Sign Tutorial

Using 12 point, single-spaced Times New Roman font, with 1 inch margins, concisely state your sign for interpretation. Establish the text you're working with, the specific moment in the text you find interesting, and what makes it interesting. Remember- engineer a sign that has kick to it! Find a textual phenomenon that doesn't make sense, or seems out of place, or just out of ordinary. The better your sign, the stronger and more interesting your paper!

Offer a clear description of your "object of study," your "analytical focus," your "specific topic," your "sign for analysis:

In the short story “A Whole New Man,” the narrator’s wife, Pam, responds to her husband with model decorum. Indeed, the narrator refers to her as “thick and soft as a snowbank” which “barely [reveals] the shape of what might be beneath it, whether a fallow garden or a scythe” (McGraw 21). Indeed, Pam's dialogue in "A Whole New Man" rings with double meanings and veiled desires. She frequently avoids direct confrontation, using sophoclean-like rhetoric to make her arguments, often as a response to her husband's overbearing assertiveness. Her use of ambiguous phrases reaches a climax when she casually states "Negotiations are under way" to the question of whether they plan on continuing their relationship (32). Pam's deliberately ambiguous language stands in stark contrast to her husband's overt resolutions, who responds to her by "putting his mouth over hers, so she couldn't ask any more" (33).

Well, that wasn't very long, but we want a short response paper; this isn't some 12 page research paper, so your sign should be fairly focused and specific.

Now you need to raise some driving theoretical questions.

What are the multiple meanings of Pam’s “veiled” desires? What narratives of femininity and masculinity are supported or rejected by this representation of a relationship? What effect does Pam's use of language have on the structure of their relationship?

Now name your sign- have fun:

Sweet Nothings: Voicing Veiled Desires in "A Whole New Man"

Find a few of these- they help pinpoint your argument!

Finally, build a dictionary or thesaurus (DTE) for your sign:

desire: individual belief in what should/should not be, sexual, ideological, imaginative desire, fantasy, criticism is a means to attaining desire

veiled: double-meaning, ambiguity, passive, hidden

discussion: argument, trade of ideas, assertion, rhetoric