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Reading for Understanding, Analysis and Evaluation
Quick questions on Analysis of language techniques: word choice, imagery, sentence structure and tone - SQA Higher English
8short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What are the four features SQA names?Show answer
Higher analysis questions draw on four overlapping feature groups. Knowing the difference lets you target whichever the question demands.
What is word choice?Show answer
The connotations of specific words. A writer who calls a crowd a "mob" rather than a "gathering" implies menace and irrationality. Analyse the loaded word, not the neutral ones around it.
What is imagery?Show answer
Comparisons (metaphor, simile, personification) that map one thing onto another. The skill is to unpack the comparison: identify the literal thing, the thing it is compared to, and what quality transfers. "The city was a furnace" transfers heat, danger and inescapability onto the city.
What is sentence structure?Show answer
How the sentence is built: lists, repetition, minor sentences, short sentences for impact, long sentences for accumulation, climax, parenthesis (dashes, brackets, commas), inversion, questions. Analyse the shape, never the content, when the question names sentence structure.
What is tone?Show answer
The writer's attitude as it comes through in the language: ironic, indignant, nostalgic, mocking, reverent. Tone is built from word choice and syntax together, so prove it from the language rather than asserting it.
What is q1?Show answer
A passage describes a politician's speech as "a torrent of half-truths". Write a developed analysis comment on this image. [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
Why does naming a technique without commenting on its effect score only half the marks (or none)? [2 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
A 4 mark question restricts you to "sentence structure". Identify two structural features you could analyse and the effect each typically creates. [4 marks]