PB2B

A writer’s “moves” are the deliberate choices they make in their writing to have a certain effect on their audience.  They can be as subtle as using a single word or as large as the overall organization of their information.  When one encounters a particularly effective move in a piece of writing, one can take it and apply it to one’s own writing, making thorough knowledge and understanding of moves incredibly rewarding to possess. 

In the reading “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking),” Boyd employs a variety of moves, many of which are evident in the structure of the piece.  These moves include her use of bullet points, bolded titles, and italicized terms.  There are multiple instances in the piece where Boyd separates her information into bullet points, making them easier to read and comprehend than if her audience had just been reading a block of text.  The bolded titles aid in this as well, as they organize the different examples she uses and indicates the example that each section is analyzing.  Throughout the reading, there are certain key terms Boyd uses that are italicized (ex. diction, tone).  This choice communicates to the audience that the italicized words are important and formal rhetorical terms that should be remembered.  Towards the beginning of the reading, she relays the five simple facts that she provided her students, separating them into categories of Who, What, Where, When, and How.  This organization of information is not only simple and easy to understand, it contributes to the point she is trying to make through her proposed writing exercise.  This writing exercise is a move itself, as she directly and personally invites the reader to participate in her experiment and prove her argument.  This particular move is incredibly effective, as it allows the audience to witness Boyd’s argument in action and understand more fully what she’s trying to say about rhetoric.  

A broader move that Boyd employs would be the informal tone she uses throughout the piece.  She writes in the first person and often speaks directly to the audience, asking them to partake in writing exercises and, at times, almost having a conversation with them.  She begins with a personal anecdote, a very effective move that helps writers hook the reader and then segue into their argument.  The overall tone of the reading is very informal and personal, which is helpful at certain points in the piece but, at others, excessively conversational.  For example, towards the beginning of the reading, Boyd invites the audience to participate in the murder scene writing exercise.  After given all the necessary details, she drags the introduction on by including, “Go ahead.  Get started on writing your report of the murder scene. Then come back and read the next section” (Boyd 88).  Naturally, she begins the next section with the sentence “Welcome back.”  As a whole, the conversational tone is effective and helpful; there are just a few instances where she goes a little too far. 

 In the reading “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis,” Laura Carroll uses many of the same moves that Boyd included in her piece.  She, too, begins her piece with a story—however, Carroll’s opening anecdote is hypothetical, as she invites the audience to delve into their memories and conjure up the image of their first day of composition class at their university.  Directly inviting the reader to participate in and prove the argument is yet another move that Carroll and Boyd share.  Though not written in the first person as Boyd’s was, Carroll’s piece is incredibly informal and personal, speaking directly to the audience and carrying a very conversational tone.  Like Boyd, Carroll uses bullet points to organize her information, including questions that the audience can pose as they are analyzing a work and a list of different types of rhetoric that one might encounter.  

However, Carroll also employs a number of different moves than Boyd that achieve different effects on the overall work.  Firstly, the overall structure of Carroll’s reading is much more paragraph-oriented than Boyd’s.  She uses bullet points more sparingly, which actually contributes to their effectiveness as they indicate particularly important information.  Carroll also doesn’t italicize or bold any important terms in the body of her piece, which took away slightly from the overall learning experience from this reading.  There is a lot of important information to be found in this reading, particularly in the section “The Rhetorical Situation, Or Discerning Context” (Carroll 48).  In this section, Carroll defines and explains the three parts to understanding the context of a rhetorical moment, as well as context itself, audience, and constraints.  These are important terms to know and are focal points for the reading, but are tucked away into a blocks of text without any indicator of their significance.  If these terms had been bolded or italicized, their importance would have been more visually evident and they would have been more easily recognized, understood, and remembered.  

Moves, like genre, can be found everywhere.  Also like genre, we recognize them and use them all the time, just without completely understanding them or knowing what they are.  Having a fuller understanding of moves and how they work can be endlessly beneficial and can help one become not just a better reader, but a better writer.