To analyze any cultural text effectively, it is useful to concentrate on specific components of the work used to build and reveal how it asks readers or viewers to understand a certain identity. This process will help you explain how a passage, character, or aspect of cultural rhetoric relates to ideas of social construction and identity allowing you to reach an intelligent and creative thesis for analysis. For this class, you will focus your analysis on our class themes: identity and bias as it is socially constructed through culture.
Complete the following heuristic as an informal research tool for your final essay analysis of a cultural text that created and shaped your ideas about your own or another’s identity. Be thoughtful, thorough, substantive, and detailed!
Submit this to Canvas as a Word document.
| Context |
| Who wrote or created this text/media? What motivated the author to create this media? What is the cultural or social purpose of the text? What time period? What social and cultural events were taking place while it was created? What specific audience was this text attempting to reach? |
| Textual Analysis |
| Language/word choice Genre/style Metaphors Audio Elements Visual Elements Characters Plot |
| Evaluation |
| What identities are being presented through this text? Does the text reflect reality? Does it select/deflect certain aspects of an identity? What inferences are being made? What biases are being perpetuated or challenged? What is you personal relationship to the text? When did you first watch, read, or listen to this particular piece of media? Why did you like it? Dislike it? How did it affect you and possibly your notions about men, women, or some other identity group? |
English 104 