Table of rhetorical modes

The first column may not be visible. Here is a guide to what each row in this column contains. First row- Purpose; Second row- audience; Third row- content; fourth row- style; fifth row- voice; sixth row- organization

	Description	Narration	Exposition	Argument
Purpose	Descriptive prose is used to express what a thing looks like, smells like or tastes like. In short, it portrays how we perceive the world through our five senses (sight, hearing, touch smell and taste).	It recounts a personal or fictional experience or tells a story. Narration is concerned with actions in a temporal sequence, with life in motion. It seeks to present an event to the reader, a sense of witnessing an action.	This discourse is concerned with making an idea clear, analysing a situation, defining a term, giving instructions and the like. Its primary function is to inform and explain.	An argument is an attempt to convince or persuade an audience that a claim is true by means of appeals to reason or to emotion.
Audience	Reader- to help create a mental picture of what is being written about.	Reader- to recreate an incident for readers rather than to simply tell them about it.	Reader- conveys information to the reader so that a level of understanding can be achieved.	Reader- It moves the readers to take an action or to form or change an opinion.
Content	It answers the question ‘what’. For example: What is it like? What is he/she like?	This mode answers the question of what. For example: what happened?	This mode has the types of questions that a piece of expository may answer. Some of these are: Hoe does it work? What are the constituent parts? What is its importance?	Answers the question why is this so?
Style	Explicit use of adjectives, data that appeals to sensory faculties and descriptive sequence.	Apparent use of action or dynamic verbs, dialogue. The point of view if the narrator is usually first or third person narrator. It should include story conventions such as plot, setting, characters, climax and resolution.	The distinguishing features and style of exposition incorporates the following functions: analysis, classification, definition, illustration, cause and effect, comparison and contrast and analogy	For the presentation of evidence, arguments use facts, authoritative opinion, and personal experience for its development whilst the rebuttal or refuting side uses persuasion in the form of repetition, rhetorical questions and emotional appeals.
Voice	Description uses details that appeals to the senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch).	To convey a particular mood (feeling) or to make an incident come alive, narratives employ the use of the first person or “I” narration and the third person or he/she/it persona.	In exposition, the writing is engaging and reflective of the writer’s underlying commitment to the topic.	The voice of argument has a strong and definite position on an issue from the beginning of the piece and has enthusiasm from start to finish.