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IB MYP Year 5 · Language & Literature · Unit 1: Textual & Visual Analysis | Advertisements, Articles, Blogs & Leaflets
📋 What You Will Learn
- Define non-literary text and recognise its major types — advertisements, newspaper articles, opinion columns, blogs, leaflets and multimodal texts
- Apply the PACT framework (Purpose · Audience · Context · Tone) as a systematic method for opening any analysis with confidence
- Analyse structure, layout and visual features as deliberate meaning-making choices, not mere decoration
- Identify and explain the effect of key language features: diction, register, and rhetorical devices (ethos, pathos, logos, repetition, direct address, rhetorical questions)
- Work through a complete annotated analysis of a realistic sample advertisement, showing how to build from notes to analytical paragraphs
- Practise on an unseen non-literary text, with model responses across Criteria A–D
🔍 Guiding Question Every non-literary text — from a charity poster to a newspaper editorial — is constructing an argument about how the world is, or should be. How do writers of non-literary texts use language, structure and layout to position their readers, and how can a systematic method of analysis reveal choices that might otherwise pass unnoticed?
🌍 Why This Matters You encounter non-literary texts hundreds of times a day: news headlines, advertisements on your commute, school notices, blog posts, political speeches, social-media captions. Each one is crafted — with specific word choices, structural moves and visual signals — to produce a particular effect on a particular audience at a particular moment. Being able to read these texts analytically, to ask "who made this, for whom, and with what intention?" is a form of media literacy that matters far beyond the exam room. This note connects directly to the MYP global context of Fairness and Development : understanding how language constructs power, opinion and identity gives you the tools to question and challenge the messages that compete for your attention every day.
1 · What Is a Non-Literary Text?
📖 Definition — Non-Literary Text A non-literary text is a text produced for a practical, real-world communicative purpose — to persuade, inform, instruct, sell, entertain or record — rather than primarily for aesthetic or imaginative experience. It is typically directed at a specific audience, rooted in a specific social context, and shaped by recognisable conventions of its text type .
This does not mean non-literary texts are artless. A well-crafted advertisement deploys imagery, rhythm, word choice and structural surprise just as deliberately as a poem. The distinction lies in primary purpose : a poem exists to be contemplated; an advertisement exists to move someone towards action. Both repay close analysis — which is exactly why MYP Language & Literature studies them side by side.
Common non-literary text types you will encounter
| Text Type | Typical Purpose | Key Conventions |
|---|---|---|
| Advertisement / campaign | Sell a product, promote a cause, change behaviour | Slogan, call to action, image–text interplay, ethos/pathos/logos |
| Newspaper / magazine article | Inform, report, entertain | Headline, subheadings, byline, inverted-pyramid structure, quotations |
| Opinion column / editorial | Persuade, argue, comment | Strong voice, direct address, rhetorical questions, anecdote openings |
| Blog / online post | Share experience, persuade, build community | Informal register, first person, hyperlinks implied, short paragraphs |
| Leaflet / flyer | Inform or persuade quickly | Bullet points, bold headings, white space, key facts foregrounded |
| Speech / public address | Persuade, inspire, commemorate | Tricolon, anaphora, inclusive "we", direct audience address |
| Multimodal / visual text | Varies (often persuade or inform) | Image composition, colour, gaze, typography as meaning |
2 · The PACT Framework — Opening Any Analysis
Before you write a single word of analysis, spend two or three minutes with the PACT questions. They force you to read the text as a constructed object rather than as transparent information, and they generate the analytical frame on which everything else hangs.
📖 PACT — a systematic opening method
- P — Purpose: What is this text trying to do ? (Persuade? Inform? Sell? Warn? Inspire? Often a combination — identify the primary and any secondary