Analysing texts

Imagery

HintWord-painting — the writer makes you see, hear or feel something that is not there.

The whyIt covers similes, metaphors and plain sensory detail. Naming the picture a writer creates is the first step of any analysis of method.

extended

HintThe comparison does not stop after one sentence — it keeps going.

The whyWriters sustain the image so every fresh detail adds to the same picture; spotting where it starts and where it stops is a Year 9 analysis skill.

Metaphor

Hint'He is a lion in defence' — the comparison is made directly, not flagged up.

The whyBecause it states the comparison as though it were fact, it hits harder than a simile: the reader accepts the claim before questioning it.

Pathetic fallacy

HintJohn Ruskin coined it as a complaint: the sky is not really angry, but the writer wants you to feel it is.

The whyRuskin meant it as a fault — feeling distorting description. Examiners now use it neutrally: name it, then say which mood the weather is doing the work of announcing.

Alliteration

HintTongue-twisters run on it — Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

The whyIt slows a reader down and makes a phrase stick, which is why headlines and advertising slogans lean on it so heavily.

Sibilance

HintThe snake-like sound; poets reach for it to whisper, to threaten, or to bring in the sea.

The whyIt is a special case of consonance, judged by effect rather than by letter: the same run of sounds can hush a line to a whisper or make it hiss with threat.

Embedding

HintThe opposite of bolting a quote on after a colon — it is sewn in so the line still reads aloud.

The whyIt forces you to choose only the words you need, which usually improves the analysis that follows: you cannot explain what you did not select.

Evidence, explain, zoom, link — the four steps after the point

HintProve it, unpack it, go down to a single word, and end where the question began.

The whyEach step earns its own credit, and the zoom — one word held up to the light — is where most of the marks hide.

Connotation

Hint'Slender' and 'scrawny' both mean thin, but one flatters and one insults.

The whyThis is where zoom-in analysis actually lives: the writer chose that word over its near neighbours, and the difference is the effect.

Dramatic irony

HintIn a pantomime the crowd shouts "behind you!" — that gap in knowledge is the whole effect.

The whyIt builds tension because the audience can see the danger coming and the character cannot, so every innocent line carries a second meaning.

14

HintTwo more than a dozen — Shakespeare wrote over 150 of them.

The whyThe form is part of the meaning: a sonnet turns its argument partway through, and a Shakespearean one usually clinches that turn in the closing rhyming couplet.

A symbol

HintA red rose on the page is rarely just a flower.

The whyWhen the same image returns again and again through a text it becomes a motif, and the pattern itself starts to carry meaning.