“The writers themselves create the problem they solve.” If we, as writers, create the problems we wish to solve, then why do we make it so hard on ourselves? Asking the question, “do writers actually spend much time analyzing their audience, and if so, how do they do it?” answers itself. They do it as much as they choose to do it, and this determines both the level of scholarly language or lack thereof, as well as the authenticity.
It’s obvious that it’s imperative for a writer to consider their audience when constructing a piece of work and composing an argument. One must accommodate the reader, and perhaps adjust the language and style for different age groups or different groups of interest/biases. However it’s a sin, in my book, to allow that to affect the overarching meaning, or dilute it into rhetorical nonsense that vaguely conveys what the writer is trying to say with an embellished “scholarly” style.
A writer absolutely cannot avoid this if he spends more of his pre-writing time defining what the “rhetorical problem” is than actually constructing his own ideas. The concept of a rhetorical problem consisting of more than one limited concept is inherently redundant. So we consider that there is both a rhetorical situation and a rhetorical goal but it makes little to no sense that we separate the two. A prompting to write is conceived out of a rhetorical situation. Without the situation, there would be no need to write or solve this problem we are trying to define. Therefore, the goal should be considered one and the same. Why, then, do we spend time trying to “define the rhetorical problem” instead of solving it? With a new progressive wave of breaking the mold and departing from structural curriculum, it’s taking two steps forward and one step backward to make a student spend so much time analyzing rather than answering. The biggest risk we are taking as writers and as writing teachers in doing so is decreasing the authenticity of our message and our argument.
Of course, as stated previously, considering one’s setting, audience, and goal as a writer is imperative to achieve anything at all. But spending copious, obsessive amounts of time tailoring our work to fit a mold that we hope will be received is falling into a writer’s dilemma that will never produce any original or even meaningful work.
Flower and Hayes contradict themselves. When you tell a novice writer that it is more important to think about their rhetorical situation than it is to think about their argument, you’re teaching them to pander. Then you ask them to create a unique, creative perspective and wonder why they can’t do it when they’re so focused on who they’re writing to instead of what they’re writing
When I’m a teacher, I want my students to have a solid foundational skill set that allows them to argue, speak, and write well. But at the end of the day, I want them to know that if they if they allow the technicalities to deviate them, if they don’t stay true to what they believe and stand up for their perspective, it’s all pointless.
