Writing Open Letters

presentation for ENGL 309

1. WRITING

2. The open letter genre is a literary device that allows the writer (and the readers) to focus on one audience, while covertly persuading another (the “real” audience). With serious or volatile topics, this can have the rhetorical effect of taking the heat off readers: those in the “real” audience can pretend that they’re not the ones the letter writer is trying to address.

3. Thus, reading an open letter is like listening in to a conversation – you learn things, but since it (ostensibly) doesn’t directly affect you, you’re less likely to feel defensive or argumentative.

4. Implicit audience (the group of people you’re actually trying to persuade). Two levels of audience in open letters: Explicit audience (the person/group/thing/event/phenomenon/concept to whom the letter is actually addressed.

5. Often, open letters use traditional genre conventions for letter writing to indicate the explicit audience (they also sometimes do this through the title: “An Open Letter to X.”) Dear X,

6. EXAMPLE Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is addressed to “My Fellow Clergymen”; however, several things in the letter suggest that his real (implicit) audience is white moderates. explicit audience implicit audience

7. Because of the complicated audience, open letters have a slightly more complicated persuasive situation. They must maintain the fiction of writing to their explicit audience, while also making a broader argument to their implicit audience.

8. Clarifying Your Argument for the Open Letter What exactly are you trying to do here in terms of your implicit (real) audience? What point do you want to make to them? What do you want them to know, feel, or do as a result of reading your letter? Convince them that a problem exists? (fact) Convince them that the way they’ve been thinking about something is faulty or flawed, or that they’ve misunderstood something? (definition) Convince them that something is good or bad, or better or worse than something else (when they thought otherwise)? (evaluation) Convince them that they need to DO something? (proposal)

9. Invention Work for Open Letters Decide on your audienc es : your implicit audience and your explicit audience. What can you say directly to the one that you want the other to overhear? 2. Focus on what, specifically, you'll use as the basis for your response (the prompt will be given you somehow by your explicit audience). 3. Identify your purpose: what exactly do you want your (implicit) audience to know, feel, or do as a result of your letter? 4. Frame your argument: which of the following best describes what you want to accomplish in the open letter? Are you disputing/establishing a fact?  Are you redefining a term, concept, or event? Are you establishing or clarifying a cause or effect? Are you judging something as good or bad? Are you proposing a solution to a problem, an action that the audience should take, or...? 5. Provide appropriate reasons and support for your argument. 6. Consider the ethos and tone that would best accomplish what you want. Is it too snarky? Too ingratiating? Too knowing?