Analysing texts

Imagery

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

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

simile

提示'As quiet as a mouse' — one little word gives the comparison away.

为什么The comparison is signposted, so the reader is never in doubt that two things are being held up side by side for a moment.

A metaphor

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

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

Personification

提示The sea can be angry and the trees can whisper — objects behaving like people.

为什么It does more than decorate: it hands a mood to a landscape, so the setting starts telling the reader how to feel about the scene.

Alliteration

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

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

Onomatopoeia

提示Comic-book noises — bang, sizzle, splash — spelled out as words.

为什么It pulls a reader into hearing a scene rather than only picturing it, which is why it turns up so often in poetry about weather and war.

Embedding

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

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

The evidence

提示A claim is worth nothing until you show where in the text it came from.

为什么The full sequence taught here is PEEZL — point, evidence, explain, zoom in on a word, link back to the question. Each step earns its own credit.

Connotation

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

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

Dramatic irony

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

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

14

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

为什么The 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

提示A red rose on the page is rarely just a flower.

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