Rhetorical Situation
§ How is the event reported at http://www.npsas.org/Contamination.html (seedstock contamination) related to the "Defining Mission" (DM) document?
§ Does the DM document represent an immediate response to the contamination? If not, what intervening factors or events led to NPSAS deciding to write this?
§ What is timely about the DM document?
§ Who is the intended audience?
§ What did the writers hope the audience would do as a result of reading it?
Composing Process
§ What genre is the DM document? How is alike or different from other members of this genre?
§ How many people were involved in writing this document?
§ What part did each writer play in the composing process?
§ How was research conducted?
§ Were documents collected to aid in writing? If so, about how many, what kind?
§ How did the writers communicate with each other and pass the document around?
§ What review process did the document go through?
Rhetorical Structure and Strategy
§ What do you think are the strongest arguments in this paper?
§ Did the writers intentionally appeal to logic? to emotion? to personal character? How?
§ How does the document represent a constituency--how does it make internal connections with those it speaks on behalf of?
§ Why is the paper structured in the order it presently has?
§ Do you think the document's design will lend to its effectiveness? How?
Publication
§ Has it been released yet? If so where; if not where will it appear?
§ How wide will the distribution be?
Reception
§ How would you classify the population of readers?
§ What kind of reception do you expect from various types of readers?
§ Are there individuals the writers especially hope will read it?
§ What reactions do you hope these people will have?