2. CONTENTS
• In this lecture, you will find:
• A brief summary of “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction
of Meaning” by Christina Haas and Linda Flower
• An explanation of what it means to read “beyond the content” of a text
• An explanation of how reading this article can help you better
understand the prompt (assignment instructions) for major assignment 3
• A doggo
• A list of skills you can take with you into other classes and situations
3. A BRIEF SUMMARY OF HAS AND FLOWER
• Haas and Flower argue that there are
two ways to read a text: to understand
its content (they call this “knowledge-
getting”), and to understand its
context—the motivations of the writer;
what the writer wants the text to do;
why the writer wrote in the first place
(they call this “rhetorical reading”).
• This made a lot of sense to me when I
read it. I think a lot about how I can get
students to understand the difference
between summary (understanding
content) and analysis (being able to
critique a text or understand its
“deeper meaning”).
4. A BRIEF SUMMARY OF HAS AND FLOWER
(CONT’D)
• “While a content representation is often
satisfactory—it certainly meets the needs of
many pre-college read-to-take-a-test
assignments—it falls short with tasks or texts
which require analysis and criticism. What
many of our students can do is to construct
representations of content, of structure, and of
conventional features. What they often fail to
do is to move beyond content and convention
and construct representations of texts as
purposeful actions, arising from contexts, and
with intended effects” (437).
• In other words, the way you’ve probably been
taught to read has a lot to do with getting you
to answer content or reading comprehension
questions. It’s kind of like the five-paragraph
essay of reading: a great place to start, and
helpful for beginners, but not particularly
flexible, and a somewhat inadequate vehicle
for the kinds of deeper analysis you’ll be asked
to do as you go forward in your education.
5. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GO “BEYOND
CONTENT”? WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO
UNDERSTAND?
• “To interpret any sophisticated text seems to require not only careful reading and
prior knowledge, but the ability to read the text on several levels, to build multi-
faceted representations. A text is understood not only as content and information,
but also as the result of someone’s intentions, as part of a larger discourse world,
and as having real effects on real readers” (Haas and Flower 437).
• We can see, right now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of
understanding writers’ intentions, understanding the “larger discourse world” (that
is, the conversation going on at the time a text was written), and understanding the
effects a text can have on readers. Let’s take a look at a concrete example.
6. GOING BEYOND CONTENT (CONT’D)
• I took this from a friend’s Facebook page
today.
• If you read this purely for content, you’ll
understand that this person thinks that
people in the US probably had COVID-19
in November-December 2019, and that
they lived through it, and that people
shouldn’t listen as much to “the media”.
• But Haas and Flower would want us to
ask, in order to go beyond the content:
who is this person? Why would he say
this? What effect is it going to have on
readers?
7. GOING BEYOND CONTENT (CONT’D)
First of all, I have no idea who this person
is. I googled “Kyle Witkowski twitter
coronavirus,” and I could not find out thing
one about him. A Google image search did
yield this same picture, but it seemed to
suggest he works for a real estate company.
In other words, I cannot establish his
credibility or his authority. Haas and
Flower would argue that, because I’m
missing this piece of the wider context, I
cannot get a full understanding of this text.
8. GOING BEYOND CONTENT (CONT’D)
Second of all, why would he say this? The
exigence (see Lecture One for a definition of
“exigence”) is the COVID-19 pandemic.
That’s easy enough to spot. But what is his
motivation? One way you can figure that
out is by looking for calls to action. This can
reveal what the writer wants to happen. In
this case, this person says, “Quit letting the
media control you” and “Now give me back
my toilet paper, sports, etc”. What does this
suggest to you about his motivation(s)?
9. GOING BEYOND CONTENT (CONT’D)
Finally, what is the intended effect on the
reader? Because we’ve looked for the calls
to action (“quit letting the media control
you”; “give me back my sports”), we have
some insight into the writer’s
motivations. He seems to be motivated by
exasperation at what he sees as an
overreaction hyped up by the media.
10. BRIEF PAUSE FOR CLARITY
• Here’s a question I anticipate you asking: But how can you know for sure that that’s
what this person’s motivations are?
• The answer is, I can’t. We often can’t talk to the writers of the things we read.
However, I can make an educated guess based on the kinds of analyses Haas and
Flower recommend people conduct when reading.
11. GOING BEYOND CONTENT (CONT’D)
What, then, is the intended effect on the reader?
The intended effect is to get people to uncancel
sports events, stop hoarding toilet paper, and stop
listening to what the media has to say.
Right now, in this moment, all of those things are
extremely dangerous. (Well—if people stopped
hoarding TP, that actually would be great.) The
underlying message here is: you don’t have to take
this so seriously.
But we do have to take it seriously. And if no one
read between the lines of the information we take
in during this time, we would all fall pretty to a lot
of bad information, and people would suffer.
12. THE IMPORTANCE OF ANALYSIS
• We’ve already seen the consequences of this kind of bad information. People have
been seriously injured by taking off-label malaria drugs; by ignoring social-
distancing protocols; by not listening to experts but instead relying on men in ties on
Twitter.
• As you can see, asking yourself who’s doing the writing, why they’re doing the
writing (their motivations) and what they want the writing to do (the intended effect
on the reader, or the aim of the writing) will give you a much deeper understanding
of a text. It can also literally save your life.
13. OKAY, THAT GOT HEAVY. DOGGO BREAK!
This is my cousin Kim’s
former seeing-eye dog,
Van. He’s a Labradoodle,
and he crosses his paws
because HE IS A
GENTLEMAN.
14. GOING BACK TO THE PROMPT
• So how does all this help us better understand the prompt for major assignment 3?
Well . . .
• From the prompt: “This assignment asks you to practice the rhetorical reading
strategies that Haas and Flower describe in ‘Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the
Construction of Meaning’ (p. 432).”
• Now we have a much better understanding of what those reading strategies are, and
what it means to try to reconstruct a text’s exigence, motivations, and aims. We now
know that it means that we’re trying to go beyond content when we’re reading by
drawing conclusions based on what’s in a text.
15. TRANSFERABLE SKILLS
Hopefully, this lecture has demonstrated to you the following
transferable skills:
• Reading to do more than just understand content
• The importance of analyzing a text based on the writer’s
motivations and aims
16. WHAT’S NEXT?
In the next lecture, I’ll take you through the steps of
historicizing the text you chose for this assignment.
