For my third assignment I was tasked to write an informative review on one of the topics that was picked from our instructor. An informative review is genre of writing that informs the public about a certain issue by presenting both sides of the argument with evidence, without taking a position. It collects data prom previous research and analyses them as well as find the gaps in them. I chose to go with “The repercussions of overturning Roe v Wade. The rhetorical elements for this assignment were a neutral stance, purpose, audience, exigence, media, genre.
What prompted me to pick this topic, aka my exigence, was the 2022 decision of the Supreme court to revoke this constitutional right and gave each state the authority to decide the legal limitations and guidelines concerning abortion care. I wanted my audience to be both pro-life and proof-choice people, as well as young feminists. My purpose was for my audience to have a better understanding of the other sides opinions.
As I said earlier the most important rhetorical element in informative reviews is your stance. This style of writing requires you to hold a neutral stance. This was a bit hard for me since it is a very sensitive topic. The tip I learned while taking notes in class was to use language in your advantage to create a non-bias writing. I used sentences such as “This decision sparked many polemics” and “forcing health care providers, and citizens to fight over what limits the government could place on abortion access.” These statements reflected a certain objective perspective on the issue. Another special rhetorical element of this writing style is genre. Genre in its core is the structure of your writing. I organized my writing into subheadings, and I created a chronological order of my topic. I started with the question behind my topic “Where does life begin”. Where I gave a summary of my chosen research and discussed this question in its different perspectives. Then I continued with the history of abortion law in the USA, where I discussed major decisions, in different points of time, on abortion. I then continued with the repercussions of overturning Roe v Wade and gave a list of what would happen if this happened. On my conclusion I tried to keep it short and not offer any new information since that is one of the genre characteristics of informative review.
On my last rhetorical element, media, I would say that my media was digital writing (I used word), since the assignment itself needed to be reviewed by my classmates and instructor and this is an online class.
