Blog Assignment #2 : Kantz and Said

I found Kantz’s article to be very helpful as to what we are supposed to be doing and how we are supposed to be writing for our Unit 2 assignments. Her article explained that a strong reader and writer needs to have certain abilities and knowledge. These consist of not taking the easy way out and be prepared to research and dig deeper than the facts that are in front of them. The reader/writer also must be aware of all the possibilities and have confidence in her writing skills. Kantz wants the reader/writer to create an ethos for themselves where they are in the right state of mind and able to confidently look and read things at every angle. In order to create a strong sustained research argument in Kantz’s opinion, they need to invent an original problem and purpose for their papers and create an original structure for her argument. They must read and process the texts they are using because it affects processing and monitoring of comprehension. The purpose of reading affects judgments about what is important and what is unimportant in a narrative text. Furthering reading and research tells us that attitude toward the author and context of a text affect comprehension. The reader/writer must recognize the rhetorical situations the texts or images were produced in, and select and evaluate material as well as use it as proof in an original argument. The reader/writer must structure her paper around an original argument and purpose. The events of the text or representation of an image must be rephrased emphasizing what they perceive and inserting comments to explain why. A convenient tool for doing so, given by Kantz, is the Kinneavy’s triangular diagram. This allows the reader/writer to set goals in three different parts of the communicative situation, which are the encoder, the decoder, and the reality. This allows the reader/writers to apply thinking in a conscious and deliberate way to academic tasks. Sources can be worked with on the page into an essay by looking to see if the factual differences suggest anything, they must talk about the source or talk about the material. From this you create and angle or a problem and can distinguish between opinions and facts, which is very important to a paper. According to Kantz rhetoric and rhetorical analysis come into play in reading and writing because when this is looked at a paper is more than repeating source material. These two elements must be analyzed while reading the source and than written about in the paper in order to set a specific rhetorical problem for the paper to say something original. The sources must examined rhetorically while recognizing the discrepant facts, conflicts, or anything else interesting. Edward Said is a role model for the kind of reader, writer, and thinker Kantz advocated because he has an open and confident mind. He does not just look at things for what they are and what everyone says they are. He digs deeper into his research and what is really there to see that there is much more than to what is right in front of us.

To mimic Said’s ethos and and meet Kantz’s standards, in my own sustained research essay I will read source texts as arguments and think about the rhetorical situation in which they were written instead of reading them as sheer facts. I will apply material to a problem or use it to answer a question, rather than evaluate or simply repeat it. I will also do all this in a way where I will dig deeper and look at things with an open mind, rather than with the confined opinions and bias I am supposed to have. I will create this kind of ethos in my work by maintain an open mind and see things from more than the angle that is in front of me. I will analyze the information in more than the obvious way I am supposed to in order to see what else is there for me to know to allow me to right a proper rhetorical essay. For example instead of taking a fact and citing it in my paper and just agreeing or disagreeing with it, I will look into the situation the fact si being produced from and dig deeper to find out why it says what it is saying and if it is actually in fact correct. I want to look at how different sources agree and disagree in different ways in order to build my argument. Upon writing my unit 2 essay I will recognize that facts and opinions are both claims that should be treated the same and rhetorically problem solve. Writers for specific reasons write both facts and opinions to particular readers, and it is very important to know this while gathering information. In recognizing this and reading sources rhetorically I will be able to create my persuasive analysis. I also will recognize the “gaps” in the sources I am analyzing. It is highly imperative to recognize why certain information or opinions are left out of a text. When finding one I will ask myself why such information was left out and why the writer of the source is thinking the way he is. I can see it being an obstacle, reading and writing my analysis with such an open mind. It is often hard to look at the truth from different angles. However, I want to be able to overcome this challenge and make my writing as good as it can be.