Purpose
An author’s understanding of his persona, audience, and context will help him determine the appropriate arguments and rhetorical tropes for achieving his persuasive goal. Authors and speakers can use only the arguments and communication skills available to them to convey their purpose. The arguments available for any given topic are specific to that particular rhetorical situation and depend on the relationships between author, audience, context, and purpose. For example, skilful communicators recognize the wisdom of excluding or including certain information in the scope of their argument or adjusting their tone when addressing X audience versus addressing Y audience. To fully realize their stance, authors and speakers must also exercise control over the rhetorical appeals and arrangement natural to their topic. This step is the most observable event in the author’s achievement of rhetorical stance because it is the verbal expression of his position in relation to both audience and topic.
Read more about this topic: Rhetorical Stance
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is poetical.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“Men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Our purpose in founding the city was not to make any one class in it surpassingly happy, but to make the city as a whole as happy as possible.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)