SQR4

Hiram Lopez, Jason Pena
ENG 1301.28
Trang Phan
9-22-10

“Rhetorical Reading Strategies and The Construction Of Meaning”

Christina Haas and Linda Flower. “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Constructions of Meaning”. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 39, No. 2 (May, 1988), pp. 167-183
Summary:

The authors discuss a point at the beginning of the article,.. “reading should be thought of as a constructive rather than a receptive process”(167) I took the “meaning “as the reader should gain something from a piece of work rather than just reading than just reading it just to read it. It’s a somewhat complicated theory. Similar to past articles, a case study is taken “think-aloud procedure” where they “watched as readers used not only the text but their own knowledge of the world, of the topic, and of discourse conventions, to infer, set and discard hypothesis, predict, and question in order to construct meaning for texts”(167). This allowed them to see the vast variations of interpretations that the readers had on the same text. The article suggests that the readers and writers’ mental representations are not limited to verbally well-informed ideas, and plans, but may include information coded as visual images or as emotions. All this means that most readers/writers visualize what they are reading or writing rather than having “well-informed ideas and plans”(169), beforehand. The article continues about good reading, but basically its saying that being a good reader depends on intellect, not in those words say, but that the meaning behind it.
Question:
What can someone get out of reading something rhetorically?
Response:
Before, I read this article I didn’t really have an idea of what rhetorical reading was, and now that I know about it I can use this form of reading so I can actively attempt to construct textual context of the text and make sense of it. I think that this form of reading can help someone, because by reading this way they can like I said, “before make sense of the text” and learn more from it because they will be paying more attention to the text and gaining a better understanding of what the author is trying to say. They can do this by recalling past images, emotions, and experiences. In doing so, the reader can come up with a hypothesis and they will be able to come up with questions about what they read, and understand the author’s feelings about the writing and the audience it was intended for. By doing this I believe people can get more out of the reading.