Rhetorical Modes

Modes as Pattterns of Organization

Rhetorical modes are patterns of organization aimed at achieving a particular effect in the reader. Narration and description are modes whose primary purpose is stirring the reader's emotions. With these essays, writers often take liberties with organization and structure.

On the other hand, essays that are aimed at explaining something to a reader tend to be much more tightly organized in order to make perfectly clear what it is the reader is expected to understand. The modes that meet the needs for an essay of explanation include process, illustration, classification/division, cause/effect, comparison/contrast, and definition. These essays aim at helping readers understand a subject by exploring its functions, causes, or consequences, its relationships to other subjects, or its meaning or nature. Finally, argumentative and persuasive essays seek to change readers' attitudes or actions with regard to specific subjects and may use both explanation and entertainment as a means to persuade--change-- a reader's behavior or thinking. Each essay has its own unique characteristics and qualities. An essay may also use one or several rhetorical modes as methods or strategies within the essay to achieve the overall purpose of the essay.

Modes as Methods of Support

While it is important to become familiar with the way rhetorical modes work, additionally, it is important to note that essays frequently use one pattern of organization to support a larger purpose. For instance, in an essay whose primary purpose is to argue that one political candidate is better suited for office than another, the writer might use comparison/contrast to favorably contrast the preferred candidate to another in order to secure people's vote. Alternatively, the writer might use narration, description, or illustration to tell humorous stories about the opposing candidate in order to suggest that that candidate is unqualified for the responsibilities of office. The writer might also use cause/effect, focusing on the past successes or failures of the candidates and suggesting that these indicate future success or failure. In this way, modes are used as methods of support.

In other words, a writer may use a rhetorical mode individually to create a particular essay, or a writer may use a particular mode as a tool to build the larger argument or purpose of a paper. Just as someone must know how to use a hammer and nails in order to build a house, it is important to understand how each of the modes work individually before hammering a mode into an essay in order to build an argument.

ENGL1010 Composition I