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How to write a language analysis

The language analysis is a task that you will be faced with both during the year and (for Victorian students) during the English exam. A lot of people find language analysis tasks to be difficult things to write, mainly because schools dont really teach a simple way of writing them. However, the good news is that a simple way does exist, and weve outlined it below: Language Analysis? The language analysis task is basically designed to force English students to read critically, which basically means that when you read piece that is trying to persuade you to think a certain way, you are able to pick up on the authors intent to do this, and make a more informed decision about whether to agree with the author or not. Why does this matter to us? Because you need to keep this point of a language analysis in mind as youre writing: you are trying to show the examiner that you recognise persuasive techniques and how they might affect the reader. The Golden Rule: There is only one rule to follow when writing a language analysis, and that is: Identification Example Explanation Basically, what this means is that throughout the essay you need to name the technique that the author is trying to use (eg. rhetorical question), give an example of that technique (eg. Does this sound right to you?), and an explanation of how the technique impacts upon the reader (eg. This compels the reader to consider their position on the issue, and plants doubt in their mind as to the correctness of the opposing contention). The only hard part about this is generally the explanation, and this is the part of the essay that will separate a poor essay from a good one. The secret is not to think about how this technique works on some anonymous reader, but instead to think, How does this technique seek to cause ME to change my opinion? OK, so now that weve established what needs to go into the essay, all thats left to do is work out some sort of structure to put it in. I suggest something like this: Paragraph 1: Introduction, which will include a background to the issue, the name of the article(s), and the author, tone, contention and publication details (date and paper) of each article. Paragraph 2: Tone, discussing how the general tone of the article works with the authors contention and target audience to persuade readers. If analysing more than one article, its important to focus on the similarities and differences between tone and how the effects on the reader might be different. Paragraph 3: Appeals Paragraph 4: Devices Paragraph 5: Language All these paragraphs are generally fairly similar. In P3, just apply the identify example explanation technique to all appeals in the article, and the same for devices (which include miscellaneous techniques like statistics, expert evidence, graphics etc) and language (connotative words, loaded language etc) in P4 and P5. If youre analysing more than one article, make sure that you compare and contrast the effects of the different techniques in each article within your paragraphs. The comparisons between articles are where the marks can be picked up! Paragraph 6: Conclusion there are a lot of different ways of concluding a language analysis. I think that the best way is probably to give a brief opinion on either (a) if dealing with one article, whether or not that article is effective in persuading its audience and why or (b) if dealing with two or more article, which article is the most effective in persuading the audience to share the authors contention and why. Tags: English, English Exam, Language Analysis
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 1:11 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to How to write a language analysis

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5/07/2012 1:26 PM

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Chris Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 2:42 am

very good. everyone really needed a simple structure that works. teachers dont really tell us stuff like this. nor do many books. just need an example like this for text response now!!!
2. KonstantinMiller Says:
July 6th, 2009 at 11:55 pm

Hi! I like your srticle and I would like very much to read some more information on this issue. Will you post some more?
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