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Reading and Literature Studies · Reading Informational and Graphic Texts

Critical Literacy: Framing, Agency and Whose Voices Count in Non-Fiction

1.8About 70 minutes
Learning goals
  • I can analyse how framing, naming and source selection shape a reader's understanding of an issue.
  • I can explain how passive voice and nominalization can hide who is responsible for an action.
  • I can apply a critical lens (power and economics, gender, colonialism and Indigenous perspectives, environment) to an informational text.
  • I can comment with understanding on the questions about beliefs, values, identity and power that a complex non-fiction text raises.

Words to know

framing
The way a text selects and emphasizes some aspects of an issue, so that a particular interpretation seems natural.
agency
The capacity to act; in grammar, who is shown doing the action.
nominalization
Turning an action into a noun (cut → cuts), which can remove the actor from a sentence.
critical lens
A set of questions drawn from a theory (for example about power, gender or colonialism) used to read a text.
systemic
Built into the rules, practices and institutions of a system, not only the actions of individuals.
centring
Placing a group's voices and experiences at the centre of a text rather than at its edges.

Hook: the frame around the picture

Two newspapers can report the same strike, quote real people, get every fact right, and still leave readers with opposite impressions. One shows empty shelves and frustrated shoppers. The other shows a cashier who cannot afford groceries at the store where she works. Neither is lying. Each has framed the event.

Critical literacy asks: Whose perspective shapes this text? Whose is missing? What beliefs and values does it take for granted? Who benefits from seeing the issue this way? In Grade 12 you ask these questions of complex texts, and you comment with understanding: carefully, with evidence, and with respect for the people involved.

Remember from Grade 11

In ENG3U you distinguished perspective (every text has one) from bias (a one-sided perspective that distorts), and analysed whose voices were present or missing in editorials, features and local histories. This lesson adds tools for how perspective is built into language: framing, naming and grammatical agency, plus critical lenses. (The sibling unit Reading Literary Texts applies critical lenses to novels and drama.)

One event, two frames (invented headlines)"Grocery strike leavesshelves empty for families"Focus: shoppers' inconvenienceActors: workers cause the problemQuoted: a shopper, the companyMissing: why workers walked out"Grocery workers strike forwages that match food prices"Focus: workers' reasonsActors: workers pursue a goalQuoted: a cashier, a union repMissing: effect on shoppersBoth can be accurate. Each selects, names and quotes differently.
Framing in action. Each headline selects a focus, casts the workers in a role and quotes different people. A critical reader asks what each frame helps us see and what it hides.

Four places where perspective is built into language

  1. Selection and order: what is in the headline and first paragraph, and what is buried or missing.
  2. Naming: protesters or land defenders? Taxpayers or residents? Migrants or newcomers? Names carry values. Notice when a text names a group by its own chosen name, for example a specific First Nation rather than a general label.
  3. Sources and authority: who is quoted directly, who is paraphrased, who is treated as an expert, and whose knowledge is treated as mere opinion.
  4. Agency: who is shown doing things. Grammar can make responsibility vanish.
Watch the actor disappearACTIVEThe company cut 40 jobs.actor namedPASSIVEForty jobs were cut.actor hiddenNOMINALIZEDJob cuts occurred.actor and action blurredAsk of every sentence about harm: who did what to whom?
Agency in three sentences about the same event. The passive and nominalized versions are not false, but they let the reader forget that someone made a decision.

Critical lenses for non-fiction

A critical lens is a set of questions. Choose the lens that fits the text:

  • Power and economics: Who has money or decision-making power? Whose interests does the text serve? Who pays the costs?
  • Gender: How are women, men and gender-diverse people represented? Whose expertise is assumed?
  • Colonialism and Indigenous perspectives: Whose history, knowledge and land are at stake? Are First Nations, Métis and Inuit people presented as present-day communities with their own voices, governments and knowledge, or only as background or victims?
  • Environment: How does the text represent land, water and other living things: as resources, as relatives, as scenery?

Lenses are not verdicts. Each one shows some things clearly and leaves others out; using two lenses on one text often gives the richest reading.

A case study: Seven Fallen Feathers

In Lesson 1 you met Tanya Talaga's Seven Fallen Feathers (2017). Between 2000 and 2011, seven First Nations students died in Thunder Bay, where they had moved from their home communities to attend high school. A coroner's inquest into the seven deaths ended in 2016 with 145 recommendations. In 2018, Ontario's Office of the Independent Police Review Director released a report, Broken Trust, which found systemic racism in the Thunder Bay Police Service at an institutional level.

Talaga's book is a strong example of how a non-fiction writer can reframe an issue:

  • Centring: each student is presented as an individual with a family, a home community and hopes, not as a statistic.
  • Agency and systems: the book connects the deaths to decisions and structures: the lack of high schools in many northern First Nations communities, the history of residential schools, and how deaths were investigated. The question shifts from what happened to them? to what systems failed them?
  • Voices: families, community leaders and educators speak in the book, and their knowledge is treated as expertise.

These are serious and painful subjects. Analysing how a text frames them is a way of taking the people involved more seriously, not less.

Worked example

Let's apply a lens and comment with understanding

Apply the colonialism and Indigenous perspectives lens to the way a hypothetical older news brief might report one student's death: A 15-year-old was found in the river on Tuesday. Police say there are no signs of foul play. Then comment on the questions it raises.

  1. Selection: the brief gives an age and a police conclusion. It does not name the student, the student's community, why the student was in Thunder Bay, or what the family says.
  2. Agency and authority: the only voice is the police, treated as the authority; the family and community are absent.
  3. Apply the lens: the brief makes the death look like an isolated event. It leaves out the systemic context that the lens asks about: a young person living hundreds of kilometres from home because their community had no high school.
  4. Comment on beliefs, values and power: the brief reflects a belief that police statements are complete and neutral, and a value system in which the family's knowledge does not count as news. Later inquiries, including Broken Trust, raised questions about how such deaths were investigated.
  5. Compare with Talaga's frame: by naming each student, telling their stories and quoting their families, Seven Fallen Feathers restores what the brief left out, and asks readers to see a pattern.

A strong critical response names the textual choices (selection, sources, agency), applies a lens, and comments on beliefs, values, identity and power, using evidence and respectful language. It does not need to accuse the writer of the brief; it explains what the form and choices make visible and invisible.

Worked example

Let's turn the lens on ourselves

Critical literacy applies to the reader too. What assumptions might a reader in southern Ontario bring to Seven Fallen Feathers, and how could the book challenge them?

  1. Possible assumption: every teenager can go to high school in their own town. The book shows that for many students in remote First Nations communities this has not been true.
  2. Possible assumption: official reports are neutral. The book and later inquiries show how institutions can fail some communities.
  3. Possible assumption: this is a story about the past. The book's events are recent, and the families and communities are living today, speaking for themselves.
  4. Reflection: noticing your own starting point is part of reading with understanding.

Asking what do I assume, and why? is the most demanding and most useful step in critical literacy.

Hands-on activity

Two outlets, one story

You need: two news reports of the same current event from different outlets (for example a national outlet and a local or community outlet, or an Indigenous-led news service such as APTN News), a pencil, and about 35 minutes.

  1. Compare the headlines and first paragraphs: what does each select?
  2. List every source quoted in each, and whether quoted directly or paraphrased.
  3. Find three naming choices that differ.
  4. Find one sentence in each with passive voice or nominalization and ask who the hidden actor is.
  5. Apply one critical lens and write a paragraph commenting on the beliefs, values or power relationships each report reflects.

What to look for: specific quotations as evidence; analysis of both reports, not just the one you disagree with; respectful, precise language.

Your turn

1

What is framing?

2

Rewrite Mistakes were made so that the actor is named.

3

In the first strike headline, what is missing?

4

What questions does the power and economics lens ask?

5

What did the 2018 Broken Trust report find?

6

How does Talaga centre the seven students?

7

Why is noticing your own assumptions part of critical literacy?

More practice: warm-up

1

Is every text with a perspective biased?

2

What is nominalization?

3

Name two critical lenses from this lesson.

4

How many recommendations did the 2016 inquest into the seven students' deaths make?

5

What is agency in grammar?

More practice: on your own

1

Compare protesters blocked the highway with residents gathered on the highway to protect their water. Analyse two differences.

2

Apply the environment lens to this sentence from an invented mining brochure: The region's untapped resources await development.

3

Why might a text that uses only official sources still be one-sided?

4

Explain why a pattern is a key word in the critical reading of Seven Fallen Feathers.

5

Choose two lenses and say what each would ask about a news feature on a new hockey arena.

Challenge

1

Write a paragraph commenting on the questions about identity and power raised by the requirement that many First Nations students leave home to attend high school.

2

Explain how a writer can be accurate and fair to facts while still framing an issue strongly. Is this bias?

3

Critique the critical lens approach itself: what is one risk of applying a lens, and how can a reader manage it?

Check your understanding

Quiz

1.

Which sentence hides the actor most completely?

2.

A headline that focuses on empty shelves during a strike mainly frames the strike from the perspective of...

3.

The colonialism and Indigenous perspectives lens asks, among other things...

4.

In Seven Fallen Feathers, Talaga mainly reframes the deaths as...

5.

Which statement best distinguishes perspective from bias?

6.

Commenting with understanding on a text about a painful subject means...

For parents and teachers

What this lesson teaches: ENG4U Reading and Literature Studies 1.8: identifying and analysing the perspectives and biases in complex texts and commenting with understanding on questions they raise about beliefs, values, identity and power.

Sensitive content: this lesson discusses Seven Fallen Feathers, which is about the deaths of seven First Nations students in Thunder Bay, and refers to systemic racism. There is no joke block in this lesson for that reason. Talk with your teen about the material, and let them know it is fine to find it upsetting.

How to help at home:

  • Compare two news reports of the same event and ask: Who is quoted? Who is missing? Who is shown doing what?
  • Rephrase passive sentences from the news together to name the actor.
  • Share what assumptions you grew up with about an issue, and how they changed.

Common difficulties:

  • Calling every perspective bias. Ask whether the frame distorts or simply selects.
  • Choosing a side instead of analysing. The task is to explain how the text works and what it raises.
  • Generalizing about Indigenous peoples. Encourage naming specific nations and communities and using present tense.

Facts used: Seven Fallen Feathers (Tanya Talaga, House of Anansi, 2017); seven First Nations students died in Thunder Bay between 2000 and 2011; the coroner's inquest concluded in 2016 with 145 recommendations (CBC News); Broken Trust (Office of the Independent Police Review Director, December 2018) found systemic racism in the Thunder Bay Police Service at an institutional level (Global News). The strike headlines, highway sentences and mining brochure are invented.