The Big 5

The Big 5

1. Context/audience/purpose

   • Who does the text target? What does the author wish to achieve through the text? What text type is it?
     • Don’t be reductive about the audience, be specific
     • Purposes: to inform, persuade and entertain

2. Content/theme

   • What is literally ‘happening’ in the text? What is it about? What are the main ideas of the text?
     • Are there any comparisons?

3. Stylistic devices

   • How does the text author use language to convey a sentiment or message? What kinds of linguistic tools does he/she employ? (Spectacle of analysis)
     • Graphology: The marks on the page, font size, colour, type, visual images, punctuation, ellipsis (…)
     • Grammar: Tenses, pronouns, parts of speech, adjective, verb, adverb
     • Syntax: Sentence forms- questions, statements, imperatives
     • Lexis
       • A lexical field is a group of words with a common theme or genre
       • An item of lexis is a word
     • Semantics vs. Pragmatics
       • Semantics= All meaning (Blue could be represented with depression)
       • Pragmatics= Meaning in context, the authors intent (the adjective is described as the curtains being blue)

4. Structure

   • How is the text organized, literally (i.e. layout/formatting)? What kinds of structural elements of a particular text type do you see?