Rhetorical purpose

The chapter has also considered certain patterns or devices in business-technical writing that simplify the writing task. The most important of these has been called BPR, or background-purpose-road map. At the beginning of every e-mail, letter, memo, and report we start with crucial background material to help the reader understand the context of the written piece. Thereafter, the rhetorical purpose informs the reader why the piece was written, and the road map builds a mental model of the remainder. Other devices such as lists and their amplification as well as the liberal use of headings and subheadings are... 

The foreword is an oft-neglected element of a presentation. I use foreword (not forward) to mean an element that sets the stage for a presentation on the larger scheme of things. The term motivation is sometimes used to characterize this important presentation element. Specifically, a foreword (or motivation) should contain two elements background and rhetorical purpose. 

From a technical point of view it was infinitely easier to plough up large units of land without regard for individual claims than it was to identify each family allotment, measure its value in the peasants traditional terms, and then painfully transpose it from scattered strips into a consolidated farm. Then, too, a capital city administrator could not help but prefer to supervise and tax large productive units and not have to deal with separate farmers.. . . The collective had a dual appeal to authentic agrarian reformers. They represented a social ideal for rhetorical purposes, and at the same time they seemed to simplify the technical problems of land reform and state control. ... 

The rhetorical situation in which these miners speak is very different from the private and anonymous interviews I conducted with U.S. and British miners. In the MSHA videos, miners testify in public about their own experiences in order to help other miners prevent accidents in the future. The MSHA training videos are not overtly scripted, but they have a deliberate rhetorical purpose—a fear message.MSHA s Instructor s Guide describes their form and content ... 

Brunei s experiment with Malayness as a core identity is the youngest of the three examples discussed, and it is much too early to assess what effects this move may have on popular consciousness and the sense of identity in the state in the long term. Despite some of the rhetoric of its apologists, MIB seems not intended as the basis of a future ethnic nationalism. It is not sufficiendy distinctive from its neighbours for that purpose. As long as the monarchy remains the central political fact of Brunei, nationalism of any but a contrived official sort will be viewed with suspicion. 

In What We Really Value, (2003) I undertook and advocated for a process (DCM) designed for a specific, focused application discovering and negotiating the rhetorical values at play in a particular writing program. These co-authors took that process, pushed and stretched it, and applied it to multiple new and different contexts and purposes, including ... 

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