Table of Contents

AI, Ethics & Human Agency

Citation

Collaboration

Genre

Information Literacy

Mindset

Research

Rhetoric

Style

Writing Process

Chapter: Information Literacy

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Textual Analysis – How to Analyze Ads

Advertising executives and marketing experts more than likely hope that we remain oblivious to the underlying messages that ads contain and that we perceive their work purely from entertainment and consumerist perspectives rather than for the purpose of critical assessment.

But to critically examine the techniques and appeals advertisers use to lure us into supporting certain products, services, claims, or even individuals is an opportunity to hone our analytical skills—skills that enable us to be informed readers of texts and knowledgeable consumers of persuasion. To begin, let’s consider specific words and phrases that can be used in ad analysis:

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Copyright and Writing

How might you more effectively integrate multimedia components into your assignment?

“Let rhetoric be an ability, in each case, to see the available means of persuasion.”
– Aristotle, Rhetoric (1.2.1)

With great resources comes great responsibility.

Composition does not merely refer to the writing of words on a paper or in a word processing document but also includes the holistic act of using all forms of media (images, videos, sounds, and texts) in a variety of different mediums (paper, blogs, websites, YouTube, podcasts, etc.).

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Annotating the Margins

As you progress throughout college and into your professional life, it’s going to become increasingly important to remember what you read. You might say, “Well, it was important for me to remember what I read in high school, because I was tested on the material and even had pop quizzes.” But that’s a different type of reading—you were reading to take a test or quiz, so you remembered the material temporarily. Do you still remember things you read in high school? How can you change the way you read now, in college, so that going forth you will be able to retain the things you learn from others’ writings? By annotating the margins of what you read, you can become a more active reader.

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Breaking Down an Image

We come across many images on a daily basis, but we rarely stop to think about what those images mean or about how they persuade us. Yet, images have power, which is why we need to understand how to analyze them. When you’re analyzing an image to understand the message it portrays, this is called visual rhetoric. Visual rhetoric is a means of communication that uses images to create meaning or to make an argument.

The first thing to consider when breaking down, or analyzing, an image is the rhetorical situation: the audience, context, and purpose.

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cory folse tweet

What are New Literacies?

Something seems wrong

A few days ago, I tweeted something that wasn’t particularly funny, but I got this response:1

I don’t know anyone named Cory Folse, and I don’t know who this @jokesallnight person is, either. So I ignored the tweet, kind of glad I had made someone happy, but kind of confused.

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Questions to Evaluate the Authority of the Researcher’s Methods

Here are some of the standard questions that academic readers ask when reviewing research reports:

  1. Is the source a first-hand or second-hand account? That is, are the authors reporting results of their own research or reviewing someone else's work?
  2. Is the source of publication credible? (For example, an essay in the New England Journal of Medicine would influence most physicians' opinions about a surgical procedure far more easily than an essay in a biweekly community newspaper.)

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Summary

Summaries tend to be interpretive. They give the author's critical evaluation of the source. Would your summary differ, for example, from the following summary of The Wizard of Oz? Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.

Like paraphrasing, summarizing involves reporting someone else's ideas in your own language. Unlike paraphrasing, however, summaries allow you to sort through the information in the secondary source and report only what you consider to be essential. A summary is therefore much shorter than the original, whereas a paraphrase may be the same length. In addition, you do not need to cite particular pages when summarizing a source.

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Double-Entry Response Format

The double-entry format is a useful technique to help you extend your thinking about a source or to critique an rhetor’s text. One very effective technique for avoiding note-bound prose is to respond to powerful quotations in what  Ann Berthoff calls the double-entry notebook form. The double-entry form shows the direct quotation on the left ...

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Government Publications

Review research reports, pamphlets, or statistics published by the Government Printing Office (GPO).

You may find it useful to discover whether the United States Government Printing Office (GPO) has published any research reports, pamphlets, or statistics on your subject. The GPO, along with the United Nations organizations, prints countless essays, pamphlets and research studies on the law, history, and such everyday subjects as growing herb gardens.

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Using Databases: Periodical Indexes and Abstracts

Search magazine articles, research reports, journal articles, and abstracts published in magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals.

Magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals provide contemporary material that is often on very narrow topics. Magazines are written in a more popular style and aimed at a general audience. The term "journals" is used for scholarly research publications. (Librarians use the term "periodicals" to include both magazines and journals.) Often journals are peer-reviewed, which means that the articles are read by a number of scholars in the field before being approved for publication.