Summary

This reading first states an important thing. Rhetoric is in basically everything. If there’s an object out there, with an intention, there is rhetoric within it. Thus, we humans analyze rhetoric all the time on our everyday lives, whether we’re conscious of it or not. However this is always done in a superficial fashion. In order to truly analyze rhetoric, such as the one found on written text, one has to look beyond its content and see things from a macroscopic point of view. A meta view if you will. From thereon there is a variety of lenses to be used for analysis. Things to be considered are the intended audience, genre, purpose, platform. The context in which the text was written is also a very important thing to consider when analyzing. 

Response

I agree with the text. There’s so much content to any piece with rhetoric, which people naturally and unconsciously extract, on varying measures. However, once you are trained in analysis, a whole new world of content opens to you, as you begin to be able to derive huge amounts of contextual, meta information from any piece of communication with an intent. 

Question

What’s more important, the author’s interpretation or the people’s interpretation? Perhaps Hegel’s dialectic could solve this?

The idea of analyzing texts is ultimately the method of understanding the whole piece of a text by studying multiple parts of the text. Authors tend to initially find a specific claim, or thesis, and then use multiple different lenses to further analyze that claim. These lenses include audience, purpose, genre, and media. The authors tend to connect with a certain group of people when they are writing, which makes the audience one of the most widely used lenses today. The purpose is much different than the claim and argument, mainly because it states why the author is discussing or writing about a certain topic within their text. Arguably the most important lenses used by the authors are ethos (author’s credibility), pathos (emotion/values), and logos (logical reasoning).

Summarize this reading in your own words (150 words).

As humans, we have an incredible capacity for absorbing information and forming thoughts and opinions from as much as a quick glance.  This is an essential trait to critically analyzing the world around us as well as the worlds found in works of fiction, art, photography, and so on… Of course nobody’s required to use the skill at all times.  One typically wouldn’t analyze the rhetoric of something as trite or mundane as a lump of coal.  But when the time does come, it’s highly recommended of us as thinking men and women — the intelligentsia — to see through certain lenses and consider certain concepts in order to pull as much information as possible from a source.  Asking questions about a text or a video or painting allows us to dig a bit deeper, facilitating the formation of strong, substantiated arguments and opinions.

What’s your response to this text? (response)

More than ever, critical analysis is an iron pillar, a cornerstone of advanced thinking.  Looking through multiple lenses allows readers to see all there is to see about virtually anything; each lens is like a kaleidoscope, bursting into a vast array of patterns, shapes, and colors… I imagine trying to understand everything about a book or a movie would look something like the scene in Marvel’s Dr. Strange, where the protagonist has his mind absolutely melted by the mystic arts of the Ancient One.

What question do you have after this reading?  (question/connect)

Has the introduction of fast-moving, fast-scrolling, post-after-post social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, etc., had any effect on people’s ability to critically analyze and question the things they see?  Consider the politicization of these platforms and the extensive and many times biased coverage of sociopolitical events and fake news, as well as the general public’s reaction to them.

The concept of analysis, just like rhetoric, is a very useful tool for reading and writing texts. Also just like rhetoric, we as people use our analyzing skills just about every day when we come across things such as advertisements to the way people act, even if we don’t know it. Analysis can be be seen as a group of qualities about something or someone that are seen when they are looked at with depth, and what the textbook calls, different lenses. What this is is really just a bunch of questions to ask yourself in order to help with the basis of one’s analysis. The most basic ones include audience, or the intended group of people meant to read the text, genre, or the type of category the piece fits into, purpose, or the reason for creating the text (which is different than the argument, and media, or the type of medium that was used to write and/or publish the text. Other lenses we may use without realizing it include kairos, or the timeliness of the text (how fast it gets its point across) and exigence, or what circumstances (such as popular beliefs of the time) lead to the text’s creation.

The one question this text left me with is more about the application of these types of techniques in everyday life, and that is just how many more techniques will I be able to utilize at a conscious level after this semester. I’m sure I use a substantial amount of the things we will learn in this class already, but just how many of these things will be opened up to in depth?

Summary

Even when we think that we are not analyzing something, we most certainly are. Analyzing a text is part of our daily lives. Analysis requires not only to understand what the message is but how it is being conveyed and what effects does it have. In order to figure out the “how,” there are certain lenses, ways of looking, that might be helpful such as the Aristotelian lenses that examine the appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos. It is also essential to understand the context of the text, i.e. the audience it is being written for, the purpose, the genre and the medium it was published through. Other lenses that might be helpful for analysis would be to look at the role of “social and cultural markers of identity (race, gender, and class).” To end it all off, it is very important to answer the “so what” of your analysis. In other words, what did your examination tell you about the text as a whole.

Response

The best part about the essay was in the introduction: “life will be much more interesting to you if you learn to step back and think critically about how the rhetoric of texts of all kinds makes demands on you.” It just amazed me and made me realize how differently I would see the world if only I use a critical eye and a different piece of lens. There are so many factors to consider when looking at a text that I was completely unaware of. But, at least now, after knowing them I would try to utilize them and find the real intent behind each artifact.

Question

How many lenses are enough to use in a formal paper? Is there a specific order one should use to utilize lenses? Does every lens has the same importance or does it depends on the type of text one is analyzing?

Summary

Rhetoric is in everything we see, and while our brains may ignore most of them, there are a few that catch our eye and stick with us forever. With analysis, we can see why and how this happens. Analyzing a text is like putting a puzzle together. We take pieces of the text and see how they relate to one another and how they fit into the meaning of the text as a whole. In order to analyze text, we have to use “lenses,” which allow us to see it in a different perspective. It’s like taking a puzzle piece and rotating it to see where it belongs in the puzzle. In the end, we get the final picture, or a full understanding of the author’s intentions. Sometimes, we can arrange the pieces in our own way to form a new picture, or a different interpretation of the text.

Response

I never realized how frequently I analyzed everything until now. Every time I looked at something with rhetoric, I was unaware that I was actually using the different types of lenses to find multiple interpretations. I find it fascinating how my own interpretation of something can be different than the creator’s original intention and someone else’s interpretation of it.

Question

If we know what the creator’s original interpretation of their own work is, then are all of the other varying interpretations still acceptable?

The reading, “Tools for Analyzing Texts” starts off by describing how bombarded we are with advertisements and why it’s important that we be able to analyze them. It mentions that being able to analyze will help us to see the real significance behind a text by thinking in a more “meta” sense and also give us the ability to understand how it works and give us new insight. The reading then goes on to discuss lenses for analysis, which are basically different ways of looking at and analyzing a text. Different lenses allow readers to develop different theories on how a text works and manages to evoke a certain thought or emotion in us. When analyzing a text, there are many factors that need to be considered, like its intended audience, purpose, time period it was written in, genre, and what medium it was produced in to give us a thorough and accurate analysis. Some theoretical lenses that should also be considered for texts of any kind are the roles of ethnicity, sexual orientation, ableism/disability, and the cultural and social markers that indicate an entire identity.

It’s really interesting how there are endless ways for a single text to be interpreted with the abundant amount of tools there are to analyze with. So many factors contribute to a text’s analysis like the time period it was written in and its intended audience that it can leave a totally different interpretation among readers. It’s fascinating how using various lenses can drastically change the perceived meaning of a text.

Can a person’s analysis of something be wrong? Is there such thing as a “correct” analysis?

Summary:

Everyone constantly analyzes texts throughout their daily lives. Whether it’s by reading an advertisement, an email, or a newspaper, messages from all sorts of platforms surround us and inevitably demand our attention. There are actually a wide variety of ways in which one can analyze a certain text through different lenses. These can differ depending on the audience, purpose, genre, or media the text was specifically addressing. It is also important to consider design and stylistic elements that can present an image or video in many different ways. Other lenses such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and social class can affect the way we interpret certain messages as well.

Response:

I think it’s interesting that one text can be analyzed in multiple different angles depending on the lenses we choose to view them through. Someone who chooses to view one topic from one perspective might have a completely different opinion from someone who chooses to view it from a completely different perspective.

Question:

If there are so many different ways to analyze a certain text, then is it safe to assume that there is no “correct” interpretation for anything?

Summary

The process of analyzing is personal and unique to the individual. When reading a piece of writing we all use lenses (theories) and rhetoric concepts to analyze it. Concepts such as who the audience is, what’s the purpose, and what is the genre all help understand the text as a whole. There are many different lenses that we as readers use to interpret a text. Not all lenses work the best for certain types of text. Often, some lenses work better for visual texts compared to fiction and nonfiction. The insight that you as a writer offer to your reader is just as important when it comes to analysis. In other words, it’s important to leave the audience with an idea that you want them to get out of your writing.

 

Response

I find it intriguing just how many tools there are when it comes to analyzing a piece of text. Factors such as the setting, timeline, ethnicity, intersectionality, just to name a few, all can completely change the way a text is interpreted and analyzed.

 

Question

With there being so many different ways to analyze a text, how can we truly know what a certain author from centuries ago really wanted us to take away from it?

Summary:

This chapter first talks about how we analyze texts regularly.  You look at different aspects of a whole and see how they are put together to create the entirety of the whole. Looking deeper into analysis, you can see that there are different lenses, or “theories.” Some of these theoretical concepts are: audience, purpose, genre, and media. These concepts are used to consider a texts context. The last part of analysis is personal interpretation. After taking the text apart and looking at the individual parts, what has it offered you? What can you offer someone else about the text that you have analyzed? Analyzing texts doesn’t just mean words, you can analyze a picture or someones stature, or an artistic piece. The first part of analyzing is just describing what you see, then interpreting what you described.

Response:

I found it very interesting that you can analyze something without even realizing you’re doing it. You take apart a text and come to your own conclusion about what it means to you, or what the author is trying to convey. Every person can look at the same text and take away something different from it, which I think is a beautiful concept.

Question:

What do you do if you analyze the same text multiple times and get a different result every time? Is there a way to decide which is the most “correct” analysis?