Reflection on Project 2 Draft

I reviewed Brandon's draft and Mike's draft. It's actually been very valuable to be able to look at my classmates' work while trying to figure out my own.

AJC. "Peer Review". 5-23-08 via Flickr. CC A-SA 2.0.

Who is reading this?
I'm writing this for new students in the Entrepreneurship program, so they should have some knowledge of entrepreneurship even if it isn't extensive. There shouldn't be unusual gender makeup in my audience, and I'm sure they all know some women.

What are their biases?
It's possible that some of my readers may have the sociocultural bias of 'women don't work in tech, engineering, startups' but hopefully they don't. Regardless of their position on that issue, their bias shouldn't get in the way of their ability to deconstruct the public speech act.

What are their values and expectations?
Again, I hope that they're values are solid and that they have reasonable expectations but I can't imagine any of those really getting in the way of rhetorical analysis. I haven't encountered many people that have strong values, expectations, or emotions about rhetorical strategies and analysis.

How much info do they need?
They probably need a decent amount of information about rhetorical analysis and why it's important. Maybe not as much background about the conflict that Julie speaks about in her piece since I'm writing about rhetorical analysis and not about the conflict that Julie is focusing on. However it is important that they understand something about the conflict and Julie's position so that they can more easily understand they way that she uses rhetoric to get her point across.

What language should I use?
I think it might be interesting to try using more formal language (not formal but more formal than I usually use) given that this is more of an instructional and informative piece. There is a time and a place to be conversational and granted, this isn't the wrong time and place to be conversational but it's not necessarily the best. Hopefully I can find a nice middle ground between formal and casual.

What about tonality?
I do not want to come off as sounding superior in any way because I'm obviously not. However I do want to have a tone that implies I know what I'm talking about, because I've read more about rhetoric over the past two weeks than most people do in their entire college career. With that said, the tone should be professional, personal but not casual, and it should have conviction.