Rhetorical What??

Today's reading covered how to analyze text and it also showed us what rhetorical analysis writing looked like. We read multiple stories that were very descriptive and analytical of something or someone.

I thought the reading was very intriguing because, for the most part, the authors wrote about both sides of the analysis so that they would not show their true opinions on the topic. This gave me, the reader, a much more unbiased look at the subject than say in persuasive writings. At first I was unsure what rhetorical analysis meant but after reading the stories and the description of how to analyze text I now know that it means to pick apart a text to give it a better meaning to the reader and to explain the point of the text. I enjoyed reading the stories especially the first reading by Dennis Noe, Parallel Worlds: The Surprising Similarities (and Differences) of Country-and-Western and Rap. This story went in-depth and looked at the words of both C&W and rap music and compared how similar they were. Noe explained how generally C&W is looked at in a more family-friendly way but he goes on to show that both C&W and rap are similarly close in how they portray violence in their music.

The third reading was also a very interesting one too. It was Pulpit Talk by Beverly Moss. This reading was a description of how in African-American churches the preacher would talk in "black" and that this was the best way to communicate to the other black members of the church. I thought it was very interesting how the preacher would talk and all the audience would talk back to him during his sermon. That is much different than how my church does its sermons. Normally no one speaks during church service so I found it interesting to hear that most African-American churches are never quite during the sermon.

The other readings were good too but for some reason I found it hard to read Seeing as Believing: The Paintings of Judith Belzer by Peter Stiglin. This story was hard for me to understand but maybe I just wasn't the authors target audience. Changing the Face of Poverty: Nonprofits and the Problem of Representation by Diana George was a very good description of how nonprofit organizations that fight poverty exploit our emotions with words and sad images.