These rhetorical modes are as follows: description, narration, exposition and argument. These modes can be differentiated in terms of purpose, content, style, voice and organisation.
PURPOSE
Description
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)
Narration
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.
Exposition
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.
Argument
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.
CONTENT
Description
It answers the question ‘what’. For example: What is it like? What is he/she like?
Narration
This mode answers the question of what. For example: what happened?
Exposition
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?
Argument
Answers the question why is this so?
STYLE
Description
Explicit use of adjectives, data that appeals to sensory faculties and descriptive sequence
Narration
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.
Exposition
The distinguishing features and style of exposition incorporates the following functions: analysis, classification, definition, illustration, cause and effect, comparison and contrast and analogy.
Argument
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.
AUDIENCE
Description
Reader- to help create a mental picture of what is being written about.
Narration
Reader- to recreate an incident for readers rather than to simply tell them about it.
Exposition
Reader- conveys information to the reader so that a level of understanding can be achieved.
Reader- conveys information to the reader so that a level of understanding can be achieved.
Argument
Reader- It moves the readers to take an action or to form or change an opinion.
VOICE
Description
Description uses details that appeals to the senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch).
Narration
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.
Exposition
In exposition, the writing is engaging and reflective of the writer’s underlying commitment to the topic.
Argument
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.
ORGANIZATION
Description
The organizing principle of description is spatial as it creates a virtual image in the minds of readers.
Narration
The organisation principle of narration is temporal in nature meaning that its events are sequential.
Exposition
There is not one single method of organizing exposition but rather a variety, with majority being based on logic: analysis, clarification, definition, illustration, cause and effect, comparison and contrast and sometimes analogy. The method chosen dictates the organisation of the piece as each method has its own distinguishing characteristics.
Argument
Argument is organised by way of formal elements and logic. The formal elements include at least two claims, the first of which being the conclusion and the other, the remaining claim or claims that are the grounds which support or justify the conclusion.
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