Evaluation of Rhetorical Situations

In this post I will be analyzing the author/speaker, audience, and context of three examples of public speech about the controversy surrounding the economic effects of legalizing marijuana.

Belcastro, Bruno, "Microphone." 4/18/2012 via Flickr. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

Source 1:"Why Colorado and Washington Were Wise to Legalize Pot"

• Author/ Speaker: The author of this article is Scott Shane. He is a professor of entrepreneurial studies at Case Western Reserve University. He has also written several books including Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live and Finding Fertile Ground: Identifying Extraordinary Opportunities for New Businesses. Shane is definitely a credible individual based off of his professional history.
• Audience: The intended audience for this article are individuals who want to educate themselves about the general and financial benefits of legalizing marijuana. These people want a well-rounded education about the pros and cons of legalization.
• Context: This article was published on January 20, 2014. Therefore the information within this writing, which is presented as a standard article, is fairly recent and definitely still relevant. The legalization of marijuana in Colorado, on January 1 of 2014 was definitely the event that caused the author to write this article.

Source 2: "How legalizing pot could save America's Economy"

• Author/ Speaker: S.E Smith is the author of this article. She is an award winning author who has written many books in many genres. Knowing that she wrote this article gives the text a lot more credibility because she is so well known.
• Audience: The intended audience of this article are people who want to be given the opportunity to learn a lot about not only the ethical arguments occurring over legalization, but the many economic benefits of ending marijuana prohibition. These individuals are the type of people who want an unbiased and unaggressive representation of facts.
• Context: This article was published on November 9, 2014. Based on the fact that this article was released less than a year ago, it is apparent that its content is still very relevant. I feel that the events that caused this article to be written was the approved legalization, pending on Congressional approval, in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. that occurred right at the same time this writing was published.

Source 3: "Legalizing Marijuana for Profit is a Bad Idea"

• Author/ Speaker: There are two authors of this article, Jamie P. Chandler and Palmer Gibbs. Chandler is a political scientist at Hunter College in New York City. Palmer Gibbs is a journalist based out of Washington DC. These authors definitely seem to  have a decent amount of credibility.
• Audience: The intended audience for this article are people who want to learn about the negative effects of legalizing marijuana. The author is most likely trying to appeal to readers who already have poor opinions about legalization, or people who are on the fence about the issue.
• Context: This article was published on April 23, 2013. Though this publication date isn't very recent, the arguments within it are still reliable. The authors of this article most likely wrote it in response to American's push to legalize marijuana, following in Colorado's footsteps. The material is presented in a straightforward and informative way.

Reflection:

After reading and commenting on both Annelise's and Cynthia's "Evaluation of Rhetorical Situations" posts I am way more confident in the forms of speech that I chose to use for this post. Initially, I was concerned that my sources were too opinionated, but now I am reassured that author having a strong opinion on the topic is what this assignment is all about. From my peers I was able to see that arguments that had more detail and support tend to be way more effective at getting their message across, than less developed writings. After comparing my analyses to those of Annelise and Cynthia, I have come to the conclusion that for now they are adequate, because I covered the most pertinent points of each source, but once I decide on a rhetorical situation to focus on, I will need to evaluate the aspects of that piece of writing much more in depth.