On the heels of a class session dedicated to learning about and engaging in the literary (and what can also be visual) process of close reading, our first homework assignment for the pre-departure seminar was to conduct a close reading of a recently received e-mail message. Due to laws and ethics regarding privacy, we were not to post the e-mail message. But -- and I think Jessica and Clifford, our two class instructors, would agree -- aren't the effects of sharing our close reading with a public (by posting it on the internet) compromised by not showing the original piece of writing that we are trying to analyze?! For that reason, I will (slightly) steer away from the original assignment and perform a close reading of a Facebook wall-post message, which, by its nature, is not in the private domain since it can be viewed by countless of people at any given time. With that lengthy introduction, I now present the original message:
It was good to meet up today! At least I didnt get caught in traffic this time (which I really did by the way! and you can tell JC and LW that) =P
I'm planning on coming back up to SEA one weekend this quarter to surprise my mom -- I'll let you know if I make it up.
For this particular close reading, I will break the passage down sentence by sentence. Here goes.
It was good to meet up today! - Using the phrase "meet up," the reader can deduce that the encounter that my friend and I had was not random; hence, we were "meeting up," instead of "running into" each other. And, by the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, the reader can can infer that my friend was probably very excited about "meeting up" with me.
At least I didnt get caught in traffic this time (which I really did by the way! and you can tell JC and LW that) =P - The reader is now informed of the fact that something unexpected and unfavorable had previously happened that made that event less "good." The reader also learns that that "JC and LW" did not believe whatever caused the unsavoriness of that event. Furthermore, a close reading shows that the writer of the message has designated me as the mediator between him and "JC and LW", urging that I tell JC and LW that he "really did...get caught in traffic" that previous time. Finally, although the writer might have been typing a section of a chemistry equation with the last two characters of the line, this was probably not the case, and the reader is expected to recognize that an equals sign followed by a capital P represents emotions of a happy, jovial, joking, or laughing state.
I'm planning on coming back up to SEA one weekend this quarter to surprise my mom -- I'll let you know if I make it up. - The final sentence of this message allows the reader to realize that the writer is presently somewhere south of Seattle, since the person is "planning on coming back up to SEA." To make this conclusion, however, the reader must also realize that the writer is not returning to the sea, but rather to SEA(attle).
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Ruben,
Any post that begins with the phrase "on the heels of" has got to be good, and this one is. I do agree with you that the necessity of withholding the email from the blog forces a level of compromise. Thus we begin our relationship to pragmatism. (And, by my lights, if you're going to compromise, though, do it in the name of ethics.)
Like Lauren, you've anatomized the message, in this case working with sentences as components. This works quite well. Your opening note that a close reading engages literary and "visual" aspects raises the question about what one does with transliterated emoticons, or whatever one would call them: =P Is =P a sentence? It's somewhere between a parenthetical comment and its own meaning-bearing mark. It's using letters as marks that are to imitate facial contours; because they're marks, rather than letters, they contain an extra-linguistic visual aspect. Fascinating. Along with the presence of abbreviations like "SEA" and "JC" this email contains multiple levels of linguistic and extra-linguistic. You are right in drawing out attention not sea-ward but SEA-ward. You might comment on why "SEA" isn't "Sea"—the capitalization is of a different order than capitalizing someone's first and last name. This work is well done—you've mediated this call to mediation very well.
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