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Central
Categories of Rhetorical Decision
Organization
The ordering of material.
The way a user is led through the communication. There are two dimensions
to organization:
- Pattern of organization.
The arrangement of material in the communication.
- Transition.
How the audience is carried from element to element through the
material.
Organizational Problems
on the Internet
The decisions on the
internet are similar to any communication
- How will information
on the website be arranged?
- On the home page
or linked?
- What will be the
page tree? What pages will link to the
home or welcome page? What material will link to the secondary
pages?
- How many clicks
will it take to get the user to the material?
- How will the user
be carried through the site?
- What navigation
strategy will move the user?
- Will the user
be free to choose their own path or is a specified path necessary?
How will a specified path be constructed?
- How will the user
find their way back to the home or welcome page?
- How will the information
on the webpage be arranged?
- On the presentation
screen or below the scroll?
- What are the regions
of the page and how will they be delimited?
- What information
goes in which region?
- How will you move
the user through the page?
- What motivates
the scroll?
- Will the user
find the information to hold their interest on the page?
Definition
and Explanation
Clarifying vocabulary,
concepts, and ideas through definition
and explication.
Explication on the Internet
- Identifying problems
requiring attention
- Terminology that
part of the audience does not know including technical terminology
- Concepts or ideas
that are novel to the users
- Complex ideas
that are difficult to understand
- Identifying strategies
to meet the problems
- Hyperlinks to
definitions and explications
- Images and other
visual possibilities to illustrate
Argument
and Support
Persuasive sites, and
promotional sites require attention to support for claims
made on the sites.
Identifying issues
The first step is to
identify any problems of belief and support
- What information or
claims are key to your achieving your purpose on the site?
- Which of these will
meet with a skeptic response?
- Do you wish to convince
the skeptics or eliminate them from your target users?
Formulating Claims
- What claims, if accepted
by your users, will address the central issues?
- Which of these claims
will your audience accept without further support?
- What claims require
additional support for at least some of your target audience?
Providing Support on
the Internet
You need next to identify
strategies for supporting
your claims with those who might doubt the claims you have isolated.
- Content Strategies
- Examples to support
your claims
- Analogies or similar
instances to illustrate your claims
- Expert or ordinary
testimony
- Photographs, film,
sound, or other images to support your claim
- Format Strategies
- Use of hyperlink
and interactive strategies to identify issues
- Use of hyperlink
to provide support for segmented audiences
Motivation
Internet sites must provide
motivation for users to stay at the site and, in some cases, need
to provide motivation for users to take specific actions that are
integrall to the site purpose.
Identifying Motivational
Requirements
- What are the challenges
in holding users to the site?
- What are the behavioral
actions the sponsor wishes to induce in the users?
Identifying Motivational
Appeals
Culturally based ways
of framing: Are there culturally based patterns that can motivate
action. For example, American audiences are motivated toward sympathy
for victims.
Maslow's Hierarchy
of Prepotency: Abraham Maslow posited that there are five levels
of motivation
- Self actualization:
achieve your karma
- Esteem: Self respect,
respect of others
- Belongingness &
Love: love and be loved
- Security: stability,
freedom from worry
- Physiological: shelter,
food, warmth
Maslow contended that
beginning with the lower level (physiological) each level of motivation
is activated only when the lower one is satisfied. Thus, a rhetor
identifies the level active in their audience and appeals to that
level. For example, when American life insurance companies express
an appeal such as "You don't buy it for you, you buy it for
them" when showing a playing family they appeal to the part
of their audience that is motivated by belongingness and love needs.
User analysis:
One of the questions you should ask when analyzing your user is
to identify the motivational appeals that might attract them to
your site or move them to respond to your appeals.
Strategies for appeal
on the website
- Content appeals:
What verbal strategies can establish the appeal?
- Visualization step:
Are there strategies for using visuals to reinforce the appeal?
- Response strategy:
Are there interactive strategies through which you can achieve
your behavior objectives?
Style
Rhetorical analysis is
sensitive to how to the response of the users to various design
strategies you may use. In addition to generally
applicable rhetorical figures, the internet requires other stylistic
decisions.
Identify stylistic features
you may wish to use in presenting your material
- Background devices
including color and image
- Typeface and color
- Layout strategies
- Special effects: flashing,
motion, image
- Navigation strategies
Analyze your users'
response to the devices
- Are there particular
associations with particular images or colors for your users?
- Are there issues of
taste and good judgment?
- What hardware and
software will your users have? How might it influence your strategies?
- Are there disabilities
among your users that require options.
- What elements of style
may turn your user from the site quickly? What elements may hold
them to the site?
Character
of the Rhetor
Communication projects
to the audience a portrayal of the rhetor. Websites should be
designed so they portray the character
or ethos that the rhetor wishes to project. Sometimes this is
called "projecting an image of the sponsor."
Identify the character
you may wish to use in presenting your material
- Friendly or hostile?
- Pleasant or angry?
- Exciting or stable
and predictable?
- Embracer of change
or attracted to the tried and true?
- A teacher or a salesman?
- Whatever other characterizations
help to define the character
Design the site to project
the character you select
Present your material
in ways consistent with your chosen character.
- Select visuals to
portray the mood you wish
- Construct the persona
for your user on the site
- Choose your style
devices consistent with the character you project
Glossary
- Categories:
Terms that allow us to see phenomena. A category focuses our attention
on a particular aspect of observation and decision.
- Navigation:
The strategy for allowing the user to move among the pages of
a site. This may include, for example, a bar displaying the linked
pages, a left hand column of links, an image with linked regions,
and so on.
- Page
tree: An outline or visual depiction of how the pages in a
website relate to each other. In the visual depiction, the home
or welcome page is at the top, with each secondary page that can
be reached directly through hyperlink from that page arrayed below
and connected with a line. That procedure is repeated for each
page that connects to each secondary page.
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