Rhetorical Triangle Handout

My anonymous friend who we'll call... Ringo Hammerschlitz.
Ringo was having some trouble with this assignment.
So I have come to the rescue!

"After reading and annotating the "Rhetorical Triangle Handout" consider and reply to the following questions:

How can understanding author, audience, and purpose help you when reading an argument?

How can understanding author, audience and purpose help you when writing an academic argument?

In terms of academic writing, what do you think that some writers might do that negatively affect author, audience, and purpose?

In terms of academic writing, how do you think you can best establish your credibility as an academic writer? Where do you think you should establish and remind your readers of your purpose? What do you think the expectations might be of an academic audience?"

I don't need no readin of no handout, yo, I got this.
cracks knuckles

When reading an argument, the first thing I want to do is skim off the bullshit. Knowing the author allows me to find out who were the largest financial contributors to the author's work allows me to write off anything the author says on topics relating to that industry as complete hogwash - since it indicates an obvious bias. Knowing the audience indicates the source of the marketing agenda behind the rhetoric. And the obvious purpose of all things academic is to make more money.

If I know the audience in advance when writing an argument, I can analyze how dumb the recipients are, and what their demographic preferences are, to best pander and solicit to whatever their demands are like a proper sycophantic lackey.

Many authors also tend to blithely state and restate the same point over and over, repeating themselves while also beating a dead horse they're crossing in midstream, using increasingly grandiloquent and verbose soliloquy to effectively bolster the intellectual standpoint of their position, while taking no risks, by making no actual affirmative or negative statements on any particular topic. By avoiding clear statements and controversial topics, like things that actually matter to someone somewhere, the author can easily avoid any fault or blame that might arise from an audience taking them even the least bit personally or seriously.

To establish credibility, the key is sucking up, also known as "not telling truth to power at all ever under any circumstances." The academic audience demands platitudes of empowerment followed by meaningless technical drivel citing sources on the internet which will likely not exist by the time of publication, rendering the internal conclusions irrelevant and without correlation. As an academic author, it is most important to be vague and non-descriptive, or incomprehensibly technical in all points made, to keep the audience confused enough to simultaneously ignore the sources of your funding and the actual data being presented.

And by keeping the purpose hazy as a ghost in a fog bank, whenever you make any confusing or muddled statements, that will remind the listener of your purpose as an academic writer: to confuse the fucking hell out of everyone.