Task brief: Collating an analytical toolbox – reading texts

Compile a list of all the technical, analytical terms introduced in the textbook and explore the idea further.

Whether fully secure in your understanding or not, you can explore these concepts best through application. Find a full-page advertisement from a magazine and briefly write up what it means to your group. Then, using the terms introduced in Long and Wall et al (2009), develop this into an analysis of meaning that pays close attention to rhetorical organisation and how the advertisement addresses its audience (what affect does it seek to produce?), along with its semiological meanings.

What ideas about its subject and context does it invoke in support of its product? How are signs selected and combined? How does it anchor meaning? How is polysemia controlled? What myths are implied in your chosen text?

Your response should be between 500 words.

View some student responses to the task here.