Page 386 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 386
What Do We Know about the World?
are being carried out. However, this is not sufficient information either
for potential sponsors (who may want to know also how the federation is
organized and managed and which is its actual financial situation) or for
NGOs interested in becoming members of the federation (which also
want to know who can join it, how and when, and which advantages
this affiliation would have for them). Besides, the analysis of stakehold-
ers outlines that affiliated NGOs are ratified participants of the bro-
chure: they care that the image of the federation and of themselves that
emerges out of the text corresponds to the set of values that leads them
and that convinced them to join FOSIT.
In fact, such a conceptual tool can be useful in order to shape and
build into the text the implied writer and the implied reader (Jameson
2004a; 2004b). As Jameson (2004a) points out, the implied writer and
reader do not coincide with the live writer and reader, but they are a
“subset of the whole, complex person” (392). “The whole, live human be-
ing who writes is never exactly the same as the writer’s representation of
self implied in the text” (Jameson, 2004b: 231). By becoming aware of
the stakeholders of the texts and of the needs, exigencies and require-
ments of those stakeholders (which emerge in the stakeholders’ descrip-
tion), students can be supported in eliciting the traits and aspects of con-
crete and real stakeholders that has to be coped with in order to build
into the text an adequate implied writer and an adequate implied reader.
In this perspective, composition exercises such as the following one can
be developed: students are given the examples we have analyzed above as
sources, that is, texts from which they can retrieve some useful informa-
tion about the organization and its products. After describing the rhe-
torical situation for each text and its stakeholders, students are asked to
produce, for instance, a letter by a chemist asking to be sent more bro-
chures and some other promotional material together with more Xylo
Mepha to sell (this letter will be sent together with the formal commer-
cial order for more products). In such an exercise students will for in-
stance realize that some participants in the communication event of the
brochure and of the letter they have to write are the same (Mepha Phar-
ma, chemist), but they play different roles, they are different stakehold-
ers: in the communication event of the brochure Mepha Pharma is the
principal (and maybe also the author) and the chemist is a ratified par-
ticipant as well as a gatekeeper, while in the communication event of
the letter Mepha Pharma is the addressee and the chemist is the princi-
pal (while students play the role of authors). The “situatedness” of each
are being carried out. However, this is not sufficient information either
for potential sponsors (who may want to know also how the federation is
organized and managed and which is its actual financial situation) or for
NGOs interested in becoming members of the federation (which also
want to know who can join it, how and when, and which advantages
this affiliation would have for them). Besides, the analysis of stakehold-
ers outlines that affiliated NGOs are ratified participants of the bro-
chure: they care that the image of the federation and of themselves that
emerges out of the text corresponds to the set of values that leads them
and that convinced them to join FOSIT.
In fact, such a conceptual tool can be useful in order to shape and
build into the text the implied writer and the implied reader (Jameson
2004a; 2004b). As Jameson (2004a) points out, the implied writer and
reader do not coincide with the live writer and reader, but they are a
“subset of the whole, complex person” (392). “The whole, live human be-
ing who writes is never exactly the same as the writer’s representation of
self implied in the text” (Jameson, 2004b: 231). By becoming aware of
the stakeholders of the texts and of the needs, exigencies and require-
ments of those stakeholders (which emerge in the stakeholders’ descrip-
tion), students can be supported in eliciting the traits and aspects of con-
crete and real stakeholders that has to be coped with in order to build
into the text an adequate implied writer and an adequate implied reader.
In this perspective, composition exercises such as the following one can
be developed: students are given the examples we have analyzed above as
sources, that is, texts from which they can retrieve some useful informa-
tion about the organization and its products. After describing the rhe-
torical situation for each text and its stakeholders, students are asked to
produce, for instance, a letter by a chemist asking to be sent more bro-
chures and some other promotional material together with more Xylo
Mepha to sell (this letter will be sent together with the formal commer-
cial order for more products). In such an exercise students will for in-
stance realize that some participants in the communication event of the
brochure and of the letter they have to write are the same (Mepha Phar-
ma, chemist), but they play different roles, they are different stakehold-
ers: in the communication event of the brochure Mepha Pharma is the
principal (and maybe also the author) and the chemist is a ratified par-
ticipant as well as a gatekeeper, while in the communication event of
the letter Mepha Pharma is the addressee and the chemist is the princi-
pal (while students play the role of authors). The “situatedness” of each
