In my CTW class we emphasize the rhetorical triangle. It is important to build your credibility in order to get your point across to the appropriate audience.
We have played around with changing our audience, this blog being one example. Instead of writing strictly for my professor, this blog can be seen by anyone (yeah, I’m talking about you). If I want you to continue to read my posts, I can’t bore you academic writing. It’s not fun for you to read and academic writing is targeted towards my professors anyways.
Enough boring writing; here is one of my favorite scenes from Despicable Me, just for fun! credit: Universal Studios
Same goes for research. I have learned that it makes it so much easier to pick an audience so that I know how to guide my key points. Although I am still in the process of writing my archival research paper on Greek life, I am thinking that I am going to gear it towards current students at Santa Clara University. I have found that not many people know about the history of Greek life, so it could be more interesting to focus it that way.
This will help me create a clear and concise message. If I know who I am talking to, then I will have a better understanding of my goal in writing the research paper to begin with. Bottom line: my goal is to demonstrate how Greek life has changed over the years to current students.
All this will not be possible unless I develop my credibility as a speaker because I need my audience to trust the information that I am giving them. I can do this by citing appropriate sources related to my topic. I also think that my status as a current student and member of the Greek community could play an interesting role in developing my credibility since I have first hand experience on what it is like today.
In the end I hope to utilize the rhetorical triangle to craft an informative, accurate, and engaging archival research piece.