ABSTRACT

Textual analysis is all about language, what it represents and how we use it to make sense of our lives. Language is a basic element of our human interactions, and it is through language that the meanings of our social realities are constructed. As cultural theorist Raymond Williams, who was one of the founders of British Cultural Studies, explains:

No expression, that is to say-no account, description, depiction, portrait-is “natural” or “straightforward.” These are at most socially relative terms. Language is not a pure medium through which the reality of a life or the reality of an event or an experience or the reality of a society can “flow.” It is a socially shared and reciprocal activity, already embedded in active relationships, within which every move is an activation of what is already shared and reciprocal or may become so.