CMNS 3500: Power and Language

Project 1 — Individual Discourse Analysis

Due (“Best Before”) Date: 2026-10-02 at 9:00 a.m.

Returned: 2026-10-06

Overview

Choose one of the five texts below and find a second piece of public discourse on the same topic that uses language differently, in a different genre from your primary text (for example: a press release instead of news coverage, an op-ed instead of straight reporting, a social media statement instead of an article).

Write a 1500-word analysis applying Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to both texts together, comparatively. Your job is to show, with evidence from each text, how specific language choices build meaning differently across the two, not to summarize what either text says.

This project is standalone. It does not carry forward into Project 2 or Project 3.

Choose one primary text

Find a second text

Find one other piece of public discourse on the same topic as your chosen primary text, in a different genre. You are responsible for sourcing this text yourself.

Attach or link your second text along with your submission. Your analysis cannot be graded against a text I cannot see.

What your analysis must do

Identify and apply at least two of Halliday’s metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal, textual), comparatively, across both texts. For each metafunction:

  • Name the metafunction and the specific linguistic feature(s) you’re analyzing (e.g. modality, nominalization, passive voice, transitivity, appraisal/evaluative language)
  • Quote or closely paraphrase the specific passage you’re analyzing in each text. Quotes from people interviewed in the stories will usually work best.
  • Explain what changes between the two texts: what each one foregrounds, what it obscures, whose position it strengthens or weakens

Naming a concept is not analysis. “This is an example of nominalization” earns nothing on its own. Showing what the nominalization does differently across your two texts does.

Length

1500 words, not counting quoted material from either source text.

Complete / Redo

This project is graded Complete or Redo, consistent with the course’s ungrading approach.

Complete requires:

  • At least two metafunctions identified and applied, tied to specific evidence, across both texts
  • Analysis shows how the metafunctions operate differently between the two texts — comparative, not two separate write-ups glued together
  • Written in your own words except where quoting either text

Redo is assigned when:

  • The metafunctions are not meaningfully applied, or
  • You’ve only worked with one metafunction, or
  • The metafunctions are named but not connected to evidence, or
  • The two texts are analyzed separately with no comparison, or
  • The analysis stays at the level of summarizing either text rather than analyzing its language

Redo attempts for this project are unlimited.

Submission

PDF, uploaded to Moodle under Project 1. Include or link your self-sourced second text.