What follows is a list of general ideas to start from when you are reading a document for analysis and comment. Not all of the criteria are applicable to every document, but many of them will be of use in formulating analyses of civilization-type documents.
Commentary instructions
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The purpose of the commentary
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(Caution should be exercised in reading and using this document: Much of it is in “telegraphic” style, in which grammatical words like articles may be omitted or abbreviations used. As such, it should not necessarily be taken as a model for academic writing style.)
it will be observed that the "commentaire" is presented here as a tool for teachers and examiners to use to determine student skills. This is indeed part of its purpose; another part is to help students learn to read documents, not only in the domain of US or Anglophone civilization, but more generally in everyday life.
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insure that the student is able to read texts (literary or “civilisation”) intelligently and critically
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insure that the student is able to write (or present orally) a structured and organize account of the conclusions reached in reading
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more generally, insure that the student is able to analyze and synthesize texts
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at least two kinds of observations
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'internal": what are (some of) the rhetorical devices the author uses, especially in clearly self-conscious/self-aware writing
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"external" (though also "external"
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what does the text reveal about the author including author's degree of self-awareness & deliberate use of "literary" devices and procedures (e.g., private letter-writers)
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what does the text reveal about what the author's expectations are of and about his/her (intended) audience
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supposes / implies that the student
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has adequate background knowledge to evaluate the text
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in civ, understand the importance of the environment in determining the characteristics of the doc
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is aware of the linguistic & rhetorical devices people use to present & define reality
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in lit, to create a reality, incl the narrator i.e., the one who “uses” linguistic devices
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The civ commentary differs from a literary one
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(Note for foreign students [i.e., those whose secondary and immediate post-secondary education was not in France - exchange students, transfer students from other countries, and others]
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a lit work is typically considered to be at least in some ways autonomous, independent of outside / environmental factors
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so considerations regarding the author’s biography and “authorial intent” are often regarded as irrelevant to, or parasitic on the “real” commentary
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furthermore, events in a literary work are fictional, i.e., are created and ordered by author/narrator
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this means among other things that a fictional narrator, for whom the events are real, must be invented by the author and identified by the reader
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(in some cases, e.g., detective fiction, part of the point of the work is to present events in such a way as to a) incite the reader to try to reconstruct the past while at the same time b) recreating the main character’s understanding of events as it evolves so as to prevent the reader from catching on till the end)
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a civ doc is completely dependent on its environment (author, audience, events, etc.)
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what are called “civ” texts are usually intended not to create a world but to put forward and defend a convincing interpretation of the tangible material world the reader inhabits and often are intended to encourage some form of action on the reader's or listener's part
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events in a civ doc are real, i.e., historically verifiable in other sources,
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this means that there is no “narrator” in the literary sense of the term: the living, breathing author has experienced the events in question, or lives in the world in which they took place
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this also means that the student needs to know something about the events referred to, independently of the presentation given in the text
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part of the purpose of a civ doc is often to provide an explanation of the (author’s and readers’ actual) present and to incite the reader/listener to action by explaining and interpreting the events & situations of the past
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this means, among other things, that an author’s political, religious and other kinds of opinions may well be of paramount importance in understanding the text.
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this also means that it is necessary to know something about the events and situations the speaker/author is talking about
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BUT some lit techniques are useful for understanding civ texts
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standard literary / poetic devices (alliteration, repetition, chiasmus, binary and ternary structures, rhetorical questions, use of pronouns, logical links, typography [italics, capital letters...] & punctuation, etc.)
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III. |
Components of a civ commentary
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These suggestions should not be regarded as commanding special authority: there are a number of works available to students that include very valuable and useful suggestions.
Furthermore, the ordering of suggestions used here should not be taken as an immutable model, but rather as a collection of interrelated ideas about ways of approaching a text.
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author’s biography if known
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Context: who, when, where, what
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what is the nature of the text: is it a speech, a newspaper editorial, a court decision, a private letter, a diary entry? The audience of a written document is not the same as that of a public speech.
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events or situation preceding and leading up to those referred to in text
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the student’s knowledge of events should ideally be independent of the text, gleaned from personal readings, courses and lectures, etc.
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e.g., to discuss Abraham Lincoln’s House Divided speech, some info about slavery and Lincoln’s position on the topic would be necessary
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events referred to in the text
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it is quite possible that the student might not be familiar with specific events referred to in the text
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considerable care must be taken not to assume that the speaker/author’s presentation is objective, neutral or impartial, i.e., to avoid attributing unexamined authority to the text’s presentation of events
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i.e., the student’s knowledge of events should ideally be independent of the text
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HOWEVER the main purpose of the commentary is not to provide the student with an opportunity to expatiate on his/her own knowledge of events - the text is not a “pretext”
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facts and background information should be used in the commentary to support a reading of the text, not to demonstrate the student’s mastery of historical arcana & minutiae (though these are two delightful words... )
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may be explicit, e.g., if the text is identified as a speech before an assembly, as an open letter, as a passage from a history book
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may often be implicit (In his "Dream" speech, Martin Luther King, Jr was speaking to a crowd on the Mall, but he was trying to influence a decision by Congress.)
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can often be inferred from the document
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rhetorical devices / structures
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the purpose of a civ text is usually to persuade / convince the reader, i.e., to get the reader to share the author’s arguments, and to arrive at the same concl the author does
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how does the author present events & situations in such a way as to persuade / convince the reader?
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this does not necessarily mean that the author is distorting or twisting events to produce a nefarious and surreptitious effect on an unsuspecting reader, (although it might)
it does mean, however, that an alert reader should be able to recognize authorial/rhetorical mechanisms that encourage this or that interpretation, even in cases when the reader agrees with the author’s point of view
in other words, it is indispensable to identify the author’s point of view, and explicitly to make clear to the reader of the commentary what that point of view is.
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the text presents a vision of events that is revealing about the events themselves and also about the author and his/her position regarding the topic s/he addresses.
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IV. |
Students will have noticed that one of their objectives should be to convince their reader (i.e., the teacher grading the paper), that is, that the student is in a position not too far distant from that of the author of the document being analyzed. It is hoped that students who can recognize and identify the rhetorical devices of others will be better equipped to use those and similar devices themselves.
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