Unit 2 Paper

For this paper, I would like you to apply some of the analytical approaches we’ve been using this term to the close reading of several literary passages (2-3 depending on their length and the extent of analysis). (You may also add a real world example that fits with the literary examples you choose, but I’d like at least part of your inquiry to focus on literary texts.) You may choose to examine passages from one (or more) of the literary works we have read in the second part of the course that can include but should go beyond passages we’ve read and discussed, and/or from another work(s). You may draw on any of the analytical concepts or tools we’ve been using to enrich your understanding of a passage and the text, but I’d like you to include some of the analytical lenses we’ve been working with in the second part of the semester.

From Unit 1

• semantic analysis—looking at the words and meanings associated with a particular character, family, community, or setting

• pragmatic analysis—looking at dialogue to explore the intentions and purposes behind the words characters utter and how these might contribute to shared purposes or to conflict and misunderstanding

Unit 2

• syntactic analysis—looking at sentences and their structure, to see, for example, --whether a character talks or thinks in questions or declarations, in simple statements or complex sentences with subordination of ideas; --whether there is syntactic repetition—any repeated pattern of phrases or clauses—and if so, what effect is created by it; --whether there is foregrounding of particular elements such as time or place; --whether a character is most often the subject of active sentences and the agent who performs actions or is the direct or indirect object of a sentence or the subject of a passive sentence, suggesting that he/she is the object of another’s actions.

• narrative analysis—looking for the elements of a narrative identified by Labov, particularly --orientation, to see how much shared knowledge the narrator assumes, how much background knowledge is presented explicitly, what this suggests about insiderness/outsiderness to the group or setting that’s represented, or how you’re being positioned as a reader; --narrative action, to see how much of the larger narrative is presented as a series of actions and events that take place (versus orientation or evaluation); --evaluation, to see how (and how much) the narrator reflects on the meaning and significance of the events that are described, and whether the narrator does so through explicit statements or more implicitly (embedding a sense of the significance in a character’s actions or statements, for example).

• representation of discourse: speech and thought—looking at how the words and thoughts of characters are represented through direct discourse, indirect discourse, free direct discourse, and free indirect discourse, and what that suggests about how much, as readers, are in the mind of any character, how our perceptions may be shaped by a narrator, and what we can learn about a narrator from what he/she reports about any other character.

• Language variation and style, working with socio-cultural/sociolinguistic concepts—looking for how a character’s style of language (formal vs. informal), register (associated with a particular context such as church or the academic world or a profession), dialect, etc, position that character in the larger world being portrayed and in relationship to other characters

• analysis of imagery and details—looking at how these contribute to setting a scene, to suggesting what’s important from the perspective of the narrator and/or particular characters, to your picture of a character, to larger themes and possible meanings.

Here are some ideas you could explore, using some of these tools:

1. Narration, evaluation and characterization. Third person narrators often tell us not only what happens or has happened (recounting the narrative action) but also how characters are thinking about those events (evaluating that action). First person narrators may both narrate what they’ve observed or participated in and evaluate what they’ve seen and done. In other words, we can learn a great deal about characters through what we’re told or they tell us of the meaning of the events being recounted. How does the amount and type of evaluation show differences in thinking and values between characters or between an early stage in a character’s development and a later stage? How does a sense of the individual character emerge from his/her attempts to work out the meaning of commonly-experienced events? How do these evaluative portions contribute to your own understanding of the possible meanings of what’s told?

2. Language and family/community. A common sense of meaning depends upon a background of commonly-shared knowledge. Where people feel themselves to be insiders to a group, they generally share the same knowledge (whether or not this is factual). They typically share common words and common meanings for those words, as well as other discourse features. And we generally expect them to evaluate their experiences using similar styles and standards. Where do you see community (or family) meanings and norms functioning in the work(s) you’ve chosen? Where and how do characters differentiate themselves in terms of what they know and/or how they interpret or evaluate what’s commonly known, and how do these differences contribute to the larger themes of the work?

3. Language and school contexts. Several of our texts show representations of language exchanges in school or lesson-learning contexts. Within what is assumed to be the larger pragmatic purpose of school and lesson exchanges—to foster learning—other purposes are attempted by both teachers and students, and those purposes are often realized quite indirectly, often through the style and variant forms of language used by each participant and/or by the reaction of each participant to the others’ styles and forms, so that school/lesson discourse often becomes a contested ground on which charged social differences are played out. As you analyze the passages you’ve chosen, what do you find about the forms/styles of language being used, the ways in which they contribute to larger purposes and confirm or challenge prior expectations of participants, and the extent to which they contribute to a construction of shared meaning or a shared evaluation of significance among the participants? (Chapters 8 and 9 of L&L address the topic of school discourse at some length, and you may want to look through them if you decide on this question.)

4. The role of the reader. The reader enters a world in which shared knowledge is created gradually through interaction with the text, with expectations aroused by the text. Take careful notes on your processing of the key passages you have selected. What associations, hypotheses, predictions, questions, tentative understandings, or puzzlements do the words arouse in you as you read them? How does the language in its many aspects shape your understanding? What is the effect of reference to knowledge you don’t explicitly share? Of disruptions in normal sequential narration? Of embedded vs. explicit evaluation? Of particular choices of style and form? As the audience to this telling, what must you do to find meaning and coherence, to find an answer to the implied question, “So what?”

As in Unit 1, I’ll expect you to create appropriate shared background knowledge about the analytical concepts you’re drawing on in your inquiry, and to do a close analysis of the excerpts you’ve chosen. (You may draw on your classmates' postings with appropriate citations.) I’ll post a rubric.

These ideas are intended to provide a starting point. You may propose to follow out any other idea that interests you and that you can explore through a close look at the language of several passages of  text that you choose.

Due dates:

A paragraph about your proposed paper—what you hope to explore, in relationship to what work(s) and through what analytical perspectives, by Friday, 11/23.

A brief report to the class, guiding us through one of the passages you’ve chosen to look at, in a Wimba session in the week of 12/3 (or posted to a discussion by the day of the Wimba class).

A preliminary draft, if you want a response from me and a chance at revision, by Monday, 12/10.

The final paper of 7-10 pages on Monday, 12/17.

If you focus on a reading other than our course texts, or if you’ve used an edition other than the paperback edition of Doyle required for the class, please attach copies of the passages you’ve chosen (or leave them in my mailbox in the English Department or in the Instructional Technology Center on the lower level of the library).