TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

Week 7

Key features

Summary of the Text Attention to the context A clear interpretation or judgment Reasonable support for your conclusions

Summary of text

Your readers may not know the text you are analyzing, so you need to include it or tell them about it before you can analyze the text. Texts that are well known may only need a sentence to summarize it (it if you were analyzing Gettysburg Address) But text that are not well-known may require a more detailed summary (a paragraph should suffice.

Attention to the context

Texts do not exist in isolation: they are influenced by and contribute to ongoing conversations, or debates, so to understand the text, you need to understand the larger context. (this may mean you need to research your text, the historical period, and the author). Texts might also include phrases from other texts as a reference to the larger context EX: Of the people, by the people, for the people is commonly found in writing that is relating its larger context to the United States after 9/11.

A Clear interpretation or judgement

Your goal in analyzing a text is to lead readers through careful examination of the text to some kind of interpretation or judgment, generally announced clearly in your thesis statement. When you interpret something, you explain what you think it means. Ex: if you are analyzing beauty commercial, your argument (THESIS) can be that consumers of three beauty products are encouraged to objectify themselves. Or for a commercial that appeals to the notion sex sells - You might also choose to judge the effectiveness of the ads, perhaps noting that they promise the impossible, that no mouthwash, soap, or other product can guarantee romantic success.

Reasonable support for your conclusions (point of views/larger claims)

Written analysis od a text is generally supported by evidence (QUOTES) from the text itself and sometimes from other sources (research or a similar text). You might support your interpretation by quoting words or passages from the text or refer to images in a visual text. You might examine the use of repetition EX: Gettysburg address Lincoln repeats the word dedicate a way of arguing that the speech is still relevant today on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. You might examine the patterns of both imagery and language in your analysis of a commercial. Note that the support you offer your interpretation need only to be reasonable - there is never one way to

Guide to Analyzing a text

Choose a text Read it critically with notes, underlines, highlighting, and comments in the margins (if possible). Define any words that are unknown Examine the purpose of the text, its title, and the message. Note areas that bring up the same topic or issue and explain that topic/issue in similar or different ways

Consider the Rhetorical Situation

Purpose:
Why are you analyzing this text? To demonstrate that you understand it? To persuade readers that the text demonstrates a certain point? To examine a theme that is understood from a particular sentence or phrase? Or are you using the text as a way to make some other point (ie. stinking ooze essay)

Audience

Are your readers likely to know your texts? How much detail will you need to supply?

Stance

What interests you about your analysis? Why? What do you know or believe about your topic, and how will your own beliefs affect your analysis?

Media/Design

Are you writing an essay for class? To be published in a journal or magazine? Something for the web? If you are analyzing a visual text, you will probably need to include an image of the text. How will your analysis be published once its finally finished? Would including images or storyboard help to illustrate your ideas?

Generating Ideas and Text

In analyzing a text, your goal is to understand what it says, how it works, and what it means. To do so, you may find it helpful to follow a certain sequence: Read, response, summarize, analyze, and draw conclusions from your analysis.

Read to see WHAT the text says

Start by reading carefully, to get a sense of what it says. This means skimming to preview the text, rereading for the main ideas, then questioning and annotating. Consider your initial response. Once you have a sense of what the text says, what do your think? Whats your reaction to the argument, the tone, the language, the images? Do you find the text difficult puzzling? Do you agree with what the writer says? Disagree? Agree and Disagree? Your reaction to text can color your analysis, so start by thinking about how you react and why.

Continued

Consider both your intellectual reaction and any emotional reactions. Identify places in the text that trigger or account for those reactions. They can be interesting to examine. If you think that you have no particular reaction or response, try to articulate why. Whatever your response, think about what accounts for it. Next, consolidate your understanding of the text by summarizing (or if its a visual text desribing) what it says in your own words. You may find it helpful to OUTLINE or MAP its main ideas.

Decide on what you want to analyze

Having read the text carefully, think about what your find most interesting or intriguing, and Why. Is there are particular sentence, passage, or phrase that draws your attention? Does the language interest you? The imagery? The argument? The larger context? Something else? You might begin exploring what attracted your notice.

Study how the text works

Texts are made up of several components- words, sentences, images, even punctuation. Visual texts might be made up of images, lines, angles, color, light and shadow, and sometimes words. All these elements can be used in various ways. To analyze them, look for patterns in the way theyre used and try to decide what those patterns reveal about the text. How do they affect its message? Then write a sentence or two describing the patterns youve discovered and how they contribute to what they text says.

Analyze the argument

Every text makes an argument. Both verbal and visual text make certain assertions and preovide some kind of support for those claims. An important part of understanding any text is to recognize its argument what the writer or artist wants the audience to believe, feel or do. Consider the texts purpose and audience, identify its thesis, and decide how convincingly it supports that thesis. Then write a sentence or two summarizing the argument the text makes along with your reactions to or questions about that augment.

Think about the larger context

Texts are always part of a larger, ongoing conversations. To analyze a texts role in its larger context you may need to do additional RESEARCH to determine where the text was originally published, what else was happening or being discussed at that time the text was published or created, and whether or not the text responded directly to other ideas or arguments. Then write a sentence or two describing the larger context surrounding the text and how that context affects your understanding of the text.

Consider what your know about the author

What you know about the person who created the text can influence your understanding of that text. His or her other work, reputation, stance, and beliefs are all useful windows into understanding a text. Then write a sentence or two summarizing what you know about the author and how that information affects your understanding of the text.

Come up with a thesis

When you analyze a text, you are basically arguing that the text should be read in a certain way. Once youve studied the text thoroughly, you need to identify your analytical goal: do you want to show that the text as a certain meaning? Uses certain techniques to achieve its purposes? Tries to influence its audience in particular ways? Relates to some larger context in some significant manner? Should be taken seriously or not? Something else? Come up with a tentative thesis to guide your thinking and analyzing but be aware that your thesis may change as your continue to work.

Ways of organzing a textual analysis

Examine the information you have to see how it supports or complicates your thesis. Look for clusters of related information that you can use to structure your OUTLINE or WEB MAP. Your analysis might be structured in at least two ways: 1. discuss the patterns or themes that run through the text. 2. Or you might analyze each text or section of the text separately. Which ever structure, your analysis will always return to support how the sentence or phrase (the one-line that interests you) that furthers your understanding of the text to emphasize your

Drafting your analysis

You goal should be to integrate various parts into a smoothly flowing, logically organized essay. However, its easy to get bogged down in the details. Consider writing one section of the analysis first, then another and another until youve drafted the entire middle; then the beginning and ending. Alternatively, start by summarizing the text and moving from there to your analysis with evidence: from the text itself (it is your primary resource), or from RESEARCH on the larger context of the text.

Draft a beginning

The beginning o an essay that analyzes a text generally has several tasks: introduce or summarize the text of your readers, to offer any necessary information on the larger context and to present your thesis.

Summarize the text

Your readers dont know your text, so you need to give a breif summary early on that introduces it to them and shows that you understand it fully. Breif summary of its context or purpose.

Provide a context for your analysis

If there is a larger context that is significant to your analysis (historical reference, theoretical prespective, rhetorical or theme found), you might mention it in your introduction. EX: Gettysburg Address is the centerpiece of 9/11 commemorations Misfit is the centerpiece to understanding how O'Connor defines a good man is hard to find. Sinking Ooze is the centerpiece to understanding how Stephans surprise to see the condition of a Ladys dressing room A Narrow fellow in the grass is the Centerpiece to understanding the trickery nature of a snake. And leads you to unravel the unsuspecting evils that lurk in the grass nature/the world.

Introduce a pattern or theme

If your analysis centers on a certain pattern of textual or contextual elements (repetition, verbs, descriptors, etc.) you might being by describing it. Ex: OConnor s story she continues to return to the notion of you are a good man as a rhetorical appeal to the Misfit for not killing or continuing his evilness presented by many of the characters in the story. How does that affect the Misfits decisions and how does it demonstrate what led the Misfit to be a misfit. What is a misfit in our society?

State your thesis

Society dictates that women should strive to attain beauty at all costs, and even through synthetic means. While most women can accept this, some men cannot. They become repulsed by the idea that the face and persona women present to society are not the same as womens natural face and persona behind closed doors and in the privacy of their own rooms. In his poem, The Ladys Dressing Room (1732), Jonathan Swift expands upon this concept by presenting two competing rhetorics in order to shape his reader s thoughts on the roles of mean and women in societyConversely, by having Swift dissembling Celias rhetoric throughout the poem in a condescending and misogynistic manner enables his character Stephon to create his very one rhetoric of femininity through scrutinizing Celias dressing room.

People put up false realities, knowingly turning a blind eye to facts or imperfections that they consciously do not want to deal with. A very prominent case of this is toward the idealism of women; the culprits in this act are those finicky and odd creatures known as men. Such is the theme behind Jonathan Swifts poem The Ladys Dressing Room (1732), where a man comes to find his perceived idealism of the quintessence of a beautiful woman is horribly destroyed when he witnesses the various potions, powders and paints in her dressing room, as well as the evidence of certain natural (and necessary) biological functionsthroughout The Ladys Dressing Room, the poet argues against the notion that women are somehow separate from men that they live in an unconnected sphere where life is far more pristine than the baseness and fetidness of men and he claims that this notion is completely misguided, unrealistic and foolish.