Textual analysis is a complex task that draws on your critical reading, reasoning, and writing skills. Therefore, when you analyze a text, you take a position on an aspect (or several aspects) of that text and support it with evidence from the text itself and, if applicable, from borrowed sources, which you acknowledge. Remember, too, that argument in academic terms means taking a position and supporting it. Like your goal in rhetorical analysis, your goal in textual analysis is to make the best possible case to demonstrate to readers that your analysis is reasonable and deserves serious attention. The best texts for analysis are those that are most problematic-texts whose meanings seem elusive or complex-because these texts give you the most room to argue for one meaning over another. Writers have many options when considering what to say and how to say it. Their impact on real events in real life is likely less direct than that of rhetorical, or persuasive, writing, but many characters and themes that “live” in these works tend to exist for a very long time and are open to analysis as part of a person’s growth and education-and even more, a part of and a reflection of the human condition. (This kind of rhetorical analysis is the focus of Rhetorical Analysis: Interpreting the Art of Rhetoric.) Literary works, whether fiction or nonfiction, film or text, print or digital, are those analyzed as texts. But an editorial or opinion piece or something written, for example, as part of an ongoing argument of viewpoints is more likely to be looked at for the rhetorical or persuasive strategies it employs to create or change an opinion. Always keep in mind, however, that a textual analysis is not about whether you like a text it is about the meaning of the text-how the author created it and intended it to be understood.Īny written work can be analyzed as a text. To find out what a text-fiction or nonfiction-means, you look at its language, examine how it is put together, perhaps compare or contrast it with similar texts or other works, and notice how it affects you or how it fits into events outside it, and you keep asking why. Others may read and understand it differently. Your analysis is your reading of it: your explanation of various text elements, your understanding of the text, and how you understand it in a larger context. Analyzing a text implies that the text can be read in more than one way. What exactly, then, is textual analysis? To analyze a text is to examine its various parts to explain its meaning. However, if you do have questions about some of the elements or disagree about them, then you are on your way to analyzing and interpreting a text. Do you and your friend agree that everything in the show is obvious and clear or is inconsistent and muddy-characters’ motivations, their development over the course of the story, how the setting affects the story, the point the story is making, the extent to which the characters seem realistic or relatable, whether the dialogue seems natural, or any other elements? Or do you and your friend view some of these elements differently? Do you have different views about what you think is the main idea or what a character represents? For instance, do you think the main character represents a force of good, while your friend thinks the main character is a boring wimp? If you agreed on everything-and everything seems straightforward-then that’s that: the film offers little to interpret and most likely is not a strong text for analysis because it doesn’t invite interpretation. It is not analysis, which goes far beyond liking or disliking a text. This brief and casual opinion-based conversation is just that, a casual conversation. You’ll probably say whether you liked it and what in particular prompted your opinion. For example, imagine you and a friend have just finished watching a TV show or movie. It is important, though, to distinguish between what textual analysis is and what it is not. In fact, you do it frequently when you read or interact in other ways with language. You may already be familiar with what is called textual analysis in academia. Demonstrate critical thinking and communicating in various rhetorical contexts.Identify the components of textual analysis and compare it to rhetorical analysis.Define textual analysis and explain its place in academic and real-world contexts.By the end of this section, you will be able to:
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