Genres of First Three Sources and How I Will Use Them

My first source for my informational report is a newspaper article written by the person I interviewed, Ambassador Ronald Keith McMullen. The genre of this source is an article, and I can use it to show that writing articles for a local newspaper, such as the Des Moines Register, can be part of being an Ambassador in residence. The article discusses the problem of heroin production not being monitored or stopped in Afghanistan, thus becoming more easily accessible in places like Iowa.

My second source is a cable written by Ambassador McMullen. A diplomatic cable is a private message sent between an embassy and it's foreign ministry. Diplomats use cables to convey important information about the country they are in back to the country they are representing. The genre of a cable could be described as a report. This source shows the most common writing performed by diplomats to report to the foreign ministry.

My third source is a blog post written by Ambassador McMullen about Kosovo, and complications around the possibility of a unilateral succession. This source gives information about different things ambassadors are knowledgeable about and can be used to show how this information can be conveyed. The genre of this source is a blog post, which is informal, but the layout is very formal and gives background information about Kosovo and then proceeds to explain what he personally did in Kosovo.

Analysis of Rhetorical Strategies for Major Assignment #1

For this informational report, my purpose is to educate high school students (my intended audience) about writing in my field of study, political science. The genre of this report is an informational essay rather than a poem or letter, making the text more serious and to the point. My stance will clearly be wanting to provide information on the nature of writing in a political science field, and my tone will be positive because it is something I am interested in. The medium of this report is a typed essay, that high school students can read to learn about writing in the political science field. 

Rhetorical Analysis of High School Poem

Dreams Can Mean More Than You Think

It takes away the pressure

takes away the stress

It can make you be a star

Makes you famous, more or less

A wonderful adventure

A beautiful design

Blink an eye and you’re there,

Surely its a sign

That we are made for great things

Just fall asleep and you’ll see

All your wishes will come true

But be careful, count to three

A wrong word, the wrong desire

And there will be a mess

A tangled web of lies

Its trouble, but nonetheless

Without it, where would we be?

Wandering the world

Not even knowing who we are

And all would be unfurled

So just remember when its time

To close those little eyes

That what’s in store could be a joy

But also your demise

I wrote this poem about dreams in a high school class with the purpose of expressing my passion for dreams. I wanted to convey that dreams are important to me and can have meaning. I wanted to share my interest in dreams, which I didn’t exactly show because I also wrote about a darker side of dreams because I wanted the tone to be secretive.

This poem had the intended audience of my classmates and teacher. I did not know if my classmates remembered every dream or never dreamt but my audience did not have to know any information about dreams to read the poem.

I chose the genre to be a poem because it seems to me that poems can have hidden meaning and can seem to be more of a riddle. Poems can have many different meanings, and although I had a purpose, I wanted readers to deduce a meaning of their own as well.

My stance on dreams was openly conveyed by this poem. I originally wrote positive things about dreams such as "It takes away the pressure / takes away the stress" and then change to a more negative side of dreams when I wrote "A wrong word, the wrong desire / And there will be a mess / A tangled web of lies." This shows that I believe dreams can vary and people have to choose how to interpret them.

The medium for my poem was text, and my design used stanzas, to follow the original outline of a poem.