Level One Analysis

At this level of our analysis, we examine how authorial choices create effects. We focus on the intentional or unintentional choices included by the author and explain how they emphasise, imply, or evoke things.

KEY ELEMENTS

Accurately Identifying Authorial Choices

This requires you to state precisely what choice you are talking about. For instance, are you discussing the effects of a metaphor, personification, parallelism, or a rhetorical question? If you simply say "this quote highlights" or even "this implies" after stating your evidence, you haven't done this.

Identify the Effects Authorial Choices

This requires you to state the effect of the authorial choice that you've identified. We do this by using the words or synonyms of the words, emphasise, imply and evoke. We avoid vague words such as show, portray and illustrate because they lack precision.

Explain How Authorial Choices Achieve Effects

This requires you to justify that the choice has the effect that you've identified. Many people have different interpretations of texts, so it's important that we do this to give our own interpretation legitimacy.

Level One Analysis Go-to-Guide

Level One Analysis

Level One Common Mistakes

Understanding Effects

Justifying Level One Analysis Workshop

Justifying evidence is an important skill if we want our analysis to be convincing. Click the heading or the image to access slides that explains how to justify different types of authorial chocies.