Levels of Interpretation

1. Levels of Interpretation

2. Basic question 2 (closed question about representation) ‘Explain the ideas about y presented by the text.’ y = idea about the world

3. Key Skill 2 Interpreting texts on more than one level • Overt content – specific people, places events • General ideas underlying overt content – issues, themes: representations

4. Overt Content General Ideas Discuss the ideas presented by the text about the management of Ningaloo Reef. Discuss the ideas presented by the text about the relationship between humans and the natural environment. How does the passage construct the main character of this passage. Discuss the ways in which the text attempts to shape your ideas about childhood.

5. Representation: what a text can be read as suggesting about an aspect of life in general (world view) • Need to distinguish between subject and representation: representation is the way of thinking a text suggests about a subject • Representations are produced by readers from the text: finding represeentations is a way of reading

6. A way of thinking about reading for representation and ideology If we were to accept some element of a text as normal of its kind, what conclusions would we draw?

7. Men

8. Women

9. Families

10. Not Just Groups Places e.g. Western Australia

11. War

12. Reading for representation sometimes takes time and requires practice

13. Heroism

14. the aged youth the city the country beauty almost any concept Issues such as: capital punishment, violence Concepts such as: bravery, love, beauty, attractiveness Virtually anything

15. When reading for representation • Still need to generate interpretations of specific characters etc • Treat our interpretations as being about the topic we have been asked to focus on

16. Reading on the overt level: ‘Sredni Vashtar’, suggests that childhood can be a time of great unhappiness for many children. ‘Sredni Vashtar’ constructs Conradin as a desperately unhappy little boy whom the reader is invited to feel sorry for. Reading on the level of representation:

17. Reading on the overt level: Childhood is represented in this passage as a time of loneliness, strong emotions and vivid imagination. Conradin is constructed as a rather lonely boy, who is full of hatred, and has a vivid imagination. Reading on the level of representation:

18. Talking about representation Reflects/promotes/encourages the the view/idea/belief

19. How does the passage from ‘Rodney Darling’ represent childhood?

20. Strategy for General Ideas Questions:Predicting Ask yourself: What attitudes/ideas and responses is a passage likely to encourage to x? ie What are the possibilities? ie What ideas are floating around in society which might turn up in the passage?

21. Activity: Have a go at predicting • Discuss how the text encourages readers to view the relationship between teachers and students in modern education. • Discuss how sport is represented in the text. • What attitudes towards violence are presented in the text?

22. Using one of the answer types, produce an introduction for an answer to the following question: How is the mass media presented in the passage from Popcorn?