Analyzing Purpose

In this post I will be answering some questions found on pg. 326 of Writing Public Lives.

1. Freewrite for a few minutes on the goal of your public argument, or what you would like to see happen as a result of your argument. What do you want your readers to do, feel, think, believe, etc. as a result of leading it?

I made a coggle because this seemed to be the most logical for brainstorming. Click here to access it.

2. Now that you have an idea of what you want to accomplish, draw a line down the center of a piece of paper. Label the left side "Plausible Actions/Reactions" and the right side "Not Plausible." Then, fill these categories with likely and unlikely results of reading your analysis.

Here is a link to my google doc which I made to respond to this question.

3. From your freewriting and list, we can now build a chain of likely consequences for your public argument. Take a plausible action from your list and then trace out the possible effects of it. For example, if you said "Raise awareness about issue, draw a line beside it and then state what raising awareness might accomplish. Let's say that awareness might motivate the public to act. Draw lines outward from that for the possible actions the public might take.

Here is a link to a coggle which I made to respond to this question.

4. Now, think through the possible audiences that you might want to address. You want to think about the people who are most likely to move towards achieving your goal. Draft out a paragraph that describes the groups of people who are most likely to advance your cause.

I think one audience that might advance my cause would be neuroscientists or any kind of scientist that conducts research on the best ways to transmit information. They would be the ones that are most knowledgable about which medium is best for retaining and learning new information. They would also be aware of what kind of information is best suited for a certain kind of medium. Another group of people that might be interesting in advancing my cause are those in the English and writing fields. They are the ones that are most knowledgable about content writing and would be the best to turn to for producing an audiobook. These two groups of people are the most essential groups for my topic.

Diliff. "Beluga Whales." January 2006 via Wikipedia. Creative Commons license.