Week 8 assignment

Laura Bolin Carol’s “Backpack Vs. Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis” has a particularly amusing take to the steps in writing a Rhetorical analysis. From this essay, I learned that we practically do rhetorical analysis in our daily lives. For example, the author used an example of seeing your teacher walk into class, and their appeal can give you an idea of what type of person she might be. Or when you see a fellow classmate, and their backpack, shoes, hair, etc might say something specific about them. Okay, being honest, it’s something I’ve been aware of, but with the author putting emphasis on this action it brings it to attention on how much we analyze daily.  Another thing that I took away from this article was the starting place for a rhetorical analysis. According to the author “one of the first places to start is context.” Context is broken down into 3 categories, according to Llyod Bitzer, which is “Exigence, audience, and constraints”. Exigence is a word I wasn’t aware of so that would be my 3rd take away from the text, meaning a problem that needs to be addressed. The audience is the particular crowd in a situation and constraints are what effects the goes into play to modify the exigence. Moving on, a sentence that caught my attention was “The more we know about how to analyze situations and draw informed conclusions, the better we can become about making savvy judgments about the people, situations, and media we encounter.” This sentence seemed like the biggest takeaway because it perfectly describes a solution for many writers that struggle in Rhetorical analysis. As a writer, sometimes I don’t completely breakdown a situation in a writing piece to give myself a better understanding of a given situation. Thanks to this essay, my awareness will be better brought in the rhetorical analysis because seeing a different perspective and how they work through it gives me an idea of how to work with mine.