Stance is the author’s attitude towards his/her work.

Like purpose, stance had always been a concept that I had been familiar with even before attending this class. Especially for argumentative essays, having a position or attitude towards the topic was almost a requirement. 

In many ways, stance can affect the other rhetorical aspects of writing. Having a stance would help determine the type of audience you are targeting as you are trying to align it with your own beliefs. Stance would also work hand in hand with purpose and genre to establish an appropriate structure for the composition. 

The image above is taken from my groups technical proposal where the needs statement is established. This is where the stance of the paper is located as it describes what is needed from the proposal and what we believe is right for the situation. Our stance was that we are in support of the application, Life Finder, and we need funding to make the app functional within society.

Although I was already familiar with stance before this class, my ability of identifying it off of other rhetorical aspects have greatly been improved. Thanks to this class I see myself considering stance into many of my arguments as it is a very important aspect of the writing process.