Coming to Terms with Scholes's Essay "On Reading A Text" - Mayah & Colin

paragraphs 3 & 4

1. What are the key terms/words or phrases Scholes uses in these paragraphs? How would you define these terms and/or phrases in your own words?

"Big Break" - the moment when all your hard work comes together and you achieve your dream

"myth of America" - the cultural ideology of the 'American Dream'\

"cultural heritage or ideology" - images and ideals that society around you has inscribed or instilled due to advertisment, culture, and assumption

2. What do you think is saying here? In other words, what do you think he is trying to tell his reader(s) and why might he think the message is important?

"How do we do this? We draw upon a storehouse of cultural information that extends from fairy tales and other basic narrative structures to knowledge about the game and business of baseball." - Society, everything from the movies we see to the stories we hear, is a huge part of what impacts how we react. Without the societal assumptions that are needed, this commercial would make little or no sense at all to the viewer.

3. What are some questions you have about this reading, these two paragraphs, in particular? Write those two questions down and attempt to respond to them as a group.

no questions

4. Thinking in terms of this essay as a whole project, what do you think are Scholes's central idea(s) or major claim(s) that he wants his reader(s) to understand?

The central ideas of the writer are accenting the need to include the analysis of visual texts in schools today. He's saying that analysis both needs to submergence of analyzer into the moment, but also to be able to draw back from that and use ideological criticism to scrutinize the situation. Scholes's talks about the Budweiser commercial's ability to sell America, not just its beer, giving the viewers a sense of pride to be an American.