Decoding Cultural Literacy: Rhetorically Analyzing Everyday Media for Professional Writers

Title

Explore the Publication

Short Title

Decoding Cultural Literacy

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Abstract

Go beyond the surface level in reading and producing persuasive, yet efficacious writing. For writers looking to engage with everyday media, cultural background knowledge is essential to understanding the depths of any media and thus interpreting its message. This handbook helps writers learn what cultural literacy is, how to critically analyze media, and then create writing which appeals to one’s own authorial credibility. The key takeaway of Decoding Cultural Literacy is to help analyze everyday media through the rhetorical analysis process, and then engage in a recursive dance by using the same rhetorical steps to write works which are culturally literate and effective for your chosen audience. These same steps for writers will then be applied for moving forward into a professional writing setting and showing how to transfer these skills for the everyday writer, to a professional writing career.

Keywords

Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Documents, Images, Archives, Visualizations, Social Media

Author

KRF

Bio

Felicitations! My name is KRF and I hail from Decatur, GA. I am the Editor-in-Chief at Vinyle zine, a Black literary magazine pedagogically driven to increase the cultural literacy within the African diaspora, and an English Instructor at Clayton State University. I hold a Masters in Professional Writing and I am currently a Doctoral Candidate for Clark Atlanta University’s Humanities and African American Studies program. I am a lover of Black Speculative Fiction, and aim to share my love for literacy and culture with the world.

Vinyle zine

Digital Issue

Platform

PressBooks

Bibliographic Citation

KRF. "Decoding Cultural Literacy: Rhetorically Analyzing Everyday Media for Professional Writers." Illinois Open Publishing Network, 2025. https://doi.org/10.21900/pww.30

Review

"With the goal of improving cultural literacy among writers, this new digital publication positions writing as an active process in the development of cultural competency, thus effectively establishing the connection between rhetorical analysis and improved cultural literacy. Fowlkes’s method for writing rhetorical analysis is especially important considering the public’s increasing access to cultural performances across various media platforms and the growing necessity to competently engage with diverse perspectives and experiences….Decoding Cultural Literacy provides a much-needed contribution to the intersection of writing, rhetoric, and media studies."

Taryn K. Myers, West Chester University

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