This guide considers ways of teaching textual analysis using the exam boards’ ‘linguistic concepts’ (aka analytical ‘frameworks’). The guide works alongside the previous guide that, under the umbrella of ‘discourse analysis’, explored the mnemonic ‘G-CAP’: genre, context, audience and purpose.
The purpose of using these ‘linguistic concepts’ is to provide a selection of useful ‘levels’ from which a text can be considered analytically, levels that will allow a close, methodical and above all, subtly revealing analysis to be carried out.
Above all, students need to grasp that the concepts are to be applied judiciously and that no single text will require the use of all of them. It is up to the student – and is a strong feature of the mark scheme – that only appropriate concepts should be selected for a particular text. The guiding rule is that the frameworks chosen need to reveal interesting and useful detail about the text under study. Stating the obvious receives few or no marks; revealing the mundane gains perhaps a grade D; but by exposing the subtleties of a text, a student will clearly receive the lion’s share of the marks available. This guide focuses mainly on techniques that will allow the average student to reveal these subtleties and thus gain a higher grade.
GRAPHOLOGY
An analysis of a text...
