COMPOSITION

If there is one word that best describes what I have learned in this class it has got to be: COMPOSITION. I have always heard the word from past English classes that I have taken such as AP Literature and COMPOSTION. I knew that it had to do with literature and writing, but I never actually bothered trying to understand what it really meant. Now that I think about it, this word has been creeping around me for a while now. Since high school and still up to now, it is still lurking around, until finally it made its way to my mind. COMPOSTION is: perfectly balancing and arranging different factors in a way that best captures attention and gets one’s point across. So basically, COMPOSITION has to do with the arrangement and placement of different elements. For example, when someone is painting a picture, it is very important that he or she thinks carefully about the elements that make up a painting. These elements include the lines, shape, color, texture, and spacing that all work together. Based on how these elements are put together determines the extent the painting will catch the eyes of its viewers and have an interactive, strong effect on them. The elements control the effect of the painting. This is just like literature. The way different elements that make up a paper, essay, media based article, or whatever the case may be, determines its effectiveness and whether in fact it is a good article. Some of the main elements of literature based COMPOSTION include CONTEXT, GENRE, RHETORICAL SITUATION, AND AUDIENCE. These elements are the key terms that I have been exploring in my ENC1102 class. These words have been stressed over and over again during this course and I have finally noticed their importance when writing an essay. I have learned that all these elements work together in order to make. It is important to stop and think about the audience since they are the ones who appeal to your writing.

[This picture would have not been so famous if Leonardo de Vinci did not use the perfect colors, spacing texture which makes this picture so brilliant! ]

AUDIENCE: may consist of a person, a community, or an even larger population. The audience is formulated of the people you are trying to inform, persuade, and entertain. This includes their age, gender, political party, social class etc. This is because people in different classes tend to have different expectations and reactions. Writers reach out to them so they can return the favor. They may be the inhibitors or the promoters who respond to an author’s call to action implied in his or her writing.

The McGraw-Hill Handbook defines genre as, “in literature, is the type of writing.” GENRE ties in with audience because the audience tends to the genres that they enjoy the most. This may consist of a story, a play, a speech, or even a poem.

Another important key term that we explored is rhetorical situation. According to Bitzer’s, The Rhetorical Situation, RHETORICAL SITUATION: consists of three different keys: an argument, interaction with the audience, and an “exigency,” or a purpose. Bitzer states that rhetorical situation functions ultimately to, “create action,” or, “change in the world.” Since a rhetorical situation has a purpose, or an exigency, which may be a cause for a change, it is important to know which audience to reach out to. Nicholas Carr displays a good representation of rhetorical situation and how it associates to genre and audience in, Is Google making us Stupid. His purpose is to inform his audience that he believes that people in our society are relying too much on the web, or technology in general in order to gain information. Based on the relevance of computers in our society he does a good job at grabbing his audience since almost everyone uses a computer, whether it’s a laptop, a phone, or an ipad. When advertising, in order to pull the consumers a billboard must use the correct colors, word font, and spacing in order to effectively reach out to the audience. This is like rhetorical situation. One must think about his AUDIENCE in order to be able to affectively carry out his RHETORICAL SITUATION through his GENRE. I realized that this class was not called a COMPOSITION class for no reason. So I decided to look the word up, and when I did, it came to my attention why these factors (audience, genre, and rhetorical situation) were brought to our attention. These ate the elements that need to be carefully thought up and brought together and arranged in the strongest way that makes our essay papers the strongest. This is why I picked the word COMPOSITION.