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Cultural Analysis Essay: Topics, Tips, & Example

Writing an essay on cultural issues is an exciting yet a challenging task to complete. Cultural analysis essays are assigned to those who study literature, business, marketing, and social work.

What is a cultural analysis? How to choose a topic for such an assignment? How to write a cultural analysis essay? You’ll find the answers to these questions below. This article contains cultural analysis essay topics, writing tips, together with cultural analysis example added as a bonus.

📝 What Is a Cultural Analysis?

🖊️ how to write a cultural analysis.

• 📃 Choosing a Cultural Analysis Topic?
• 📋 Cultural Analysis Essay Topics

📑 Cultural Analysis: Example of an Essay

🔗 references.

A cultural analysis essay focuses on social and cultural aspects of life : the ways people interact with each other, create communities, etc. It also explains how these interactions are based on the backgrounds and common practices of the participants.

Your cultural analysis essay can be short – for example, a 500-word essay . Or you can go for a long piece of writing. It depends on your topic and the number of arguments you want to cover.

In terms of the style, you can pick an expository , a descriptive , a narrative, or a persuasive type of essay. Your decision will depend on what you aim at when writing this paper.

You might be wondering: how to write a cultural analysis essay? And what exact steps should you take?

• First of all, you need to choose a topic you’re going to explore. It shouldn’t be too broad, as, for example, ‘Culture of Islamic countries.’ It will be best to focus on a particular event or a custom and explore it. Further, we’ll provide you with cultural analysis essay topics.
• Then you can focus on researching, formulating a thesis statement , and creating an outline . The outline is an essential part of your writing, as it helps you to ease the process.
• In the introduction, you should mention your thesis statement and cover what you’re going to discuss in your paper. Remember that it’s vital to intrigue a potential reader in your intro!
• Next, you’re going to focus on the main body . You can split it into several paragraphs. The number of paragraphs will depend on the length of your essay and the number of arguments.
• The conclusion is the last paragraph of your paper. Here, you should confirm your thesis statement by summing up your arguments.

Here , you can learn more about a step-by-step plan for your analytical essay.

📃 Cultural Analysis Topic Ideas: How to Choose

Here, you’ll find three important points that will help you to choose the right topic for your paper.

Cultural Analysis Topics: Point 1

First, choose a society or culture that you want to talk about . Let us take American culture and society as an example.

Cultural Analysis Topics: Point 2

Cultural traditions are reflected in many ways: in literature , cinema, etc. We suggest you use films (this is not boring). You can even write the cultural analysis essay based on your favorite movies .

Cultural Analysis Topics: Point 3

Now, you have to decide on the central issue of your cultural analysis essay . What particular aspect of American culture do you want to discuss, e.g., men/women, drugs , minorities, etc.?

Finally, you need to watch a movie (better twice) that depicts the problem you want to consider . Your major goal boils down to analyzing the film and making the final decision. The question is whether this or that cultural aspect is depicted as it is. This is exactly why the article is called “reflecting the reality.”

As you know, truth is not always shown correctly, especially in movies. For instance, many African Americans living in the United States are depicted as drug pushers or members of some gangs. However, this is not precisely what happens in reality.

Sure, you can take any culture or even sub-culture as the basis of your paper.

📋 80 Cultural Analysis Essay Topics

We’ve prepared 80 exciting topics for your cultural analysis essay. Let’s dive in!

• Changing role of the institution of the family in modern Western society.
• Social Media Role in Promoting Social Change .
• Male and female roles in American society: In the past and nowadays.
• Cultural Changes in America After World War II .
• Cultural stereotypes: How have they occurred?
• A Family System and Social Care Service Users .
• The role of marriage: Western and Eastern countries.
• Cultural Diversity Among the Hispanics .
• How are cultural minorities presented in American media nowadays?
• Cross-Cultural Management Problems .
• The role of traditions in modern American society.
• Role of Social Media in the Curriculum .
• Does the media help in promoting social tolerance?
• Culture and Diversity in Education .
• Origins of racism and discrimination in American society.
• Importance of Social Responsibility .
• The role of migration in modern American culture.
• Intercultural Communication Breakdown .
• New professional ethics in the United States: What has been changed in the last decade?
• A Development of American Society .
• Role of religion in modern American society.
• Social Problem, Its Components and Stages .
• Impact of Latin American culture on US culture.
• Social Media’s Effect on Democracy .

• Cultural unification mechanisms: How does it work? 
• The Meaning of Theology for the Present Society .
• Social media and global culture: A myth or reality? 
• Gender & Society. Intersectionality and Feminist Activism .
• The role of national cultures. 
• Why Make a Step Family a Real Family?
• How is culture used in advertising? 
• Hip-Hop in Japan and Cultural Globalization .
• The role of holidays and celebrations in American culture. 
• Direct and Indirect Social Influences on a Person .
• Multicultural societies: Positive and negative aspects. 
• Gun Control: Social Contract Broken in the US .
• The role of subcultures in American society. 
• Freedom Significance: Social and Political Aspects .
• American Revolution and its role in American culture. 
• Social Issues: The Uses of Global Poverty .
• World War II and its influence on world culture. 
• Effects of Technology on Society .
• The role of religion in Islamic countries. 
• Cultural Safety and Transcultural Nursing .
• The role of feminism in American culture. 
• American Culture Reflection in Sport .
• The role of feminism in post-Soviet countries. 
• Social Media: Ethical Issues and Theories .
• Female and minorities in politics: Why it becomes important nowadays? 
• The Effect of Music on Culture .
• Hip hop culture and its influence on American society. 
• Effect of Gaming on People’s Social Lives .
• Gender and Social Movements .
• Race relations in the United States: Has the situation improved in the 21st century? 
• Heritage and Culture in African American Literature .
• Do social networks support personal identity or suppress it? 
• Culture Diversity and Healthcare Delivery in Australia .
• What are the roots of international culture? 
• Foreignism, Media, Imperialism Influence on Culture .
• Social networks and its impact on national cultures. 
• Family Support and Intervention in Substance Abuse Among Adolescents .
• Mexican culture and its influence on American society. 
• Nuclear family : What has changed in the 21st century? 
• Science, Technology and Society: Implications for Education .
• Freedom of information and its impact on international culture. 
• Popular Music in the Modern Culture .
• Do national cultures lose their significance in the rise of international culture? 
• “Religion in Society: A Sociology of Religion” by Ronald Johnstone .
• How did the technological revolution change European culture? 
• Rap in American Culture .
• Changing female roles in Islamic countries. For this topic, you can choose two Islamic countries: the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia . And discuss and compare the way female roles are changing. 
• Canadian Political Culture .
• Indigenous people and their impact on American culture . Here you can pick one particular area of American culture that indigenous people influenced. It could be, for instance, literature or cinema.
•   Social Media Helps to Bridge Divides .
• The influence of religion on modern American politics . For this topic, you can focus on how Bible teachings are reflected in contemporary American laws. 
• Social Groups and How They Work .
• American popular culture and reasons for its acceptance worldwide . You can discuss the origins of this phenomenon and why American culture got accepted all over the world. 
• Family Structure and Its Effects on Children .
• Fighting gender stereotypes in mass media . For this topic, you can choose European Union and discuss how it fights gender stereotypes and sexism in the media. 
• Teen Pregnancy Prevention in Modern Society .

In this section, we’ve prepared a cultural analysis essay example for you.

You’ll see excerpts from an essay on social networks and their influence on national cultures in the table below. We hope you’ll get inspired by your paper!

Social networks and their impact on national cultures

• Ideas for culture essay & paper topics – California State University, Fresno
• Use of social media to promote national culture worldwide – URFU
• Guidelines for academic papers in Literary or Cultural Studies – Stiftung Universität Hildesheim
• The Practice of Cultural Analysis – Stanford University Press
• Film Analysis – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Write Your Essay | UNSW Current Students
• Writing Across Cultures and Contexts: International Students in the Stanford Study of Writing – Stanford University
• Cross-Cultural Analysis – The University of Alabama

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3.6: Modes of Cultural Analysis

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• Page ID 150189

• Jennifer Hasty, David G. Lewis, & Marjorie M. Snipes

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain how evolutionary theories have been applied to the study of human culture.
• Identify two critiques of evolutionary approaches.
• Describe how anthropologists have studied the functionality of culture.
• Distinguish Malinowski’s functionalism from Radcliffe-Brown’s structural functionalism.
• Explain how ontological anthropology defines the study of reality.

Anthropologists have a number of ways of studying the elements and aggregates of culture. Some approaches emphasize the development of a particular aspect of culture over time, while other approaches examine how the different parts of culture fit together.

Evolution, Adaptation, and Historical Particularism

Some anthropologists are interested in the origins of human cultural forms and how these forms have changed over long periods of time. Just as Charles Darwin applied the notion of evolution to explain how biological species change over time, many 19th-century anthropologists used evolution to explain how cultures changed over time. This approach is called cultural evolutionism . Like Darwin, these anthropologists believed that simple forms evolved into more complex forms. Comparing different cultures of the world, they assigned the ones they considered more rudimentary to earlier evolutionary stages, while the ones they considered more complex were assigned to the more advanced stages. For example, British anthropologist Edward Tylor argued that human culture evolved from savagery through barbarism to civilization. He identified savagery with people who used gathering and hunting to meet their basic needs. The domestication of animals and plants was associated with barbarism. Civilization resulted from more advanced forms of farming, trade, and manufacturing as well as the development of the alphabet. Not surprisingly, British scholars identified their own culture as highly civilized.

Elaborating on Tylor’s scheme, American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan subdivided each of these three stages into an even more elaborate model and proposed a mechanism for moving from stage to stage. Morgan focused on technology as the primary driver of cultural evolution. New and better ways of making things, according to Morgan, resulted in new patterns of social practice and thought. Advanced technology was associated with advanced civilization.

But is technology the only measure of cultural accomplishment, or even the best one? Members of societies in which people gather and hunt for a living have vast stores of knowledge about their environments. Typically, they can name hundreds of plant species and tell when and where to find each of them. Many hunters can examine animal tracks to discern the species, sex, age, and condition of the animal as well as how long ago the tracks were laid. People in these societies also actively sustain and nurture diversity in their environments, careful to avoid depleting important resources. Is it really accurate to think of such cultures as simple? All cultures are complex, though in different ways. Technology is highly valued in American culture, while environmental knowledge and sustainability have historically been less valued. Is it any wonder that early American anthropologists ranked other cultures according to one of their own most cherished values? Perhaps people in more environmentally sustainable cultures might consider the United States to be an example of environmental savagery.

Both Tylor and Morgan, like most anthropologists of their day, thought that all cultures passed through this single set of stages in the march toward civilization. This kind of theory is called unilineal evolution . Disagreeing with this way of thinking, anthropologists such as Franz Boas argued that there is no single line of cultural evolution but that each culture changes according to its own unique historical trajectory. Moreover, cultures evolve not in isolation but in constant interaction with one another. Rather than focusing on technological changes within a culture, Boas highlighted the diffusion of material objects, practices, and ideas among cultures in complex relations of trade, migration, and conquest.

Though theories of unilineal cultural evolution have been largely abandoned, some anthropologists are still interested in discovering regular patterns that might govern how human cultures change over long periods of time. In the 1950s, American anthropologist Julian Steward developed an approach called cultural ecology , recognizing the importance of environmental factors by focusing on how humans adapt to various environments. Steward’s approach showed how humans in each environmental zone develop a set of core cultural features that enable them to make a living. Central to each cultural core are ways of getting or making all the resources necessary for human survival—in particular, food, clothing, and shelter. Similarly, anthropologist Marvin Harris developed a theory called cultural materialism , arguing that technology and economic factors are fundamental to culture, molding other features such as family life, religion, and politics.

Though recognizing the importance of cultural change, many anthropologists reject the notion that all cultures change according to a general universal model, such as cultural materialism. Drawing from the Boasian notion that each culture follows its own historical path; many cultural anthropologists analyze change in terms of historical particularism . In this approach, contemporary processes are understood as products of the unique combination of internal and external forces unfolding over time in a particular culture.

Functionalism

Rejecting the comparative unilineal models that assigned each culture to an evolutionary stage, a number of cultural anthropologists developed a radically different approach that attempts to understand each contemporary culture in its own terms. Functionalism seeks to understand the purpose of the elements and aggregates of culture in the here and now.

Bronislaw Malinowski, an early proponent of this approach, argued that the function of culture is to meet human needs. All humans need to satisfy the need for food, clothing, and shelter. The fundamental purpose of culture is to provide a means of satisfying those needs. In the course of meeting those basic needs, humans in all cultures develop a set of derived needs—that is, needs derived from the basic ones. Derived needs include the need to organize work and distribute resources. Family structures and gender roles are examples of cultural elements addressing these derived needs. Finally, cultures also address a set of integrative needs, providing people with guiding values and purpose in life. Religion, law, and ideologies fulfill these integrative needs. Malinowski sought to understand both the biological and psychological functions of culture.

At first glance, this approach may not seem all that different from evolutionary approaches that identify the core set of cultural features devoted to human survival. What was so different in Malinowski’s approach was his attempt to show that even so-called primitive societies had functionally complex cultural systems for meeting the full array of human needs. Malinowski’s three-volume ethnography of the economics, religion, and kinship of the Trobriand people of Papua New Guinea demonstrated this fact in striking and elaborate detail.

A second version of functionalism, advocated by British anthropologist Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, identified the functions of various elements of culture in a slightly different way. Rather than looking for the way culture satisfies biological or psychological needs, structural functionalism focused more on how the various structures in society reinforce one another. Culture is not a random assortment of structural features but a set of structures that fit together into a coherent whole. Common norms and values are threaded through the family structure, the economy, the political system, and the religion of a culture. Structural functionalists conceptualized culture as a kind of machine with many small parts all working in tandem to keep the machine operating properly. While recognizing the value of this approach, contemporary anthropologists have complicated the mechanistic model of culture by pointing out that the various elements of culture come into conflict just as often as they reinforce one another. Although few anthropologists would now identify themselves as structural functionalists, the holistic approach to culture as an integrated system is derived from this important theoretical foundation.

Structuralism

In the previous paragraph, you learned about structural functionalism, an approach that marries functionalism with social structure. In a different sense, the term structure can refer to patterns of thought embedded in the culture of a people—that is, conceptual structure. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss pioneered this approach, sometimes called French structuralism . Lévi-Strauss considered culture to be a system of symbols that could be analyzed in the various realms of culture, including myths, religion, and kinship. In these realms of culture, objects and people are organized into symbolic systems of classification, often structured around binary oppositions. Binary oppositions are pairs of terms that are opposite in meaning, such as light/dark, female/male, and good/evil. For example, kinship systems are varied and complex, but they are fundamentally structured by oppositions such as male versus female, older versus younger, and relation by blood versus relation by marriage. Lévi-Strauss examined myths as well, showing how the characters and plots emphasize binary oppositions. Consider the many European folktales featuring an evil stepmother (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty), a character that combines the opposition of good versus evil with the opposition of blood relation versus relation by marriage. Lévi-Strauss argued that myths operate as public arenas for conceptually pondering and processing the fundamental categories and relations of a culture.

In recent decades, some cultural anthropologists have come to focus on the nature of reality, including but not limited to human perspectives and experiences. Ontology is the study of the true nature of existence. In some cultures, for instance, the social world consists not only of embodied persons but also of spirit beings, such as ancestors and witches, who interact with people in mysterious ways. And in some cultures, people are not just bodies but assemblages that include souls, spirits, characters, or fates. Ontological anthropology explores how culture constructs our social and natural realities, what we consider real, and how we act on those assumptions. Reaching beyond human realities, ontological anthropology also attempts to include nonhuman perspectives, relationships, and forms of communication.

For instance, in his provocative ethnography How Forests Think (2013), anthropologist Eduardo Kohn describes how the web of life in the Amazon rainforest consists of continual communication among plants, animals, and humans. He examines how Amazonian peoples engage with dogs, spirits, the dead, pumas, rivers, and even sounds. Humans and these nonhuman beings are both antagonistic and interdependent in this interactive web. Predators and prey read one another’s behavior, interpreting intentions and motivations. Kohn’s effort is to get beyond conventional modes of human thought and language to understand how humans are embedded in nonhuman ecological realities.

Profiles in Anthropology

Dame mary douglas (1921–2007).

Dame Mary Douglas .

Personal History: Mary Douglas was born in San Remo, Italy; her British parents had stopped off on their way home from Burma, where her father had been working as a colonial civil servant. As children, Mary and her younger sister lived with their mother’s parents in England until they were old enough to be sent to Catholic boarding school—a fairly common practice for the children of colonial officers. After the death of her mother and her dearly loved maternal grandfather, young Mary found security in the order and routine of the convent school (Lyons 2011). This respect for rules and order combined with a reverence for the Catholic Church to shape her lifelong commitment to studying the sacred aspects of the social order.

Area of Anthropology: At Oxford, Douglas studied with the prominent structural functionalist E. E. Evans-Pritchard. From him, she learned that African belief systems such as witchcraft were structured by an underlying logic. In this approach, the goal of fieldwork is to examine oral forms of culture as well as ritual and social practice in order to discern the underlying logic that governs culture as a whole. Douglass went to the Kasai region of what was then the Belgian Congo, where she studied how the Lele people used animals in practical and symbolic ways. She was particularly interested in a strange animal called the pangolin. Though a mammal, the pangolin has scales and no teeth.

Douglas described how the Lele observed a fundamental distinction between edible and inedible animals. Animals who lived among humans, such as rats and domesticated chickens, were considered part of society and therefore inedible (most of the time). Only wild animals were considered food. Pangolins are wild animals, but the Lele did not eat them (usually). Why? Douglas argued that the weirdness of the pangolin made people single it out for special consideration. Pangolins have scales like fish, but they live on land and climb trees. They look vaguely reptilian, but they do not lay eggs, instead giving birth to live young. Rather than teeth, they have long snouts that they use to vacuum up small insects. Thus, the pangolin defied the conventional categories the Lele used for dividing up the animal world. This breach of categories made the pangolin both repellent and sacred to the Lele. Members of a special fertility cult engaged in rituals in which they ate pangolins to ingest the power of this anomalous animal.

As this examination of cultural categories and anomalies suggests, Douglas was also influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss and the approach of French structuralism. Like Lévi-Strauss, Douglas viewed culture as a coherent system of categories that were expressed in oral culture and social practice.

Accomplishments in the Field: Following her work on the Lele people, Douglas went on to conduct a broadly comparative study of objects, practices, and people that were considered ritually dangerous, subject to rules of prohibition called taboos. She showed how the subjects of taboos are often “matter out of place” (Douglas 1966, 44), things that defy conventional categories for dividing up the social and natural world. In her most famous work, Purity and Danger (1966), Douglas examines a wide range of taboos, such as rules against eating certain foods or engaging in sex at certain times or with certain persons. She examines the set of social and dietary rules established by ancient Hebrews, detailed in the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament. According to these rules, the Jewish people were forbidden from eating pigs, shellfish, and certain wild animals. They were not allowed to wear garments made of cloth that combined different fibers—such as, for example, a linen-cotton blend. Men were prohibited from having sex with menstruating women. In fact, women were considered so unclean during menstruation that anyone or anything that touched a menstruating woman became contaminated for the rest of that day.

What do all of these prohibitions have in common? Douglas shows how each forbidden object or condition produced discomfort because it transgressed conventional categories. Shellfish, for instance, are sea animals, but they don’t have fins or scales, and many of them do not swim. Menstruation is blood loss, but it does not indicate injury. Moreover, menstruation is hidden and connected to the dangerous states of pregnancy and childbirth. In Hebrew law, menstruation itself was considered a dangerous and contaminating exception to the purity of persons and objects.

In her later work, Douglas applied this style of analysis to a variety of other social phenomena, including humor and trickster figures. She argued that humor functions as a release for thoughts and actions that might threaten the social order. Whereas taboos regulate and prohibit interaction with dangerous objects, animals, and people, humor seeks to sap them of their dangerous power by making light of them.

Importance of Her Work: After more than 25 years of teaching at the University of London, Douglas moved to the United States, where she held positions at the Russell Sage Foundation and Northwestern University. She continued to publish widely on such topics as consumerism, environmental risk, and decision-making in bureaucracies. When she retired, she moved back to England. In 2006, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She died in 2007 at the age of 86.

• Marketplace

Conducting a Cultural Analysis: A Simple Guideline

• Conducting a Cultural Analysis: A…

Updated: 12 September, 2023

Ping-pong tables, zen rooms, fun and open offices…

Do any of these remind you of something?

These staples of modern day startups have rekindled interest in workplace culture, and made it urgent for companies to evaluate and revise their corporate cultures in order to remain competitive. According to Glassdoor’s 2019 mission and culture survey, close to 4 out of 5 job seekers consider a company’s culture before applying for a job. 

In this article we dive into how organisations can identify which cultures are dominant amongst their employees and how to take advantage of these – how organisations can perform a cultural analysis.

Table of Contents

• What is cultural analysis?
• Why is cultural analysis important?
• How to conduct a cultural analysis
• How to use Hoftede’s Cultural Dimensions for cultural analysis
• How to use Schwartz’s Values for cultural analysis
• How to use Fiske’s Model for cultural analysis
• How to use the Competitive Value Framework for cultural analysis
• How to use Corporate Culture Classification for cultural analysis
• How to guarantee data privacy in cultural analysis

What is Cultural Analysis?

Even though nuanced in definition, culture is generally understood to be the collective of beliefs, customs, ideas, institutions, laws and values that determine behaviours amongst a defined group of individuals. The same understanding applies for organisations where any set of formal or informal practices, systems and expectations that guide behaviour and decision making will qualify as culture.

In this line, cultural analysis is any attempts, usually by human resource professionals, to uncover the core values and practices common to stakeholders within an organisation and how these affect employee experience, overall organisational performance and how the outside world perceives the organisation.

Also, the most pro-active employees and job seekers often seek to understand organisational culture in order to avoid it or devise methods to adapt and/or take advantage of it.

Why is Cultural Analysis Important?

In today’s volatile and highly competitive world, companies are in need of resilience and a competitive advantage to sustain and grow overtime. Turns out that beyond great product market fit, positive cultures that define how companies interact with their customers are strong determinants for success. The key with a cultural analysis is not necessarily creating these positive values but understanding which ones are dominant and how they could contribute towards achieving organisational goals. Whether you work remotely or in the office, company culture is very important.

A good cultural analysis can:

• Help companies leverage a positive culture to outperform competition and attract the best talent.
• Ensure that company objectives are aligned with employee motivation.
• Communicate executives’ interest in building an environment of trust and openness to diverse perspectives.
• Throw light on cultural strengths and possible weaknesses that might impede any present or future change initiatives.
• Provide guidance for cultural fit in recruitment, job orientation and job promotion practices.

How to Conduct a Cultural Analysis

We know that cultural analysis is important, but conducting one can seem tricky and overwhelming. It helps to think of cultural analysis as consisting of 2 major steps: choosing the appropriate theoretical framework and a practical implementation using a HR consultant and a data gathering and analysis tool.

Theoretical frameworks in the field of organizational culture provide a lense/canvas for companies to measure and view workplace culture. Frameworks could be based in academic research or could be practical adaptations of academic frameworks by companies and HR professionals to make them easy to implement in the business world. In this article we see 3 frameworks based on academic work: Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions, Schwartz’s Values, and Fiske’s Relational Model.

How to use Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions for Cultural Analysis?

Hofstede’s cultural dimensions  is probably one of the most famous theories in HR and workplace culture literature. It identifies 6 key dimensions that help understand the difference in cultures across countries and their impact on individuals and the business setting. This theory is mostly relevant in multinational companies with employees from various backgrounds. See below the 6 dimensions of interest

• Power Distance Index : High power distance cultures encourage bureaucracy, and respect for rank and authority while low power index cultures encourage decentralised decision making, participative management styles and power distribution.
• Individualism vs Collectivism :  In companies where individualism is dominant, employees place a greater emphasis on attaining their personal goals above the goals and well-being of the group. Think “I” versus “We”.
• Uncertainty Avoidance Index :  High uncertainty avoidance is usually characterised by strict rules and procedures. With low uncertainty avoidance there is an appetite for risk taking and comfort in ambiguity and the unknown. Rules and regulations are more laxed.
• Masculinity vs Femininity :  Masculine cultures seem to focus on material achievements and wealth building. Gender roles tend to be distinct. In feminine cultures, there is a focus on quality of life, fluid gender roles, modesty and nurture.
• Long term Orientation vs Short term Orientation :  Long term orientation is all about delayed gratification. Company culture in this domain forgoes short term success in order to achieve long term vision. Short term oriented companies on the other hand are interested in immediate results and the present rather than the future.
• Indulgence vs Restraint : The freedom for employees to have fun versus restraint through social norms and company policy.

To measure the different cultural dimensions, Hofstede developed a survey tool known as the Value Survey Model that companies can use for their cultural analysis.

How to use Schwartzs’s Values for cultural analysis?

Schwartz’s theory of basic values  identifies ten basic personal values and classifies them into 4 categories depending on their underlying goals or motivation: self-transcendence or self-enhancement or on openness to change or conservation. Some values conflict with each other, while others are congruent.

• Self-transcendence vs Self-Enhancement :  Values can either emphasise a concern for the common good rather than the individual (universalism, benevolence) or emphasise self-interest and success and dominance over others (achievement, power).
• Openness to change vs Conservation :  Values can either emphasise readiness to change, innovation, independence of thought, feelings and actions (self-direction, stimulation) while others emphasise preservation of  traditions, rules and regulations and self-restriction (security, conformity, tradition).   See the table below for a breakdown of Schwartz’s ten basic values

Using the Schwartz Value Survey (survey questions developed from the model) companies can measure which values are the most prominent amongst their employees and identify situations where values conflict and impede productivity.

How to use Fiske’s relational models for cultural analysis?

Fiske’s model  is not as popular. Nevertheless it has potential to provide interesting insights that previous models don’t look at. Fiske’s is a relational model that informs how employees interact with each other. All human interactions can be described in terms of 4 relational models:

• Communal Sharing  :  People consider themselves to be equivalent, undifferentiated and interchangeable. The focus is on the group’s success rather than the individual’s. Companies can look out for rituals, synchronous movements, sharing and generosity.
• Authority Ranking  :  The working environment is characterised by hierarchical structures. Highly ranked people enjoy greater authority and prestige while lower ranked people are entitled to guidance and protection.
• Equality Matching  :  Employees seek reciprocity and balanced relationships. In instances of difference, the necessary is done to restore balance.
• Market Pricing  :  Interactions are oriented towards ratios and rates like pricing, tithes, wages, cost-benefit analysis.

Working with Fiske’s model, it is important for companies to seek to uncover instances of conflict and to align these to the company’s overall vision.

HR practitioners have made attempts at modifying academic theories to simple guidelines applicable in the business context. These have taken the form of  types of workplace cultures , with one of the most well known classification being Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn’s Competitive Value Framework.

How to use the  Competitive Value Framework  for Cultural Analysis?

Using the Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI), companies can see which of 4 corporate values proposed affect how they operate, and how employees collaborate for now and the company’s desired future state.

• Adhocracy Culture :  innovative workplace environment with high risk tolerance
• Clan Culture:  Individuals are considered to be of equal importance and hierarchies are frowned upon
• Hierarchical Culture :  structure controlled and stiff processes
• Market culture :  competition and results orientation

How to use the Corporate Culture Classifications for Cultural Analysis?

Other Types of organisational culture are mentioned in  Havard’s Leader’s Guide to Corporate  culture

• Learning Culture:  knowledge and skills expansion, continuous learning and curiosity, innovation.
• Purpose Culture:  Working towards a vision greater than self, usually to change the world.
• Caring Culture:  Helping customers, employees and team members to thrive.
• Order Culture:   Structure, rules and regulations and standard processes.
• Safety Culture:   Risk planning and aversion and sticking to proven processes.
• Authority Culture:  Competitiveness, decisiveness and boldness. Employees and the company strive to be the best in their fields.
• Results Culture:  Meeting and exceeding goals and targets.
• Enjoyment Culture:  Fun loving, playfulness and spontaneity.

How to do a cultural analysis practically?

Using any of the theoretical frameworks mentioned above, it is important for companies to do the following:

• Use anonymous surveys and culture assessments to employees to understand where you presently stand. See how employees view the company, their thoughts on company values, and their understanding of overall company vision and goals. Does their understanding align with what is communicated by the executive team? This could take the form of a cultural gap analysis where you assess where you stand today versus where you want to be in the future.
• Supplement your anonymous surveys with other data sources. For example, observe team interactions and behaviours during meetings and social gatherings and/or review the stories and anecdotes that run across the organisation and what these say about the work environment. Companies can also analyse HR processes like recruitment, onboarding and incentives to see what they communicate.
• Once strengths and weaknesses are identified, companies should develop a strategy to achieve their desired culture. This might require intensive training with employees, communication, skill training for leadership, recognition for employees who show desirable values and incentives to encourage certain behaviours.
• Culture analysis should not be a 1 time event but a continuous process if you are going to sustain a positive culture.

How to guarantee data privacy in cultural analysis?

Nothing hinders the benefits of a cultural analysis like data privacy concerns. It is difficult to create an open space for the discussion about culture without the tools and processes in place to ensure any information shared is private and without risks to employees. To guarantee data privacy, companies are advised to hire the services of a 3rd party HR consultant and use tools with a privacy by design architecture to collect and interpret data.

Why 3rd party consultants over in-house HR staff? Privacy, limited bias and trust. For employees and other internal stakeholders to feel comfortable sharing honest feedback without any fears of negative repercussions, a third party with little to no conflicts of interest within the company is necessary. Any survey data shared back to management should be in aggregate form and guarantee anonymity.

While HR consultants will design survey questions based on any of the theoretical frameworks mentioned above or develop their own frameworks, there is a need for a survey analysis tool to collect and analyse data safely.

CODIFIC’S  Survey Analysis and Reporting Automation tool (SARA)  helps HR consultants:

• Collect survey data safely with privacy by design principles
• Automate analysis with either generic methodologies or proprietary methodologies of their choice
• Generate automated reports with their existing templates and branding

With the right frameworks, methodologies and steps to ensure data privacy via using a non-biased HR consultant and a data safe survey analysis and automation tool, companies are equipped with what it takes to carry out a cultural analysis and establish the right cultures to remain competitive.

Data protection:

Codific is a cybersecurity firm that develops SaaS applications. At the core of everything we do is a security and privacy by design principle, protecting user data and truly guaranteeing anonymity when relevant. The highest standard in data security is the only practical, legal and moral option.

Stop wasting time building reports manually. Stop sending your customers to third-party tools and stop being limited by the features of your software. Hire SARA today.

Employee motivation in cultural analysis

Employee engagement and motivation are a huge part of the culture of a business. It contributes to the productivity, success, and environment of the business, with motivated employees, the work is given more attention, precision and creativity. Satisfied employee helps obtain satisfied customers.

Read more on a simple guide to employee motivation analysis in this blog. 

What else does Codific build with privacy by design principles?

Videolab  is used by top universities, academies and hospitals to put the care in healthcare. Communication skills, empathy and other soft skills are trained by sharing patient interviews recordings for feedback.

SAMMY  Is a Software Assurance Maturity Model management tool. It enables companies to formulate and implement a security assurance program tuned to the risks they are facing. That way other companies can help us build a simple and safe digital future. Obviously our AppSec program and SAMMY itself is built on top of it.

We believe in collaboration and open innovation, we would love to hear about your projects and see how we can contribute in developing secure software and privacy by design architecture. Contact us.

Zeinabou Bunji

If you have questions, reach out to me here.

Author:  Zeinabou Bunji

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How cultural analysis helps you understand people better

Sociocultural and urban anthropologist Rosalyn Negrón shares her expertise on cultural domain analysis to provide insight into the shared understandings within a group. This type of cultural analysis focuses on how people in a group think about and understand things in the social and natural world, which has wide application in anthropology, marketing, public health, education and other fields.

What is cultural domain analysis?

Cultural domain analysis is a set of methods for collecting and analyzing data about how people in cultural groups think about things and concepts that are related to one another. Cultural anthropology researchers glean insights from these data to gain a better understanding of different cultural worldviews. “Cultural domain analysis provides insight into the shared cultural knowledge that underlies people's choices, behavior and beliefs,” said Rosalyn Negrón, an instructor of a cultural domain analysis course in ASU Continuing and Professional Education. “It’s often difficult for people to articulate the cultural knowledge that influences their routine actions and many are not explicitly aware of the particular perspectives on the world they may share with other members of their cultural groups.” When researchers conduct a cultural domain analysis, they can discover “the hidden obvious” that is so important for anthropological research and is applicable across a range of fields. Further, a cultural domain analysis can reveal nuances in how people perceive different concepts or whether they share the same concepts in the same ways. Cultural domain analysis has been around for at least six decades. This type of cultural analysis was developed within anthropology, integrating theory and methods from cognitive psychology. Advances in computing from later decades made cultural domain analysis more widely accessible and applicable.

How do you define a cultural domain for analysis?

Researchers typically start with lists to define a cultural domain. A key way to elicit items for a domain is through free listing. Free listing is an easy, yet powerful way to discover the concepts most salient in people’s mind about a given topic. “In cultural domain analysis, lists can be of physical, observable things like plants, colors, animals and symptoms of illness or conceptual things like occupations, roles and emotions,” said Negrón, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “You can get lists in many different ways, such as through interviews or by gathering curated lists that people create online, such as on sites like Pinterest.” In her course, Negrón walks learners through what to do with those lists to map out shared knowledge within a group. This includes pile sorting, multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis and cultural consensus analysis. These assist in understanding what items people associate with each other, exploring the structure of collective cognitive and semantic associations and determining if and how members of a cultural group share knowledge about a cultural domain.

Why is understanding cultural domains useful in various fields?

Cultural domain analysis reveals a deeper understanding of people in different cultural groups and how they view the world. While anthropology students would benefit from adding these methods to their research toolkit, the insights from these methods have become increasingly important in environmental science, marketing public health, web design, user experience and other fields. “In these fields, ethnographically grounded insights about people's perspectives can make all the difference in whether a product or service can actually meet people's needs,” said Negrón. “For example, understanding cultural knowledge differences can help improve and target behavior change programs, such as in public health.” Environmental science Cultural domain analysis can illuminate how concepts about nature and the environment vary across cultures. These insights prove to be useful for environmental conservation and natural resource management. “Understanding, for example, the cognitive salience of certain plants or other natural resources within indigenous or traditional knowledge systems may help shape strategies for managing those resources,” said Negrón. “Such insights can also help to bridge gaps in consensus between relevant stakeholders about the nature of environmental issues.” Marketing research In the field of marketing, rather than the term “cultural domain analysis,” researchers use terms like “concept mapping” and “brand mapping” to describe similar methods that collect and analyze data about people’s perspectives. “These methods are excellent for gathering the knowledge and perspectives that people have about products, brands and what sorts of associations people have about them,” said Negrón. “Through cultural consensus analysis, you can get a sense of the extent to which there is a shared understanding about a particular product or marketing campaign.” Public health Cultural domain analysis has been used extensively in public health. Cultural awareness can help researchers understand people’s knowledge about health and well-being to create more effective health policies. “Public health researchers have used these methods to better understand how to develop cross-culturally relevant communication materials and health interventions that respond to local understandings about health and illness concepts,” said Negrón. “Further, these methods help researchers understand the divide that might exist between expert knowledge and non-expert knowledge about health, its causes and its consequences.” Web design In web design, cultural domain analysis can determine what groupings of content make sense to users. These insights can inform the layout of website navigation, the structure of information and the hierarchy of content on a website or webpage. “If, for example, you’re developing a website for a bookseller, you might do ‘free lists’ to discover the different genres or subgenres that users know of and present content that is consistent with the shared understanding of possible genres out there,” said Negrón. “Some of these might not square with the developer's understanding of what people are doing, using or reading.”

Is cultural domain analysis only important to researchers?

The topics and skills covered in Negrón’s cultural domain analysis course are primarily for research settings, such as in the aforementioned fields. However, the methods used in cultural domain analysis are transferable to other roles, such as teachers and managers. “Teachers may find free listing is an easy and fun way to teach to their students how to develop cultural awareness,” said Negrón. “Managers can use pile sorting exercises as an icebreaker and team-building activity or use multidimensional scaling mapping to do deep dives about their team's collective mental concepts about a given domain, such as a company mission.”

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Cultural Analysis

Volume 22.1, forum series 1: pandemics & politics, stephen olbrys gencarella.

Folk Research: A Query and a Critique

Sarita Ray Chaudhury

“Laugh like Surpanakha:” Modern Literary Re-Imagining of a Famous Villainess in Indian Folkloric Traditions

Tiago Pires

Ethnopsychiatry of the Devil: Demonic Possession as a Cultural Language for Subjective Suffering in Contemporary Italy

Book Review

Gregory Hansen Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork (Gilman and Fenn)

Mary L. Sellers Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in Flyover Country.

The Editors

Introduction: Changing Landscapes

Dom Tartaglia, Kaitlyn L. Kinney, Christine J. Widmayer, Annamarie Morel, Daisy Ahlstone, & Jared L. Schmidt

Becoming Folkwise: Sustaining Digital Community While Socially Distant (Essay)

Juwen Zhang

Making Sense of the Pandemic of Racism: From the Asian Exclusion Act in 1924 to the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act in 2021

Response by: Fariha I. Khan

Lucy M. Long

Refrigerators, Cupboards, and Canning Jars: Emergent Meanings and Subversive Practices in Food Preservation and Storage During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Response by: Janet C. Gilmore

Andrea Kitta

God is My Vaccine: Religious Belief and COVID in the United States (Essay)

Levi Bochantin & James I. Deutsch

The Folkloric Roots and Pandemic Popularity of the QAnon Conspiracy Theory (Essay)

Interrogating Social Distancing: Pandemic and Farmers’ Protest in India

Adam Hinden, Ziying You, & Zhen Guo

Online Activism and Grassroots Memorialization in the Age of COVID-19: Dr. Li Wenliang's Virtual Wailing Wall

Response by: Frederik Schmitz

Volume 21.2

Approaching Climate Change Adaptation: Knowledge, Power, Communication

Volume 21.1

Creative Methodologies

Volume 20.2

Approaching Trauma through Laughter, Betrayal, and Othering

Volume 20.1

Volume 19.2

Tracking Knowledge

Volume 19.1

Ethnographies of Silence

Volume 18.2

Various Topics

Volume 18.1

Comparison as Social and Cultural Practice

Volume 17.2

Gesar Epic & The Punisher

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Volume 16.2

Volume 16.1

Inheritance of the Digital

Volume 15.2

Volume 15.1

Everyday Practice and Tradition

What's in a Discipline? 50th Anniversary of SIEF

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About Cultural Analysis

Established in 2000 in the Berkeley Folklore Archives, Cultural Analysis has published over 19 volumes and hosts a global editorial board and collective.

Cultural Analysis is global in scope, with an international editorial board. EDITORIAL BOARD

Submission Guidelines

Authors should submit research articles of approximately 8,000-10,000 words in length, in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition, and include an abstract of 100 words and a "Works Cited" section. Authors must provide either an electronic or a paper copy of their article. Microsoft Word is the preferred format for all electronic copies. Electronic copies may be sent as e-mail attachments to [email protected] . Essays (2,500 to 3,500 words) are also welcomed.

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1999 --> 1999 416 pages. from $45.00

Hardcover ISBN: 9780804730662 Paperback ISBN: 9780804730679

This volume presents an interdisciplinary approach to humanistic scholarship, one that can be situated somewhere between cultural studies and cultural history while being more specific than either. Cultural analysis as a critical practice is based on a keen awareness of the critic's situatedness in the present—the social and cultural present from which we look, and look back, at objects that are already of the past, objects that we take to define our present culture. Thus it can be summarized by the phrase "cultural memory in the present." Far from being indifferent to history, cultural analysis is devoted to understanding the past as part of the present, as what we have around us.

The essays gathered here represent the current state of an emerging field of inquiry. At the same time, they suggest to the larger academic world what cultural analysis can and should do, or be, as an interdisciplinary practice. The challenge for this volume is to counter the common assumption that interdisciplinarity makes the object of inquiry vague and the methodology muddled. In meeting that challenge, it offers close textual and visual readings of subjects ranging from Vermeer to abstract expressionism, from the Book of Ruth to Djuna Barnes's Nightwood , from the history of cinema to popular culture in Zaire.

The essays in Part I, "Don't Look Now: Visual Memory in the Present," explore in detailed case studies centered on the theme of visuality or looking, the tricky consequences of the uncertainties regarding history that the presentness of the past entails. Part II, "Close-ups and Mirrors: The Return of Close Reading, with a Difference," demonstrates and advocates "listening" to the object without the New Critical naïveté that claims the text speaks for itself. Instead, the essays create the kind of dialogical situation that is a major characteristic of cultural analysis; the text does not speak for itself, but it does speak back. The essays in Part III, "Method Matters: Reflections on the Identity of Cultural Analysis," do not propose any "directions for use" or authoritative statements on how to do cultural analysis. Arranged in pairs of opposites, the essays represent the kind of fruitful tension that stimulates debate. Though no definite answers are proposed, and conflicting views are left in conflict, the essays stimulate a (self-)reflection on cultural analysis, its practices, and its understandings.

About the author

Mieke Bal is Professor of Literary Theory at the University of Amsterdam and co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and Interpretation. The most recent of her many books is The Mottled Screen: Reading Proust Visually (Stanford, 1997).

The Reeducation of Race

Sonali Thakkar

Climate of Denial

Allen MacDuffie

Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets

Pot for Profit

Joseph Mello

Of Effacement

David Marriott

Constant Disconnection

Kenzie Burchell

The Residential Is Racial

Adrienne Brown

Queer Obscenity

Javier Fernández Galeano

A History of Fake Things on the Internet

Walter J. Scheirer

Sensitive Witnesses

Kristin M. Girten

Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena, and Feifei Zhou

The Influencer Factory

Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness

Careers in Qual

Quick answers, cultural analysis, related terms.

Textual Analysis: Definition, Types & 10 Examples

Textual analysis is a research methodology that involves exploring written text as empirical data. Scholars explore both the content and structure of texts, and attempt to discern key themes and statistics emergent from them.

This method of research is used in various academic disciplines, including cultural studies, literature, bilical studies, anthropology , sociology, and others (Dearing, 2022; McKee, 2003).

This method of analysis involves breaking down a text into its constituent parts for close reading and making inferences about its context, underlying themes, and the intentions of its author.

Textual Analysis Definition

Alan McKee is one of the preeminent scholars of textual analysis. He provides a clear and approachable definition in his book Textual Analysis: A Beginner’s Guide (2003) where he writes:

“When we perform textual analysis on a text we make an educated guess at some of the most likely interpretations that might be made of the text […] in order to try and obtain a sense of the ways in which, in particular cultures at particular times, people make sense of the world around them.”

A key insight worth extracting from this definition is that textual analysis can reveal what cultural groups value, how they create meaning, and how they interpret reality.

This is invaluable in situations where scholars are seeking to more deeply understand cultural groups and civilizations – both past and present (Metoyer et al., 2018).

As such, it may be beneficial for a range of different types of studies, such as:

• Studies of Historical Texts: A study of how certain concepts are framed, described, and approached in historical texts, such as the Bible.
• Studies of Industry Reports: A study of how industry reports frame and discuss concepts such as environmental and social responsibility.
• Studies of Literature: A study of how a particular text or group of texts within a genre define and frame concepts. For example, you could explore how great American literature mythologizes the concept of the ‘The American Dream’.
• Studies of Speeches: A study of how certain politicians position national identities in their appeals for votes.
• Studies of Newspapers: A study of the biases within newspapers toward or against certain groups of people.
• Etc. (For more, see: Dearing, 2022)

McKee uses the term ‘textual analysis’ to also refer to text types that are not just written, but multimodal. For a dive into the analysis of multimodal texts, I recommend my article on content analysis , where I explore the study of texts like television advertisements and movies in detail.

Features of a Textual Analysis

When conducting a textual analysis, you’ll need to consider a range of factors within the text that are worthy of close examination to infer meaning. Features worthy of considering include:

• Content: What is being said or conveyed in the text, including explicit and implicit meanings, themes, or ideas.
• Context: When and where the text was created, the culture and society it reflects, and the circumstances surrounding its creation and distribution.
• Audience: Who the text is intended for, how it’s received, and the effect it has on its audience.
• Authorship: Who created the text, their background and perspectives, and how these might influence the text.
• Form and structure: The layout, sequence, and organization of the text and how these elements contribute to its meanings (Metoyer et al., 2018).

Textual Analysis Coding Methods

The above features may be examined through quantitative or qualitative research designs , or a mixed-methods angle.

1. Quantitative Approaches

You could analyze several of the above features, namely, content, form, and structure, from a quantitative perspective using computational linguistics and natural language processing (NLP) analysis.

From this approach, you would use algorithms to extract useful information or insights about frequency of word and phrase usage, etc. This can include techniques like sentiment analysis, topic modeling, named entity recognition, and more.

2. Qualitative Approaches

In many ways, textual analysis lends itself best to qualitative analysis. When identifying words and phrases, you’re also going to want to look at the surrounding context and possibly cultural interpretations of what is going on (Mayring, 2015).

Generally, humans are far more perceptive at teasing out these contextual factors than machines (although, AI is giving us a run for our money).

One qualitative approach to textual analysis that I regularly use is inductive coding, a step-by-step methodology that can help you extract themes from texts. If you’re interested in using this step-by-step method, read my guide on inductive coding here .

See more Qualitative Research Approaches Here

Textual Analysis Examples

Title: “Discourses on Gender, Patriarchy and Resolution 1325: A Textual Analysis of UN Documents”  Author: Nadine Puechguirbal Year: 2010 APA Citation: Puechguirbal, N. (2010). Discourses on Gender, Patriarchy and Resolution 1325: A Textual Analysis of UN Documents, International Peacekeeping, 17 (2): 172-187. doi: 10.1080/13533311003625068

Summary: The article discusses the language used in UN documents related to peace operations and analyzes how it perpetuates stereotypical portrayals of women as vulnerable individuals. The author argues that this language removes women’s agency and keeps them in a subordinate position as victims, instead of recognizing them as active participants and agents of change in post-conflict environments. Despite the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which aims to address the role of women in peace and security, the author suggests that the UN’s male-dominated power structure remains unchallenged, and gender mainstreaming is often presented as a non-political activity.

Title: “Racism and the Media: A Textual Analysis”  Author: Kassia E. Kulaszewicz Year: 2015 APA Citation: Kulaszewicz, K. E. (2015). Racism and the Media: A Textual Analysis . Dissertation. Retrieved from: https://sophia.stkate.edu/msw_papers/477

Summary: This study delves into the significant role media plays in fostering explicit racial bias. Using Bandura’s Learning Theory, it investigates how media content influences our beliefs through ‘observational learning’. Conducting a textual analysis, it finds differences in representation of black and white people, stereotyping of black people, and ostensibly micro-aggressions toward black people. The research highlights how media often criminalizes Black men, portraying them as violent, while justifying or supporting the actions of White officers, regardless of their potential criminality. The study concludes that news media likely continues to reinforce racism, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Title: “On the metaphorical nature of intellectual capital: a textual analysis” Author: Daniel Andriessen Year: 2006 APA Citation: Andriessen, D. (2006). On the metaphorical nature of intellectual capital: a textual analysis. Journal of Intellectual capital , 7 (1), 93-110.

Summary: This article delves into the metaphorical underpinnings of intellectual capital (IC) and knowledge management, examining how knowledge is conceptualized through metaphors. The researchers employed a textual analysis methodology, scrutinizing key texts in the field to identify prevalent metaphors. They found that over 95% of statements about knowledge are metaphor-based, with “knowledge as a resource” and “knowledge as capital” being the most dominant. This study demonstrates how textual analysis helps us to understand current understandings and ways of speaking about a topic.

Title: “Race in Rhetoric: A Textual Analysis of Barack Obama’s Campaign Discourse Regarding His Race” Author: Andrea Dawn Andrews Year: 2011 APA Citation: Andrew, A. D. (2011) Race in Rhetoric: A Textual Analysis of Barack Obama’s Campaign Discourse Regarding His Race. Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection. 120 . https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ugtheses/120

This undergraduate honors thesis is a textual analysis of Barack Obama’s speeches that explores how Obama frames the concept of race. The student’s capstone project found that Obama tended to frame racial inequality as something that could be overcome, and that this was a positive and uplifting project. Here, the student breaks-down times when Obama utilizes the concept of race in his speeches, and examines the surrounding content to see the connotations associated with race and race-relations embedded in the text. Here, we see a decidedly qualitative approach to textual analysis which can deliver contextualized and in-depth insights.

Sub-Types of Textual Analysis

While above I have focused on a generalized textual analysis approach, a range of sub-types and offshoots have emerged that focus on specific concepts, often within their own specific theoretical paradigms. Each are outlined below, and where I’ve got a guide, I’ve linked to it in blue:

• Content Analysis : Content analysis is similar to textual analysis, and I would consider it a type of textual analysis, where it’s got a broader understanding of the term ‘text’. In this type, a text is any type of ‘content’, and could be multimodal in nature, such as television advertisements, movies, posters, and so forth. Content analysis can be both qualitative and quantitative, depending on whether it focuses more on the meaning of the content or the frequency of certain words or concepts (Chung & Pennebaker, 2018).
• Discourse Analysis : Emergent specifically from critical and postmodern/ poststructural theories, discourse analysis focuses closely on the use of language within a social context, with the goal of revealing how repeated framing of terms and concepts has the effect of shaping how cultures understand social categories. It considers how texts interact with and shape social norms, power dynamics, ideologies, etc. For example, it might examine how gender is socially constructed as a distinct social category through Disney films. It may also be called ‘critical discourse analysis’.
• Narrative Analysis: This approach is used for analyzing stories and narratives within text. It looks at elements like plot, characters, themes, and the sequence of events to understand how narratives construct meaning.
• Frame Analysis: This approach looks at how events, ideas, and themes are presented or “framed” within a text. It explores how these frames can shape our understanding of the information being presented. While similar to discourse analysis, a frame analysis tends to be less associated with the loaded concept of ‘discourse’ that exists specifically within postmodern paradigms (Smith, 2017).
• Semiotic Analysis: This approach studies signs and symbols, both visual and textual, and could be a good compliment to a content analysis, as it provides the language and understandings necessary to describe how signs make meaning in cultural contexts that we might find with the fields of semantics and pragmatics . It’s based on the theory of semiotics, which is concerned with how meaning is created and communicated through signs and symbols.
• Computational Textual Analysis: In the context of data science or artificial intelligence, this type of analysis involves using algorithms to process large amounts of text. Techniques can include topic modeling, sentiment analysis, word frequency analysis, and others. While being extremely useful for a quantitative analysis of a large dataset of text, it falls short in its ability to provide deep contextualized understandings of words-in-context.

Each of these methods has its strengths and weaknesses, and the choice of method depends on the research question, the type of text being analyzed, and the broader context of the research.

See More Examples of Analysis Here

Strengths and Weaknesses of Textual Analysis

When writing your methodology for your textual analysis, make sure to define not only what textual analysis is, but (if applicable) the type of textual analysis, the features of the text you’re analyzing, and the ways you will code the data. It’s also worth actively reflecting on the potential weaknesses of a textual analysis approach, but also explaining why, despite those weaknesses, you believe this to be the most appropriate methodology for your study.

Chung, C. K., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2018). Textual analysis. In  Measurement in social psychology  (pp. 153-173). Routledge.

Dearing, V. A. (2022).  Manual of textual analysis . Univ of California Press.

McKee, A. (2003). Textual analysis: A beginner’s guide.  Textual analysis , 1-160.

Mayring, P. (2015). Qualitative content analysis: Theoretical background and procedures.  Approaches to qualitative research in mathematics education: Examples of methodology and methods , 365-380. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9181-6_13

Metoyer, R., Zhi, Q., Janczuk, B., & Scheirer, W. (2018, March). Coupling story to visualization: Using textual analysis as a bridge between data and interpretation. In  23rd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces  (pp. 503-507). doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3172944.3173007

Smith, J. A. (2017). Textual analysis.  The international encyclopedia of communication research methods , 1-7.

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Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Cultural Analysis Essays: What to Focus on

Are you struggling with a cultural analysis essay? Can you not understand where to start and what to focus on? It is pretty weird that a teacher has not provided necessary specifications, because cultural analysis essays can actually be devoted to many different issues.

Yet, the main principle of writing cultural analysis essays remains the same. You need to analyze something referring to its cultural aspect. Let us introduce you a couple of examples and pointers for writing your cultural analysis essay.

📝 Essays on cultural diversity

📃 essays on cultural differences, 📄 deaf culture essays, 📑 analyzing cultural aspects in movies.

This is one of the popular topics today that students have to address. Our society and world in general become more and more culturally diverse and cosmopolitan. How do all these cultures interact? Answer this question in your essay on cultural diversity.

If you choose this option, you will have to compare two particular cultures. For instance, you may discuss cultural differences between America and India or America and China.

Explain what deaf culture is all about, signs deaf people use, schools they go to, their entertainment, and so on. By the way, some people believe that deaf culture does not exist. Express your opinion about this issue in the deaf culture essay.

This is one of the most fascinating ways to complete cultural analysis essays. It is not a secret that films reflect culture of different countries. What movies do you think are best at reflecting American culture?

Take them as examples for your cultural analysis essay, explain what particular cultural aspect they are about (men or women in society, drugs, or any other social problem), and finally tell whether it is really so in reality.

Probably, you will find our next articles about “Proud to Be a Canadian” essays and a Geography essay useful too.

Essay 1: Cultural Analysis

Basic Assignment . This assignment asks you to write a critical essay that provides a cultural analysis of a multicultural American literary text written before World War I, something prior to literary modernism and on our syllabus.

Cultural Analysis . For the purposes of this assignment, "cultural analysis" means making connections between a text we've read and the cultural contexts in which that text emerged or circulated. It does not exclude the formal analysis of a text (indeed some of the very best cultural criticism uses analysis of form); but cultural analysis moves beyond the boundaries of the text itself to establish links among texts, values, institutions, groups, practices, and people.

 Here are some examples of the questions that a critic developing a cultural analysis might ask:

 •    What kinds of behavior does this text seem to encourage or enforce?

•    What are the social purposes or functions of this text?

•    Why might readers at different times and different places find this text compelling?

•    What are the differences between my values and the values implicit in the text?

•    Upon what social understanding does the text depend?

•    How might this text affect the freedom or movement of a person or groups of persons?

•    How is this text connected to larger social groups, beliefs, structures, issues, ideas, events, habits, customs, practices, or communications?

 These are just examples. The specific questions, form, and content of you paper should be tailored to your own talents and interests. In other words, you will develop your own topic for this paper. It also means that some of these papers may be deeply informed by cultural theory; others may not. Some will want to develop a very precise idea of what “cultural analysis” means; others will not. Some will use a great deal of historical research; others only a little. Some papers will use mostly primary documents to construct an understanding of an early American cultural context; others will rely on secondary sources; and others may use a mix of both. All these papers, however, must use documents and sources beyond the literary text itself.

Proposals . I will need a proposal from everyone sometime before September 24 . I will accept three different kinds of proposals: 1) a paper conference with me; 2) a one-page, typed explanation of the option you’ve selected and a preliminary indication of what you would like to do with the topic; or 3) an e-mail version of #2.

What-I’m-Really-Looking-For. Just so you know, when I’m reading these papers, I’ll be asking myself the following questions:

•    Does the paper move beyond an analysis of a text in isolation, the text itself?

•    Does it focus on a multicultural American literary text written before World War I, something prior to literary modernism and on our syllabus?

•    Does it make links between the text and its culture (i.e., values, institutions, groups, practices, or people)?

•    Does the paper make specific and interesting claims about the text and culture examined?

•    Does it explain in a clear and persuasive manner its interpretation of the text and its cultural contexts?

•    Does it support that interpretation with judiciously chosen evidence, including most importantly appropriate, direct references to the text?

•    Is it organized in a way that makes clear (rather than detracts from) the argument’s major claims and emphases?

•    Does it acknowledge its primary and secondary sources using a bibliography and a clear and consistent style of documentation?

•    Would the paper be interesting to others in the class? Does it avoid saying the obvious?

Revisions . After I return your papers (on October 8th probably), please read my comments. If at that point, you would like to revise your paper, please do so. Revisions will be due one week after papers have been returned (October 15th). A revision does not automatically receive a better grade. The revision must be substantially improved. It must demonstrate significant change in ideas and focus, arrangement and organization, or evidence and development. Simply correcting typos or making editing corrections will not change the grade.

To submit a revision, please: 1) Write a summary explaining why and how you revised—for example, how and why you decided to change the focus and organization; why you deleted or added a certain part; why and how you rearranged information; and so on. 2) Hand-in your revision, your original paper, and my original comments along with your summary explaining the changes.

Due Date . Friday, October 1

Length . 5-8 typed, double-spaced pages

Greg's Home | Department of English | Graduate Studies | Cultural Studies | Visual Culture | Kansas State University |

This page was updated on 18 August 2004. Other pages on this site may have been updated more recently. These pages are copyright © 1995-2004 Gregory Eiselein.

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• How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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151 interesting cultural analysis topics for students.

October 6, 2021

As a broad concept, cultural analysis is an area of study that looks at the social and cultural aspects of everyday living and life in general. It focuses on the analysis of all the ways we develop interactions and relations with human society.

When writing a cultural analysis paper, students should remember that it affords them an excellent opportunity to explore various experiences through their chosen cultural themes.

Students are often assigned cultural analysis paper writing in school because it serves to conduct extensive research. Through selected topics and research, students are enabled with the ability to analyze global topics, investigate topics on various issues, as well as to understand the significance of different cultural backgrounds.

When assigned to write a cultural analysis essay, the first approach is to research topics filled with rich experiences and ideas, as this gives you room for so many things to write on. While writing your cultural essay, your abstract, introduction, main body, and conclusions are relevant. For more context, your article has to be detailed, flowing seamlessly for easy reading and understanding.

Interesting Analytical Essay Topics for Students

When writing an analytical essay paper, emphasis is paid majorly on the topic you are selecting because your topic affords you the level of depth necessary to carry out the needed analysis. Analytical topics writing demands interesting analytical topics to come out well. Here are some analytical essay topics to consider for your essay writing assignment:

• Analyze the impact of religion on our thinking and perception of life
• Analyze the core distinction between Islam and Christianity
• Write extensively on the health importance of Marijuana
• How is technology influencing human inertia
• What is the cultural symbolism of Halloween
• Analyze the effect of the Spooky season over time
• Explore the origin story of Halloween
• Explore the social impacts of religious doctrines and how it impedes growth
• Analyze the limitations of spiritual principles and how they negatively impact social life
• Analyze the importance of self-care practice to developing one’s mental health
• Analyze the effect on cultural differences and how it affects people’s perception of various subjects
• Analyze fast fashion as an unsustainable social lifestyle
• Effects of fast fashion on an economy
• Explore ways through which the social impact of fast fashion can be curbed
• Analyze the importance of therapy and why it’s essential for better mental health
• What factors promote peace and unity in multicultural states
• Why does Christianity frown on intermarriage between Christians and Muslims
• Exploring the limiting social and cultural beliefs of Christianity
• Exploring the cultural limitation of religion
• Analyze in well-constructed details the modern-day effects of slavery
• Analyze how technology is taking over the educational sector
• Explore the benefits of marketing beyond digital marketing

Critical Analysis Essay Topics for College Essays

There is a significant distinction between analysis paper topics and critical analysis topics. It is in its complexity. Your analysis topic changes shape the moment it requires you to carry out criticism. In this situation, your work on the topic moves beyond analyzing the work but also mirroring your work from a critical lens. In your critical analysis essay, you are not just exploring but picking up salient points and facts to help you form a solid judgment.

• Exploring in detail the inherent racism of the Olympics
• Exploring misogyny, misogynoir and racism in the entertainment industry
• A critical outlook structural racism
• Ways through which the implementation of gender roles confines genders in boxes
• A look into how excessive video game impacts health
• Exploring how video games influence children’s mental health
• A look into addiction, how it affects a system, and possible ways through which it can be curbed
• An exploration on how technology impacts educational growth
• Critically evaluate the pros and cons of the gradual decline of traditional learning and the burgeoning development of online learning
• Assess the benefits of single-parent families
• Critically evaluating the effects of global warming
• A look into how social media promotes freedom of speech
• Exploring in detail the importance of virtual communities
• Atheism: a form of religion on its own?
• Veganism and its social effect on healthy living
• Anti-drug campaign and the study of drug abuse and addiction
• Critical research on the concept of body positivity
• Interracial marriages and the origin of its social perception
• Inter-religious marriage and the challenges associated with it
• Study into the inherent nature of homophobia in the human society
• A study into how homophobia and religion connect
• The distinction between the positive and negative impacts of social media in young adults.

Good Cultural Criticism Essay Topics to Explore

As an integral part of human living, culture is multifaceted. What this entails in any essay writing or criticism through a cultural lens is that there are many subjects to touch on. To conduct and write a good essay on this topic, attention should be drawn towards exploring the complexity of culture and the various dimensions of living. Here are some cultural criticism topics to look into:

• The history of racism and how it has continued to affect healthy coexistence in Western societies
• Understanding the limitations of religion
• A look into the distinction between spirituality and religion
• A study of the history of the Olympics and its impacts on sports over the years
• A survey of literature and how it impacts various aspects of human lives
• Critical analysis on the subject of black hair
• How safe abortion ban translates to dictatorship
• Dictatorial tendencies prevalent with Western philosophies and ideas
• The cultural impact of Brexit on Europe
• The cultural impact of Brexit on the United Kingdom
• Critically evaluating structural racism in the workplace
• A study of overt and implicit racism
• Analyzing the influence of colonial rule on Africa
• How imperialism morphs into new slavery
• Exploring the concept of ethnicity
• The cultural impact of literature
• Analyzing the role of literature in shaping human consciousness
• A study of misogyny and how it affects human relationships
• Analysis of the cultural aspects within the literature
• A study of the importance of situating a literary work within a cultural context
• Importance of cultural context in writing
• Exploring literature from a cultural lens

Controversial Cultural Analysis Essay Topics

Your cultural analysis essay topics will differ slightly from your critical analysis topic. Unlike your critical analysis paper, the cultural analysis only requires that you situate your topic within a cultural context and does not require the bringing up and exploration of facts. It just simply requires you to analyze your topic within a cultural context.

• Discuss the impacts of Interracial marriages
• Discuss the strength and weaknesses of inter-religious marriages
• A study on the popularity of Tiktok today
• A study on how Tiktok culture has influenced music promotion
• How Tiktok and Instagram Reels is rewriting the terms of social engagement
• Does social media have an impact on culture?
• The cultural effect of fast fashion culture
• A study of the social preference of Ape products
• A study on the weakness and strengths of Apple products
• What Apple products have to say about capitalism
• The effects of television on society
• How Television sitcoms have effects on culture
• A discussion on how TV builds and promotes the culture
• The importance of representation in popular culture
• The influence of classical literature on life to date
• The cultural impacts of social media trends
• Effects of classical movies today
• Social media blackout: How social media blackout has been ingrained into society
• A cultural analysis of social media in creating bandwagons
• Exploring the impact of psychology on culture
• The cultural implications of following trends
• Elaborate on social media herd culture

Exceptional Literary Analysis Essay Topics for your Quality Essays

Just like in culture analysis essay topics, in literary analysis essay topics, the goal is to situate your essay topic within an academic context. It means that what you’re writing and what you’re going to write on must be drawn from a literary work. Here are some topics that fit within the category:

• A study of the symbolic nature of the “green light” in the Great Gatsby
• Understanding ethnicity within literary work of Langston Hughes
• The cultural impact of James Baldwin’s literary works
• The Harlem Renaissance literature and how it shaped the future of literature in America
• The symbolic depiction of the title “The Invisible Man” from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
• Discuss Queerness through the study of Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
• An intensive review of the negro movement through the works of W.E.B Dubois.
• A comprehensive literary analysis of Double Consciousness by W.E.B Du Bois
• From a cultural perspective, a literary analysis of Audre Lorde’s collection of essays I am your Sister
• The continued relevance of Jane Austen’s literary works to date
• A realistic study of D.H Lawerence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
• Explore the concept of realism and romanticism in the novel Jane Eyre
• The social relevance of James Baldwin’s Just Above my Head
• Social implications of Toni Morrison’s Sula
• An overview of the racist connotation in Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
• Detail how The Great Gatsby pictures came to be in the 1920s America.
• A cultural analysis of Bell Hooks All About Love
• The cultural impact of black literature
• A literary study of Samuel Selvon’s Ways of Sunlight
• A cultural analysis of Edwidge Danticat’s Breathe, Eyes, Memory
• The Societal relevance of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

Textual Analysis Essay Topics on Engrossing Subjects

A textual analysis essay looks into the analysis of the writing technique of an author. The student pays attention to the language of the literary work and, in turn, draws out ideas from it to elaborate on the inherent message of the work or how the author’s language influences ideas. All of this is done using the student’s thoughts. Here are some topics within this category.

• Analyze the plays written by William Shakespeare
• Analyze the recurring theme within the various works of James Baldwin
• Discuss the theme of “the American Dream” that is prevalent within The Great Gatsby
• The theme of race and hardship in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun
• The theme of a quest for belonging in Langston Hughes’s poem I Too
• A textual analysis of James Baldwin’s Another Country
• The exploration of the effects of racism in James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain
• A study on the subject of marriage in the 19 century through Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
• Write a textual essay on any literary work of choice
• Write a textual analysis of any artwork of choice
• Analyze the characters in Baldwin’s Another Country
• A textual analysis of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
• A textual analysis essay on the New Testament
• Analyze the characterization in any selected literary text of choice
• Write an analysis of any of Obama’s past speeches
• A textual reading of the work of Alice walker
• A study of the writing style and identity representation in Toni Morrison’s works.
• The use of language to draw attention in Toni Morrison’s novels
• The use of language to compel action in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance
• Write an essay on the importance of Zora Neale Hurston’s works
• A textual study of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time

Critical Response Essay Topics for Study

A critical response essay is a more in-depth version of a textual analysis essay. Although you’re summarizing and analyzing the author’s works, at the same time, you’re making critical remarks and arguments through the various points you earn by highlighting outstanding things from the work. Here are some of them:

• Jane Austen literature is as relevant today as in the 19th century
• A study of salient points highlighted from Baldwin’s essay The Fire Next Time
• Write a critical personal response to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
• Write a critical personal analysis on selected Obama’s speeches.
• Using contemporary measures in the study of The Merchant of Venice
• Critical analysis of Alice Walker’s inclusion of lesbianism in The Colour Purple
• The portrayal of society in Oliver Twist
• The exploration of human desires in Lady Chatterley’s Lover
• A response to the depiction of black lives in Mister Johnson
• How care is portrayed in Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals
• A critical analysis of Audre Lorde’s poem “A Litany for Survival.”
• A critical overview of the role of art in human lives
• A study of how literature influences the perception of reality
• An analysis of the cultural context of literary works
• A critical response to the need for representation in literature
• The impact of art on revolution
• A critical study of revolutionary art
• An analysis of identity politics in literature
• Study of race relation in The Fence
• A critical overview of Toni Morrison’s Beloved
• The study of the cultural impact of revolutionary literature.

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Free Cultural Studies Essay Examples & Topics

There is a field in academia that analyzes the interactions between anthropological, political, aesthetic, and socioeconomic institutions. It is referred to as cultural studies . This area is interdisciplinary, meaning that it combines and examines several departments. First brought up by British scientists in the 1950s, it is now studied all over the world.

The scope of cultural studies is vast. From history and politics to literature and art, this field looks at how culture is shaped and formed. It also examines the complex interactions of race and gender and how they shape a person’s identity.

In this article, our team has listed some tips and tricks on how to write a cultural studies essay. You will encounter many fascinating aspects in this field that will be exciting to study. That is the reason why we have prepared a list of cultural studies essay topics. You can choose one that catches your eye right here! Finally, you will also find free sample essays that you can use as a source of inspiration for your work.

15 Top Cultural Studies Essay Topics

The work process on an essay begins with a tough choice. After all, there are thousands of things that you can explore. In the list below, you will find cultural studies topics for your analytical paper.

• The role of human agency in cultural studies and how research techniques are chosen.
• Examining generational changes through evolution in music and musical taste in young adults.
• Does popular culture have the power to influence global intercultural and political relationships?
• Different approaches to self-analysis and self-reflection examined through the lens of philosophy.
• Who decides what constitutes a “cultural artifact”?
• The difference in religious and cultural practices between Japanese and Chinese Buddhists.
• Exploring the symbiotic relationship between culture and tradition in the UK.
• Do people understand culture nowadays the same way they understood it a century ago?
• Which factors do we have to take into account when conducting arts and culture research of ancient civilizations?
• Día de Los Muertos: a commentary on an entirely different perspective on death.
• American society as represented in popular graphic novels.
• An analysis of the different approaches to visual culture from the perspective of a corporate logo graphic designer.
• What can French cinema of the 20 th century tell us about the culture of the time?
• Narrative storytelling in different forms of media: novels, television, and video games.
• The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the direction of pop culture.

In case you haven’t found your perfect idea in the list, feel free to try our title generator . It will compose a new topic for your cultural studies essay from scratch.

How to Write a Cultural Studies Essay

With an ideal topic for your research, you start working on your cultural analysis essay. Below you will find all the necessary steps that will lead you to write a flawless paper.

• Pick a focus. You cannot write an entire essay on the prospect of culture alone. Thus, you need to narrow down your field and the scope of your research. Spend some time reading relevant materials to decide what you want your paper to say.
• Formulate your thesis. As the backbone of your assignment, it will carry you through the entire process. Writing a thesis statement brings you one step closer to nailing the whole essay down. Think “What is my paper about?” and come up with a single sentence answer – this will be your statement.
• Provide context for your intro. The introduction is the place for setting the scene for the rest of your paper. Take time to define the terminology. Plus, you should outline what you will talk about in the rest of the essay. Make sure to keep it brief – the introduction shouldn’t take up longer than a paragraph.
• Develop your ideas in the body. It is the place for you to explore the points you’re trying to make. Examine both sides of the argument and provide ample evidence to support your claims. Don’t forget to cite your sources!
• Conclude the paper effectively. The final part is usually the hardest, but you don’t need to make it too complicated. Summarize your findings and restate your thesis statement for the conclusion. Make sure you don’t bring in any new points or arguments at this stage.
• Add references. To show that you’re not pulling your ideas out of thin air, cite your sources. Add a bibliography at the end to prove you’ve done your research. You will need to put them in alphabetical order. So, ensure you do that correctly.

Thank you for reading! Now, you can proceed to read through the examples of essays about cultural studies that we provided below.

616 Best Essay Examples on Cultural Studies

Raymond williams’ “culture is ordinary”.

• Words: 1248

What Is Popular Culture? Definition and Analysis

• Words: 1399

Similarities of Asian Countries

• Words: 2356

Power and Culture: Relationship and Effects

• Words: 2783

“Never Marry a Mexican”: Theme Analysis & Summary

• Words: 2244

Comparing the US and Italian Cultures

• Words: 2217

Cultural Comparison: The United States of America and Japan

Nok culture’s main characteristic features.

• Words: 1483

Philippines Dressing Culture and Customs

• Words: 1454

The United States of America’s Culture

• Words: 1367

Pashtun Culture: Cultural Presentation

• Words: 1083

Chinese Traditional Festivals and Culture

• Words: 2763

The Influence of Ramayana on the Indian Culture

Uae and culture.

• Words: 1210

The Luo Culture of Kenya

• Words: 3544

Culture and Development in Nigeria

• Words: 2718

Art and Science: One Culture or Two, Difference and Similarity

Culture identity: asian culture.

• Words: 1101

Saudi Traditional Clothing

• Words: 1815

Impact of Globalization on the Maasai Peoples` Culture

• Words: 1736

Culture and Health Correlation

Polygamy in islam, saudi arabian culture.

• Words: 1486

Football Impact on England’s Culture

• Words: 1096

Three Stages of Cultural Development

• Words: 1165

The Beautiful Country of Kazakhstan: Kazakh Culture

• Words: 1644

Culture, Subculture, and Their Differences

• Words: 1157

American Culture Pros & Cons

Society, culture, and civilization, chinese manhua history development.

• Words: 5401

Culturagram of African Americans Living in Jackson

Taiwan and the u.s. cultural elements.

• Words: 2265

Differences in Culture between America and Sudan

Indian custom and culture community.

• Words: 2207

Discussion: Cultural Roots and Routes

• Words: 1469

Gothic Lifestyle as a Subculture

Ballads and their social functions.

• Words: 3314

Kazakhstani Culture Through Hofstede’s Theory

• Words: 1480

The Nature of People and Culture

What role does food play in cultural identity.

• Words: 1199

Cultural Diversity and Cultural Universals Relations: Anthropological Perspective

Trobriand society: gender and its roles.

• Words: 3118

Time in Mahfouz’s “Half a Day” and Dali’s “Persistence of Memory”

• Words: 1092

The Jarawa People and Their Culture

• Words: 1438

The Māori Culture of New Zealand

• Words: 1326

“Signs of Life in the USA” by Maasik and Solomon

African cultural traditions and communication.

• Words: 1114

Wheeler’s Theory and Examples of Pilgrimage

Hells angels as a motorcycle subculture, the role of chinese hats in chinese culture.

• Words: 2307

Dubai’s Food, Dress Code and Culture

• Words: 1124

Singapore’s Culture and Social Institutions

• Words: 1288

The History of the Hippie Cultural Movement

• Words: 1485

Anne Allison: Nightwork in Japan

• Words: 1548

Cultural Change: Mechanisms and Examples

Africans in mexico: influence on the mexican culture, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender subculture.

• Words: 2000

Is Cultural Relativism a Viable Way to Live?

Comparison between the body rituals in nacirema and american society, birthday celebrations in the china.

• Words: 1664

“Cargo Cult Science” by Richard Feynman

Filial piety.

• Words: 1120

Expanding Chinese Cultural Knowledge in Health Beliefs

• Words: 2291

Korean Popular Culture: Attractiveness and Popularity

Cosplay subculture definition, italian heritage and its impact on life in the us.

• Words: 1111

Indian and Greek Cultures Comparison

• Words: 2789

Greetings in Etiquette in Society by Emily Post

Traditional and nontraditional cultures of the usa, non-material and material culture, caribbean culture and cuisine: a melting pot of culture.

• Words: 1601

Theory of the Aryan Race: Historical Point of View

• Words: 2770

Perception of Intelligence in Different Cultures

• Words: 1137

African-American Cultural Group and the Provision of Services to African Americans

Angelou maya’s presentation on the african culture.

• Words: 1107

Cultural and Institutional Features: United Kingdom and China

• Words: 1033

Meaning of the Machine in the Garden

Anthropological approach to culture, traditions and their impact on personality development.

• Words: 1131

Arab Music and Cinema Development: Western Culture Impact

• Words: 3622

Popular Culture in the History of the USA

• Words: 1119

Cultural Artifacts and the Importance of Humanities

Cultural effects on health care choices.

• Words: 3292

The Essence of Cultural Ecology: The Main Tenets

The importance of cultural values for a society, researching of rituals in culture.

• Words: 1174

Meaning of Culture and Its Importance

The importance of understanding national culture, african american heritage and culture, the university of west indies, the caribbean identity, and the globalization agenda.

• Words: 1393

The History of Guqin in Chinese Culture

• Words: 1652

Exegeses-Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas by Karl Marx

Cultural competence: purnell model.

• Words: 7928

Hofstede’s Study: Cultural Dimensions

The power of a symbol, cultural studies: ideology, representation.

• Words: 1704

World Society and Culture in Mexico

• Words: 2775

Korean Popular Culture: Problem Statement

Asian community’s cultural values and attitudes.

• Words: 4933

The Phenomenon of Queer Customs

Foot binding in china in terms of women’s rights.

• Words: 1786

Syncretism in the American Culture

The western conception of africa in “things fall apart“ by chinua achebe.

• Words: 2238

The primary modes of subsistence among the Navajo

• Words: 2278

Cultural Appropriation: Christina Aguilera in Braids

Implications of korean culture on health.

• Words: 1439

Cultural Prostitution: Okinawa, Japan, and Hawaii

• Words: 2370

Culture of the Dominican Republic

• Words: 2229

Conflict Management in Japanese Culture

Gender relationship: food and culture.

• Words: 1948

Indigenous Australian Culture, History, Importance

• Words: 2102

“High” and “Low” Culture in Design

• Words: 2560

Jamaican Culture and Philosophy

Etiquette in traveling at home and abroad, indian culture: dances of rajasthan, history of mexican festival, chile’s geography and culture.

• Words: 1677

Honor Killing in Islam

Understanding the significance of diwali as a representation of indian culture, the analysis of christmas as a cultural context of consumption.

• Words: 4386

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