Larger cultural issues such as apartheid, prejudice, and the effects of colonialism on the colony and the colonizer are also considered important. Likewise, lesbian and homosexual criticism examine issues relating to lesbians and homosexuals that might otherwise be unnoticed, such as prejudice against their lifestyles. Issues of Cultural Criticism Both stated and unstated cultural issues in literature are to be examined. Black English, Chicano bilingualism, and the special uses of language by ethnic groups are examined as special sources of literary power. The role of art and music in literature is of special importance.
Folk tales have a special cultural significance in many works.
Gender roles and gender expectations relevant to gay and lesbian characters can be the focus of interpretation. Cultural criticism shares many interests with other critical schools, such as the political-economic concern for oppression and the feminist concern for male domination. However, you need not be a member of a specific cultural group to use cultural interpretive strategies any more than you need to be a feminist, Marxist, or psychoanalyst to use those interpretive strategies. Although the methods of cultural criticism are context based, since they examine the cultural context of the literature, the text is very important in itself. Thus the cultural critic often uses formalist interpretive strategies, such as searching for irony, patterns of imagery, and revealing uses of language within the cultural context.