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Reaching Rhetorical and Aesthetic Purposes

As you may recall from earlier lesson, rhetoric is the art of speaking or writing effectively. Every writer has a motive when he or she writes. Every writer has his or her own point of view. The writer may try to explain, inform, anger, persuade, amuse, motivate, sadden, or ridicule something or someone.

A good writer chooses words that do a good job of conveying his or her ideas. A good writer writes rhetorically.

Writers often try to evoke an emotional response in their audience. A character or situation may remind a reader about something in his own life. For example, an author may write the story of a girl's first dog. The writer tells about how she was given the dog for her third birthday. The author talks about how the girl and the dog grew up together and were best friends. Then she tells about how the dog grew old and feeble, and finally died.

If the writer has done her job well, you will feel sad when you get to that part of the story. In this case, the writer is trying to create an emotional response in you. Creating an emotional response in the reader is called aesthetic writing. Aesthetic writing is different from rhetorical writing, although both may be done together. Rhetorical writing is the conveying of  ideas. Aesthetic writing is the conveying of emotions.