Related Concepts

Related Concepts are the secondary focus of our studies which will deal with much more English related topics. Each are important to the study of English language and literature and offer fundamental skills in this subject. Below are definitions for the official guide. In class, we will personalize these ideas and discuss how they become relevant to our studies in more direct ways.

Purpose: In literary terms, the creator’s intentions in producing the text. This concept could also engage students in exploration of meaning, thesis/argument, gender, age, bias, persuasive techniques, function, critical stance, message and culture.

Audience Imperatives: An umbrella concept to refer to whomever (the reader, the listener, the viewer) a text or performance is aimed at, and the characteristics, impact or desired responses created.

Character : The representation of persons in narrative and dramatic works. This may include direct methods like description or commentary, and indirect (or “dramatic”) methods inviting readers to infer qualities from characters’ actions, speech or appearance.

Context: The social, historical, cultural and workplace settings in which a text or work is produced. Students are encouraged to consider how texts build upon and transform the inherited literary and cultural traditions.

Genre: A type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions (the characteristics of a literary genre).

Setting: The time and the place in which the action of a book, film, play, and so on happens. Setting may also include mood and atmosphere.

Intertextuality: The connections between one text and other texts, the ways in which texts are interrelated, and the meanings that arise out of their interrelationship.

Self-expression: The expression of one’s feelings, thoughts or ideas, especially in writing, art, music, dance, design and film.

Theme: The central idea or ideas the creator explores through a text.

Point of View: The particular perspective brought by a composer, responder or character within a text, to the text, or to matters within the text. It also entails the position or vantage point from which the events of a story seem to be observed and presented to us.

Structure: The way in which a poem or play or other piece of writing has been put together, and the relationships of different parts of a text to each other and to the text as a complex whole.