The definition of an announcement is a public and typically
formal statement about a fact, occurrence, or intention, from google dictionary.
We are given lots of announcements all through our lives. When we were born,
the hospitals give the birth announcements to prove new lives in this world.
When we went to a long rest, hospitals would give us death announcements. And
if we are lucky and hardworking enough, we may have a chance to give others announcements.
Since we cannot escape announcements, let’s find the properties of
announcements.
As students, we
receive university announcement emails very often. Checking these emails, we
can find that most university announcements are either stating occurrence: Arts
and lecture events presentation in downtown venues, concerts in Iv theatre, UCSB
Alumni speak about their professions and give advice on interning, networking,
and graduate school or stating facts, the expansion of the Financial
Aid Advisors' Drop-In Office Hours Program, information about application for University
Lobby Day. So, here is the most important core of an announcement---a fact or
occurrence, the content of an announcement.
What is more, the
tone of an announcement to state its content is always authoritative. There are
seldom questions, jokes, or even explains in an announcement. The reason for
the authoritative tone of an announcement is the purpose of an announcement is
to inform people of some authentic things that cannot be easily changed. As a
result, announcements do not need to interpret or inquire anything. They just tell
people what happened or what will happen or give you information about an
event. Additionally, to be authoritative, an announcement must be sent by
official channels. Government, Schools, Hospitals, or big companies are the
common official channels from which an announcement is made. People are more
inclined to believe them.
Last but not
least, timeliness is another pivotal characteristic of an announcement. Timeliness
means the quality of arriving or being ready on time. All announcements
must be posted at the correct time. In the stock market, companies make their
announcements to inform all investors of any information that would influence
the price of the stocks. For example, if Apple is making the Apple cars in
factories and it did not make an official announcement until Apple cars have a
number of sales. Apple may meet a big problem. This kind of action is
considered as illegal and a deceit of investors by the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission. Not only the companies should make announcements on time,
but also the government should make latest announcements. I browsed many
government announcements websites and
found that the UK government has the best announcements.(www.gov.uk/government/announcements).
For example, there are 6 announcements all named by “Eric Pickles' update” by
the Communities Secretary Eric. The UK government announcements are all updated
as soon as possible. This helps to gain trust from UK people.
To conclude, an announcement is a timely formal
statement made from official channels to inform people of authentic facts in
authoritative tone.
The topic is valuable because announcements are commonly used in our everyday lives. Paragraph structure is clear. You give the definition of the announcements in the first place. Then, you point our three most important conventions of announcements - authenticity, authority and timeliness. Lastly, there is a simple but powerful conclusion. Also, your examples are excellent and approachable. You properly use your own personal experience and facts as illustrations. The example of “Apple cars” is interesting and helpful for readers to understand the convention of “timeliness”.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think these three conventions you found can also applied to news. News need to report the fact or the truth; news reported by CNN, BBC or even CCTV are more authoritative than others; news must report latest events. Therefore, I suggest you to find several unique features of announcements, which make them different from other textual genres.
Very clear and accurate description of announcements. Not only did you define what an announcement is, but you also gave us very specific examples that we, as students attending UCSB, can easily relate to. As a result of this, it is much easier for us to understand the concepts of rhetoric and conventions. As Ting said, the topic of announcements is very valuable and can be applied to topic such as news because they report the truth. I'd like to add to that by also saying that announcements can be more informal. For example, twitter updates and Instagram posts can serve as announcements because they also state facts, they just do it in a slightly different way.
ReplyDelete