What are the four forms of discourse?

Answer 1

The Four Kinds of Discourse

Exposition

In the first of these, exposition, the intention is to explain something: for instance, to make some idea clear to the reader, to analyze a situation, to define a term, to give directions. The intention, in short, is to inform.

Persuasion

Persuasion represents power.

You persuade somebody to join your political cause, that is to accept your body of opinion. You persuade

somebody to lend you five dollars till Saturday night-that is, however reluctantly in the beginning, to perform an act.

We must realize that a change of opinion or attitude implies a change, potentially at least, in action. Thus persuasion is

always targeted toward action - i.e., power.

Description

In description, the intention is to make the reader as vividly aware as possible of what the writer has perceived

through his senses (or in imagination), to give the reader the "feel" of things described, the quality of a direct

experience. The thing described may be anything that we can grasp through the senses, a city street, the face of a

person, the sound of a voice, the odor of an attic, a piece of music.

Narration is the kind of discourse concerned with action, with events in time, with life in motion. It answers the

question "What happened?" It tells a story. As we use the word here, a story is a sequence of events historically true

or false -- so -- fictional or non-fictional -- presented that the imagination grasps the action.

In narration, the intention is to present an event to the reader-what happened and how it happened. The event itself

may be grand or trivial, a battle or a ball game; but whatever it is, the intention is to give the impression of movement

in time, to give the sense of witnessing an action.