Differentiating the Rhetorical Modes

A writer may use any one of the four rhetorical modes of discourse or a combination of these modes in order to fulfill his purpose. These four modes are identified as exposition, narration, argument and description. It seems that knowledge of these modes can be useful to our students in the classroom as their fulfill their roles as both readers adn writers by helping them select appropriate modes to accomplish their purpose when writing and to categorise texts when reading. These modes should be explicitly taught in the classroom to develop students' understanding of texts in order to help them fulfill the goals and objectives of the English curriculum. Here I seek to differentiate these modes according to my understanding from texts read.

Rhetorical Modes

	Description	Narration	Exposition	Argument
Purpose	Descriptive prose is used to express what a thing looks like, smells like or tastes like. It seeks to portray the way things are perceived through the five senses (sight, hearing, touch smell and taste). It caters especially to the visual sense.	Narration seeks to recount the details of events/ actions in a temporal sequence. It seeks to present an event to the reader and to provide a sense of witnessing an action.It generally seeks to appeal to a reader's imagination	Expository discourse is concerned with making an idea clear, analysing a situation, defining a term, giving instructions. Its primary function is to inform and explain.Therefore seeks to appeal intellect and understanding.	An argument makes an attempt to convince or persuade an audience that a claim is true by appealing to reason/rational thought processes as well as their understanding or to emotion.
Audience	Reader- usually conjures up a mental/visual image of what is being "described" or written about.	Reader- helps to recreate an incident for readers to create the sense of witnessing action.	Reader- conveys information to give reader a level of understanding.	Reader- It moves the readers to take an action or to form or change an opinion.
Content	It helps answer questions like: What is it like? What is he/she like? What does he/she look like?	This mode answers the question of what. For example: what happened?	Some questions that an expository text may answer are How does it work? What are the constituent parts? What is its importance?	Answers the question why is this so?
Style	Explicit use of adjectives, sensuous details and spatial/descriptive sequence that "freezes" time as it moves over an object/person/place etcetera to describe it	Use of action or dynamic verbs, dialogue; point of view narrator which is usually first or third person narrator. It should include story conventions such as plot, setting, characters, climax and resolution.	Expository style is characterised by the following: analysis, classification, definition, illustration, cause and effect, comparison and contrast and analogy	Presents claims and use of supportive evidence, argument use facts, authoritative opinion, and personal experience for its development with refutation of counterarguments whilst the "artistic" argument uses persuasion in the form of repetition, rhetorical questions and emotional appeals.
Voice	Description uses details that appeals to our senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch). May be artistic appealing to affective and sensory faculties or technical/scientific with an unembellished description.	To convey a particular mood (feeling) or to make an incident come alive, narratives employ the use of the first person or “I” narration and the third person or he/she/it persona. Generally artistic in nature.	In exposition, the writing is engaging and reflective of the writer’s underlying commitment to the topic. Generally scientific/technical in nature though it may be artistic.	The voice of argument has a strong and definite position on an issue from the beginning of the piece and has enthusiasm from start to finish. Can be logical (scientific/technical) or psychological (artistic).
Organisation	The organising principle of description is spatial. It creates a virtual image in the minds of readers as we must move spatially over the object in order to describe its different parts. described.	Time is the organising principle of narration. It is temporal in nature meaning that its events are sequential.	Organisational structure of this mode are various, with majority being based on logic: analysis, clarification, definition, illustration, cause and effect, comparison and contrast and sometimes analogy. The method chosen dictates the organisation of the piece as each method has its own distinguishing characteristics.	Argument is organised by way of formal elements and logic. The formal elements include at least two claims, the first of which being the conclusion and the other, the remaining claim or claims that are the grounds which support or justify the conclusion