Textual Analysis and Critical Appreciation

    The textual analysis is an approach of discussion about a text. Your approach depends on the ability of observation, reading and comprehension of a text. Indeed when you are going to analyze a text you have to observe carefully the title and the layout because they can suggest you a lot about the type of text (poem, ballad, essay or short essay, ...) and about the content. You cannot limit your approach only to observation or a disinterested reading but you have to understand the true meaning of the word and the reasons that led the writer to make some choices and not others.

    First of all you must observe carefully the title, the structure and layout of the text. The title can suggest you a possible content of the text and the structure and layout can suggest you the possible writer’s purpose. In order to understand the extract, poem or essay ... you have to think about its most profound level. If you are able to be immersed in the writer you can get a sense of the text and its purpose.

The method of analysis have to be precise and your argumentation must be organized into paragraphs:

1. The introduction paragraph where you explain your purposes and the possible correlation of the analysis with other topic, for example the political and/or social implication of the text with its period.
2. You can start the analysis with your consideration about the title. It can suggests to the intelligent reader the possible content, the origin of the text or other features.
3. Then you should observe the layout to understand the type of the text and the functions of every parts of it.
4. Now you can analyze the denotative aspect, underlining the different references of the setting and the simple and objective explanation of the writer’s ideas contained in the text.
5. In addition, there obviously needs to be a scrupulous connotative analysis of the text, you have to find out the rhetorical figure, understanding the reasons of their use and what the writer wants to convey. You can put into focus the possible implication of the writer’s opinion and of his/her use of the language with the cultural, political, economical and social situation during the time that the text was written.
6. At the end you can elaborate a conclusion where you explain a general opinions and a report connecting them with the previous information.

    It’s most important to support your opinions with the references to the text because the interpretations of a text are often personal and subjective. When you analyze a text you must not forget the different level of the connotation:

• Phonological level: the sounds, the rhythm (length of the lines, run-on-line, alternation between stressed and unstressed syllable etc.), the rhymes, the use of anaphora and alliteration
• Semantic level: the writer’s use of words, the semantic choice.
• Syntactic level: the order of the words, the language deviations etc.
• Rhetorical level: the use of rhetorical figures (simile/s, metaphor/s, etc.)connected to their meaning.