I'm pretty sure everyone who thought they were a great writer established that assumption in High School, however; it's a whole different ball game when college starts. I was one of those people whose view drastically changed when reaching college. When I think of my writing process, I think of how easy creative ideas come my way but also how difficult the overall construction of the paper. I like sentence structure variation, but I know one of my weaknesses is writing in a round-a-bout way.
I always thought there was only one concept in writing a rhetorical analysis. But ofcourse I was wrong here too. There are two concepts to keep in mind when writing a rhetorical analysis: contextual and textual analyzing. Yes, they are totally different from eachother in a writer's world.
A textual analysis encompasses the actual material being analyzed. A textual analysis consists of some background knowledge on things such as the time period and societal issues. Analyzing the text with these elements creates the deeper meaning an analysis should have.
It is difficult because I feel there is a fine line between textual and contextual. I also think there is a fine line between analyzing something and flat out over thinking something. Maybe from a Professor's point of view, I want to know what are some pointers a student can use to make their analysis deep? Even though we incorporate quotes in a paper to support an idea or a concept, can those quotes be contextual? Why is a contextual analysis better than one that is textual? From a student's point of view, how did you do in writing your rhetorical analysis? If you did well, what tips could you give your peers? If you didn't do so great, what questions are still unanswered? Because I don't think the difference between contextual and textual is obvious. But obviously my grade proves otherwise.
I feel the same way Brooke. I feel that overall. That was the same for me when I got to college. Contextual anaylsis is things outside of the overall speech content. Contextual can the speeker's reason for speaking, the type of audience around the speech and the ideology of the speaker. What are the expressions and reactions of the the speaker's audience? What are is the speaker's motives in the speech are some of the questions that could be asked.
ReplyDeleteBeing in college has basically been the first time I have really written anything since high school. Most of the writing I did for my job was in short, declarative sentences, so I didn't get a lot of practice before coming into my first semester here. I feel that what made me a better writer since my high school days was reading everything I could get my hands on-- newspapers, books, websites. I feel that by doing this everyday, I was able to subconsciously pick up on ways to structure my sentence better, increase my vocabulary, and better analyze what I was writing about.
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