Teaching Analysis with Pop Culture

Analysis skills are a central component to English teaching; students need to know how to deconstruct what they are reading, viewing or listening to so that they can fully understand its central message or theme. At the moment I am teaching my students to deconstruct poetry. We have read many classic Australian, British and American poems and have deconstructed and annotated them carefully. For their final assessment, students will write an analysis essay about one of these poems. While this method works, introducing pop culture into the lessons can make analysis more engaging and relevant to students.

The English teacher online community Teach Argument (2016a) recommends using popular music videos as subjects for rhetorical analysis. One that specifically caught my attention was the analysis of the song "Style," by Taylor Swift (Teach Argument, 2016c).

(Teach Argument, 2016c)

The author breaks apart the music video, discussing not only the lyrics of the song, but the visual representations Swift uses to display her thoughts. The video runs twenty minutes long and is a comprehensive analysis of the rhetorical devices Swift and her producers use to display the idea of classic style, being perfectly matched with someone and despite jealousy, acceptance of another's faults.

Another analysis by the same author deconstructs Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" (Teach Argument, 2016b). In this video the author starts by blatantly stating the song is a love song, not full of representations of jealousy and symbolism.

(Teach Argument, 2016b)

In comparison to Swift's song "Style," one may think that an analysis of Sheeran's lyrics would be less engaging to students. However, addressing the theme of thinking aloud, the author deconstructs what it really means to have transparency in love. Using strikingly different songs like the author from Teach Argument, just as one might do with traditional poetry, English teachers can analyse how two different poets (or songwriters) address the same topics.

Using music to teach poetry analysis can "be used to complement traditional literature in English to bridge the gap between students’ home and school worlds" (Bowmer & Curwood, 2016). Students talk about their favourite songs on the radio and listen to them on Spotify in their free time, so why not use that interest in music and relate it to poetry analysis? Music gives students an interesting and quick view into the ways metaphors and symbols are actually used by artists (and poets) today, from Taylor Swift to Metallica (Adams, 2011).

An important thing to remember when using pop culture like music to engage students is that English teachers should not get rid of traditional canonical literature and poetry. Using pop culture is not an "either/or approach, but it is an enriching, complementary practice...[it is] not a substitute for traditional literature and is a way of making seemingly impenetrable poetry relevant to our students today" (Bowmer & Curwood, 2016). Teachers need not believe that asking students to analyse a One Direction or Macklemore song as a piece of poetry replace William Wordsworth or Wilfred Owen. Teachers should simply use pop culture to give context to poetry and invigorate students--to "inspire students to continue their engagements on their own" with poetry (Buhler, 2016). Pop culture can help students see that poetry can come in all forms, musical or written, current or ancient.

References

Adams, C. (2011). Lessons in pop: Does pop culture belong in the classroom? Instructor, 121(3), 37.

Bowmer, M. E., & Curwood, J. S. (2016). From keats to kanye: Romantic poetry and popular culture in the secondary english classroom. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(2), 141-149. doi:10.1002/jaal.550

Buhler, S. M. (2016). Palpable hits: Popular music forms and teaching early modern poetry. CEA Critic, 78(2), 229-241. doi:10.1353/cea.2016.0016

Teach Argument. (2016a). Content Library. Retrieved from http://teachargument.com/contentlibrary/

Teach Argument. (2016b). Teaching Rhetoric With Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud. Retrieved from http://teachargument.com/music-video/teaching-rhetoric-ed-sheerans-thinking-loud/

Teach Argument. (2016c). Teach Rhetorical Analysis With Taylor Swift’s Style. Retrieved from http://teachargument.com/music-video/teach-rhetorical-analysis-with-taylor-swifts-style/