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?