ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the parts of an analytical text, the content of each part, and the most common mistakes associated with them. The parts are the introduction and its three subparts; the development and its three subparts or stages; and the conclusion and its two subparts. The development contains, either explicitly or implicitly, three stages: (1) presentation of the method (including the approach) used; (2) description of the text using the chosen method; and (3) interpretation of the “raw” data produced by the description. These stages can be implicit: for instance, even a traditional, non-technical thematic analysis implicitly relies on a method and a theory to define what a theme is, how to find themes, how to interpret them, etc. Among other things, this chapter introduces the five main kinds of interpretation (e.g., comparison, correlation, causality, etc.). This chapter includes an example of the analysis of a literary text (a short poem) using the general structure of analysis previously discussed.
