Media and Society : Thinking about Critical Analysis

Thinking about Critical Analysis

The steps below are only in a suggested order. Prepare by reading/watching/listening to all material thoroughly. Understanding what you have to analyze is crucial. As you read, make notes of the following:

Identify the author’s thesis. What is she arguing for/against?
Identify the context of the argument. Why is he arguing this?
Do they offer a solution to the problem(s) they raise? Does it seem plausible?
Note any supporting evidence and all of the main ideas. How does the author support her argument?
What kind of appeals does the author make in order to persuade the reader? For example, does he use: pathos (appeal to emotion), logos (appeal to reason/logic), and/or ethos (appeal to credibility)?
Note your responses to the reading. Do any questions arise? How effective does the artifact appear?

Essential Questions for Each Specific Critical Perspective

When viewing a text through a specific critical lens, use these questions to guide your analysis.

Deconstruction Essential Questions:

Social Class Essential Questions:

Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
What is the social class of the author?
Which class does the work claim to represent?
What values does it reinforce?
What values does it subvert?
What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it portrays?
What social classes do the characters represent?
How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?

Cultural Criticism Questions:

How are events' interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the author?
How does the text function as part of a continuum with other cultural texts from the same period?
How can we use a literary work to "map" the interplay of both traditional and subversive discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerged and/or the cultures in which the work has been interpreted?
How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?

Gender Conflict Essential Questions:

How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?
How are male and female roles defined?
What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
How do characters embody these traits?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them?
What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
What does the work say about women's creativity? Men’s ambition? The androgynous dichotomy?
What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of patriarchy?
What role does the work play in terms of gender literary history and literary tradition?

Psychoanalytic Criticism Essential Questions:

How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work?
Are there any oedipal dynamics - or any other family dynamics - at work here?
How can characters' behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example...fear or fascination with death, sexuality - which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior - as a primary indicator of psychological identity or the operations of ego-id-superego)?
What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader?
Are there prominent words in the piece that could have different or hidden meanings? Could there be a subconscious reason for the author using these "problem words"?

Media and Society