Techniques of Close Reading

By: Barry S. Brummett

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Synopsis: In a world in which messages increasingly ask us to believe, accept, buy, and follow, the ability to read texts closely in order to gain a deeper understanding of their meanings is an indispensable survival skill. Techniques of Close Reading is a brief book that helps students see what texts may be saying, be they written, oral, visual, or mediated. Renowned scholar and professor Barry Brummett explains and explores the various ways to "read" messages (such as speeches, cartoons, or magazine ads), teaching students how to see deeper levels of meaning and to share those insights with others. Students learn techniques for discovering form, rhetorical tropes, argument, and ideologies within texts.This book differs from other books in rhetorical criticism, textual analysis, or critical thinking by: Focusing on the act and techniques of criticism rather than on schools of thought, grand theories, and specific methods, thus helping students to engage in the act of critical close reading in ways that are congenial to a wide range of methods - making the book an ideal companion to texts focused on specific methodsExplaining the relationships among theory, methods, and techniques of rhetorical criticismExamining the ethics and risks of doing and reading rhetorical criticism via plenty of examples, figures, and exercises taken from everyday life Serving as a brief, affordable text, thus allowing instructors the flexibility to assign other textbooks