Blog Assignment Three: Audience Analysis

In the upcoming weeks for Paper 2, you will be performing a Rhetorical Analysis of a text of your choice. We'll discuss this in more depth during class next week. Regardless, we've already spoken about purpose, audience, context, and text. Additionally, we've spoken about ethos (authority), logos (logic), and pathos (emotion). Often, as part of RA includes determining who the audience of a text is, and how a text speaks specifically to that audience.

Thus, for Blog Assignment Three I ask you to perform the following tasks: 1) select a blog that interests you (technorati is a great site for looking for blogs, but you could do a google search for a topic and blog, or even search within blogger for a blog); 2) once you have selected a blog, provide a hyperlink, or the address to the site, so that your classmates and I may follow your blog to the blog you've selected to write on; 3) explain who the audience is, and provide supporting rationale for why you feel that a) the audience is who you say it is and b) why the blog clearly relates to the audience you've selected. More simply, why do you think the blog speaks to the audience. What aspects of the genre or the topics do you think apply to the blog. For instance, if I picked a surfing blog, I would expect the writers to use the language and jargon which surfers use. Or, I would expect them to say something that I can relate to and would be interested in reading. Or, for instance, I think that Corey Doctorow's blog is worth reading why? I obviously don't expect you to tell me why I'd read it, but its a good way to get the right thinking gears moving.

I also really enjoy BoingBoing; Photoblogs;Podcasts which are audio blogs; but, there are also video blogs too on iTunes and otherwise. The best part is for instance, there are videos like "Vans Off the Wall" which normally I'd be paying like 20 bucks a pop to buy that I can watch for free cause it's a new technology and not many people are using it: get it whilst it be free.


Thanks for yet another fantastic week, I'm really enjoying the semester to date, and I think you're all wonderful students.

The best to you all,

tra