In the beginning of the semester, I believed that the stance of a text was the opinion or perspective being shared, usually of the author. I’d written argumentative essays, literary analyses, and persuasive speeches in the past, all of which required me to create a thesis statement of my stance and then back it up with strong evidence. For my first assignment, the memo, my stance was that textbooks are too expensive and cause financial issues for students (refer to Figure 1). I pushed that CCNY needs to solve this issue, and gave potential solutions. I realized from this assignment that stance is extremely crucial, because I would not be able to achieve the purpose of the Memo without it. This memo was designed to address a problem in CCNY that students faced in order to invoke discussion and change. If I didn’t make my stance clear, my audience, who were the Dean of the Division of Humanities and the Arts, Renata K. Miller, and the Dean of Science, Susan Perkins, would not understand the purpose of my message and nothing would be achieved.

 

 

As time passed, my original understanding of stance was further reinforced. For my Engineering Proposal, “Emergency SOS Alarm from Brains Against Natural Disasters”, my team’s stance was that our project, the Emergency SOS Alarm, should be invested in because it will help save the lives of people affected by hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters. After this assignment I realized even more so that stance is heavily intertwined with purpose. If my team did not make our stance clear, the proposal would be largely ineffective. The audience would not be convinced that our project is worth approving, funding, or testing, because we haven’t solidified our stance enough. As a team, we need to show our audience that our cause is worth fighting for, and our project has potential. If our stance is too laidback, we seem unprofessional and that also destroys any credibility.