Developing a Rhetorical Strategy

Thought and Discussion

1. Susan Turner assumed that sending an email to an instructor is basically the same as sending it to a friend. With this assumption in mind she simply sat down and quickly wrote out a request for the instructor to let her know what materials she missed in the class that she missed due to illness. Based on what has been discussed in the previous section on Developing a Rhetorical Strategy, why is this assumption and approach problematic? What are the advantages to developing a rhetorical strategy for this particular situation? What are the disadvantages of not developing a rhetorical strategy?

2. In small groups, create a fictional on-line start-up company. Decide on your product and your audience. Discuss what types of initial correspondence you will need to establish your company and discuss which modes of correspondence will be best for each communications situation.

Analysis and Revision

3. The Challenger Disaster
Read the trip report memo (in PDF format) from William Ray detailing a visit to the O-ring manufacturers (Note that this memo is part of the documentation from NASA). Obviously, the memo fails in a number of ways to communicate important information about the O-rings. Putting yourself in Mr. Ray's shoes reanalyze the rhetorical situation, and rewrite this memo as an email that will go to other members of the design group as well as to your supervisor. As you write, remember to think about purpose, audience and the writing technique. Remember, that everyone in your group gets dozens of emails daily, so you need to draw attention to it (in a professional way) as well as present the potential problems clearly. Your job, as you think about the visit, is to decide what information is most important and state it as clearly as possible. Remember that this memo is from 1979, 7 years before the explosion and very early in the development process.

This section has covered the following areas:

The steps in developing a rhetorical strategy
The appropriate form of correspondence when given a purpose and audience
The major purposes of each form
The "direct" versus "indirect" approach to organization
The major organizational steps in an "indirect" approach and a "direct" approach
The importance of tone and clarity in writing correspondence
The key characteristics of successful and unsuccessful tone and clarity
"Letterese" and cliché in correspondence

Go to Section II. Letters, to learn more about writing business letters.

Writing Correspondence	Modules:

Exercises - Developing a Rhetorical Strategy