Application analysis is something that college-level writers working in an academic environment engage in all the time. In fact, it is a common notion among educated people to think of texts as commenting on and speaking to or about each other. This intellectually rich interplay of voices is sometimes called "the cultural conversation." It might help your brainstorming to think of the texts you are using as having a conversation. In other words, if the texts were people and could talk, what would they be saying to each other.

In one sense, you've done application analysis already when you used a source text, for example Stuart Hirschberg's "The Rhetoric of Advertising," to help you understand the impact of an advertisement. The source text made general statements about how advertising works that you were able "to apply" to a particular ad, which in that case was serving as the target text.

The prompt gives you an example of two texts that might be used for this assignment. Notice that these example texts represent different genres or kinds of writing. Scarf's text is from the field of psychology and is about families in general. Gilmore's text is a personal narrative about a particular family, his own. They focus on a similar topic, family dysfunction, but they approach that topic from different perspectives. This difference of genre is one reason why comparison/contrast just won't work with these two texts. You are advised against producing a final draft that is a "comparison/contrast essay," but if you really understand this assignment, the prompt's warning is easily heeded.

To discuss your ideas for this assignment and qualify for a valuable individual conference, attend a LARC 39A workshop.