Interview

The first object I noticed around Emma was her bag, not only because it was sitting on the table directly in front of her, but also because the design on it was quite eye catching. The bag was of medium size, large enough to fit an average sized text book into, and box shaped. The trim and strap of the bag were a warm red and the sides of the bag were the same red and white in a filagree design. Covering the front of Emma’s bag were a few different kinds of flowers, bunched together in the left bottom corner. Green stems with buds sprung out from the bundle of flowers. Also decorating the bag were several words. When I looked at the words more closely I realized that they were French, which made me wonder if perhaps the bag was purchased outside of the country. The material of the bag appeared waxy, almost plastic looking, and it was fairly thin material. However, the red strap was canvas and sturdy.
As I said, the bag was the first thing that caught my eye; it was quite unique, I had never really seen a bag like that before. Where Emma acquired the bag was my first question to her because as I stated before I wondered if perhaps it was purchased from somewhere in France. She said simply that it was from the bookstore Barnes and Nobles for the price of twelve dollars. She then proceeded to show me that on the bottom of the bag was stamped “product of Barnes and Noble.” The bag was not for a special occasion, or a gift, Emma saw it and simply liked the design and the color. She explained that it is hard to find anything red, and although green is her favorite color, the store did now carry green and the red bag was better than the other blue colored bag that they had. Emma was also drawn to the French words on the bag because she is currently studying in French 204.
Emma purchased the bag approximately three weeks ago, when she intended to only buy one book. Instead she managed to add to her shopping list not only the bag, which was the last item that she picked up, but also a few various items such as folders and loose leaf paper. When Emma happened upon the red, flowered bag, she admired it and liked the look of it and was reminded of a friend’s bag that she had been fond of, but was not necessarily going to buy it. However, when Emma noticed that the bag was biodegradable and environmentally friendly she was convinced that it was a good purchase.
Emma wasted no time using her newly purchased bag on that day, when leaving the book store instead of taking a plastic store bag, she gathered her items inside the environmentally friendly bag and headed straight for the library for some studying. Emma explained that even though the bag was just an on the whim purchase, she really likes it and would be sad if for some reason she lost it or it broke in any way. It is useful to her for carrying her books to and from class; the size and shape are her favorite for a bag, however, she does wish that it had a pocket or compartment to carry small, loose items such as pencils in.
Although people either to tend either like or dislike the bag she carries with her, Emma enjoys it and uses it regularly to carry her books and various other items in.

Bazerman; Speech Acts, Genres, Activity Systems

The features, functions, and student activity of textbooks are often very similar. It is the job of all textbooks to guide a student along the content in a particular course that student it taking. A textbook is written in order to not only help the student understand the material, but to also offer more information than what a teacher may give in a classroom lecture.
The function of the Ancient Rhetoric for Contemporary Students textbook is to give students an inside look at where writing, and the way that our culture writes now, came from and developed over time. It contains several chapters about different aspects of writing from Chapter one's criteria of ancient rhetoric all the way to chapter twelve's guidelines for style, memory, and delivery of oral content. The textbook is written in a way that is easy to read and easily accessible to all of its part which is a way to make it much easier for students to learn the necessary material. The book is broken down into chapters of detailed titles, with different labeled sections in each chapter; there is a table of contents and a glossary in the back to reiterate important terms.
Every text book for every subject is quite similar in setup and design, however, the layout of materials within each individual textbook serves a very different purpose.

Selzer; Rhetorical Analysis

For this assignment I chose to look at the Salvation Army's website. The website itself is very informative with several different links allowing one to find various locations throughout the counrty, information about their goals and their programs, and information on ways to donate. It is a very eye appealing and easy to read home page, with bold white links to the various areas of information. It allows one to glance over the organizations main points and then make their own decisions on the best route for them to begin learning about the organization. I feel this website is well designed for all people to use of varying ages and mental capacities. The organization has made a website with very straightforward messages and explanations of all that they do. It is not too cluttered and it offers some pictures. Because this is a charity organization, however, I feel it would have helped to share a photo album of different projects completed, etc for viewers of the website to have an even better understanding of the organization and their efforts. A few more pictures on each additional link page would have made the site more eye appealing as well.
While the Salvation Army's website accomplishes a crisp and clear explanation of their goals and achievements, a few more visual aspects would make it slightly more appealing to the viewers and perhaps draw even more types of people in.

Intertexuality

Many texts written rely somewhat on a look at other texts that either relate to the style or the subject matter for which you as an author are writing. For example, Nelson, the engineer, writes proposals for different companies. He uses a wide variety of resources to complete his writing process including previous texts written.
A text begins with a set of ideas, those ideas are put together in an outline, and then built on from there. Many authors use other pieces of writing to help mold their own. In the situation of Nelson, the types of documents that he composes follow a particular set of guidelines. They often have a similar style for each different document and can even sometimes share some of the same information.
Case studies and research articles can follow this same sort of building upon an idea and then using other resources and pieces of texts to build the final product. I looked up several psychological research papers, something that I may be interested in doing, and found that many of them had the same style. I also found sets of facts that were recycled throughout each article. When composing one paper compared to another, it was evident that to reach the final product would have been more difficult without the ability to look back at other texts and sets of facts. It is often necessary to use other peoples works, or even previous works of your own, to compose an entirely new text. Many texts can relate to one other, and even rely on one another even if each piece is about something entirely different.