Writing 2 : Project Builder 1A: Dissecting a Genre’s Rhetorical Features and Conventions

A Postcard

What makes a postcard a postcard? There are many rhetorical features and conventions for a postcard that help us recognize this thing, and make it into what we acknowledge as a postcard.

Postcards are sent, seen, and read. With each audience, there is a different purpose for the card. In general terms, the audience of a postcard is the reader or receiver of the card. Readers can consist of family members, friends, relatives, or even the sender. With the audience of family, friends, and relatives, the purpose of the postcard is to provide information or give a greeting. If the audience is the sender, the purpose of the card changes. The sender could have multiple reasons for wanting a card; one example could be that the sender wants to remember the location of where they got the postcard. Postcards can also be used for marketing. Businesses send out many postcards as advertisements, in hopes that a picture on the postcard or the information provided will catch a reader’s eye and interest them. The tones and styles of these postcards for marketing would be different than the tones and styles for family, friends, and relatives. For marketing, the sender would try to include information on the postcard about new deals or about their business. The tone would be to try to convince the reader of the importance of these deals or of their business. For family, friends, and relatives, the tone could be warm or excited in greetings or informative when keeping the reader up to date on the sender’s life. The context of postcards varies from place to place, which is what makes the postcard special. The postcard could come from the sandy beaches of Hawaii or from the Great Wall of China. In this way, the context of the postcard allows the receiver to picture where the sender was and how the sender felt when he or she bought the postcard. These rhetoric features (audience, purpose, context, and style/tone) tie into the conventions of postcards and what makes a postcard a postcard.

The conventions of a postcard help define what is recognized as a postcard. Conventions are considered “the glue,” or the similarities that are seen in many different postcards. Postcards are usually sent by mail. Because of this, postcards usually have addresses and postage stamps on them and can be sent from far away or nearby, nationally or internationally. They are usually rectangular or square, and small enough to fit in a mail box. They are also usually on thick, sturdy paper so that each postcard can survive the rough handling of the mailing process. Postcards can be used as keepsakes on travels, to send love or greetings, as a way to keep in touch with distant friends or family, as announcements, or as advertisements. They can then be put away and saved for memories or posted on a board, wall, or fridge to be looked at often. Because of this, they often have quotes or images printed on them, usually on the front to catch the attention of the reader. Then, on the back, there is usually a message from the sender with the location of where the postcard is from and the date or time it was sent. These conventions differentiate postcards from other genres, such as tweets or romance novels and allow us to recognize a postcard when we see it.

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