Journal 2

In your opinion, what is close reading? What is its purpose? Are you learning anything about writing, or yourself, as you engage in close reading for Inquiry I?

Close reading is when you take a special interest in a text to look beyond the obvious and "read between the lines." A Rhetorical analysis is a very good example of a close reading, where you look at each and every detail and discover the reason behind the use of that detail. Its purpose is to realize the effect of the readers of the texts, weather it be intentional or unintentional. For example, the use of rhetoric in commercials is obviously intentional, in order to use every detail possible to drive the urge in the audience to buy their product. But texts that effect kids understandings of gender roles, i believe, are more often accidental than on purpose. Since the beginning of civilization and before that, there have always been understood gender roles, and they are imprinted in everyones heads from the time they are little. So when people create a text, it is hard to exclude the normal gender roles because that is what everyone knows, anything else is just different and often unaccented. Inquiry 1 is making me think hard about weather I think these gender roles in texts are on purpose or accidental, and like I said i believe they are more often accidental than on purpose, just because that is what everyone konws