Be a Critical Reader, Critical Thinker, and Critical Writer
Strong writing is the result of “knowing what you’re talking about.” This means you have a clear understanding of your reading material. How do you increase your understanding?
You need to learn the tools of critical reading.
One. Always re-read.
Two. Embrace the 5 Ws: who, what, where, when, why and how (elaborate below)
Three. Write annotations or notes in the margins of what you’re reading. Studies show that your memory of what you read increases exponentially when you write notes in the margins, which is superior to highlighting. Highlighting is worthless compared to writing margin notes. For example, if you disagree with an author’s point, put the word “disagree” or “?” in the margin. I often write, “really?” If I agree, I write, “yes.” If I’m stunned by a painful truth, I’ll write, “disgusting!”
Active Reading Questions
One. What is the author’s primary argument? Can you identify a thesis statement, or is the thesis implied?
Two. What words or key terms are fundamental to that argument? If you are not familiar with the fundamental vocabulary of the selection, be sure to check a dictionary for the word’s meaning.
Three. What evidences does the author provide to support the argument?
Four. What underlying assumptions shape the author’s position? Does the author consider alternative points of view, providing counterarguments and rebuttals to those counterarguments?
Five. What style and tone does the author adopt? Is the author earnest, angry, satirical, ironic, spare, multisyllabic, assured, supercilious, self-regarding (what an important, talented writer I am!), unctuous, sanctimonious, verbose, bloviating, witty, no-nonsense, moralistic, etc.?
Six. What kind of expository mode or modes are being used? Is the mode descriptive, cause and effect, argumentative, informative, process analysis (how-to), narrative, contrast-comparison? The book calls these approaches genres.
Seven. Who is the intended readership of this selection and does the author’s intended audience affect the author’s tone and information?
Lexicon for Writing a Semiotic Analysis (30)
You should familiarize yourself with the semiotic language to strengthen your analysis of popular culture.
One. Denotation: What is the factual definition of your subject? The HBO series True Blood is factually about the persecution of vampires. It’s not a horror TV series about scary vampires hurting people; it’s the other way around.
Two. Connotative Meanings: What is your subject in its system of signs? By signs we mean symbols and sometimes allegories, which show the factual subject on a symbolic level.
For example, the HBO series True Blood is ostensibly and factually about vampires living among humans; but there are signs that the vampires represent, not monster, but gays and hipster counterculture that is in direct clash with mainstream, conservative society.
Three. Differences within the System: There is a dividing line between the series, a sort of before and after. Vampires in True Blood, for example, change from uncompromising haters of humans as mainstream society to vulnerable “people” who need humans, however flawed real people are.
In other words, the signs and symbols in a popular culture TV series can evolve.
Four. Abductive Explanations: We use our interpretative skills to analyze the causes in a shift or evolution that causes “differences within the system.”
As the vampires evolve from misanthropic snobs to vulnerable beings craving the frailties of human life, they themselves become more human and reachable.
Examples of A-Grade Essays on pages 37-64
Malcolm Gladwell, “The Science of Shopping” (97)
One. What physical characteristics of people determine the type of environments business want to create to maximize consumer activity?
People walk like they drive cars.
People need visible cues to slow them down, a process that takes up to fifteen paces, the “downshift factor,” a necessary condition for a shopper to peruse the items in a store.
Never sell your premium items in the Decompression Zone, the front of the store where people are still disoriented.
Depth-Buying Ratio: The deeper in a store a customer wanders, the more likely she will buy something.
Two. Should we be fearful of shopping scientists like Paco Underhill?
We are spied on and analyzed to create an environment that will manipulate us in order to maximize our probability of buying something. However, Gladwell asserts that the typical shopper is too headstrong to be manipulated. Therefore, Underhill is creating an environment that satisfies fickle shoppers. Gladwell adds that Underhill’s clients, so eager to please the consumer, are acting in a state of humility (103).
“The Signs of Shopping” by Anne Norton 104-110
One. How does the shopping mall address decentralization?
We are a scattered society. Many of us live outside of urban centers and are sprawled out in suburban communities where we’re out of touch with one another.
However, there is a consumer oasis, the shopping mall, which glues us together with its hodgepodge of consumer enticements.
Its intent is “to restore lost unity of city life to the suburbs.”
Two. What is “commodity fetishism”?
The word fetish pertains to an unnatural, twisted obsession in which we give magical, even religious powers to an object.
The mall is a temple and it is serving commodity products that will “elevate our existence” and make us “transcendent beings.”
Three. What is the “pervasive private authority” that defines the “seemingly public place” of the mall?
While diverse people gather in what appears to be a public space, the mall, a very private place with a very private authority, exercises a code:
There can be nothing of controversy.
There must be no substantive ideas, only pabulum for the mind.
There is no freedom of speech or assembly. In other words, no one can gather with political intent.
The authority must be discreet through the use of “visible, inaudible, public discourse.”
This discourse must come from the commodities, which proclaim our identity, wellbeing, meaning, purpose, opinions, desires, and happiness. Nothing can exist outside commodities because at the shopping mall commodities are God. They are your God and you’re going to pay, go in debt, and slobber and weep over your religious experience, which can only come from commodities.
To reiterate the above, in the world of the mall the only meaning that exists comes from commodities.
The mall loves all people, but it especially loves female adolescents who spend more time at the mall than any other demographic. They also spend the most money. If the mall is the Holy Temple, adolescent females are its High Priestesses.
Four. What is the mall’s ultimate purpose regarding female adolescent shoppers?
More than wanting young girls to spend money, the mall wants to indoctrinate teen girls with a “well-developed sense of the significance of those commodities. In prowling the mall they embed themselves in a lexicon of American culture.” We can infer from these remarks that the mall is interested in implanting the girls’ long-term spending habits so that they are hooked to the mall and the consumer lifestyle it represents until those girls go to their graves.
Five. How the dependent-on-her-husband female shopper both conventional and subversive?
She buys things to define herself and her family on one hand, but on the other she exercises authority over property by being the “informed consumer,” a role her husband is okay with since he’s too lazy to take on this function.
Six. What is “imperial nostalgia” in relation to mail order catalogs like Banana Republic and J. Peterman?
These catalogs give men the fantasy of being imperialists, colonialists, conquerors, and men on safari. A lot of the imagery is racist as it recalls the days of plantations.
Seven. What is the message of the Home Shopping Network?
That your incontinent spending is somehow equal to engaging in the noble enterprise of pursuing liberty and freedom, which are proof of your authentic American status.
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