taking an approach.

According to Harris, taking an approach is not the same idea as picking a side, like with forwarding and countering. Taking an approach is much more stylistic and reflexive. In fact, "you rewrite not passages or ideas from a text but an author writer's mode or style of working" (Harris 95). Harris talks about the three distinctive ways in which one can take an approach on a piece of writing. First, you must acknowledge the influence; look in your own work to see how a certain author has influenced it. Second, you turn an approach on itself by asking the same questions to the author. Third is reflexivity. Reflexivity is about looking back on your text and noting the methods taken in forming it.
Taking an approach can be seen throughout many New York Times articles where the author may question or speculate into a situation. Often times their curiosity or political beliefs transcend into the writing and forms the language they use to create a text. For example, Jonathan Weisman wrote an article called "Texas Senator Goes on Attack and Raises Bipartisan Hackles" . In the article, Weisman takes an approach by painting Cruz in an unfriendly manner. His language suggests that he disagrees strongly with Cruz's political viewpoints, which can be seen by the phrase in the title "raises bipartisan hackles". This leads the reader to be set up for a man who is so bad that even his own party doesn't want anything to do with him.
I believe that taking an approach can be difficult in the reflective manner. We are surrounded by so many forms of writing it's hard to be definitively influenced by one in particular.