**"Rhetorical moves"** are the various strategic moves a writer makes in any given [[academic article|article]] or [[speech]]. ###### A few examples: - establishing your [[ethos]] in some subtle way; - establishing why your topic is "important" in the first place; - [[positioning]] yourself relative to a past [[research conversation]]; - "[[framing]]" your topic in some advantageous way; - discussing or subtly alluding to the implications of your topic; - [[if you have a very bold claim, you should address the refutatio early on|addressing a refutatio early on in order to cut if off early]] Rhetorical moves are inseparable from [[rhetorical structure]]. In many ways, "rhetorical structure" is just a way of describing when it *often* makes sense for a writer or rhetor to make a certain set of rhetorical moves. For example, _generally_, it makes sense to establish ethos [[ethos makes sense at the beginning of a speech|early on in a speech]]; _generally_, you should think about [[pathos]] much [[pathos makes sense at the end of a speech|later in a speech]]. And so on. ## Rhetorical moves and genre ### Rhetorical moves *across* genres Many rhetorical moves are consistent across genres—[[different rhetorical moves manifest differently in different genres|they just manifest differently]]. Above, I used the example of establishing [[ethos]] early on in a speech, but obviously the forms and conventions for that particular move look very across different genres. ### Rhetorical moves, genre, and expectation Rhetorical moves and their relationship to structure are heavily wrapped up with [[genre]] and the [[audience]] expectations they involve or invoke. That is, **an audience for any given genre expects certain things at certain points in your writing or speech.** You can have fun with these expectations, but you should be aware of them. In situations where you're describing a more difficult concept, you probably don't want to play with or subvert those expectations too much. Instead, you want to reduce the [[cognitive load]] of your reader/audience. You can do this by offering a pretty bog-standard structure. When your reader is looking for certain rhetorical moves at the beginning, offer them what they'll be looking for _when_ they're looking for it. Don't hide them. When your reader is looking for certain rhetorical moves at the end, then — again — provide them. It's a waste of their concentration to make them search for them! An obvious example of this is the [[thesis statement]] or [[propositio]] (and [[partitio]]) in a standard, high-school [[5-paragraph essay]]. Your reader will be looking for that specific move in a very specific place: the end of the first paragraph. More broadly, in other genres, your reader will be looking for a propositio and partitio — that is, a sense of what your most important claims are (propositio) and a sense of what your structure will look like (partitio) — in and around the end of the introduction. You can see, from this example, how the more you meet one expectation for a rhetorical move (e.g., its placement in your structure), the more you can play with *other* expectations. If you begin an essay with an obvious thesis statement by saying, "This essay will argue. . ." then the fact that it's in an unusual place is less of a big deal. Conversely, if you put your thesis statement in the usual place, the less it has to obviously "look" like a thesis statement. (There are obviously gradations here.) ## Teaching implications of rhetorical moves In working with students, it's important to distinguish between more minor mechanical issues ([[grammar]], syntax, etc.) and the rhetorical moves they're going for. Also, my experience is that students "get" rhetorical moves. Sometimes, all I'm doing is giving [[students just lack the vocabulary|them a vocabulary]] to think more self-reflexively about these moves.