Rhetorical Analysis Essay
Dante Wilson
Professor Calkins
ENC 1101-B004
11th September 2015
Rhetorical Analysis Essay
As a result of countless applications and in-store visits I was finally able to get a job at my dream job, Champs Sports. After about one a year working with the company my manager requested for two coworkers, who were also seniors at the time, and myself, to write an essay about why we enjoy our job and what could make it more enjoyable. At first I was wondering why my manager was making us write the essay, but once I begun my writing I was fully engaged into finishing it and getting my thoughts across. Unlike most essays that high school seniors write that seem to be meaningless, this essay was very significant not only because I felt like my opinions on change for the company were going to be considered, but also because I sincerely loved my job. After a few days I completed the essay and presented it to my manager in mid-march. Months passed and I never really thought or spoke of the essay. Then at beginning of July I went to work as usual but when I entered the store I was surprised by my managers and co-workers and was rewarded with a five thousand dollar scholarship. I soon found out that the essay that I wrote was actually a scholarship requirement, and I was chosen as one of ten employees across the United States to be rewarded with this opportunity. With the scholarship I was able to attend my current and dream school University of Central Florida. This essay meant a lot to me because I wrote it with passion and pride. When I was told to analyze a previous essay this one immediately came to mind, due to the fact that it affected my life so positively and I remember everything about the essay so precisely. I will be analyzing the rhetorical situation of my Champs scholarship essay within its four main constraints; rhetor, exigence, constraints, and audience. (Grant-Davie 351)
Any piece of writing can be analyzed using the threshold principles of Grant-Davie, which are rhetor, exigence, constraints, and audience. (Grant-Davie 351) I choose to analyze this piece of writing because my job means a lot to me, and it allowed me to leave my home and go off to college. To begin, I will start by discussing rhetor or the person who is creating the conversation or discourse (Grant-Davie 350), which was myself. I was the one who wrote the essay and engaged in rhetoric or discourse. I wrote the essay in order to get my message across to my audience: my manager and scholarship readers, in a way that I thought would be professional as well as straightforward and truthful. Another rhetor would be my father because he assisted me with the essay. He reviewed it and added his own personal thoughts to my writing and told me some things that I should review or change throughout the essay. Grant-Davie makes known the necessity of matter and motivation of the discourse or the exigence is extremely important to the rhetor.
Secondly, Exigence is the need or reason for a given action or communication. (Grant-Davie 351) Initially, my primary motives for writing this essay was to inform my manager about problems that I saw with the company and the work place, thus showing my commitment. Another reason why I wrote the essay was because I felt like I was obligated by my managers to write the essay; every year each associate has to write feedback to the company and I felt like my feedback pertinent. Being highly observant I took mental notes on all the companies policies that worked and did not, and I made my views known in my essay with the hope of change and improvement in the company. Initially when I wrote the essay I had no idea of the purpose of me doing so but it ended up being the main exigence of my whole essay. Predominantly, my essay was written for the primary audience of my managers. But in reality my primary audience was Footlocker Inc. members who instructed the scholarship. After looking back on the whole situation I think if my exigence was to be rewarded a scholarship then my whole essay would have been written from a whole different perspective. With that being said maybe it would not have stood out as being straightforward and truthful and allowing me to be one of the ten recipients of the award.
Consequentially, audiences are those people, real or imagined, with whom rhetors negotiate though discourse to achieve the rhetorical objective. (Grant-Davie 355) The audiences for my piece of writing were all real people, including my managers, to the Footlocker Inc. scholarship reviewers, and some of my family members including my father and aunt. My primary audience was the Footlocker Inc. scholarship reviewers, who were initially unknown to myself. I originally thought my primary and only audience was my managers. The audience could change the way the rhetor, myself, executes the writing and helps dictate the direction of the piece. For example, when I was writing the essay I wrote it in a very professional manner because the paper was for a highly established company that listens to their employees ideas and problems. As the result of the importance that I placed on the task, it did not matter if I viewed my managers or the scholarship reviews as my primary audience because I would have written the essay with the same amount of passion either way.