Alan McKee’s A beginners guide to textual analysis (2001)* deconstructs the approach and motive of a textual analysis whilst studying Media and identifies approaches towards interpreting texts. McKee’s interpretation of textual analyses being a central methodology within Cultural Studies, usually developed through accounts of semiotics, acknowledges that when interpreting a text one has to be mindful analysis’ methodological abyss (Mckee, 2001). When the word ‘text’ is identified through a linguistics interpretation, we see that the word itself is not a singular noun but has many mediums and thus, reasons for connotations. The word text, detaches the medium from it’s physical restrictions, whether its a tv show, film, radio, image etc, transcending it’s mode of communication allowing textual analysis on a much wider circumference as it engages a spectrum of enargia reflective on experience. When we surpass analysis constructed through the science of it’s medium – understanding the physicality of a text is still important – we broaden our minds from a previously linear approach of analysis and inherit McKee’s multilateral approach. Seen in John Hartley’s example of television accentuating hidden undertones of political life through watchers’ D.I.Y citizenship of choice to watch what and when, exemplifies how even though we can annotate the text as ‘tv’ and therefore study it’s physical characteristics such as what is being produced by the tv (sounds and visual), we can also interpret it as a mobile community that generates messages that is part of a flowing debate, where skills are needed by each individual to process media’s message.

Therefore, McKee’s emphasises to never claim that a text does or does not reflect reality – similar to Leeuwen’s* discussion of perspective. Edward Hall stated that each individual “carry with us an invisible set of boundaries”, enforced through years of cultural experience. Although we might see a text and our reaction to it is that it contradicts or leaves out elements of subject matter and thus, isn’t a ‘whole’ representation, one must never discard it as ‘untrue’ or ‘false’ as there is no one singular truth. Therefore, we must see it as a reality, and not just the reality. Textual analysis revolves around the desire to make sense of the world we live in through others’ interpretations. Instead of approaching text analysis as what, we must  cognitively shift to the concept of who, when, where, and why.

• McKee, Alan (2001) A beginner’s guide to textual analysis. Metro Magazine, pp. 138-149.
• Leeuwen, Theo van. 1999, ‘Perspective’ in Speech, music, sound, Macmillan Press ; St. Martin’s Press, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York