Analyzing

WHAT IS ANALYSIS?

When you analyze another person's words, you reveal the deeper meanings, ideas, motives, and relationships within the text itself. Analyzing another's words can also help you discover new and more insightful ways to present your own ideas and opinions to your readers in relation to the original text. This badge builds on the foundations of the Quoting badge from ENGL 101, which taught you to use the ICE method to help better integrate quotes into your writing (for more, return to the 101 Quoting badge or the Coastal Writers' Reference for a quick refresher). Good analysis requires a familiarity with summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting from outside sources.

Upon completing this badge, you will have considered a number of ways you might analyze texts and use outside sources to create richer analysis in your own work.

WHY IS ANALYSIS IMPORTANT?

It helps you create new ideas. The process of analysis means to pick something apart, to deconstruct or "unpack" materials so that one might better understand an idea, a place, or an object. When combined with the adjective "textual," we might envision the idea of a textile or a piece of cloth, which uses many different threads woven together to create a dynamic image. When we analyze a text, we pick apart the details and examine them for meaning and then we can put them together with our own understanding to create something new.

It permits us to take as much away from a text as possible. By analyzing a text, we are able to recognize ideas in the text that are not immediately noticeable. Analysis begins with close reading and interpretation of a text. Doing so allows us to make connections between ideas so that we can "see" aspects we might not otherwise notice.

It makes you more credible to your readers. If we want our readers to trust what we have to say, we have to prove that we are knowledgeable on the subject, as well as conscientious writers. Analysis illustrates our thorough understanding of an issue; it shows that we have examined a text from all sides rather than just accepting it at face value.

HOW DO I ANALYZE SOMEONE ELSE'S WORDS?

Remember the "E" in the ICE method for integrating quotations in our writing? It reminds us to "Explain" or "Engage with" each quotation that we choose to include. This form of analysis builds on the skills you developed when completing the Quoting badge from ENGL 101; it is also a practice you are likely to use often in your essays. Here are a few things that analyzing a quote might entail:

Unpacking. Find unique words and phrases within the quotation that contain important meanings. "Unpack" the quotation by pulling out such key words or phrases and explaining them in your own words for your readers.
Picking apart. Separate or "pick apart" the threads or related ideas within a text or among multiple texts. Identify those relationships:

Does the text compare or contrast ideas?
Does it suggest a cause or effect?
Does it explain a process?
Does it provide concrete examples of ideas discussed elsewhere?
Does it propose a solution?

Tracing. Trace your own development of ideas and illustrate to readers why you feel the way you do about a particular topic. Think carefully about your intention for including a particular quotation, and explain that reasoning to your reader. As a writer, it is part of your job to make your purpose in quoting an outside source clear for your readers. For example, you might use a quotation for one of the following reasons:

To support a point you have already made
To set up a point you want to dispute
To enrich or complicate a point in your writing, showing you understand multiple sides to the conversation

CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE OF AN ANALYSIS IN ACTION?

Let's say you wanted to use a passage from Paulo Freire's book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. This book challenges the traditional roles of "teacher" and "student." Freire criticizes the "banking model of education," in which students are seen as empty containers waiting to to be filled with knowledge, rather than fully-formed individuals with their own unique insights and interests:

"Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other" (217).

Depending on your larger purpose for writing, there are any number of ways to analyze this quotation. Here are a few ways to follow the quotation with analysis so that your reader has a better understanding of both Freire's meaning and your purpose for quoting his text:

Unpack key words. As you read a text, underline key terms, concepts, and phrases to return to as you consider the piece in more careful ways. Look especially at terms used repeatedly in a piece and consider how terms are introduced and handled throughout the text.

"For Freire, learning is never passive; it is an activity that requires the energy and dedication of the learner…"

How does the use of these words impact Freire's argument? What do they emphasize for readers? You may find it helpful to look some of these words up in a dictionary — sometimes words have more subtle meanings than you might not originally recognize:

It is "restless," implying that learners are not satisfied with easy answers.
It is "impatient," suggesting that learners are motivated by a thirst for knowledge.
It is "continuing," implying an unending, lifelong process.
Lastly, the true pursuit of knowledge is "hopeful," meaning that learners remain optimistic and positive in their quest.

Pick apart a relationship. While reading, you will also want to consider the ways particular concepts are related in a text by noting patterns in meaning. Doing this kind of work allows you to consider how a piece builds and constructs larger points.

"For Freire, education is not a commercial transaction in which the customer (student) pays for a product (knowledge). Rather, Freire describes education as a multi-step process, in which the outcome depends on the learner's commitment to goals and continuous active involvement…"

This analysis section explains two kinds of relationships: first, it contrasts Freire's ideas with more conventional beliefs about education; then it analyzes the multi-step process that Freire describes. To further explain the relationships built with this quote, you might provide examples of what the learning experiences referenced might look like, or use additional sources to create a conversation that extends or complicates Freire's point. How might the coming together of multiple ideas create a richer illustration of Freire's argument? Or of your own?

Trace the development of your ideas. As a reader, pay attention to your reactions to a text. Describing the realizations and conclusions you came to as you worked through a piece stresses the significance of your own stance and perspective.

"Freire is right. In my own growth as a student, I have changed from someone who passively swallows information only because I might be tested on it, into someone who eagerly pursues knowledge as a way to engage with the world around me…"

As you incorporate Freire's text as a way to show the development of your thinking to readers, you develop a sense of ethos — authority — in your writing. In this way, Freire supports your position at the same time that you show support for (or complicate) his.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Let's take a look at our completed analysis of Freire's quote:

Historically, Western education has regarded students as passive "consumers" of information, not as unique individuals. However, educator and theorist Paolo Freire challenged this view in his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which argued that this view was not only counterproductive but also harmful to both student and teacher. Freire claims that "[k]nowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other" (217). For Freire, learning is never passive; it is an activity that requires the energy and dedication of the learner. By describing inquiry as "restless" and "impatient," he suggests that learners are not usually satisfied with easy answers, and that they are motivated by a thirst for knowledge. He also says it is a "continuing" process, meaning that it is unending, often lasting an entire lifetime. And finally, he characterizes inquiry as "hopeful," which is to say that learning requires us to be optimistic in our quest for understanding. Education, as far as Freire is concerned, is not a commercial transaction in which the customer (student) pays for a product (knowledge). Rather, He describes education as a multi-step process, in which the outcome depends on the learner's commitment to goals and continuous active involvement. Freire is right. In my own growth as a student, I have changed from someone who passively swallows information only because I might be tested on it, into someone who eagerly pursues knowledge as a way to engage with the world around me.

No matter the specific way you choose to analyze a text, one principle always remains the same: analyzing a text or a quotation is about more than just summarizing what is being said — it is about engaging with materials and synthesizing different ways of thinking to create something new.

EXAMPLE

For reference, take a look at how one student writer chose to use textual analysis in her own writing.

This essay was published in the 2015-2016 Coastal Writer's Reference and was written for an English 102 class. In the essay, the writer, Jami Pulley, argues for the vaccinations of children, presenting evidence from a variety of sources throughout the paper. More specifically, Pulley uses the specific example of autism. In the excerpt below, she analyzes a keyword from one of her quotes, using it to support her main thesis. Let's take a look…

Vaccination is one of the single most beneficial public health achievements of the 20th century. Another source states that, although this information is true, the amount of people that believe it is slowly plummeting because of "falsely balanced" reporting in the media (Dixon and Clarke 352). Falsely balanced reporting in the media is when reporters show the "controversy by presenting claims both for and against a link [between vaccination and autism] in a relatively 'balanced' fashion" (Dixon and Clarke 352). This means that even though there is scientific evidence that vaccines are not related to autism, journalists present the controversy as if both sides are evenly balanced in evidence. This is unrealistic because there is no scientific proof the vaccines cause autism and a lot of research that states that there is no link between the two (Dixon and Clarke 352).

For citation, use:

Coastal Carolina University, Department of English, First-Year Writing Program. "Analyzing." Coastal Composition Commons, 24 August 2017, https://ccc.coastal.edu/task/102-badge-1-2/. Accessed xx xxxxxx xxxx.