Understanding Where Meaning Comes From - Constructing Meaning from Texts

Constructing meaning to understand texts and analyzing their meaning:

If the meaning of a text is obvious, the first step is working to construct the meaning of the text. Once the meaning is understood, then we can begin to analyze and evaluate the message being conveyed.

To explore this, we will revisit the S.K.U.M. analysis tool.

S.K.U.M. ANALYSIS

A refresher for how and why we use SKUM analysis is detailed in the video below. A link for the SKUM Template can always be found on Google Classroom under the topic "Important Class Resources".

DAY ONE: SKUM to Evaluate Message Credibility

Advertisers are brilliant at crafting ads to sell their products and ideas. Sometimes these ads blatantly manipulate and communicate subliminal messages designed to undermine what you know to be true so that you will considering buying into what they are selling. In order to understand how this happens we are going to take a look at an add for a product that everyone knows is bad, to unpack the tricks of the trade that advertisers use.

Below, you will find an ad from a cigarette company - a product we all know is a carcinogen and extremely bad for individual health. This means that the advertisers have LOTS of work to do convincing people to buy their product. Our job is to uncover their strategies, so we are not fooled. To do this we will complete the task below.

Task - Discover and analyze the meaning of the print ad below and evaluate its credibility

We have spent the week analyzing various television commercials. Oftentimes the main thesis/claim of a commercial is obvious to us and so it is helpful to start with the main idea and work backwards to figure out how their “authorial choices” affect their audience. Doing this with print advertisements can be trickier. Often the main idea of a print advertisement can be less obvious and made through authorial choices that are much more subliminal and at times manipulative.

Today we are going to practice analyzing a print advertisement in order for us to look closer at these techniques.

DIRECTIONS: Today we will be analyzing the print ad below with our SKUM tool. Below you will find a copy of the image and a link to the Google Doc on which you will complete your analysis. Pay attention to the details/strategies the advertisers are using and how they try to sell their product. For example, this ad is crafted to look retro, but in fact it is only 5 years old. Think about why the advertisers might make this and other choices.

TASK 1: Complete a rhetorical triangle for this advertisement. To understand and analyze this kind of persuasive text, it will be extra important that we understand the rhetorical situation. When you have finished with this, we will share out our thinking with each other. As we share out together, please revise your triangles, as needed, so that they are as complete and thorough as possible.

TASK 2: Complete a SKUM analysis. The first half of the analysis (the S and the K) you will complete on your own, and then we will share out as group. Once we have a consensus on the first half of the analysis, then you will complete the second half of the analysis (the U and the M).

TASK 3: After identifying and analyzing the main argument of this print ad answer the question at the end of the Google Doc in prose (ideas formed into sentences): How credible (believable) do you find the thesis (claim of the ad) and why? Support your answer with details from your SKUM Analysis.

Use this Google Doc to complete your task. Click here for a copy of your own or look on Google Classroom.

Here is a sample of the rhetorical triangle we build together as a class: