Just Food by James Mcwilliams

ESSAY 2
Textual Analysis
This essay will require you to consider the philosophies and ideas behind texts. All forms of media and
communication are texts and are, thereby, arguments. The readings assigned for this class as well as any additional
texts
devoted to the subject of
food
all present arguments about food, about nature, about government, about health, and about
agriculture. The messages may be subtle at times, but they are molding the nuances and details of these material
s in order
to best communicate these central ideas.
For this assignment you should
begin by choosing
a text related to our course of study
(
an article, book, film
,
etc)
.
Note: you may select from the readings/materials on the syllabus or viewed as part of the class or you may choose an
outside text from your own research.
You want to then read/examine it thoroughly, making copious notes. You should be
looking at 1) the m
essages within this text and 2)
how
these messages are communicated. You need to make an evaluative
judgment of the article/book
/film
based both upon your opinion of the its
persuasiveness but also upon the validity of the
information presented. In order to do so you will need to collect sources that will help you to better understand the
arguments and subjects covered. In this way you will be educating your opinion. Remember
, that your decision is not to
be based on whether or not you liked the text but whether you think it is rhetorically successful AND whether the
information is true.
Purpose:
All good research writers know how to balance many complicated tasks at once. On
e of the most important of
these tasks involves being able to understand whether or not an argument is a good one.
Assignment: W
e are looking at texts that make an argument; but not all sources are created equal. Some are definitely
better than others

s
ome use better evidence and others have better logic. Still other texts are deficient in one way or
another, so deciding to use one can be a calculated risk that a writer has to take.
This paper asks you to choose
one
of the texts you have read in this cou
rse. You will then evaluate that source

that is to
say, you will look at the source’s strengths and weaknesses and decide whether or not it makes a valid research source. In
that vein, you aren’t so much making an argument as you are
determining the valu
e of a source by analyzing its
component parts.
You will need to have a
brief
summary
of the argument (not a summary of the topic but of the position taken/argument
made). You will need to identify
what argument the source is making, any underlying assumpt
ions the source makes,
what types of evidence the source is using to prove its point, and whether or not the point is successfully made
. The points
made in your paper should always have an eye towards unpacking the argument and discovering whether it is a
weak one
or a strong one.
Your goal in this analysis paper is
depth
rather than
breadth
. That means that you will want to pick out a small number (2

3) of key points/criteria and focus on saying a lot about those points, rather than saying just a little bi
t about a large
number of points. You will have to identify the most important qualities of your chosen source that will help you explain
to readers whether or not it is well

researched, well

structured, and well

argued.
Try answering one or more of the fo
llowing questions: What are the arguments made? How are they made? Why are they
made? Are those arguments persuasive? Why/why not? What kind of sources are used? Are they reliable sources? Does
the writer effectively deal with any objections to his/her arg
ument?
Format: MLA documentation, 1 inch margins, Times New Roman, 12 point font
Length: 1600 words

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