English 100-050
Sam Nie
Style analysis essay
You are now required to do an in-depth analysis of the writing style in the prose essay of “I came. I saw. I spun” by Jason Karpf, which is readily available in the non-fiction folder in UR Courses online. The purpose of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to demonstrate your appreciation of language use in short pieces of literature.
You need to refer to the Style Analysis Packet or Style Analysis Guide in the folder of Writing Handout in UR Courses online to familiarize yourself with the elements that you need to conduct a detailed textual analysis in your essay. In other words, your analysis needs to be focused on some of the following levels: phonetic level (use of sounds), lexical level (diction or choice of words), syntactical level (sentence structures), figurative level (metaphorical use of language), and thematic level (meanings you have learned in the text). In prose, the use of sound to enhance ideas is not as important as in poetry, but sometimes, it can be critical, so you need to be careful with it. Diction or choice of words is always a big thing in literature because authors depend on words to create texts, express their understandings of the world, and build up the atmosphere in the text. Sentences are even more important to authors because they are the basic units of communication. You need to identity the syntactical features as to its type, length, formality level, function, and any variation from the natural order of an S + V structure. You also need to examine the figurative use of sentences in the context. However, please bear in mind that such analysis of the use of sounds, words, and sentences, and figures of speech in any writing is only a means to an end, i.e. helping authors to express the central ideas or themes in the text. Therefore, your discussion of language features has to be oriented or related all the time to the message(s) that the author is trying to tell readers through the use of language. Without this aspect integrated into the essay, your analysis will miss the whole point.
In terms of the structure of this essay, you need to have a strong thesis statement with THREE developers (subtopics) in place. This statement should be a summary of the main textual features of the text you identify from your close reading. The developers or three subtopics should name the sub-features on those levels of analysis. On the whole, the introduction should include author’s name, title of text, a brief summary of the text under discussion, and your thesis statement.
The body paragraphs are a place for you to present your supporting evidence, that is, your detailed analysis of those important textual features. A clearly phrased topic sentence is required for each body paragraph. You can include smaller developers depending on your evidence. Quotations of sentences either in part or in whole or even in small paragraphs from the text are a must. No matter how you plan to organize the support, you need to build some logic into your discussion by using categories or types or classes if necessary. You also need to use a concluding sentence to bring your paragraph to a logical close.
The conclusion should summarize your major point of your discussion and reiterate the significance of the textual features in the context of the whole piece. A clincher sentence or two are to be used to close the essay.
