Topic 1 Tool Summary
We haven’t yet begun to learn in any detail about analytical tools.
That will come in later sessions. But we have begun to learn about the
different levels of language and how they interact with one another.
Perhaps we could think of this in terms of a tool – you have been
introduced to the linguistic leveller!
More specifically, we have noticed how, when texts are produced, choosing
one word, phrase or other construction can, at the same time, have effects
at more than one linguistic level (e.g. lexis, grammar, phonetics).
And we have also begun to explore how the effects of those choices at
different linguistic levels can be integrated together to produce overall
meanings and effects.
This will have been particularly obvious in the work on ‘Anthem
for Doomed Youth’ and in your reading of the analysis of Philip Larkin’s
‘Wants’ in chapter 1 of Mick Short’s Exploring the Language
of Poems, Plays and Prose.
Have you done the reading? - if not, click the relevant link on the
menu for details.
Finally, in going through the work and reading in relation to the poems,
you should have begun to get a sense of the overall purpose of stylistic
analysis and the kind of analytical detail it needs to be successful.
If you want to specify, explain and support interpretations of texts
well, you need careful and systematic analysis to justify your interpretation
and also to help make that interpretation as precise and informative as
you can.
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