Ac vity: Analysis of Rhetorical Situa ons in the Walmart online shopper according to Melanie Gagich

from “An Introduc on to and Strategies for Mul modal Composing”.

Course Outcomes addressed in class:

 Mul ple Literacies & Goal Se ng. Students will be able to demonstrate how they
marshal/leverage their mul ple literacies (e.g. speaking, listening, reading, mul lingual wri ng,
transla ng, mul modality, etc.) to support their wri ng processes.
 Varia on across Contexts. Students will be able to iden fy, analyze, and reflect on varia on in
rhetorical and linguis c pa erns, including their own, from a range of contexts (e.g cultural,
digital, workplace, and/or academic).

Course Reading: “An Introduc on to and Strategies for Mul modal Composing” by Melanie Gagich

Instruc ons:

I will split you all into four groups, one per whiteboard. You will be given a few dry erase markers per
group. To make sure all of you par cipate, each person will address one of the criteria of Gagich’s
Rhetorical Situa on characteris cs. Your group will be given 5 minutes to address each characteris c of
the following Walmart adver sement found on their online shopper. Using the white board, you will
iden fy the following of each one:

a. The message. Remember the message is the purpose of the text. In other words, think about
what it is trying to get across to its audience. Is it trying to sell something to a certain
demographic? Is it trying to convince its audience of something? Is it trying to inform them? You
want to be as specific as possible when trying to tell me what the message or purpose of the text
is.
b. The audience. According to Gagich, there are two types of audiences: “An intended audience,
who you target in your message, and an uninten onal audience, who may stumble upon [the]
text”. She explains that “you want to consider the beliefs, values, and demographics of [the]
intended audience as well as the likelihood that uninten onal audiences will interact with [the]
text”(75). Thus, men on who are the intended audiences and how may be the unintended
audiences? (When thinking of unintended audiences, remember to also consider who is being
le out by this text, or who isn’t be addressed who could be included but hasn’t been).
c. The author. This is the creator of the text. Gagich reminds us that authors “bring explicit
(obvious) and/or implicit (not obvious) biases to [the] message, so it is important to recognize
how these might affect it and [the] audience” (76) . In this case, ask what the author gain by
showing these texts to its audience.
d. The genre. Remember that “genre refers to a type of text that has genre conven ons, or
audience expecta ons” (76). In other words, what type of text is this? In this exercise we know
these are al adver sements on a company shopper. However, you need to be more specific
when describing each one. Think: What kind of adver sements are we looking at? Does it do
things we expect out of an adver sement of this type? Why or why not?
e. The medium. This refers to where and/or how the text is distributed (Gagich 76). Once again,
even though all these texts are distributed from the same overarching website, what part of the
site would you see them from? For the texts that don’t show you, what departments would you
find these in if you were to search them online yourself?
Addi onal details to consider as you analyze:

 What language is this text using, if any?

 What kind of images are being chosen and why?
 Is it easy to understand the purpose of the text? Is it meant to be easy to understand?
 How do these adver sements use backgrounds and color?

Images: