Writing with Authority

Authority, in writing, means that students are writing with a defined purpose and have tone of voice as the author that says you are confident with your ideas in your writing. Although this may prove difficult for students who lack exposure to more advanced writing conventions, a good majority of students would most likely be surprised to discover that there are many different concepts and tools they can use which can help to develop an authoritative voice in their writing. There are many different methods of support which can help students to convey a message with authority, and they are all interconnected in a much larger framework.
Discourse Communities, Genre Systems, and Domain Knowledge/Rhetorical Knowledge
When learning how to write with authority, there is perhaps no better place to start than the idea of discourse communities. Discourses are best described as “ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes” (Gee, 6-7). The idea here is that there are certain rules/methods of writing that must be followed based on the specific genre students are trying to write. This brings us to the concept of genre systems, which consist of “the several genre sets of people working together in an organized way, plus the patterned relations in the production, flow, and use of these documents” (Bazerman, 374). In simpler terms, genre systems are made up of the different types of documents in a specific field or profession, in a broader sense than a genre set would. These two concepts of genre systems and discourse communities relate to each other in the sense that they contain specific writing conventions that one must follow in order to be able to write with authority, based on the student’s specific discourse community and genre of writing they are trying to appeal to. This leads into the third idea here, known as domain knowledge and rhetorical knowledge. These two forms of knowledge are defined as follows: domain knowledge is knowledge about a specific topic or academic domain, while rhetorical knowledge is about knowing how to write and what terminology to use based on the field the student is writing in and the type of document the student is writing (Penrose & Geisler, 509-512). The reason this can help students to write with authority is because you need both types of knowledge in order to be able to communicate your ideas as well as possible. It’s important to know how to word your writing as a student based on the specific rhetorical situation the student is observing. You must ask yourself: “what are the constraints on my writing?”, “what audience am I trying to appeal to?”, and “what kind of jargon can I use to appeal to that specific audience?” All of these concepts help a student to write with a more authoritative because having knowledge about your discourse community and knowing how to write in order to serve the higher purposes of your specific genre system can help a student to sound more proficient in their fields.
Learning to Interpret Your Sources, Activity Systems, and Rhetorical Situations
To better understand the concept of rhetorical knowledge and its implications, it is important that students understand the concept of rhetorical situations as well as the concept of activity systems. Rhetorical situations are defined as situations that involve exigence (an urgency), an audience, and a rhetor speaking or writing about a specific topic or issue (Grant-Davie, 351-359). This relates to the concept of activity systems, which are known as “a group of people who share a common object and motive over time, as well as the wide range of tools they use together to act on that object and realize that motive” (Kain and Wardle, 275). These two concepts relate in that we must understand our own activity systems and how they function, and the rhetorical situations involving these activity systems before we can know to how to write with authority, based on the situational circumstances. If we do not understand how the different figures in our activity systems relate to each other, then we will not be able to write in a way that communicates to everyone in that activity system that we have a strong knowledge of the topics we are writing about. This leads into the idea of interpretation of a source for persuasive purposes: “the concept of rhetorical situations gives students a powerful tool for creating a persuasive analysis” (Kantz, 438). Students must ask certain questions when writing: “What audience am I trying to appeal to for this activity system?”, “What are the constraints for this rhetorical situation and how do I abide by them while maintaining authority as the rhetor?”, and “How do I interpret my source effectively to gain more authority on the issue?” Asking these types of questions will help students to gain a wider scope when creating text in order to develop a stronger sense of authority in our writing.

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