Purpose is simply why we write. Specifically for engineering, it is what you are trying to accomplish with the document you are producing. Some examples include: explaining how some mechanism works, how to accomplish a task, asking for funding for a project, etc. The main goal is for your audience to believe that your project is valid or for them to know how to carry out the task you were writing about. In the case of my memo, I was trying to convince City College president, Mr Boudreau to hire more academic advisors at our school. In order to do so, I had to use all the proper writing techniques and use all elements of the rhetorical situation.

In order to achieve my purpose, it was essential that I understood Mr. Boudreau’s responsibilities at the school, his attitude towards students, and overall how to appeal to his emotions. Below is my purpose for writing to Mr. Boudreau. This can be found in the assignments tab under “Memo”.

Figure 1. Part of my Memo to Vincent Boudreau.

Since achieving purpose required me to use many of the other rhetorical elements, I feel that my ability to demonstrate purpose improved throughout the semester. This is because my knowledge of most of the elements also grew with each assignment we completed. All of the elements and purpose are intertwined. Your exigence fuels your purpose, audience determines what your purpose is, media effects the way in which you convey your purpose, your stance on the topic can influence what the audience feels and the genre of your writing depends on what purpose you are trying to achieve. My improvement in determining purpose can be seen in the engineering proposal because I feel that my exigence was much stronger and I had a better understanding between purpose and exigence by the final project. The background portion shows my strong exigence for the topic of Australian Bushfires, and the needs statement displays the purpose of our document. More of this can be found under assignments in the “Engineering Proposal” tab.

Figure 2. Background and Needs Statement of Engineering Proposal.