ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses methods of textual analysis the disciplines and theories we use to analyze and interpret texts in order to understand how we find meaning in them and what their semiotic, psychoanalytic, sociological, and political significance may be. It also discusses genres the kinds of shows and films we watch. The chapter explores that the texts we analyze are the sites for battles between critics with different perspectives on things who apply different methodologies to texts. It examines that rhetorical analysis has moved far beyond the traditional subject of rhetorical analysis speech. The chapter begins with semiotics, the science of signs and the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure, author of a seminal book on the subject, Course in General Linguistics, and the other founding father of semiotics, American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. It explores material on sociological theory, Marxist theory, and Sigmund Freud's contributions to psychoanalytic theory.
