Katy Hanratty Homework #2

While reading chapter one in Everything’s a Text, I came across this “hot spot“ “When you compose in college and beyond, your audience with always influence the way you compose and what you say” (Melzer Coxwell-Teague 13).  I fully believe in this statement, especially after reading the speeches by Malcolm X to the different groups of people.  Malcolm X proves this statement to be true because when he speaks to the Detroit Civil Rights Group his language use is different than how he spoke to the people of Harvard.  When Malcolm X spoke to the people of Detroit it was a more relaxed tone and more casual.  When Malcolm X spoke to the people of Harvard he spoke very polite and prim.  The second passage I found interesting in Everything’s a Text was “Composers always have both a purpose for composing and an audience or audiences to receive their message” (Melzer Coxwell Teague 10).  I found this passage interesting because the composer can speak to an entire audience and that audience will receive the message but can interpret that message in several different ways.
While reading the text in Person Custom Library a “hot spot” I came across was “In a narrower sense, rhetoric is the art of making messages persuasive” (Bean, Johnson and Ramage 12).  I found this to passage to be very true because without using rhetoric to spread a message, the message will probably not get a lot of attention or focus.  Rhetoric helps to send out a message in an interesting way.  The second “hot spot” I found was “For college professors, “a good, interesting question” is at the heart of good writing” (Bean, Johnson and Ramage 8).  I believe this statement is true because without asking yourself a question before you write, you have no good basis to the essay.  The question provides how much thought you will put into the essay.