Story Analysis

Description

analyze the story by answering 5 overarching
questions (highlighted in green); however, do not answer those questions directly, but respond to
the sub-questions for each element (which are in bold and italics under each element). After
responding to each question, provide evidence to support your response in the form of quotations
from the story or from your own experience/thinking. Finally, resulting from each response,
determine a choice to how you will perform the story. Remember to include citations in-text and
on the reference page in APA style for any sources used.Agent-Who is speaking?

1. What are their physical characteristics? (posture, strong, attractive? how do they move?,
how do they sound? gesture? Facial expression? Facial Features? etc.)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
2. Demographic characteristics? (age, sex, race, religion, socioeconomic status)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
3. Attitudes? (toward self, audience, and subject; do they change?)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
4. Psychological characteristics? (disposition, personality, morality, likeable?)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:

Purpose-Why is the Speaker Speaking?
1. What is the speaker’s motivation to speak? (to entertain, to persuade, to inform/explain,
understand, to gossip, etc.)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
2. What are the cultural values evident? (aesthetic conventions, political agendas, ethical
concerns, social concerns, interpersonal, etc.)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
Scene: Where, When, and to Whom is the Speaker Speaking?
1. Where and when is the speaker speaking?
a. What is the performative context? (social, literary, theatrical, does speaker recognize
the context as aesthetic?)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
b. What is the historical setting? (time period: roaring twenties, 1960s, etc.)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
c. What is the physical location and temporal dimension? (porch, desk, theatre, bar;
city or countryside, during day, night, what season or time of year; is it in the past,
present, or future; time progression or shift of physical location during utterance,
etc.?)

Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
2. To whom is the speaker speaking?
a. Audience? (self, specific other, general audience?, does the audience change?)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation from story or external experience):
Performance Choices:
b. Relationship to audience? (intimate, friendly, distant, condescending)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
c. Affect audience has on speaker (physical, psychological)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
Act: What is the Speaker Saying?
1. What does the speaker mean? (what is the general sense or theme? What is the specific
meaning of each word, phrase, and sentence?)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
2. What is the speaker doing when speaking? (driving, scratching, drinking, smoking,
dressing, working, etc.?)

Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
Agency: How is the Speaker Speaking?
1. The type of speaking in the text? (Is it oral? Or maybe the text is internal thought? Or
reading? Or writing?)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
2. What mode is the speaker speaking? (lyric, dramatic, epic)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
3. What style is the speaker speaking? (quality of language: formal-informal, concrete-
abstract, simple-complex; language device employed: (metaphor, oxymoron,
personification)
Response:
Evidence (provide quotation or external experience):
Performance Choices:
4. What structure is the speaker using? (how is utterance organized? What form?: sonnet,
novel, folktale, ritual, conversation; what point of view? Use of sentence length,
punctuation, and rhythm)