Doing Stylistic Analysis

Doing Stylistic Analysis

(or four steps to heaven)

READ THROUGH THE WHOLE OF THIS PAGE CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU BEGIN WORK ON YOUR ANALYSIS ... FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS BELOW.

Step One: Initial Guidance
DO NOT DO ANYTHING BUT READ THROUGH THIS SECTION
DO NOT START WRITING OR NOTE-TAKING YET!

If you are offered a choice, DO NOT choose to analyse any text that you really think you don't understand! Go for something you think you can make some sense of, even on an initial reading. Do give the author credit for having thought about the way the text is phrased: assume that it's unlikely that s/he simply stuck something down without thinking, though you may feel (and eventually be able to prove from linguistic evidence) that a particular choice is not working well.

Once you have the text(s) you intend to work on, START THINKING AND NOTE-TAKING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE after finishing this handout, so that if you have a deadline to meet, you don't have to rush at your work at the last minute.

STRUCTURE YOUR WORK, either along lines indicated to you (if any), or in any other way that you prefer. But if you create your own structure, make it explicit by using (sub-)headings. Make sure you cover all the areas you need to. You could also number your own paragraphs and sub-paragraphs, to help you decide if you've got things in the best order, but It's not necessary to retain the numbers once you are satisfied you've finished moving things about.

ALWAYS refer to line or sentence numbers in your chosen text, unless you are referring to longish sections. This avoids confusion and saves time and space. If however you find you have a very large number of such references in a short space, consider rephrasing or referring to longer stretches of the text you are analysing, in order simplify and clarify for the marker.

Follow the normal conventions for general presentation and short quotations as described in 'General Instructions' above. In addition, remember the following layout requirements (which are normal for all academic work) :

INDENT any long quotes from the course reading, with the attribution following aligned to the right-hand margin, and including page numbers: and always leave a one-line space before and after the quotation;

SINGLE INVERTED COMMAS are used for short (one-line or less) quotes, and these are not indented, and can simply follow a colon;

UNDERLINING (or italicisation) is appropriate for single words or short phrases quoted as part of your own sentence.

Step Two: Producing material and planning your work
YOU MAY NOW PICK UP A PEN!

Allow yourself plenty of time to do the analysing. No matter how long you allow, it will take longer than that!

It's impossible to start writing an analysis immediately you feel you can begin to interpret the text, so don't try it! But DO note down your major reactions and responses to the text as you read, especially any 'impressions' as to what the more subtle meanings are. A record of your initial understanding will be essential later on.

Next, you are going to SKETCH OUT YOUR ROUGH ANALYTICAL NOTES as you analyse. If you do this carefully, it will provide you with much more material than you can possibly use, so that later you can select the most pertinent parts to include in your final write-up.

START METHODICALLY: decide which bits of your text are foregrounded or obviously deviant, and then decide what language levels the foregrounding operates on. This will enable you to decide which language levels to analyse throughout the text in most detail. If nothing seems foregrounded or deviant, look at each language level separately, and collect as much information as you reasonably can.

DO NOT EXCEED about 12-15 sides of double-spaced A4 in all (i.e. including lists, appendices, etc.) for this draft analysis (often referred to in the trade as 'scribble' ! ). More than that and you can be sure you are going into too much detail, getting bogged down, or stuck on one aspect, or repeating yourself! On the other hand, you will find you can't produce less than an absolute minimum of 5 sides, even in note form, if you cover all basic aspects.

KEEP TO YOUR PLANNED STRUCTURE for analysing : following inspiring thoughts as they occur will not produce good stylistic analyses. If such thoughts intrude, however, don't lose them: note them down (on a separate sheet of A4 kept for that purpose) and at a later stage, decide consciously whether or not you want to use them.

When you have produced and noted down all the analytical material you think you could need, TAKE A BREAK, or leave the work until the next day.




Step Three: Drafting your work
You now need to link up your analytical data and your initial impressions,
and make them into a coherent ESSAY PLAN.

Compare your collection of analytical data with the first impressions that you noted down under 2.2 above. Select those bits of data that support your initial interpretation, and those, if any, that interestingly contradict it. Specify closely all these aspects of the analytical data, so that you can explain clearly how they relate to meaning.

Plan to use only the most salient material in your final submission. (You can always include lists, etc., as an Appendix, but don't put anything significant there, as your tutor/marker may not spot it.) Be firm - exclude data that only amounts to a statement of what's there, and does not link to interpretation interestingly. But don't yet throw away what you think you don't want to use : you may find as you go along that some parts of it come in useful.

TAKE YOUR TIME AT THIS STAGE AND KEEP REFERRING BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THE DATA AND YOUR INITIAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE TEXT. It may be at this point that looking at the data affects how you have understood the text. Highlight or otherwise mark any bits of the data that cause this to happen, and indicate what they made you think.

Arrange your material in a coherent way, whether by language level or otherwise: make sure you are not repeating the same conclusions under different headings (if you are, perhaps you should organise by 'foregrounded/deviant areas'). You don't need much of an introduction : If you want to put one in, just say how the text works overall, and what you think it means. I would advise you to plan out any introduction LAST, when you know what you are 'going' to say (because you will already have said it!).

Now take a break, or leave the final writing up to another day (this will give you the necessary perspective on what you finally include/exclude).

Step Four: Writing up
TAKE YOUR TIME: BE SURE YOU'VE COVERED EVERYTHING NECESSARY BEFORE you consider writing your work up (especially if for submission)

Look again at your 'linking notes', and number the items you intend to cover, in the order you intend to cover them in your final presentation. Make sure that you have in mind the need to produce INTERESTING comments as well as ACCURATE analysis.

Make additional notes of any RELEVANT quotations/citations or terminological language from the course reading or any other independent reading that you feel may be useful, keeping them to a minimum, and ensuring that you ONLY INSERT THEM WHERE THEY RELATE CLOSELY TO WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SAY. Try not to include very general definitions or broad statements from the course reading.

Make sure that any individual organisational plan you have decided to use does not oblige you to write very long sections: this could mean that you include irrelevant or uninteresting information, and possibly obscure the 'good bits'! Lists or parts of lists (e.g. of word functions or sentence structures) MAY be included if you feel that they will be essential, but beware of taking up good writing time with simply reproducing lists, tables and the like. You may use footnotes and/or appendices, and these are not normally included in word counts.

Write up each section as independent from the others. Then look at them collectively to decide whether or not they are in the best order for you to draw any conclusions.

Remember that this is NOT a literary essay. Any conclusion should relate very narrowly to what you found through analysis that affected your initial interpretation in any way.

After all this, it should be more obvious than usual that you are aiming to produce a specialised piece of academic writing, not an impressionistic or casual response to the text you are examining.


KEEP THIS SHEET to hand during your preparation - and afterwards. As well as keeping you on the right track for your stylistics work, it will also serve as a general working methodology for any material that requires careful analysis; for example, you may wish to use it

as a guide to producing your own notes from academic reading (except that you don't do Step Four, the 'write up', of course);

to examine short extracts of any literary texts that you are studying, to see if you can work out what an author is actually doing, rather than just accepting the judgements of others;

to enable you to produce orderly and elegant linguistic analyses of any texts you are working with (you would then probably include much more of your technical data).

In fact, wherever there's text to be examined, your training in stylistic analysis will help you (advertising, political speeches, partisan language of any kind, etc, ...). Try it!

Rishi Kumar Nagar