Understanding of Different Literary Techniques - Article Example

Rhetorical Analysis of On Going home (Didion) Introduction Rhetorical analysis is an in-depth study of an article such as a speech or essay with the view of determining the author’s strategic employment of words in order to influence his or her audience. Authors for example communicate using words, this demands that they employ the words tactically in order to influence their audience a feature that gratifies their writing and revamps the communication process in their articles. By appealing to the audience, the authors improve the target audience for their article and engage them on several levels. Authors use words tactfully in order to appeal to their audiences. Emotional appeal is essential in the development of an article since it influences the readership to identify with the plot and themes in the article thereby sympathize with the author. The analysis of the article On Going Home below analyses the author’s use of words to gain the emotional appeal from her audience. Joan Dion, the author of the article is a renowned writer and a linguist and therefore exhibits understanding of different literary techniques, which she employs strategically in the article with the view of appealing and influencing to her audience. The author’s first attempt to appeal to the audience and gain their understanding is her choice of themes in the article. Among the themes that the author of the article addresses are family, home and belongingness. Such are fundamental themes that every individual identifies with in any society. The American population, which constitutes her primary target audience, identifies with the three essential themes above owing to the specific social structure in the society and the relationship within the society. The author therefore positions the three themes tactfully often addressing issues that influence everyone’s life. The tactic gains success for the article thereby increasing readership for the article. Belongingness for example is an emotional issue that affects everyone; it refers to the recognition of a particular social set up. People develop attachment with their societies as they grow up. Dion therefore develops attachment with her two homes a feature that helps heighten the conflict within the article. She compares her present life as an adult with her husband and daughter versus her life with her father, mother and other siblings. She explains the difference portraying the differences tactfully in a manner that earns the article the emotional appeal she would have wanted for article. The society expects people to marry at specific ages in their lives, the institution of a marriage presents couples with different challenges thereby necessitating Dion’s attempt to compare her two lives. her ability to define the features of the two homes that earned her a sense of belonging both in her past home and in the present society validates her claims and the conflict she experiences in doing this further earning the audience’s emotional appeal since most of the issues are prevalent in the society and affect every individual. Home is yet another basic theme that Dion addresses in her article. Everyone has a place he or she calls home. Such a place could be a community or just a simple town hose that offers one with the shelter and the warmth of family. The relativity of the concept as Dion portrays it in her article earns the article greater emotional appeal from her audience. she describes her two homes explicitly portraying the challenges she encounters in each of the two places that constitute her homes. From the comfort of her father’s home to the hustles and bustles of a young mother settling in with her husband in a new town-house in a new city, such are realistic challenges that everyone faces at some time in their life. Dion’s analysis of the factors therefore draws great public interests in the article since people will always want to know another person’s story. Dion built her story creatively explaining the numerous challenges. She further addresses how she tackled them thereby succeeding in building a conducive home for her daughter. Besides appropriate themes in the article, the author uses several other literary skills to earn the emotional appeal from her audience. Among the conspicuous literary techniques the author employs is vivid description. Vivid description refers to the use of descriptive adjectives in the article in describing the characters, the settings and the plot of the article. Dion describes every feature of her life and the challenges she faces at every state. Her use of vivid description influences the audience of the article. Consumption of literary texts depends on the author’s presentation of the facts through a combination of texts in thereby aiding the audience to build a mental picture. The audience conceptualizes the things they read in an article in their consumption process. Dion understands this and therefore employs vivid description in the texts with the view of widening her readership and improving their understanding of the facts she presents in the article. Through vivid description, Dion helps the audience in conceptualizing the action in the article thereby improving their comprehension of the article. The success of any literature relies on the audience’s ability to understand the issues the author addresses in an article. Understanding the message in an article epitomizes the importance of an article and facilitates the emotional appeal of an article, which every author would wish to earn from a target audience. Dion understands the need for this and therefore helps her audience develop the mental picture. She describes her two homes and the challenges she faces in each thereby developing a clear distinction between the two homes and her relationship with her two families. Through such, she facilitates understanding of the facts she presents in the article thereby influencing the readership by winning their sympathy (Dion 1). She for example begins the article by explaining her home in which she says the “home” does not imply the place where she lives with her husband and daughter in Los Angeles but her father’s place in the Central Valley in California. By explaining this in the introductory paragraph, Dion captures the attention of her audience as she begins the story. Home is a basic place for everyone; women leave their families to start new homes with their husbands. Dion therefore comes back to her father’s family but this time she has a daughter implying that she is happily married and has a home of her own. Her visit is therefore likely to encounter several challenges most of which she justifies by explaining her husband’s feelings whenever she visits her family. She explains that her husband dislikes the place since whenever she gets there she easily falls back into her former life thereby frustrating him. Such is the case with several young women who identifies with both their father’s homes and the homes they develop with their husbands. The author’s portrayal of this fact especially on the first paragraph helps captivate even the male audience who strive to understand her husband’s feelings and therefore sympathize with him in the unlikely setting. Another equally important tactic the author uses to gain thee emotional appeal is her choice of words. The words an author use in her article does not only influence the communication process but also helps determine the size of her target audience. Dion constructs simple clear and concise sentences as she shuns the use of vocabulary. The use of simple words in constructing equally simplistic sentences helps widen her target audience since most people identify with the issues she raises in the article. The simplistic approach increases the readership of her article since most the ordinary reader can understand the issues she discusses. The simple structure facilitates her vivid description in the article thereby enhancing communication in the article. Dion constructs simple sentences and uses such in describing the setting, action and the characters in the plot thereby enhancing the communication abilities of the article a feature that increases the scope of the emotional appeal among the readers of the article. In a summary, writing requires a tactful use of words with the view of enhancing the communication process thereby appealing to the audience. Dion achieves this by using specific literary features and addressing themes that are likely to appeal to her audience. Work cited Dion, Joan. On going home. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print. Read More