The style of a written work can tell us nearly as much about the author's intention as facial expressions and body language can tell us about a speaker's intention.
In Queen Elizabeth I's speech to the troops at Tilbury, she's just "a feeble woman" walking among "armed multitudes" who are underpaid, hungry, and tired. How does she convince them to fight a greater enemy? She addresses their misgivings with statements like "I have the heart and stomach of a king" and "being resolved... to live and die amongst you." This makes the soldiers more trusting of her. Coming across as a mentally strong monarch, if not physically, allows Queen Elizabeth to show her trust in the soldiers, which in turn allows her to inspire them to fight and die for the country she represents. However, Queen Elizabeth uses two other powerful tools to deliver her message: tone and mood.
Tone
Tone is the speaker's attitude toward the subject (and can be revealed through their choice of language).
Mood
Mood is just the feeling created by the work.
In her speech, Queen Elizabeth humbles herself, then inspires and defies. So, her tone is humble, yet inspiring and defiant.
(BEGIN activity) The tone of Restoring Black History can be described by the two words ''smug" and "proud" because of how it ties back to how historical ideas and how wrong/absurd they are ("the absurd charge that...") in light of this museum. The writer comes across as proud by how he describes the accomplishments of Black people ("who wanted to make history by writing it") and the museum ("brilliantly designed"). (END activity)
We can often learn more about a text by "asking it questions." For example, "what is the purpose of dropping the royal 'we' in the speech to the troops at Tilbury?" These questions can lead us to noticing things like parallelism (constructions in prose that correspond in meter, meaning, grammatical structure, sound, etc.), juxtaposition (two things near each other with contrasting effect), or antithesis (expressing a contrast of ideas with parallelism of words that are the opposites of each other). Some good questions to ask are:
- What words draw your attention? Is there something similar between all of them (part of speech, specific-ness, etc)?
- Are there words with strong connotations?
- What are the sentences like? Are they periodic (moving toward something important at the end) or cumulative (starting with an important idea and then adding details)?
- How does the writer connect words, phrases, and clauses?
(BEGIN activity) Who is Nunberg writing to? How does the audience react to him writing that he is "a better person for it"? What does the author attempt to accomplish by putting commas around "above all" at the start of the excerpt and not at the end? How do consistently periodic sentences help the writer? Does Nunberg alienate part of his audience by using words like "coterie" and "diffident"? (END activity)
Of course, there's what most people have already done at least once in their life: annotating. Annotating a text requires being able to mark it up, but is rather powerful and can reveal many things about the text (or about what you don't know!).
Graphic organizers are cringe. They take up too much time, space, and thinking for a task that can really be simplified to sticky note thoughts. However, they are helpful for larger projects that require a composed set of observations on a text.
(BEGIN activity) I found that asking questions was a new approach with a lot of potential, as it made me think of questions instead of answers. For me, thinking of questions is easier than trying to find things out about the text directly. I also tend to like taking notes (not directly annotating, but more like writing down important things) on a text because it makes me take note of what I think is important. (END activity)
(BEGIN activity) Literary analysis is similar to rhetorical analysis because both analyze the choices a writer makes to impact the reader in some intentional way. The two are different, however, in what choices they analyze: rhetorical analysis analyzes the meaning of the writer, while literary analysis analyzes the way the message is delivered.
How does asking and answering rhetorical questions support Churchill's purpose? How do his extremisms ("there is no survival") make him appear to the audience? How does his repeated use of lists of four items make his purpose clearer (as opposed to using three-item lists)? (END activity)