Reading Prose: Questions to Guide your Interpretation

Note that the guidelines for systematic analysis on pages 2-3 will help you to answer the questions
on this page with more confidence.
1) Read the passage in its entirety. As you read, take note of what ‘stands out’ most in this passage. Try to
work out a) what the author wants to make you feel, think or believe and b) what obstacles she needs
to overcome in order to make you do so.
- Is there a particular image or pattern of imagery that seems central to the text?
- Is there some sort of argument or dialogue taking place within the text, where one idea is being
weighed against another?
- Does the author put herself into the picture, e.g. by asking a question or recounting a personal
anecdote?
- Is there a clear narrative structure – i.e. do we go from orientation to complication to some sort
of resolution?

2) Write a brief synopsis of the content of the passage: ‘this passage is about…’
- Is there a heading or title? This normally identifies the main theme or topic.
- Highlight the nouns in the passage, particularly those used in the first paragraph or two. These are the
‘content’ words. What do these nouns have in common? What sort of connotations do they share?
Are particular nouns repeated? Are these nouns abstract (about ideas) or concrete (about material
things)?
- Re-read the first paragraph and the last paragraph. Do these present a thesis? Do they begin and end
a story?

3) Identify the main issue that is raised in this passage.

- Highlight the verbs in this passage, particularly in the first paragraphs. These tell us who is doing what.
- Use the verbs to identify the main actors, i.e. the subjects of the verbs. (These ‘actors’ may or may not
be flesh-and-blood people.)
- Do these verbs reveal a conflict or tension, e.g. (alleged/denied; revealed/concealed;
remembered/forgot)?
- Highlight quotations within the text. Ask: does the reader agree or disagree with the speaker quoted?

4) Describe your sense of the author’s opinion on, and attitude toward, this issue.
- Describe your impressions of the ‘narrative voice’. What sort of persona is speaking?
- Highlight the adjectives, adverbs and intensifiers. These often signal the author’s judgement on the
matters they are describing. Are there a lot of these? How strong are the judgements given?
- Look for discourse markers that indicate shifts in the author’s attitude:
o e.g. ‘however’, ‘nonetheless’, ‘all the same’, ‘on the other hand’...
- Is there any hint of irony or sarcasm?
- Is the author making an explicit argument? Look for words and phrases that mark a claim, such as,
‘clearly’, ‘more to the point’, ‘therefore’, ‘in conclusion’, ‘so’.

5) Explain how the author positions you, the reader, in relation to the content of the text.
- What is the register used? How is the narrator addressing you? What is the level of the language and
what sort of social interaction is implied between ‘speaker’ and ‘listener’?
- Identify the narrator’s ‘point of view’. What is her perspective on the information being given? How
much of the truth does she claim to see? How much is she telling us? Is she trustworthy? Do we
receive information in chronological order or some other sequence?
- What sort of appeals does the narrator make to win your assent? Ethos (appeal to credibility,
authority, good character)? Pathos (appeal to the emotions)? Logos (appeal to reason and logic)?
What techniques are used to convey these appeals?

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 Reading Non-Fiction Prose: Questions to Guide a Systematic Analysis
Below are a list of questions which you can use to systematically analyse any non-fiction prose text. Please
note that not all of these questions will be relevant to all texts.

1. Diction: How does the author’s overall word choice (imagine turning the text into a word cloud and then
looking at what links together the words chosen) help to create particular effects?

- Is the vocabulary used mostly simple (with short words) or complex (polysyllabic and Latinate)?
o Compare: “the cat sat on the mat” with “the feline quadruped was situated atop the luxuriously
embroidered drapery.”
- Is the diction mostly abstract (to do with ideas) or concrete (to do with things you can see, smell, hear,
taste and touch)?
o Compare: ‘a wistfulness swept over me as childhood memories, mingling delight and confusion,
returned to my long-jaded mind’ with ‘I sat down on the worn nylon carpet, smelling of chalk,
paste and crumbs of discarded play-dough, and heard, as if from another life, the long-
forgotten roar of an electric pencil sharpener.’
- Is the diction mainly colloquial and informal or elevated and formal? Does it use idioms, such as ‘feeling
under the weather’ or ‘raining cats and dogs’? Is any specialist vocabulary, archaic language or technical
jargon employed?
- Is the diction strictly denotative or does it also create effects through connotation? If so, are the
connotations positive or negative – i.e. what sort of mood is created?
o Compare: ‘A cold wind battered us as the sun sank beneath the grey and greasy ocean’ with ‘A
bracing sea-breeze enveloped our senses as we gazed into the glowing west’.
- What musical effects does the diction create? Is the diction euphonious (pleasant to the ear) or
cacophonous (harsh-sounding)?
o Compare: ‘Murmuring mildly, he gently unfolded his soul to the reverent congregation’, with
‘spitting garbled, hacking barks, he spilled his rank guts to the braying mob’.
- Does the diction belong to one or more identifiable 'fields of meaning' (also known as 'semantic fields'
or 'lexical fields') - e.g. war, colour, the body, the emotions? If so why?)

2. Syntax: How are words structured into clauses, sentences and paragraphs in this passage and what effects
does this structuring have?

- What is the typical length of the sentences in this passage? Are there any striking contrasts between
long and short sentences? Why is this?
- What is the function of the sentences which make up this passage? What effect is generated?
o Statements? (He scored.)
o Questions? (Did he score?)
o Commands? (Score, damn you!)
o Exclamations? (Gooooooooaaaaaaaaallllllll!!!)
- How are the sentences structured?
o Simple sentences: “He scored a brilliant goal.”
o Compound sentences: “He scored a brilliant goal but tore his hamstring.”

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 o Complex sentences: “He scored a brilliant goal, his last ever for that team.”
- What style of sentences predominates?
o Loose sentences: “He scored and ran on delirious to stare wondering up into the stands
where the home crowd were screaming his name.”
o Periodic sentences: “Summoning up every last dreg of energy from his injured and exhausted
body, he raced down the sideline, jigged inside the final defender, thought of his dead father
and scored.”
o Balanced sentences: “He scored twice, but he fouled twice.” “He won the match, but lost our
respect.”
o Fragmented or truncated sentences: “The crowd could see. He was going to - he had! Had
scored! Over! Was it? It was... It was all over!”
- What is the tense? Are there any shifts, e.g. from past to present tense?
- Do pronouns (e.g. "I", "we", "you", "they") play any important role? Is there striking use of the definite
article ("the") or the indefinite article ("a")?

3. Figures of Speech: Figurative speech is language which draws attention to itself - language which is
consciously 'artful'. Where and how does the passage use figures of speech?

- What use is made of tropes (figures which extend words beyond their literal meanings) in this passage?
Is there much use of, for example, metaphor, simile, personification or symbolism?
- Does the author make use of syntactical or lexical schemes (i.e. repetition of particular words or
particular structures), such as anaphora, parallelism or chiasmus? How do these schemes heighten the
effect of the words themselves?
- What about figures of sound or 'phonological schemes', which pattern or play with the sounds of the
words used? These might include alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance or rhyme.

4. Cohesion and Coherence: Are the links which allow us to 'make sense' of the text implicit or explicit? How
'orderly' is the text? How hard do you, as a reader, have to work to understand what is going on?

- Does the text frequently require us to infer connections between words and sentences?
- Or does the text often include logical conjunctions ('and', 'but', 'so', 'because')?
- Are the same words or phrases repeated across sentences and paragraphs in order to connect them?
Or is there 'elegant variation', i.e. use of a variety of different words and phrases to refer to the same
thing?
- Is the style dominated by parataxis, hypotaxis or are both used? What is the effect of this?
o Parataxis: ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ (all elements are given equal 'weight')
o Hypotaxis: ‘Since it was I who arrived, and I who saw how the land lay, the victory followed
as a matter of course.’ (elements are ranked as more or less important)

5. Context and Textual Relations

- Does the writer address the reader directly, or through the words or thoughts of a fictional character?
- What language features are there which tell you who is "speaking" (e.g. first person or third person
pronouns)?
- Can you sense the author's attitude to his subject? Is it revealed explicitly or can you infer it from the
way he writes?
- If a character's words/thoughts are represented, how is this done: by direct quotation (direct speech)
or by some other means (indirect speech or free indirect discourse)?
- To what extent does this text refer to a broader social and historical context?