Textual Analysis Notes to help with mural essay.

There are certain key elements that comprise a textual analysis essay. These are:

SUMMARY: whatever the “text” is , you need to assume that the readers do not have any idea what or who it is about. Aim to give a summary in your analysis  to include them in the conversation, to make sure they can follow the details.

Pay attention to the Context: any type of text that you look at is part of an ongoing conversation, a controversy, or a debate. To understand it, you need to understand the larger picture.

Interpretation: Your goal is to lead your readers through a careful examination of the text to some kind of judgement, and this is generally announced in the thesis statement.

When you interpret something,you explain what you think it means.

Support your analysis with evidence- this comes from actual parts of the text.

When you analyze a text, your goal is to understand what it says, how it works, and what it means. You may want to follow a certain sequence to better come up with an argument.

Look at your paper right now and apply these steps to your own textual analysis.

1. Read to see what the text says- literally. Look for actual words, ideas, key words, phrases, etc. that seem worthy or questionable. Look for these in the image of your mural.
2. Think about your response to the text’s words. What is your reaction to the tone, to the language, to the image? Do you find it difficult to understand? Summarize it and describe it in the paper.
3. Look at how the TEXT works. Texts are made up of several components--words, sentences, images, lines, angles, colors, light and shadow. Look for patterns in the way they are used.
4. Think about the larger context. To analyze a text’s role in its larger context, you may need to think about the text outside of the actual image itself ( like the neighborhood around it or think about the people who view it)
5. Come up with a thesis. Do you want to show the text has a certain meaning? A certain purpose?