Understand and search for the ‘premise’ in texts and oral communication, a sort of underlying belief on a certain topic.
The premise may be clear in some texts but not others. For example, reading a selling brochure most people know that a product is being marketed to them, so one will not find reasons against the product nor information about competing products or companies in that brochure.
In other texts the premise may not be as straightforward but still relevant. Even children’s books convey messages such as ‘the world is a fair place’. Guidelines may convey messages that align with the organisation’s or the expert’s world view, such as ‘the world is an unfair place’ or ‘you need to protect yourself from bad influences’.
Finding these facts, statements, or foundations of a text can be illuminating as to why the text was written, what it is trying to achieve, and what could be the missing pieces in a text. We can often question the premise of a text by asking ourselves, what if the opposite were true or what would somebody opposing to these views write? When reading a text, consider:
- who wrote it
- what they want to achieve
- what if the opposite were true
