To:
From:
Subject: A Rhetoric Analysis of Technical Writing
Date:
The purpose of this memo is to provide a rhetoric analysis of the following technical document. The document is a property of Coca Cola Company, and it is a 1941 Christmas advert. It focuses its attention on promoting coca cola as a drink that quenches thirst.
Source: Ehrlich
Taken as a whole, the rhetoric analysis establishes that the poster conveys a clear message, but it fails to meet a number of measures of excellence in totality. The memo starts by evaluating the characteristics of a technical document before proceeding to its measures of excellence.
Characteristics
Audience: The poster is addressed to English-speaking members of the public.
Problem solved: It demonstrates that coca cola quenches thirst. Accordingly, anybody who is thirsty should look for a coca cola drink because that is what thirst asks for.
Organization’s goal and culture: The poster is intended to demonstrate that among other things Coca Cola Company works to quench thirst, and that it acknowledges the festive season.
Production: The poster has been created by a photographer, graphic artist and product experts. Graphic artist helped to insert the graphics on the poster. A photographer took the photograph while product experts determined the message to be incorporated on the poster.
Readability: The posture of the man appearing on the poster is used to demonstrate the state of a thirsty person. The coca cola box and the bottles of coca cola appearing on the poster are used to demonstrate what a thirsty person requires and should use. The words and graphics have been used to convey the overall message. On the whole, the different elements have been used to demonstrate that a thirsty person requires coca cola to quench thirst.
Words and graphics: The words have been used to explain everything on the poster whereas graphics demonstrate what the words say about coca cola.
Tools: high-tech tools have been used to create the poster.
Measure of excellence
Honesty: As far as thirst is concerned, the poster does not mislead the members of its audience because coca cola quenches thirst. However, the poster does not inform the members of the audience the possible side effects of drinking too much sugary substances. As far as honesty is concerned, the poster should warn the members of the audience about the possible side effects of starchy substances like coca cola. This would be an honest message worthy including on the poster.
Clarity: The poster conveys a single message. It informs the members of the public that their thirst asks for coca cola and nothing more. Any person who comes across the poster can understand this message easily. However, the message lacks flow in that one must look at the message appearing on the box to understand what to do to quench thirst.
Accuracy: The message of the poster is accurate. It does not overstate what coca cola drink does.
Comprehensiveness: Although the poster is both accurate and clear, it does not provide all the information that a person may require to quench thirst. For example, it does not specify the number of bottles that a person might require to quench thirst. Furthermore, it does not inform its audiences other benefits of drinking coca cola. It only focuses its attention on one benefit. At the same time, it does not provide the possible side effects of excessive consumption of sugary substances.
Accessibility: The poster is made up of one complete section. Accordingly, a person who comes across it does not need to click links unnecessarily to find the various sections of the poster. At the same time, the person does not need to flip through pages to find the other sections of the poster (Markel 13). This is an advantage to the poster.
Conciseness: The poster uses shorter words. It also eliminates unnecessary phrases. By so doing, it conveys a lot of information economically (Markel 13).
Professional appearance: Overall, the poster appears neat and designed in the right way. It contains an attractive coca cola box that carries bottles of coca cola. It also contains a clear message. Furthermore, it consists of a person that looks thirsty. All these items form a positive impression (Markel 12). As a result, a person that comes across the poster may be attracted to it. However, it contains a number of dolls that do not serve any major purpose. Bearing in mind that the poster is intended for grownups, the dolls do not serve any purpose. In this case, although children might be attracted by the dolls, they do not have money to buy coca cola. More importantly, most of them do not consume coca cola even if they consume other brands of the company. Therefore, professionally the poster does not convey the right message because of the misleading dolls.
Correctness: In spite of the above, the poster adheres to conventions of grammar. It uses words that are correct grammatically. It also conveys a clear message. However, it would not be grammatically correct to put the message in quotation marks. The quotation marks in this case do not serve any grammatical purpose even if they emphasize the overall message. Grammatically, the quotation marks should not be used in such a case because they do not serve any purpose in grammar. Therefore, they should be omitted.
Work cited
Ehrlich, Jake. Vintage coca cola Christmas. RoleMagazine.com. 2016. Web 19 May 2017 http://www.rolexmagazine.com/2011/12/1970-coca-cola-ad-its-real-thing-coke.html
Markel, Mike. Practical strategies for technical communication. New York: Bedford/st. Martin’s, 2013. Print.