How to Analyse Texts

A toolkit for students of English

Ronald Carter, Angela Goddard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317405528
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

How to Analyse Texts is the essential introductory textbook and toolkit for language analysis. This book shows the reader how to undertake detailed, language-focussed, contextually sensitive analyses of a wide range of texts – spoken, written and multimodal. The book constitutes a flexible resource which can be used in different ways across a range of courses and at different levels.

This textbook includes:

• 
  
  

• three parts covering research and study skills, language structure and use, and how texts operate in sociocultural contexts
• a wide range of international real-life texts, including items from South China Morning Post, art'otel Berlin and Metro Sweden, which cover digital and print media, advertising, recipes and much more
• objectives and skill review for each section, activities, commentaries, suggestions for independent assignments, and an analysis checklist for students to follow
• a combined glossary and index and a comprehensive further reading section
• a companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/goddard with further links and exercises for students.

Written by two experienced teachers of English Language, How to Analyse Texts is key reading for all students of English language and linguistics.

Part I

Foundations

Researching texts

Aim: Part I will help you develop the research skills that are fundamental to the academic work of text analysis.

CONTENTS: PART I

1 Your materials

2 Gathering more materials

3 Sizing up the job: questions, scope and focus

4 The right tools for the job: research methods

5 Preparing the ground: reading and note-making skills

6 Analysing

7 Reporting: writing about texts

Review your skills

Commentaries for Part I

CHAPTER 1

Your materials

Developing a spirit of enquiry starts in your own location. Research is not necessarily about leaving familiar territory – some of the best work is done on home soil. At the core of all good research is the ability to stand back from what is known and see it afresh. This can be done in any context, familiar or not.

However, standing back from language is never easy, because it seems so natural to us. The activities that follow are designed to get you looking at yourself anew – as the source of some good language materials.

Activity 1.1

A LANGUAGE INVENTORY

Answer the questions below, making an inventory as you go. At the end of this process, you will have a profile of yourself as a resource for ongoing text analysis.

1.1 YOUR OWN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Make a list of any material you have, or have access to, that relates to your younger self. For example:

Early reading books	Teachers’ reports	Diaries
Old comics and magazines	School exercise books	Games
Greetings cards	Collections, eg football cards, cards about toys
Recordings of yourself	Letters, eg to a penpal

Examples of your digital communication, eg emails, SMSs, social media posts.

1.2 YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Make a list of any people in your immediate social circle who are interesting or intriguing from a language point of view. For example:

Do you have younger relatives or friends who are themselves using or producing any of the material above?

Do you have any relatives or friends in occupations that use a specific type of language?

Do you have any older relatives or friends who have kept material from years ago – for example, sports articles, greetings cards etc.?

Do you have friends from different communities who use language in distinctive ways?

1.3 YOU NOW…

Do you belong to any groups or take part in any activities that have their own forms of language?

Do you do any work that involves you in using language in a certain way?

Do you collect, read and/or write particular sorts of material?

Individuals are said to have their own ‘idiolect’, or set of linguistic fingerprints that are uniquely their own. Give some examples of language habits or expressions that characterise your idiolect.

1.4 …AND YOUR ATTITUDES

Everyone has an attitude to some aspect of language or another. What are some of your pet loves and hates about language? What are some of the things that make you laugh, think, feel confused, cry? Read the list below, and add any further items that you feel strongly about:

The way people speak on mobile phones

Shop names

Gravestone inscriptions

Family conversations

Sign language

Advertising language

Language and stereotyping

Political speeches

Occupational language – e.g. legal language, scientific language

Children’s expressions

SMS

The way people communicate online – e.g. in blogs, on Twitter, on social media

Language and ‘political correctness’

Terms of address – e.g. words used to women

Swearing

Song lyrics

Personal ads – e.g. the language of internet dating sites

The language of some rituals – e.g. weddings, funerals

Language use in some specific contexts – e.g. at the hairdresser’s, at the dentist’s

Communication with animals – e.g. the way people speak to their dogs

Graffiti

Conversations between strangers at bus stops or on trains

Greetings

The language of junk mail

Bias in newspapers

The language of some magazines

Certain types of literature

Road signs

Greetings cards

The language of birth announcements or obituaries

Some new words and expressions

Particular accents, dialects or languages

When you feel you have exhausted all the topics here, write a summary for yourself of all the different language resources you could tap into, and all the different language areas that provoke a reaction in you.

Your summary is, in effect, a description of you as a language resource. It shows some possible sources of texts, and it also shows some areas where doing research could be rewarding for you. Research questions that arise from something you find personally affecting – whether that’s pleasurable, or annoying – can be powerful because you care.

This completes the first layer of your toolkit.

CHAPTER 2

Gathering more materials

Simply sticking with your existing resources will not give you a way to develop further. You need to plan for how you will go about collecting new sources of language use.

Here are some ways you can add to your raw materials:

2.1 RECORDING

Keep a note of interesting examples of language use that you see and/or hear as you go about your everyday life. There are times when we all wish we had had a way to record a conversation that unfolds near us, perhaps on a bus or in the street. However, even if the conversation itself proves elusive, it is still possible to record some elements of it in a notebook or notemaking tool on a phone or other device. Try to make a note of what it was that you found so interesting.

Of course, recording sound and/or video has become far easier with mobile digital technologies, and there are many examples of undercover recordings that are made by investigative journalists attempting to expose what they see as corruption or bad behaviour of some kind. However, academic research ethics also warn us against doing anything which causes harm to individuals during the process of research, particularly if those individuals are vulnerable – for example, if they are very young, elderly and infirm, mentally ill, or powerless in some way. Ideally, if you want to record people in conversation, you should ask the permission of the speakers. However, researchers recognise that the very act of doing this can alter what would otherwise occur naturally, for example by people saying what they think you want to hear, or by being on their best behaviour. This idea of the researcher affecting the results of their own research is called the observer’s paradox...