Close Reading

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Close Reading

• The art and craft of analysis

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Suzanne Berne article

• Premiseher visit to World Trade CenterGround
  Zero, several months after 9/11
• Appeared in NY Times travel section in April 2002
• Her trouble getting a ticket to the official
  viewing platform

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Berne article discussion

• Use the rhetoric triangle
• Now we can look at her style
• Choices she makes at the word and sentence levels

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Analyzing Style

• Tone, sentence structure and vocabulary make up
  an authors style
• Style contributes to the meaning, purpose and
  effect of a text, whether visual or written

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Berne

• Why is the first paragraph one sentence?
• In that paragraph, why does Berne call the empty
  space the disaster?
• Why does the third sentence begin with Gathered
  rather than firefighters?
• What examples of fig. language appear in the
  fourth paragraph?
• Does the word huddled in the fourth paragraph
  remind you of anything else?
• What is the effect of the dashes in the final
  sentence?

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Style

• When we talk about an authors word choice, we
  mean diction
• When we look at an authors sentence structure,
  we mean syntax
• Style is a matter of tropes and schemes
• Tropesartful diction-metaphor, simile,
  personification, hyperbole
• Schemeartful syntax-parallelism, juxtaposition,
  antithesis

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Diction Analysis

• Look at important words in the passageverbs,
  nouns, adjectives, and adverbsgeneral or
  abstract specific or concrete
• Important wordsinformal, formal, colloquial or
  slang
• Non-literal or figurative language

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Syntax Analysis

• Look at order of the parts of the
  sentencesubject, verb, object, or is it inverted
• What part of speech is more prominent-nouns or
  verbs
• What are the sentences like? Periodic-moving to
  something important at the end or
  Cumulative-adding details that support an
  important idea in the beginning of the sentence
• How does the sentence connect its words, phrases,
  and clauses

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Practice

• Read Joan Didions passage about Californias
  Santa Ana winds
• Look at word choice and sentence structure.

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Annotation

• Requires reading with a pen or pencil to mark the
  text.
• If you cannot write in the book, because it is
  not yours, then use post-it notes or a readers
  notebook.
• Identify the main idea-thesis statement and main
  points-also look for imagery and details.

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Dialectical Journal

• Also called a double-entry notebook
• Represents a visual conversation between the text
  and the reader
• Note taking para Note making
• Collecting these bits of information from the
  text and considering their impression on you
  prepares you to attack the text and pick it apart

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Assignment

• Bring in an advertisement to analyze.

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JFK Inaugural address 1961

• Read the first time to gather information
• On the second reading-conversation with the
  address
• Use the rhetorical triangle and appeals
• Answer questions on board about diction and syntax

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Assignment

• Do the same activity for Obamas inaugural
  address 2009

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Tropes and Schemes used by Kennedy

• Alliteration
• Allusion
• Anaphora
• Antimetabole
• Antithesis
• Archaic diction
• Asyndeton
• Cumulative sentences
• Hortative sentences
• Imperative sentences
• Inversion
• Juxtaposition
• Metaphor
• Metonymy
• Oxymoron
• Parallelism
• Periodic sentences
• Personification
• Rhetorical questions