapter 3 also talks about creating compositions to serve different purposes. For example: a composition that's main purpose is to communicate a particular argument may be different than a composition aimed at teaching others to learn. I have observed this difference myself many times. When was in Scientific and Technical communication here at Tech, I was required to create a design plan that taught someone how to do something. I picked creating a cheese quesadilla as my subject, I developed a design plan for it with the media being a paper and PDF instruction booklet. Now, for my business I use design plans all of the time when creating websites or applications. The way in which you present an informative website vs. the way you present an instruction set are very different. The main difference being when you produce an instruction set you have to take into account the audience's skill set, but with a website you only need to take in account the audience's ability to understand the material. This is similar to the concept of connecting audience, context and purpose in the reading.  For example how you communicate information to a audience of kids might differ greatly from how you would communicate the same information to a group of teenagers. Wysocki & Lynch explain in great detail about how audience profiling, and how when you create a production piece it is important to consider the audience's skill sets as well as their past experiences when trying to communicate a specific goal or idea to them. This would be extremely important to consider for example if you were communicating to children how to build a bird house from a kit, vs how you would build a bird house from scratch to adults.

All in all this reading was fairly informative, I already had a pretty clear understanding both in theory and practice of most of the concepts presented in this reading but I never knew the technical names or analysis for each of them so I feel more informed now.