Describing Something from Two Perspectives. To continue working on writing as conversation, you can practice changing your rhetorical stance. This reading will help you: “Rhetoric and Genre: You’ve

Describing Something from Two Perspectives.  To continue working on writing as  conversation, you can practice changing your rhetorical stance.  This reading will help you: “Rhetoric and Genre: You’ve Got This! (Even if You Don’t Think You Do…). For the second half of your post, describe one incident or event from two perspectives that you might have to that event or incident.  The event might be a confrontation between two employees in the break room. You could write it from these two perspectives, wearing two different writing masks:

• You send your spouse an animated, upset text about what just happened, as you were very frightened by it. (Writing mask is a close, personal one not afraid to express strong emotions and use informal, conversational language.)
• You write a detailed report to give to the human resource director about the same event, describing in careful detail exactly what you saw, without adding in any emotion or bias. (Writing mask is a serious, objective, calm one, demonstrating the ability to control emotional responses and using language that is formal, factual, and objective.)

Think about the differences in word choice, sentence structure, emphasis, inclusions and omissions as you build these two descriptions.  

Your perspectives could be set forth like this:

• Description of incident: Include here a brief statement of what happened and who was involved.
• Perspective # 1: Include here how you would describe the event to one person (maybe a friend, spouse, or co-worker). Tell us who your audience is and then write your description just like you would say it (no need to put inappropriate language here).
• Perspective # 2: Include here how you would describe the event to another person or persons (maybe a supervisor, human resource person, or law enforcement personnel). Tell us who your audience is and then write your description just like you would say it.