Laura Bolin Carroll

Backpacks and Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical

Analysis

After reading Laura Bolin Carroll's "Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical
Analysis I believe that Carroll really isn't telling us things that we don't already know or
choose to ignore. She had me from the very beginning of the article because this is
something that I can thoroughly relate to. The examples she gave for rhetorical
analysis were very relateable because we use many of them in our everyday lives.
The example of the men's deoderant was spot on in the sense that they try to appeal
to young men convincing them that if they buy that deoderant then they will become
irresistable to women. If someone were to ask me to give a rhetorical analysis on a
person that walked by I would probably have looked at them with a "what" face,
meaning I had no idea what they just asked me to do. I didn't know that there was so
much that could be classified as rhetoric and to know that I use it almost everyday is
shocking. With the many examples that she gave it was easy to follow along in the
article and also gave insight to what we will be going over in the next unit. Using
rhetorical analysis is very important in life when it comes to choosing friends or
boyfriends. Rhetorical analysis almost reminds me of "Thin Splicing" meaning that you
basically make decisions based off of what you see or hear. I think that this article was
very nice and now I can't wait to get into more it this unit.

Carrolle, Laura Bolin. "Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis."
Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. By Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 1.
West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010. N. pag. Print.