The rhetorical element “stance” is a very simple element to understand. Stances just your position or point of view on topics. You can have an attitude or opinion on a topic you decide to write about. Stance is involved with everything that contains your opinions or personal ideals. An example of stance can be seen using my group’s engineering proposal “California Coastal Turbine Project”. My team had the stance that California’s blackout issue was a major problem that needed to be solved. We used evidence to provide reason on why our stance was the appropriate stance when it came to this issue (see figure 1 below).

Stance can be intertwined with the other rhetorical elements such as purpose and exigence. I learned that throughout the semester stance never really changed but, the only thing that changes about it is how strong your stance is. If you don’t believe in what you’re writing your stance will suffer because you aren’t truly siding with what you’re writing. Stance for me was always a very easy element that I got right away with little to no issues.

The engineering proposal “California Coastal turbine project” can be found in the dropdown menu under “Revised Assignments”, on the submenu called “Engineering Proposal ”.

Figure 1. first 2 sections from the Engineering Proposal project