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Exploring Rhetorical Moves in Writing

Apr 17, 2025

Writing Spaces 4: Make Your Move: Writing in Genres

Authors

  • Brad Jacobson
  • Madelyn Pawlowski
  • Christine M. Tardy

Overview

  • Rhetorical Moves Analysis: A practical approach for understanding how writers achieve goals in a genre using writing strategies.
  • Purpose: Familiarize students with rhetorical moves analysis to understand new genres and identify writing options.

Understanding Genres

  • Genre Definition: Categories of writing based on purpose, audience, and context.
  • Examples: Student absence emails, grant proposals, legal briefs, research articles.
  • Characteristics: Not identical but resemble each other in vocabulary, design, content, and organization.

What are Rhetorical Moves?

  • Definition: Parts of a text that achieve specific goals.
  • Examples: Wedding invitation moves include inviting and providing venue information.
  • Importance: Helps in achieving the genre’s main action.

Analyzing Rhetorical Moves

  • Process: Identify moves in sample texts, look for patterns, and understand their functional roles.
  • Strategies: Practice with familiar genres before tackling complex ones.
  • Example Analysis: Student absence emails were analyzed to identify typical moves.

Identifying Typical Moves

  • Gather multiple samples (5-10 or more).
  • Label moves with verbs or actions.
  • Compare samples to determine obligatory, common, optional, or rare moves.

Understanding Moves in Genres

  • Analyze how moves help in achieving the genre's social actions.
  • Consider variations based on context, audience, and writer preferences.
  • Recognize flexibility in genres, e.g., student absence emails.

Common Language Features

  • Analyze linguistic choices like verb tense, voice, sentence type, and pronouns.

Critiquing Moves

  • Purpose: Evaluate the strengths, limitations, and transformation possibilities of a genre.
  • Factors: Sequence significance, writer freedom, and community values.

Applying Moves Analysis

  • Example: Grant proposal's Statement of Need section analyzed for typical moves.
  • Steps: Connect to societal issues, demonstrate local need, identify solution/impact.

Producing and Transforming Genres

  • Use moves analysis to write in new genres or innovate existing ones.
  • Consider risks and appropriateness of innovation.

Teacher Resources

  • Teaching Strategies: Introduce moves analysis with familiar genres, then complex ones.
  • Challenges: Selecting appropriate sample texts and maintaining balance between prescriptivism and flexibility.

Activities and Process

  • Class Activity: Conduct moves analysis of familiar and less familiar genres.
  • Drafting/Revising: Use moves analysis for informed writing choices.

Discussion Questions

  1. Discuss typical moves in student absence emails.
  2. Write examples of effective and ineffective absence emails.
  3. Importance of audience awareness in genre moves.
  4. Experience of bending genre conventions.
  5. Conduct a brief moves analysis on a familiar genre.
  6. Identify genres open to variation versus rigid ones.