read – re-read – re-write – re-read
Key questions:
The problem: All texts are deliberate constructions……. composed in a particular cultural, social and historical context …… they will reflect a certain world view or version of reality, conveying a particular set of assumptions, attitudes, and messages which may be understood as the ideology of the text …….
The Process:
The defence is persuasive: you had to intervene in the nasty base text and this is why….this is how… and this is the result.
1. You will mainly be using text-centred and world-context centred approaches in this task but there is no actual need to mention those terms.
2. This is a spoken presentation, not a written one. Ensure your defence has speech like qualities. Your delivery skills will also be important.
3. However, it is helpful to chunk your presentation into coherent, well-structured paragraphs. Also ensure PowerPoint presentation follows 6 X 6 rule – no more than 6 words in each point, no more than 6 points/slide. Use attractive and relevant visuals to enhance presentation.
4. You could choose to transform a text with visual elements like a comic or a picture book. If you do this, you will need to unpack the ideology underpinning the visuals as well as those structuring the written text.
5. The base text just starts the whole process. It is not the main concern of the defence so do not spend too long on invited reading of it.
6. Also, transformation must not be too long – you need just enough material to refer to in your defence (where you will be explaining how you transformed the base text on microlinguistic and macrolinguistic levels). Ensure there are clear links between base text and transformed text e.g. names, plot elements, characters, behaviour. Make links obvious.
7. Make each move in the whole staged process explicit. Convince your audience about why they must be repositioned. Speak persuasively. You must clearly explain what factors motivated you to intervene. Why did you change text structures and features on macrolinguistic and microlinguistic levels? Quote from your transformed text to provide examples of changes made. Explicitly evaluate how the newly written text offers an alternative perspective.
8. Consider different ways of discussing ‘contested discursive positions’ e.g. What is unsettling in the text? What is there to object to in the text? What kind of social injustice is evident? What gaps, silences, marginalization reveal this injustice/unfairness? You are finding the ideological center of the base text and then re-centering it. What are the ideological ‘hot spots’ in the base text? Pinpoint the significant ideological moments/events/characters within the base text in order to problematize its invited reading.
9. Find the specific point at which to intervene in the base text and pin it down. Don’t try to deconstruct too much of the text.
10. Change the genre of initializing text. Make your new genre authentic. E.g. if it is a newspaper article layout, headline, pictures etc. must be realistic. Clearly explain why you changed the genre! Justify how the textual elements of the selected genre are well-chosen by explaining the way they support the transformed text’s invited reading.
11. Make the changes in your text clearly visible – not too subtle.
12. Specifically explain how your chosen theoretical approach (feminism, Marxism, post colonialism) supports your re-writing. Quote from theorists. DO NOT run through a shopping list of theorists! 2-3 at most.
In other words:
You need to make a discursive shift; that is, change the dominant discourse in which characters are operating which you feel is underpinned by socially unjust ideology (the world view, cultural assumptions, beliefs and values that the text promotes and invites the reader to endorse). Discourses are ways of being mobilized by the characters in thought, speech and action. The discourses of the focal character (e.g. Cinderella) are generally privileged in the world of the text. The competing discourses of the other characters may be marginalized (ugly sisters).
The discursive construction of character is the tool which promotes the text’s ideology (reading of the world). Textual ideologies are promoted by inviting the reader to endorse the discursive positioning of the focal character (e.g. Cinderella is valued for her beauty and passivity; ugliness is depicted in mean characters. The invited reading suggests that it is only natural that the Prince desires Cinderella solely based on her beauty). To subvert the textual ideology of the base text, you will need to consider how you will construct the discourses of your focal character so that an oppositional reading of your base text occurs. (e.g. What characteristics would a feminist like to see developed in the focal character, Cinderella, which make her more of a woman and less of a damaging beauty myth stereotype? Alternatively, it could be the ugly sisters who are transformed.) It is a good idea to change the genre and setting at the same time as changing the discourse. This is because modern readers have great familiarity with the fairy tale and comic book genres you are likely to transform and have developed well-established predictive, conventional reading strategies with regard to them. You need to disrupt these expectations in order to generate a new invited reading. Also, fairy tales and comic books are closed texts, often ending with a clear ‘happy ever after’ resolution, in which readers are not invited to question the ideological assumptions of the text. You need to unsettle the reader’s routine and familiar expectations.
See "Revised Complex Transformation" doc for further insight.