Summary:
Text analysis, or “meta-thinking”, is going beyond the words or ideas in front of us and figuring out how it works. For example, certain texts trigger strong emotion within us, and thus we must find out how that is. In order to analyze the text, we must break it down into simplistic pieces, then put it back together. By breaking it down, we can evaluate each element of the whole picture. The lens is the point of view from which we analyze from, and things we consider include the intended audience, purpose of the text, the genre, and the media or platform it is placed in. Additionally, the timing of the text, the limitations due to the audience’s beliefs, and the cause that led to the text being composed. Finally, theoretical lenses are used to account for the role of characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, ableism
Response:
I think it’s amazing to learn that there is so much the reader can know without the author explicitly stating it in the text. Just as it is said that humans only use 10% of their brain, when we read the text without analysis, we are missing the whole story. If we analyzed most of the elements of any given artifact, a whole new picture would form.