Week 8 Assignment – Anupa Gulab

Backpacks V. Briefcases: Steps Towards Rhetorical Analysis

While reading the essay “Backpacks v. Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis” by Laura Bolin Carol I learned many new things. For example, “Imagine the first day of class in first year composition at your university. The moment your professor walked in the room, you likely began analyzing her and making assumptions about what kind of teacher she will be.” (Laura Bolin Carol). Everyone goes through a natural process of rhetorical analysis all throughout their life for countless activities, however, this process has become so normal to us that we do not think twice about it. Another example of something I learned after reading this essay is the word exigence which I initially searched up to find the correct pronunciation then later learned it is another term for exigency which means “an urgent need or demand” (Google). Lastly, another thing I learned from Laura’s essay is the term economical summit. According to businessdictionary.com, this term is used to address an event where a group of people (usually leaders) meet to discuss financial budgets, forecast, or any other similar topics. We go around our normal days analyzing people like your friends or teacher, “However, when this same teacher hands you an advertisement, photograph or article and asks you to write a rhetorical analysis of it, you might have been baffled or felt a little overwhelmed.” (Laura Bolin Carol). As mentioned previously, we grow up learning these “analytical processes that you already use to interpret the rhetoric” (Laura Bolin Carol) though we do not think to apply these skills to our analytical related school work, instead we stress and overthink. However, since this has been brought to my attention, I think I will start looking at my assignments from a new perspective. For example, I can revise my choice of political speech to help learn some new understanding of rhetoric being interpreted. Then I will revise my essay to include the new information I hope to obtain from my speech.