Textual Research Methods

Critical Race Theory – Beyond Myths: What the Debate Misses

What Is Critical Race Theory? “Critical Race Theory” (CRT), which is defined by Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality, is — at its most basic explication — a lens, a perspective, through which folks, traditionally legal and sociological scholars, examine race matters and power dynamics. Related Concepts Audience Awareness; Interpretation, Interpretative Frameworks; Literacy; Perspective; Research; Rhetorical Analysis; Rhetorical ...

Rhetorical Analysis of Film – Elements of Film

This article focuses on film. It describes some terminology to use when writing about the rhetorical devices used in film. It explores of how elements of a film work together to communicate ideas and create specific audience orientations, identifications, feelings, and attitudes. Introduction When you study rhetorical devices, you are studying how a text uses ...

Post-Colonial Criticism

Post-Colonial Criticism is a research method, a type of textual research, that literary critics use to interpret texts a genre of discourse employed by literary critics used to share the results of their interpretive efforts. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, authors of The Empire Writes Back (1989), are three key figures who significantly ...

Structuralist Criticism

Structuralist Criticism is Key Terms: Dialectic; Hermeneutics; Semiotics; Text & Intertextuality; Tone Key Terms Definitions Sign the basic unit of Saussurean linguistics, a physical entity consisting of a signifier (an acoustic image) and a signified (a concept); a sign is said to be arbitrary because a logical relationship between the signifier and signified does not ...

Russian Formalism and New Criticism

Russian Formalism and New Criticism is a research method, a type of textual research, that literary critics use to interpret texts a genre of discourse employed by literary critics used to share the results of their interpretive efforts. Key Terms Definitions Form a genre or literary type (the lyric form, the drama form); the principle ...

Reader-Response Criticism

Reader-Response Criticism is a research method, a type of textual research, that literary critics use to interpret texts a genre of discourse employed by literary critics used to share the results of their interpretive efforts. Key Terms: Dialectic; Hermeneutics; Semiotics; Text & Intertextuality; Tone Key Terms Definitions Incomplete Text a text that remains incomplete because ...

Psychological Criticism

Psychological Criticism is a research method, a type of textual research, that literary critics use to interpret texts a genre of discourse employed by literary critics used to share the results of their interpretive efforts. Psychological criticism, or psychoanalytic criticism, took off in popularity in the early decades of the twentieth century. Sigmund Freud, who ...

Post-Structuralist, Deconstructive Criticism

Post-Structuralist, Deconstructive Criticism is Key Terms: Dialectic; Hermeneutics; Semiotics; Text & Intertextuality; Tone Key Terms Definitions Binary Opposition a pair of related terms or concepts that appear to be opposite in meaning (e.g. light/dark, good/evil, masculine/feminine) Privileged Term the preferred term of a binary opposition; the term’s connotation usually creates its privileged status Suppressed Term ...

New Historicist Criticism

New Historicist Criticism is a research method, a type of textual research, that literary critics use to interpret texts a genre of discourse employed by literary critics used to share the results of their interpretive efforts. Key Terms: Dialectic; Hermeneutics; Semiotics; Text & Intertextuality; Tone Key Terms Definitions Culture the values, conventions, social practices, social ...

This illustration depicts as woman who is looking through glasses that say "class" and "alienation"

Marxist Criticism

What is Marxist Criticism? Marxist Criticism refers to both Marxist Criticism as both a theoretical approach and a conversational genre within academic discourse. Critics using this framework analyze literature and other cultural forms through the lens of Marxist theory, which includes an exploration of how economic and social structures influence ideology and culture. For example, ...