Homework help! (english language)

my homework is to find two two thematically linked texts and find out how language is constructed to reflect personal and social identities.

Its my first term of doing english language and i find this vague and confusing so some help would be appreciated.

- what texts should i find cause when i heard thematically linked i thought fiction but fiction might not reflect personal identities of the author (or is it the identity of the character)
-What kind of texts? book, autobiography, article, poem

Im pretty sure if i could find two texts i could take it from there cause im confident in analysing but i just dont know what texts to find. My whole class is confused but its the holidays and no one knows her email. She said she expects this to be good since we all got bad on our little mock tests. (Cs,Ds and Es but only 3 Cs in a class of 25).

Some help on what kind of texts to find or even some examples would be much appreciated.

Reply 1

applesforme

Is there any more information with the question? I suppose you could use non-fiction or fiction texts to answer this question, just whatever you feel you can say the most about. I wouldn't take "personal identities" to only mean the identity of the author, it could be referring to the author if it was an autobigraphical piece but otherwise I would take it mean the personal identities of the people the author is writing about. You could still mention the author's identity as well though and how their indentity has shaped their own view of the characters and society. Also with a question like this, you have to think what exactly is an identity, and what is a personal identity and what is a social identity - there aren't clear cut defintitions or just one way of viewing that, and different people may view certain aspects of their identity as more or less important than someone else, and it's also affected by social, political and historical contexts.

So if you took one text like An Inspector Calls, you have themes there like power and wealth, responsibility and duty, conscience and guilt. So if you find another piece of fiction with some similar themes then you could compare how the two texts deal differently or similarly with the linked themes and how the personal identities of the characters are shown ( feelings, thoughts, ambitions, worries, relationships with their famiy and friends, romantic relationships) and their social identities (their place in society regarding class and social standing, their authority and responsibilty in society, if they are looked up to, looked down upon - this is determined by: social position, wealth, gender, age, race etc and of course the era the people are living in.) It doesn't have to be about Inspector calls at all, that was just an example.
What other plays, novels or poems or non-fiction pieces are you familiar with?