Glossary

Audience – An Audience is the person for whom a writer writes. A writer uses a particular style of language, tone, and content according to what he knows about his audience. In simple words, audience refers to the spectators, listeners, and intended readers of a writing, performance, or speech.

Genre – A literary genre is a style of writing. Your favorite literary genre might be science fiction, for example. The word genre means “artistic category or style,” and you can talk about a movie’s genre, or the genre of music that drives you crazy. Writers and readers both use genres because of the cognitive and social work they accomplish. For writers, using the patterns of a genre accepted by readers for accomplishing their purposes allows them to establish a working relationship with readers.

Purpose – Purpose is the goal or aim of a piece of writing: to express oneself, to provide information, to persuade, or to create a literary work. When someone communicates ideas in writing, they usually do so to express themselves, inform their reader, to persuade a reader or to create a literary work.

Rhetorical Situation – The rhetorical situation is a fundamental and practical part of developing as a writer, it refers to the setting in which writers or speakers create rhetorical discourse. Each individual rhetorical situation shares five basic elements with all other:

1. A text (i.e., an actual instance or piece of communication)
2. An author (i.e., someone who uses communication)
3. An audience (i.e., a recipient of communication)
4. Purposes (i.e., the varied reasons both authors and audiences communicate)
5. A setting (i.e., the time, place, and environment surrounding a moment of communication)

Discourse Community – A discourse community is a group of people involved in and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field.

Knowledge – Being knowledgeable means you are well informed about writing techniques, the subject matter and tools to use. This knowledge can come from schooling and more often from on-the-job experience.

Reflection – Reflection is a mental process. It is contemplation or a long consideration. Thoughts or opinions that come to you while you are reflecting are called reflections. When you are writing about a reflection, there are factors that can affect how you express it. These are:

1. Why you are writing
2. Whether others will read it
3. How you feel about your writing
4. Your emotions at the time of writing
5. How capable you are at writing reflectively