Chapter 2 Notes

·      Close Reading: The Art and Craft of Analysis

o   When you read closely, you develop on understanding of a text that is based first on the words themselves and then on larger the ideas those words suggest.

o   When you write about close reading, you start with larger meanings and use then in small details to support your interpretation.

o   Examining style provides information about the choice an author makes at the word and sentence levels, some of which we may use to further analyze the piece.

·      Analyzing style

o   We can understand a text better by examining its tone, sentence structure, and vocabulary. These elements make up the style of the written piece and help us to discover layers of meaning.

o   Style contributes to the meaning, purpose, and effect of a text whether it be visual or written.

o   We call choice of words diction

o   Arrangement of words id syntax

o   Sometimes we talk about style as a matter of tropes and schemes

§  Tropes are artful diction

·      Metaphors

·      Personifications

·      Similes

·      Hyperbole

§  Schemes are artful syntax

·      Parallelisms

·      Juxtaposition

o   Oxymoron

·      Antitheses

o   Some one who apposed someone else

·      Talking with the Text

o   Pay close attention to choices the writer makes in the way he or she connects subject, speaker, and audience

§  Remember that style is a subset or rhetoric, it is a means of persuasion

o   Annotation

§  Annotating a text requires reading with a pen on hand

§  Identify mains ideas, thesis statements, topic sentences, and also words phrases, or sentences that appeal to you or that you don’t understand

§  Look for figure of speech, or tropes, such as metaphors similes and personifications, as well as imagery.

o   Dialectical Journals

§  Use columns to represent visually the conversation etween the text and the reader

§  Breaking text into small sections helps you notice the details

§  Collecting bits of information from the text and considering their impression on you prepares you to answer questions about style.

o   Graphic Organizer

§  Use the paragraph division in the text as natural breaking points, or perhaps consider smaller sections that reveal interesting stylistic choices

§  Copy something the writer has said, then restate it in your own words, next you analyze how the writer makes that point and that the effect on the reader is

·      Note that you become increasingly analytical as you move across the columns to the right

·      Analyzing a Visual Text

o   Many of the same tools of rhetorical analysis and close reading are also useful for detecting the underlying message in visual text.

·      From Analysis to Essay: Write about close reading

o   The more you examine the elements of diction and syntax and consider their effects, the deeper our understanding of an essay, a speech, or visual text becomes.

o   We have to reach the deeper understanding when we write about rhetoric and style, or we will end up merely summarizing rather then analyzing the strategies a writer uses to achieve a particular purpose.

o   The syntax of a speech can reveal other meanings and add to the development of the speeches tone.