Reading Response 3

After reading Chapter 17 in Everything’s an Argument and the “From Backpacks to Briefcases” excerpt, I can honestly say I do better understand what it really means to analyze rhetoric, and also how being able to recognize rhetorical styles can help writing skills overall. What really helped me begin to see the big picture is the part in “From Backpacks to Briefcases” where Carroll begins by explaining how we quickly analyze people and form quick judgements based off of what we see, much like we are learning to notice rhetoric styles in different forms of writing. It really does make sense: when I pick up a newspaper, I know pretty much what to expect because most newspapers follow very similar conventions, and on the other hand I know not to compare the writing in a newspaper with the writing in a children’s book or a non-fiction piece.

For example, on the first day of our writing class, I saw that Zack was dressed casually and wearing sandals—based off of these initial observations, I came to a quick conclusion that he must be a laid-back guy, and that the class would probably be more of a laid-back and open environment. If, on the other hand, Zack walked in wearing a suit and tie, fancy dress shoes, and a briefcase, my judgement might have been that he prefers a more formal classroom environment. This week’s readings helped me to understand that eventually we’ll all get to a point where we can notice written rhetoric, and understand the greater implications of these findings and apply them to our own writing.