What are features should I look out for when analyzing non-fiction or non-literary texts?

When you are presented with non-fiction material, the first thing to identify is the mode of the text. Is it a magazine article? Is it a script for a radio advert? Is it a personal blog post? All of these types of texts will differ in purpose and thus present alternative narratives. Once you have established the mode of the text, you can begin to analyse its content in terms of representation; how the speaker describes places, people or events, context; such as the time period the text was written in and the age, race or gender of the speaker, as well as the devices available to the speaker with regards to the platform that the text is produced on i.e. multimedia devices. You must also analyse the linguistic features chosen by the narrator such as the phonetics, lexis and semantics, grammar, and pragmatics utilized. These devices refer to things such as sound symbolism (e.g rhyme), the connotations of specific words or metaphors and the pronouns that are used which in turn affect the reader's interpretation of the text, in liaison with any pre-conditioned assumptions or values of their own.