When composing my Composition in Two Genres it was different from previous essay assignments. In this essay, I was allowed to be more creative since I chose a visual genre. My composition rationale was based on my poster and political cartoon creation so I was able to express more of what I wanted to say in this essay compared to the other essays we’ve written. When explaining my visual genres, I was also allowed to be more informal when explaining it.

For this essay, I chose to do a visual genre because it was convenient. I could express what I wanted to express by dedicating a small amount of time to create the visual genre rather than doing hours of research on an article or a website. Furthermore, since my audience is the US government and black Americans, I chose to create a political cartoon and a poster. The US government can conveniently have access to political cartoons because it can be published through newspapers or articles. Politicians would read these mediums to keep up to date with current news. Black Americans who are experiencing the disadvantages of the racial wealth gap wouldn’t have access to technological devices, so I chose a visual genre that would be accessible to the public without using money. Posters can be posted in shops, on the walls of the streets or in public transportations. Overall, I considered the state of my audiences and what genres would they have access to in order to have my message about the problem of the racial wealth gap spread.

The type of rhetorical strategy I used to engage my audience was the use of logos and primarily pathos. In my political cartoon, I used logos by having each brick labeled as a policy that the US government passed or didn’t prevent throughout American history. I also used pathos by having the black man restricted from climbing the stairs by being chained to the floor and having bricks fall on top of him. Climbing the steps would symbolize wealth accumulation. In my poster, I appealed to pathos by using the image of a fist and the word “fight” to give a sense of power and unity among the black American community. I also wrote “march for equal wealth” to demand black Americans to march for equal wealth so that they can gain the attention of US politicians so that they can make changes.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.