Related concepts in English Language and Literature

Related concepts promote deep learning. They are grounded in specific disciplines and are useful for exploring key concepts in greater detail. Inquiry into related concepts helps students develop more complex and sophisticated conceptual understanding. Related concepts may arise from the subject matter of a unit or the craft of a subject—its features and processes.

Related concepts in English I and English II

Audience imperatives

An umbrella concept to refer to whomever (the reader, the listener, the viewer) a text or performance is aimed at, and the characteristics, impact or desired responses created. This impact could include humour, sensibility, critical stance, appreciation, empathy, antipathy and sympathy, aesthetics, mood, atmosphere and gender perspectives.

Character

The representation of persons in narrative and dramatic works. This may include direct methods like the attribution of qualities in description or commentary, and indirect (or “dramatic”) methods inviting readers to infer qualities from characters’ actions, speech or appearance.

When exploring the concept of character, students might explore transformation, influence, conflict, protagonist, antagonist, persona, foil, stock.

Context

The social, historical, cultural and workplace settings in which a text or work is produced.

All texts may be understood according to their form, content, purpose and audience, and through the social, historical, cultural and workplace contexts that produce and value them. Literary texts are influenced by social context, cultural heritage and historical change. Students should be encouraged to consider how texts build upon and transform the inherited literary and cultural traditions.

Cultural context refers to the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time.

Genres

A type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions.

Conventions are the characteristics of a literary genre. These features may, of course, vary between languages. Each genre has recognizable techniques, referred to as literary conventions, and writers use these conventions, along with other literary features, in order to achieve particular artistic ends.

A study of genres includes essential understandings about conventions of genre: form, style, storyline, characterization, tone, mood, atmosphere, register, visual images and layout, narrative/storytelling, prose (foreshadowing, flashbacks, stream of consciousness in novels and short stories), poetry (metre, rhyme), drama, mythology and other fiction (for example, graphic novels, satires, oral traditions, screenplays, film and episodic television) and non-fiction (for example, autobiography, biography, travelogues, essays, letters, literary non-fiction, speeches).

Examples of conventions in drama may include dialogues, speeches, monologues, soliloquies, asides, stage directions, voice, movement, gesture, use of space, costume, props, lighting, set and sound.

Intertextuality

The connections between one text and other texts, the ways in which texts are interrelated, and the meanings that arise out of their interrelationship.

An overt reference to another text (as in a direct quote from another text) is also an example of intertextuality.

Point of view

The particular perspective brought by a composer, responder or character within a text to the text or to matters within the text. It also entails the position or vantage point from which the events of a story seem to be observed and presented to us.

When exploring this concept, students will, for example, consider positioning, voice and tone.

Purpose

In literary terms, the creator’s intentions in producing the text. This concept could also engage students in exploration of meaning, thesis/argument, gender, age, bias, persuasive techniques, function, critical stance, message and culture.

Self-expression

The expression of one’s feelings, thoughts or ideas, especially in writing, art, music, dance, design and film.

This umbrella concept includes an exploration of essential understandings about identity, voice (personal), inspiration, imagination, sensitivity, critical stance and process.

Setting

The time and the place in which the action of a book, film, play, and so on happens. Setting may also include mood and atmosphere.

Structure

The way in which a poem or play or other piece of writing has been put together, and the relationships of different parts of a text to each other and to the text as a complex whole. This can include exploring metre pattern, stanza arrangement and the way the ideas are developed. Structure requires essential understandings about plot, narrative, discourse, form, transformation, thesis/argument, syntax, foreshadowing and flashbacks.

Style

The characteristic way that a writer uses linguistic devices, literary devices and features for particular purposes and effects; for example, word choice, sentence structure, figurative devices, repetition, motif, allusion, imagery and symbolism.

Theme

The central idea or ideas the creator explores through a text.