Research Questions

What does each form of writing in the business field mean to the worker?
What are the day to day forms of communication in the business field and why are they important?

Textual Rhetorical Analysis

Tanner Mettner

English 250

Textual Rhetorical Analysis

In this summary about Business Majors, the author tries to describe all the qualities and expectations of a graduate in the workplace. The author also seems to have done research on the business world to gain further knowledge into the field. He either must be a prospecting business major or at least influenced by something to dig deeper into this subject. The summary itself has no visuals and that can lead to misconceptions about what the author means about certain subjects since the business aspect of the workplace is so broad.

In the summary the author states a lot of very factual and to the point information which leads me to think that he has done some research into the topic because either he is planning to become part of the business workplace or wants to learn more about what the business world holds for him. I say this because, not only does he go into the more fact driven parts of business, he gets into the emotional side. By the emotional side, I mean what kind of mentality and worth ethic is needed in a business major, which is evidence that there is some connection or want with the business world. I say this because; why else would the author care what the mentality of a businessman is if he didn’t want to be one?

The author also describes the qualities and expectations of a new businessman in a firm. Many of these qualities are very obvious and can be assumed by the average person, which leads me to think that the author was trying to appeal to a very basic audience and inform them of the basic details of a businessman. He conveys the purpose of this text by keeping all the information super simple and easy to comprehend. This summary would appeal to anyone who was willing to want to learn about the business major, or anyone who wants to understand how the business world functions. The very basic information and lack of technical words makes me think that the author was not trying to make this piece anything but an informational paper to appeal to those wanting to look into business.

With that being said, the style of the author is very simple. The author tries to keep the piece very informal so that he does not turn away the average prospecting college student from reading his summary. The sentences are very readable and have a very insightful tone to them. The tone is well suited for the audience because most of the people reading this article are looking for that piece of information on business majors that will help them decide whether it’s the major for them or not, and that is also the purpose of the summary too. The author’s use of transition sentences is somewhat lacking, but the paper still can be read smoothly. The similarity of all the subjects in his summary helps the transition from paragraph to paragraph.

With business being such a broad subject, the lack of any visuals of any sort really can make this paper lacking because there isn’t really a specific description of what part of business the author is talking about. There are many types of business in the world and the author really has a very broad way of speaking about them, it really can distract the reader because it is hard to follow what the author is trying to convey. But what the author lacks in visuals he makes up for in visual cues, the listing of all the information he has given in the summary is very easy to follow and helps the reader understand and get a better view of what he is trying to convey.

Visual Rhetorical Analysis

Tanner Mettner

English 250

2/12/14

Visual Rhetorical Analysis

            Communication in the business world is a very broad topic to be talking about. The extent communication is used in the business world is too big to understand, so I will focus the topic more on the big group meetings. In my visual that I got from a 2014 LBA Minority Women’s Business Conference, you can see that there is many people in one room with a central person talking to all of them at once. This is called a “Business Conference” in the business world and is the most widely used form of communication in this aspect of my major. These conferences include a wide variety of topics to use, from sales numbers to economic efficiency, but they all have one main goal, and that is to inform the masses by getting them together and discussing the goal at once.

            As you can see in the photo there is a woman on a big screen with a bunch of other colors and symbols around her to demonstrate the probable topic of the conference. In this particular conference for the Latin Business Association is women in the workplace and is supported by the evidence of a woman leading the conference in the front of the room and the high amount of women in the room. When business men and women come to a conference there is many things for the company to discuss and teach their employees and that’s why they get as many people in a room as possible, the main purpose is so that it reduces the “Telephone Effect”. The telephone effect is the impreciseness of your memory over time and that if you were to teach or spread the news of the conference, that it would be distorted or altered. That effect is eliminated by a conference like the one shown in my visual. With that being said, business conferences are as important for companies as they are for employees!

            In this case, this conference is sponsored by an association for women and the people attending are different company officials. This conference is a very informal conference as you can see by the lack of suit and ties in the visual, which means that it intends to inform friendly and very basic information to company officials to implement into the business themselves. The evidence from that is the lack of any formal types of note taking, examples being a pad notebook or laptops. With that being said, the formal conference in the business world requires that there is some sort of note taking or memorization process because the information being shared is important and is very imperative that it be remembered and distributed throughout the company. The informality of this also shows there’s more of a friendly connotation to this conference, which leads to my next point.

            Saying that, conferences are more than just a way to distribute information they are there to get the company’s name out there too. Whoever took the picture of this visual, also can be known as the author of this photo. The author obviously wanted to show the popularity and friendliness of this conference. That is seen in this picture as the lady on the projector screen with a greeting smile and such a friendly informal order of the building too. Anything that seems very laid back and friendly is appealing to a lot of people in business and the world in general, and that’s what I think the author was trying to demonstrate with this picture.

            In this form of communication, visuals are more important than words. Conferences in a way control the morale of current employees or try to invoke feelings of camaraderie or teamwork for future or prospecting employees. It’s no different in this conference, the pictures of skyscrapers and beautiful sky can be conveyed as showing success or happiness. The evidence behind that is, if the company were to put a picture of ugly slums and a rainy sky in the background, it would change the whole mood and setting of the conference. Visuals will always create more emotion and have more of an effect on a person than words will in a conference. That’s why it is important to have very bright and promising images in conferences. The colors that are mostly used in and that are shown in this visual are blue, white, and red. All these colors are vibrant and are physiologically proven to provoke feelings of success and excitement in humans.

"LBA WBC." Latin Business Association , 14 Apr. 2014. Web. 8 Feb. 2014. <http://www.lbausa.com/wp-content/uploads/minority-woman-business2.jpg>.

            The one time I felt I rhetorically analyzed a lot is when I first came to ISU, it was just like the first day of school in kindgarten. What I mean by that is, you don’t a soul on campus and you want to find some friends so you’re not alone. So I went on the journey in my dorm to find and meet new people!

            My next door neighbors had accents like they were from Chicago so that made my head jump to all sorts of conclusions, from what their personalities were to what kind of food they ate. I tend to rhetorically analyze more than I notice when I first meet people the more I think about it. My friend Aaron, who was one of the neighbors I mentioned before, at the dorm was very quiet and withdrawn at first, so I deduced that he was shy and scared of change. But the more and more I got to know him I found out that he was very open to change and that he liked to have fun, he just didn’t like bad first impressions.

            The next person I met was Austin, he was a tall, blonde, and friendly guy, so I figured by his body language that he was either popular in school because he was very open and knew how to communicate with new people or, that he was just one of those annoying people who didn’t talk. After talking to him for a while, I found out that he thought the same about me, and actually he was the same as me. He was very open and talked a lot because he played sports, and in sports you have to be open and communicate with your teammates, otherwise it doesn’t work out.

            So that’s how I found out I rhetorically analyze more than I thought. And it is a skill I think I am very good at using. I’ve always used it when I read books and talk to people, because I always want to go that extra mile to find out what actually is going through that persons head!

P.S. Sorry it was late, Freddy Court internet is in the works of upgrading that internet.

My summary, in reflection is a very common assignment for me. I’ve done plenty of summary-like assignments for my classes. When I think about it, taking notes and studying for an exam is summarizing. You’re taking what you were supposed to learn and read and summarizing it in your head so you can remember it for the exam. Also, I have a class where I have to write summaries, so that’s similar too in a way ha!

            The hardest part of the summary was actually finding a good article to write a summary on. The ones I found to be very lengthy in text, were actually lacking in information because they were being redundant, and the ones I found to be very information dense were pretty short and not worth of a 2-3 page summary. The easiest part was summarizing the article. It was like taking notes in class, you just take what you read and condense it into a more concise and to-the-point form. The article had a lot of information in its paragraphs so it was easy just to translate that into a more friendly and easy to read form!

            I wish I had the peer review by a student to assist me in writing this summary, would have made things flow so much easier. Without the peer review, I had no idea if I did something wrong, or something didn’t make sense, so I had to worry about whether I was completely off or if I was right. I also wish I had time to go to the writing center and make sure I wasn’t using any of my thoughts on the article, because that’s a big no in summaries. But I had neither, so I’ll see what happens for this paper and just make sure I get my help next time!

            I learned a lot about writing in my field, there is still so many other things to learn too! I learned that writing in my field comes in very different forms. There are memos and cover letters and e-mails, and much more too! Each single form requires a different style of writing and a different audience. It’s so interesting to know that there is different ways to communicate within a business or a firm, like its ridiculous on how important it is for the style and audience to be right when you’re writing these pieces! But, all in all, I found that communication is key in the business world, which it should be for every aspect of the job world.