A LEVEL PREPARATION:

ENGLISH AS
DLAPENG01
A LEVEL PREPARATION: ENGLISH
AS
 MASTHEAD

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DLAPENG01
Version No.: 001-2022-0930
Lorenz Hindrichs & Lillian Wilde

© 2022 IU Internationale Hochschule GmbH

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2
DR. PETER EGOROV

Dr. Egorov is an Academic Director for International Affairs at IU International University of

Applied Sciences, focusing on facilitating strategic partnerships with a wide variety of institu-
tions.

After completing his studies, Dr. Egorov worked several years as a management consultant in
Germany within the scope of University-Industry collaborations. Dr. Egorov’s work as a
researcher and consultant is responsible for the development and implementation of novel
metadata metrics as well as has contributed to the global collaborative engagement strategy.

Additionally, Dr. Egorov has extensive multinational experience working across industry sec-
tors, whilst having obtained academic background in business economics as well as natural
sciences.

3
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
A LEVEL PREPARATION: ENGLISH AS

Module Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Introduction
Signposts Throughout the Course Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Basic Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Learning Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Unit 1
Text Types 13
Author: Lorenz Hindrichsen

1.1 Speeches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.2 Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Unit 2
Audience 37
Author: Lorenz Hindrichsen

2.1 Promotional Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

2.2 Diaries and Travel Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Unit 3
Meaning 63
Author: Lorenz Hindrichsen

3.1 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.2 Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.3 Text Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Unit 4
Reading and Analysis 83
Author: Lillian Wilde

4.1 Textual Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

4.2 Linguistic Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4.3 Directed Response & Text Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

4
Unit 5
Writing 111
Author: Lillian Wilde

5.1 Planning Your Written Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

5.2 Tailoring Your Text to Type and Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
5.3 Evaluating Your Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Appendix
List of References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
List of Tables and Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

5
INTRODUCTION
 WELCOME
SIGNPOSTS THROUGHOUT THE COURSE BOOK

This course book contains the core content for this course. Additional learning materials
can be found on the learning platform, but this course book should form the basis for your
learning.

The content of this course book is divided into units, which are divided further into sec-
tions. Each section contains only one new key concept to allow you to quickly and effi-
ciently add new learning material to your existing knowledge.

At the end of each section of the digital course book, you will find self-check questions.
These questions are designed to help you check whether you have understood the con-
cepts in each section.

For all modules with a final exam, you must complete the knowledge tests on the learning
platform. You will pass the knowledge test for each unit when you answer at least 80% of
the questions correctly.

When you have passed the knowledge tests for all the units, the course is considered fin-
ished and you will be able to register for the final assessment. Please ensure that you com-
plete the evaluation prior to registering for the assessment.

Good luck!

8
 BASIC READING
Gould, M., & Rankin, M. (2019). Cambridge International AS and A Level English language
coursebook (2nd ed). Cambridge University Press.

Burton, B.S.H. (2016). Work Out English A Level. Macmillan Education UK.

Pavich, J. (2018). Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper Coursebook Digi-
tal Edition. Cambridge University Press.

9
 FURTHER READING
UNIT 1

Tolstoy, L. (1906?). Tolstoy on Shakespeare. https://cdm16057.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/

collection/p15482coll3/id/4711.

UNIT 2

Berensmeyer, I. (2022). A Short Media History of English Literature. De Gruyter. https://doi-o

rg.pxz.iubh.de:8443/10.1515/9783110784459

UNIT 3

Pettersson, A. (2022). On literary meaning. Neohelicon 49, pp. 167–181. https://doi-org.pxz.

iubh.de:8443/10.1007/s11059-022-00629-x

UNIT 4

Crystal, D. (2021). “I Don’t Get It”: Researching the Cultural Lexicon of Global Englishes. https
://doi-org.pxz.iubh.de:8443/10.5040/9781350167087.ch-009

UNIT 5

Eco, U. (2015). How to Write a Thesis. The MIT Press. https://search-ebscohost-com.pxz.iub

h.de:8443/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=963778&site=eds-live&scope=site.

10
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
This course is a preparation for your AS Level English. Throughout this course, you will
gain a deeper understanding of the English Language and acquire transferable skills in
higher order thinking, text analysis, and writing. You will encounter a variety of different
text forms and learn to critically engage with them. In the first unit, you will get to know
different conventions of how texts are written. In unit two, you will engage in-depth with
the role the audience plays in the production and analysis of texts. In unit three, you will
learn how purpose, context, and genre influence the meaning of a text. Units four and five
focus on the development of your analysis and writing skills, respectively. You will learn
how to identify the genre, style, and audience of a text, comment on its linguistic features,
and analyze how these factors come together to create meaning. You will acquire techni-
ques for creating a range of different kinds of texts. You will learn how to respond directly
to other texts in a reflective, analytical, discursive, and creative manner. You will learn how
to structure and create longer pieces of imaginative, discursive, and critical writing, tailor-
ing your text to your audience. Finally, you will learn how to write a reflective commentary,
commenting critically on the linguistic choices you made in creating your text. By the end
of the course, you should be able to analyze a variety of genres and express yourself with
precision and clarity, adapting your style of writing to a diverse range of text types, audi-
ences, contexts, and purposes. We encourage you to read many texts from different genres
in preparation for your AS Level English and practice your writing skills in many different
text types.

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 UNIT 1
TEXT TYPES

STUDY GOALS

On completion of this unit, you will be able to ...

– identify a variety of different text types and develop a strategy to classify texts accord-
ingly.
– decide what conventions are underlying specific genres.
– tell when a text breaks with conventions.
– identify a range of rhetorical devices, register, and other linguistic choices an author
makes.
 1. TEXT TYPES

Introduction
This unit will introduce you to variations of two important text types: speeches and letters.
Both of them are illustrated through examples that demonstrate the wide range of forms a
particular text type might take. Public speakers might deliver speeches that are polished
and neat, or improvisational and more loosely structured, yet arguably more authentic
and personal. A similar range of styles can be found with letters, which differ significantly
depending on the audiences they target, the subject matter they address, and the aes-
thetic ideals they aspire towards.

Exploring these different forms of writing will help you appreciate differences in style, and
the effect created through various language choices. Learning how speakers address their
audiences formally or informally will help you get a feel for voice when analyzing speeches
or writing one on your own. Understanding how open letters can generate interest in a
wide range of readers is useful knowledge, both for analyzing texts, but even more so for
an effective crafting of your own letters.

The text types discussed here offer crucial preparation for the Cambridge AS exam, where
you will be expected to respond to, and write in, a range of genres. More will be added in
the following units, allowing you to broaden your expertise on various text types in the
English language.

1.1 Speeches
Speeches are one of the most powerful ways of reaching out to a large number of people.
Many social occasions call for a formal address of some kind, be it a graduation speech, a
Maid of Honor speech, a stump speech on the campaign trail, or a pep talk in a movie.
What makes a speech effective will depend on a large number of factors, such as the social
context, expectations of the audience, cultural norms, a speaker’s personality and back-
ground, and style and delivery. This unit shall address this variety of styles by presenting a
sampling of speeches which have all been considered effective in their own right despite
differing widely in the ways in which they have been written.

Classical Rhetoric

Throughout history speakers have aspired to different ideals as to what the perfect speech
Rhetoric might look like. One such ideal is classical rhetoric, language that mimics the lofty style of
The art of effective or per- speeches as recorded in ancient Greek and Roman sources, which are rich in literary devi-
suasive speaking
ces (like metaphors or rhetorical questions), lofty language and dramatic touches. The
opening lines of Marc Anthony’s funeral speech from Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar (set
in ancient Rome) is a good demonstration of such an ideal:

14
 Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
(Shakespeare, 2015, Act 3, Scene 2, line 74)

Many elements are highly unusual here, and distinguish these lines from ordinary speech.
Instead of using a single phrase (like “Dear citizens”), Marc Antony uses a list of three to List of Three
highlight how much he values the Senators in front of him: as friends, as (cultured) Enumeration of three ele-
ments for dramatic effect
Romans, and as patriots (“countrymen”) with a common interest. Listing the labels lends
his opener a touch of natural elegance similar to the use of triads in other contexts, such
as movie titles (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.)

Other rhetorical devices include the phrase “lend me your ears”: a metaphor which feels Rhetorical Devices
far loftier than a plain call for attention (“please listen up”), and matches the social expect- A technique used to make
an utterance more power-
ations of a respectful address of the Roman senate. Antony maintains this sophisticated ful
tone in the next line hen he says that he has “come to bury Caesar, not to praise him”: a
Metaphor
curious phrase which inverts the natural word order (or syntax) of everyday language to
A figure of speech
lend it a dramatic edge. Compare the effect of these two sentences: whereby two elements
are said to be the same
(“You are a star.”)
I have not come to praise Caesar, but to bury him. (everyday language)
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. (speech) Syntax
The order in which words
are arranged in a text
The first (everyday) version feels smoother and fairly non-dramatic, and flows naturally
from stating what one does not intend to do (to praise Caesar) to one’s intended aim (to
bury him). Marc Antony’s inversion sounds unusual in that what Marc Antony intends not
to do is moved to the end, which is typically the most powerful part of a sentence. This is
unusual, and makes the language both archaic and stage-like; it also raises the question Archaic
as to why Marc Antony should emphasize the word “praise,” seeing that he intends to Sounding old-fashioned
and antiquated, yet still
“bury” (or forget) Caesar. The mystery of Marc Antony’s mixed signals is revealed later on understood
in the speech when it becomes clear that he actually does intend to praise Caesar and con-
demn Caesar’s murderers, who are among the Senate sitting right in front of him. The
clever scrambling of syntax therefore helps to send a secret signal (that Antony says one
thing, yet means another), and shows how virtually every phrase of the speech has been
carefully chosen to maximize its effect on the audience.

Many speakers from Shakespeare’s times to the present have tried to match the rhetorical
elegance of Marc Antony’s speech, widely admired as one of the finest speeches in the
English language, by mimicking its features. We can find similar rhetorical devices in the Mimicking
speech “Is it a Crime to Vote” by the suffragette Susan B. Anthony, delivered in 1871 to the Imitating by copying
superficial features
senate of Washington State. Anthony had been previously arrested by the police for
attempting to vote even though only men were eligible to do so. She decided to challenge
her criminal conviction in front of the lawmakers of Washington State in a speech, com-
mencing with the words:

Friends and Fellow-citizens: I stand before you to-night, under indictment for the alleged crime
of having voted at the last Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be
my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but,
instead, simply exercised my citizen’s right, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by
the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny.

15
 (Linder, 2022, p. 172)

Although Susan B. Anthony’s language sounds more modern than Marc Antony’s speech, it
shares some rhetorical devices, such as the opening phrase “Friends and Fellow-citizens,”
which works in a similar way to “Friends, Romans, Countrymen.” Susan B. Anthony wants
her Washington Senators to think of her not as a criminal but as a “citizen” with rights, as a
“fellow” member of their own community, and as a potential “[f]riend.” Her form of
Form of Address address thus signals warmth, respect as well as an awareness of her own rights.
How someone is
addressed (with “You,
there!,” “Ms. President” Anthony also explains her motivation to address the Washington legislature in language
etc.) that faintly echoes Marc Antony’s in formality and tone. Anthony reaches for high register
High Register in phrases like “lend me your ears”, or also the term “honourable,” which he keeps using
Sophisticated style
throughout his speech. Susan B. Anthony says how “[i]t shall be [her] work this evening”
to establish her innocence, using the term “work” in a way that lifts the sentence above a
common phrase like “it is my job [...]”. Sophistication is also expressed through technical
jargon. By voting, Anthony states, she merely “exercised [her] citizen’s rights” that were
Technical Jargon
Language used by profes- “guaranteed [...] by the National Constitution.” These phrases reflect her determination to
sionals or experts in a challenge the traditional interpretation of law in front of the legal body of senators that
given field are arbiters of that law: a powerful move that makes her speech very compelling.

Susan B. Anthony also relies on effective syntax to strengthen her voice. The line “I not
only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen’s right[.]” sounds much
more assertive than a more ordinary rendition of the same sentence: “I did not commit a
crime, but simply exercised my citizen’s right.” This is mainly caused by the double nega-
Double Negation tion (“not,” “no”), which drives home the absence of a criminal act. Anthony also uses the
Using two negatives (like modifiers “only” and “instead,” which are not really necessary for the meaning of her
“no” or “not”) in a sen-
tence statement but intensify the message she intends to convey: that the accusations of her
criminal act are bizarre, and that there is nothing more natural for a citizen than to exer-
cise their rights.

Orator A 20th-century orator using rhetorical devices very effectively is Martin Luther King, whose
A public speaker I Have a Dream belongs to the most iconic speeches of all times. In probably the best-
known sequence of his speech, King articulates his vision of a fairer and more just society
as follows:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of
former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of
injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and
justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
(King, 2022)

16
King uses a number of rhetorical devices that distinguish his speech from common lan-
guage. Probably the most striking one is the repetition of the phrase “I have a dream”,
which kickstarts every line and gives the speech shape by binding the various lines
together, similar to the use of pairs and lists of three we saw earlier. There is also some-
thing particularly powerful about the metaphor of a dream, which is not meant literally as
a dream experienced by a single individual in their sleep, but as a shared vision of a better
future for his main target audience, the African-American community; a dream “deeply
rooted in the American dream,” or in the idea that each citizen should have an opportunity
to achieve prosperity throughout their lives.

Just like Marc Antony and Susan B. Anthony, King balances high and low register to
encourage his audience to share this vision. Words like “creed” (for “belief”), “equal” (for
“same”), “injustice” (for “unfairness”) and “oasis of freedom and justice” represent a fairer
society as a noble goal worth aspiring towards. He also uses highly emotive language like Emotive Language
“brotherhood” and “sweltering” to celebrate social harmony and contrast it with the pain Language that is full of
emotion
of social discrimination. King also effectively follows metaphors of conflict (“the sons of
former slaves and the sons of former slave owners [...]”) with an image of harmony and
understanding (“sit[ting] down together at the table of brotherhood”), inviting his listen-
ers to imagine an egalitarian and just society.

Significantly, King concludes with lines that are both simple and highly personal when
relating the prospect of a more just society to his own children:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
(King, 2022)

Both in speeches as well as in writing, simple language often comes across as authentic
and genuine. In what is perhaps the most powerful statement of the quote above, there is
no word that is difficult or sophisticated, nor are there words that are more than two sylla-
bles; most words are mono- or bi-syllabic. Syntax is linear, with the sentence progressing Mono- and Bi-Syllabic
smoothly from the dream of his children’s future to the ways in which they might or might Words having a single syl-
lable (as in “bus”, “dog”,
not be judged. The lack of any ‘obstacles’ in the sentence, one might say, mimics the har- “sky”) are monosyllabic,
mony King envisages. Language is often particularly powerful when its features resemble and words having two syl-
the ideas that are being portrayed. Whereas Marc Antony’s speech earlier used convoluted lables are called bi-syl-
labic (as in “buses”, “dog
syntax (“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him”) to reflect his underhand purpose of food”, “skyline”).
praising Caesar without openly saying so, King takes us on a journey from conflict and
pain (the legacy of slavery) to harmony and understanding, conveyed through a smooth-
ing of sentence structure and a simplifying of vocabulary to make the readers experience
that journey.

Contemporary Speeches

Contemporary speeches in modern drama, film, politics, and entertainment tend to be far
more casual, direct, and blunt by comparison, aiming for effects that differ significantly
from the classical models discussed above. Many speakers seeking to inspire audiences
strike a decidedly confessional tone and choose to bare personal weakness in order to

17
 connect with their audiences. Speeches also frequently contain cheeky, provocative, or
Postmodern ironic elements, reflecting a postmodern lightheartedness that departs from the earnest-
Modern texts that treat ness of classical rhetoric.
traditional culture with a
degree of irony or humor.
Pep Talk A popular subgenre of modern speeches is the pep talk whereby a leader (commander-in-
Inspirational speech chief, coach, teacher, or band leader) rallies their troops and inspires them with a fiery
before a battle or sports
delivery that readies them for battle. A well-known example appears in the movie On Any
competition.
Given Sunday (Donner & Stone, 1999), where the American football coach Coach Tony
D'Amato (Al Pacino) addresses his team in half-time after a disastrous first leg:

I don't know what to say really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives all
comes down to today.I don't know what to say really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our
professional lives all comes down to today. Either we heal as a team or we are going to crumble
inch by inch play by play till we're finished. We are in hell right now, gentlemen, believe me, and
we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us or we can fight our way back into the light. We
can climb out of hell. One inch, at a time.

Delivered in a husky voice of an aging coach, D’Amato’s pep talk differs strikingly from the
classical models above. It lacks the elegance, polish, and grace of the lines by Marc Ant-
ony, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King, and yet – miraculously – still succeeds in
being highly effective. Coach D’Amato’s speechlessness (“I don't know what to say really”)
Appropriateness and his crudeness (“get the shit kicked out of us”) feel strangely appropriate given the sit-
Something is appropriate uation the team is in: Only a dramatic turnaround can save the game, the season, and ulti-
when it is suitable or
proper given the circum- mately the career of these players and their coach who are “in hell right now.” Realizing
stances (incl. text form the impossibility of winning without a complete change in attitude, D’Amato dispenses
and audience) with the niceties of formal speech conventions, and aims for an unvarnished, brutally
Speech convention honest wake-up call: “Either we heal as a team or we are going to crumble, inch by inch,
Informal rule of what is play by play, till we're finished.”
considered correct or
right when delivering a
speech. The punchiness of D’Amato’s lines is achieved both through effective word choice as well
as syntax. D’Amato reaches for dramatic metaphors (“battle”, “finished”, “hell”) to try and
capture the depths of the players’ despair, thus acknowledging his understanding of the
situation. Linear sentences offering an either/or scenario suggest players have a choice to
make a difference:

Either we heal as a team or we are going to crumble.[…] [W]e can stay here and get the shit
kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light.

Reducing the complexity of the players’ situation (who struggle to see a way out) to a sim-
ple either/or choice, D’Amato establishes focus and conveys a sense of hope. By stating
that they can “fight [their] way back into the light,” D’Amato reaches for a powerful reli-
gious symbol (“light”) as a means to escape from the “hell” they are in right now. By con-
necting “light” and “fight” through rhyme, D’Amato also stresses that the players’ only sal-
vation, at this point, lies in their own strength and determination to win the game. The
final line further builds on that hope, stating “We can climb out of hell. One inch at the
time.” The calm assertiveness of “We can [climb],” followed by the repetition of “hell” and

18
“inch” in a positive context (of recovery and success) conveys D’Amato’s deep trust in his
players, and his conviction that they have the abilities to rise to the occasion and perform
a miracle, “one inch at a time.”

D’Amato’s speech from Any Given Sunday (1999), then, is a masterpiece of rhetoric not
because it meets the classical standards of decency and decorum, but because it responds
to the moment, feels genuine, authentic, and makes sense (to the players, as well as to the
audience). This ability of a text to be highly effective despite (perhaps) failing by certain
expectations can be best explained with four key criteria ancient Greek writers expected to
find in a powerful speech or text:

• pathos (emotion)
• ethos (credibility)
• logos (reason)
• kairos (timeliness)

If we take another look at D’Amato’s speech, we can see that despite what one might con-
sider failures in terms of eloquence and etiquette, his pep talk is indeed full of pathos
(emotional), delivered with a great deal of credibility (or ethos) reflected in the coach’s
honest sharing of emotions, along with confessions of personal failures in his earlier life
(delivered right after the lines quote above). The straightforward either/or scenarios oper-
ate with logos that takes more the shape of common sense than a complex logical argu-
ment, yet it displays clear thinking nonetheless. The timeliness (kairos) of the speech is
indisputable: It is precisely because the speakers “are in hell” that D’Amato reaches for a
rough and ready wake-up speech rather than a polished delivery as practiced by the three
previous speakers.

Another much admired contemporary speech which departs from classical conventions is
Emma Watson’s HeForShe campaign speech. Having been appointed Goodwill Ambassa-
dor by the UN in 2014, Watson addressed an assembly of UN delegates to mark the launch
of a gender awareness campaign and to raise awareness among the (predominantly male)
UN delegates present at the conference. After greeting her fellow delegates, Watson
describes her experience as Goodwill ambassador as follows:

I was appointed six months ago and the more I have spoken about feminism the more I have
realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If
there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.
For the record, feminism by definition is: “The belief that men and women should have equal
rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the
sexes.”
I started questioning gender-based assumptions when at eight I was confused at being called
“bossy,” because I wanted to direct the plays we would put on for our parents—but the boys
were not. When at 14 I started being sexualized by certain elements of the press. When at 15 my
girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t want to appear
“muscly.” When at 18 my male friends were unable to express their feelings.

19
 I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has
shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Apparently I am among the ranks of
women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men and, unat-
tractive. Why is the word such an uncomfortable one?
I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male counter-
parts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is
right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decision-making of my country. I
think it is right that socially I am afforded the same respect as men. But sadly I can say that there
is no one country in the world where all women can expect to receive these rights.
(UN Women, 2014)

Watson’s language differs from the previous examples in several respects. She appears far
more fluent than D’Amato, who communicates in rough, fragmented chunks, and uses
dramatic pauses to amplify his message. She also uses much more ordinary language than
Martin Luther King, Susan B. Anthony, and Mark Antony, all of whom prefer elegance and
figurative language to plain and direct speech. In addition, Watson chooses a much more
Anecdote personal angle than the previous speakers and shares many personal anecdotes to dem-
Short story told in conver- onstrate the urgency of the issue at stake.
sation, often about a per-
sonal experience
She first signals her personal involvement when saying that her role has made her
“realiz[e] that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-
hating.” Acknowledging that she did not know this before starting as an ambassador is
highly effective here, as she stresses the importance of a personal journey towards insight,
as well as a readiness to acknowledge imperfections, which renders her human and bol-
sters her ethos, or credibility. In the following lines she shares increasingly more personal
details about her own experiences as a teenager, of having been “sexualized” by some of
the media at the age of 14 and seen friends “dropping out of their sports teams because
they didn’t want to appear ‘muscly.’” Anecdotes like these lend her talk poignancy and
depth, and allow audiences to connect with both the substance of Watson’s speech, as
well as her delivery, on an emotional level: through pathos. The personal nature of her
Confessional talk lends her speech a confessional touch, whereby the speaker establishes an intimate
Characterized by the shar- bond with the listener. Making oneself vulnerable through sharing information like that
ing personal secrets,
especially embarrassing paradoxically makes the speaker appear quite strong and powerful, as they appear bold
ones enough to share personal information others would never disclose.

Having established her credibility and an emotional bond with the audience, Watson also
uses reason (logos) to tackle gender prejudice. She quotes the definition of feminism to
clarify that it is a belief in “equal rights and opportunities,” not a system of oppression,
and uses her personal anecdotes as evidence to illustrate how severely gender prejudice
can affect the lives of teenagers of different sexual orientations. Having sketched out the
Reliability real-life implications of the issue, and asserted her reliability as a well-informed speaker
The degree to which a who not only dedicates herself to fighting gender prejudice but has also suffered person-
speaker or writer can be
trusted (or relied on) to ally from it, Watson launches into a spirited finale where she states “I am from Britain and
tell the truth. think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male counterparts,” effectively
seizing the moment (or kairos) to remind audiences about the lack of gender inequality in
modern Britain.

20
Unlike all previous speeches, Watson uses hardly any rhetorical devices, which makes her
speech feel modern and direct. The examples of metaphor (“fighting” for “raising aware-
ness”) and metonymy (“press” for news agencies) in the text are so common in ordinary Metonymy
speech that listeners will hardly notice that they are not to be taken in a literal sense. One Referring to a person or
thing by referencing a
way in which Watson makes her language novel and lively is by throwing in informal terms related item, such as “The
(“bossy,” “muscly”) that serve as quotes mirroring the prejudice she and her peers faced White House says” for
as teenagers. Watson also uses the colloquial term “anti-men,” which breaks with the “The US President says.”

sophisticated language she otherwise uses, and mimics the prejudice of men feeling
threatened by (female) feminists promoting equal rights.

A third contemporary speaker that uses yet a very different approach to establish a rap-
port with her audience is Ellen DeGeneres, a popular TV host, who was invited to address Rapport
the graduates of Tulane University in 2009. DeGeneres opens her speech as follows: Personal connection
(with an audience or
reader)
Thank you, President Cowan, Mrs. President Cowen; distinguished guests, undistinguished
guests, you know who you are, honored faculty and creepy Spanish teacher. And thank you to all
the graduating class of 2009, I realize most of you are hungover and have splitting headaches and
haven’t slept since Fat Tuesday [Mardi Gras, in February], but you can’t graduate ’til I finish, so
listen up.
When I was asked to make the commencement speech, I immediately said yes. Then I went to
look up what commencement meant which would have been easy if I had a dictionary, but most
of the books in our house are Portia’s [Portia de Rossi: Ellen’s partner], and they’re all written in
Australian. So I had to break the word down myself, to find out the meaning.
Commencement: common, and cement, common cement. You commonly see cement on side-
walks. Sidewalks have cracks, and if you step on a crack, you break your mother’s back. So
there’s that. But I’m honored that you’ve asked me here to speak at your common cement.
I thought that you had to be a famous alumnus, alumini, aluminum, alumis; you had to graduate
from this school. And I didn’t go to college here, and I don’t know if President Cowan knows, I
didn’t go to any college at all, any college. And I’m not saying you wasted your time, or money,
but look at me, I’m a huge celebrity.
(DeGeneres, 2009)

Obviously, the defining characteristics of DeGeneres’ speech is humor. From the opening
line, DeGeneres breaks etiquette by poking fun at her audience, welcoming both her “dis-
tinguished guests” as well as “undistinguished guests, you know who you are.” After mock-
ing an imaginary “creepy Spanish teacher,” she seizes on the graduating class, and jokes
about students being “hungover,” having splitting headaches”, and being at her mercy in
this talk which is meant to celebrate their achievements (“you can’t graduate ’til I finish, so
listen up”).

DeGeneres’s humor extends not only to the interaction with her audience (and honorees in
particular), but also the purpose of her speech as a whole. She claims that she does not
know what a commencement speech is and entertains the audience with an absurd folk
etymology that relates the awarding of a degree – after a “commencement speech” the Folk Etymology
graduates can begin, or commence, their professional careers as Bachelors – with “com- Popular yet false origin of
a word
mon cement.” Next, she mocks the concept of an alumnus (or former student), etymologi-

21
 cally deriving the word from “aluminum,” followed by the shocking admission that she
never graduated herself from college: “And I’m not saying you wasted your time, or
money, but look at me, I’m a huge celebrity.”

What makes DeGeneres’ speech unique and absolutely hilarious is the ways in which she
consciously breaks the rules and conventions of what a proper commencement speech
Parody might look like, offering the listeners sheer parody instead. Listing the various elements,
Poking fun at the style or she falsifies offers which serves as a good reminder of the many things listeners take for
manner in which some-
thing is delivered in a text granted with a formal speech like that. A proper graduation speech ought to show respect
or movie, or on a social to the various stakeholders present (the graduates, the faculty, alumni, parents, and fam-
occasion. ily) and the institution as a whole. A graduation speaker ought to honor the occasion by
offering food for thought on the graduates’ future career paths without overtly question-
ing the institution inviting them to give the talk, much less the degree which said institu-
tion offers. DeGeneres’ bold (and perhaps partly unexpected) parody subverts those
expectations and makes light of a life-changing moment in the graduates’ career. Her sta-
tus as a popular TV host and comedian naturally puts her shenanigans into perspective:
Irony and humor are her trademarks, which suggests that she in all likelihood greatly cher-
ishes the moment, and is grateful for the opportunity to greet the students, yet chooses to
forgo a conventional address in favor of an absurd mockery of university education at
large.

1.2 Letters
In today’s digital world where most written communication is paperless, the concept of a
letter seems in many ways a quaint thing of the past. Yet even if physical letters are
increasingly made redundant by electronic ones, the craft of letter writing, and the sense
of what constitutes an effective letter have not significantly changed. When applying for a
job, you will be sweating over your cover letter just as you would have done twenty years
ago. Personal letters have largely been replaced with email, electronic postcards, and
snapchats, and yet the act of sharing personal experiences, expressing thanks, congratu-
lating someone for an achievement, or articulating intimate content in writing has not
fundamentally changed, though changes in format and style may result in communication
that looks quite different on the surface.

Public Discourse Letters are still widely used in public discourse in the shape of open letters (typically pub-
Published texts and lished in a newspaper or magazine), where individuals express their views on a current
speeches within a com-
munity topic. Open letters are a hybrid between personal and public communication, as they
resemble a personal letter in form (featuring a salutation and a valediction) and tone
(striking a personal note), yet make use of mass communication channels to share those
views with a large audience. Letters to the editor are similar in that they also address a
wider public, yet do so in a more concise manner, as publishers limit the length of such
letters in order to make room for a wide range of views. Letters to the editor typically
respond to previous articles from the same outlet, and often express a subjective opinion
on such coverage, praising, or critiquing past articles on a given subject.

22
This section introduces you to four common letter formats: personal letter, business letter,
letter to the editor, and open letter, highlighting commonalities and differences among
these four. The main focus lies on the conventions expected with these letter formats,
from how recipients are addressed to differences in language and tone. This section also
demonstrates how various structural elements (from sentence structure to paragraphing)
lends these letters power and weight. All of these factors seem important both for a criti-
cal analysis of letter writing, as well as for crafting effective letters in these various sub-
genres.

Personal Letter

The following letter was posted by the Irish immigrant Cathy Greene in Brooklyn, New York
in 1884. It is addressed to her mother, who lives in Ballylarkin, a rural place in County Kil-
kenny, Ireland.

My dear Mamma,
What on earth is the matter with ye all, that none of you would think of writing to me? The fact is
I am heart-sick, fretting. I cannot sleep the night and if I chance to sleep I wake with the most
frightful dreams.
To think it’s now going and gone into the third month since ye wrote me. I feel as if I’m dead to
the world. I’ve left the place I was employed. They failed in business. I was out of place all sum-
mer and the devil knows how long. This is a world of troubles.
I would battle with the world and would never feel dissatisfied if I would hear often from ye. And
know candidly things are going on but what to think of how ye are forgetting me. I know if I don’t
hear from ye prior to the arrival of this letter at Ballylarkin I will be almost dead…
I sometimes think you would come here and that health would fail and like almost all the Irish,
drop off one by one. There is no place like home if one could at all live there but if not don’t
hesitate about coming here.
I trust ye are well and that my frightful dreams won’t be realized.
Cathy
(Keough, 2015)

Cathy’s letter comes across as deeply personal for many different reasons. Distinct lan-
guage choices such as the pronoun ye (instead of you) and the salutation “My dear Salutation
Mamma” suggest that this letter is an authentic piece of writing (rather than a fake) pen- How one greets a person
in a letter (Dear ...)
ned by a desperate immigrant who longs to hear from her family. The abrupt opener
“What on earth is the matter with ye all” feels rough, accusatory, and quite inappropriate,
as it breaks with expectations of politeness and etiquette in a personal letter. Then again,
the desperate situation Cathy finds herself in (living largely by herself among the working
poor in the United State) acts as a redeeming circumstance; she genuinely struggles, and
so a reader might feel that the context in which the letter was written justifies these
breaches of etiquette.

The language Cathy uses is typical of what one might find in a personal letter as it is col-
ored by her social background, her personal circumstances (of living in the US), and her
personal relationship with the recipient. Several lines echo the language spoken by the
working class in 19th-century Ireland as seen in the following:

23
 • “I cannot sleep the night” for “I cannot sleep at night”
• “Fretting” for “feeling anxious”
• “To think it’s now going and gone into the third month …” for “To think it has now been
three months since …”

Sociolect Writing in a working class sociolect, Cathy addresses her family in a manner which proba-
Language spoken by a bly resembles close to the way she would speak at home. Some lines are difficult to under-
particular social group
(e.g. working class) stand for a non-Irish speaker, who might get the nuances wrong. The line “I was out of
place all summer,” for example, presumably means that Cathy was homeless over the
summer, yet the line might have further connotations that only members of her commun-
Connotation
Shade of meaning ity would be able to decipher with any certainty.

The syntax or sentence structure is also often very informal due to punctuation which
would be considered ungrammatical in a school or business context:

To think it’s now going and gone into the third month since ye wrote me. I feel as if I’m dead to
the world. I’ve left the place I was employed. They failed in business. I was out of place all sum-
mer and the devil knows how long. This is a world of troubles.

The first sentence (“To think … ye wrote to me”) is not a proper sentence but a sentence
Fragment fragment, as it is incomplete. (“To think that it has now been three months since you
Incomplete piece (of text) received a letter means what exactly to you?,” a puzzled reader might ask.) The following
sentences are short and abrupt:

I’ve left the place I was employed. They failed in business. [...] This is a world of troubles.

The listing of short sentences with a basic subject (S) -verb (V) - object structure (O)

• I (S) ’ve left (V) the place (O)

• They (S) failed (V) in business (O)
• This (S) is (V) a world of troubles (O)

feel static and fail to build momentum. There is nothing smooth or comforting about these
Staccato sentences. The staccato rhythm of heavy punctuation is typically a way to signal distress,
Characterized by inter- suppressed anger, or an unwillingness to express negative feelings in words. Cathy seems
ruptions or gaps that
upset a steady rhythm unwilling to spell out what exactly her “world of troubles” consists of (poverty, homeless-
ness, home sickness, health issues?), yet the clipped sentence structure gives the reader a
sense of the gravity of her situation.

While one might not see many artistic qualities to this letter, which feels as if it has been
written in a rush by a person who felt very emotional at the time, the writer uses meta-
phors and images which are very poignant, and elevate it beyond an ordinary letter. The
phrase “I feel as if I’m dead to the world”, which is later on echoed in the line “if I don’t
hear from ye [...] I will be almost dead” sounds poetic and captures her desperation and
hurt in a single phrase. Other powerful metaphors are used when she talks about being
afraid of falling sick, and as a consequence unable to support herself: a nightmare sce-
nario she describes with the phrases:

24
• “that [my] health would fail,” and
• “[that I] like almost all the Irish, drop off one by one.”

The expressions “fail” and “drop” powerfully capture her fears of losing out, compromis-
ing her health, and perhaps even passing away like many other countrymen she has met.
The repetition in the phrase “one by one” further amplifies that image of a social drop, or
a loss of health, and suggests that such personal disasters are indeed a distinct possibility
for someone in her situation.

Having shared her pain, the letter ends on a more conciliatory and hopeful note:

I trust ye are well and that my frightful dreams won’t be realized.

Cathy

Whereas her opening line took aim at her family for failing her (“What on earth is the mat-
ter with ye all [...]”), she now cares for her family’s well-being, and also distances herself
from the previous worst case scenarios by calling them “frightful dreams” rather than
likely outcomes. She omits a formal valediction like “Yours sincerely” or “Yours faithfully” Valediction
as we might expect in a business letter. She also omits a more casual valediction like Saying farewell in a letter.

“Love” or “Thinking of you” as one might expect in a letter to a close family member, per-
haps because she is still processing the hurt of not having heard from her family in three
months. The signature reads “Cathy” rather than “Cathy Greene” or “C. Greene”, matching
the expectation of a personal letter, as this is the way in which she would have been
addressed by her family members.

Cathy Greene’s letter, then, paints a moving picture of a struggling immigrant, and makes
us connect with her plight because of the authentic rawness of the way it is written. It is
unlikely that a polished, more neatly punctuated, and more carefully written letter would
have left the same impact on her family members and a modern reader. However, this is
not to say that formal letters cannot leave a great impact on readers – they often do, if
their language and tone suits purpose and context.

Business Letter

One letter which effectively demonstrates, and in fact plays with, formal conventions is
the now famous letter Paul Devlin sent to Harvard University in 1981. Devlin had applied
to study at Harvard, but received a rejection letter, which – to his delight – contained a
grammatical error. He decided to hold Harvard accountable for their sloppy writing, and
crafted a letter in which he rejected his rejection on these grounds. Upon receiving more
rejections from other universities, he modified his letter to suit these various universities,
and shared it with friends. It became so popular that editors of the New York Times deci-
ded to reprint it in full in 1981. The letter runs as follows:

[To] Office of Admissions

Dear Sir/Madam:
Having now reviewed the many rejection letters received in the last few weeks, it is with great
regret that I must inform you I am unable to accept your rejection at this time.

25
 This year, I applied to a great number of fine colleges and universities and, of course, received
many rejection letters. Unfortunately, the number of rejections that I can accept is very limited. It
is for that reason that I was forced to reject the rejection letters of many qualified institutions.
This was not an easy task. Each rejection was reviewed carefully and on an individual basis. Many
factors were taken into account, such as the size of the institution, student faculty ratio, location,
reputation, cost and social atmosphere.
I am certain that most of the colleges I applied to are more than qualified to reject me. I am also
sure that some mistakes were made, but I hope they were few in number.
I am aware of the disappointment this decision may bring, for these were not easy judgements.
Throughout my deliberations, I have kept in mind the importance to you of this decision. I wish it
were possible to cite specific reasons for each of the determinations I have made but, frankly, it is
not.
It was even necessary for me to reject some letters that were clearly qualified as rejections. This
is surely my loss.
I appreciate your having enough interest in me to reject me, and, although it may seem inappro-
priate to you at this time, let me take the opportunity to wish you well in what I am sure will be a
highly successful academic year.
See you all in the fall!
Sincerely, Paul Devlin Applicant at Large
(Devlin, 2012)

Devlin’s letter cleverly uses the conventions of a standard business letter to protest his
rejection in a humorous way. He borrows many standard phrases one would find in an
authentic rejection letter from a university, and tweaks them ever so slightly, thereby
effectively parodying the type of language used in such a letter.

He begins with the standard salutation “Dear Sir/Madam,” and closes with the valediction
“Sincerely,” as one would expect in a formal letter. (Note that different English-speaking
countries have different rules as to when to use “Yours sincerely,” “Yours faithfully,” or
“Yours truly.”)

Devlin uses formal diction like “reviewed” (for “gone over”), “inform” (for “tell”), and
“deliberations” (for “careful thought”) to sustain the formal register throughout the letter.
He specifically uses set phrases one would typically find in a rejection letters, such as “[...]
it is with much regret that I must inform you that [...],” “[t]his was not an easy task,” and “I
am aware of the disappointment this decision may bring [...],” which are meant to convey
the difficulty of reaching the decision that led to a negative outcome.

The letter also uses syntax typical of a business letter. Almost all sentences are long and
smooth, generating a sense of sophistication of ease:

I appreciate you having enough interest in me [...], and although [...], let me take the opportunity
to wish you well in [...] academic year.

The gentle flow is interrupted once, using the short and punchy sentence “This was not an
easy task” to emphasize the closeness of the decision.

26
The letter also communicates in deliberately vague and general language, as one would
find in a generic letter that is sent out to many unsuccessful applicants simultaneously. A
good example is the line “Many factors were taken into account[.]” which conveniently
hides what factors were considered, thereby successfully shielding the writer from
accountability, since not knowing who considered these factors makes it difficult to criti-
cize the selection process.

Note also the use of passive voice in the sentence above, which adds to a business-like Passive voice
tone: “Many factors were taken into account” (passive) as opposed to “I took many factors A construction that casts
a subject in a passive role
into account” (active). (“She was given a medal”)
rather than in an active
Whereas active voice feels personal and concrete (we know who took the decision), pas- role (“She won a medal”).

sive voice obscures and depersonalizes the process. Perhaps the writer is among those
who took factors into account, perhaps not. That vagueness once more insulates the
writer from the action and protects them from blame.

The letter further camouflages the decision-making by suggesting that the writer would
like to share more specifics but is not allowed to: “I wish it were possible to cite specific
reasons for each of the determinations [...].” The combination of an apologetic tone (“I Apologetic Tone
wish it were possible”) with vagueness is a powerful way of feigning regret while prevent- Language quality that
feels like an apology.
ing the recipient from being able to challenge the decision.

The fact that this letter is not the university’s rejection of Devlin, but Devlin’s rejection of
the university’s reflection makes it quite humorous and absurd. Rejecting someone is an
act of asserting power. Sought-after universities like Harvard can afford to reject many
applicants and be selective with student intake. By rejecting a university decision, Devlin
pretends to have the same status as a university. He also claims to be bound by rules and
regulations like an academic institution (“Unfortunately, the number of rejections that I
can accept is very limited”), which is both ludicrous and funny. By stating that “[t]his year,
I applied to a great number of fine colleges and universities,” he also creates the illusion of
an annual process that repeats itself. The praise for the “fine colleges” is reminiscent of the
way in which universities justify a rejection by highlighting the many “fine students” that
applied at the same time.

Devlin’s success partly rests on his ability to sustain a professional-sounding register

throughout. Note the stark contrast between Cathy Greene’s letter above, which is per-
sonal and heartfelt, and Devlin’s letter, which suppresses emotion through vague phrases
and an overly formal register. Devlin might have written this rejection letter as a kind of
therapy: an act of writing that allowed him to overcome his sense of disappointment.
Beyond that, the letter also mocks disingenuous business letters that shy away from a
hard truth and thus fail to satisfy the recipient. His comedy thus serves as a powerful eye-
opener that a successful business letter needs not only hit the right register, but also have
solid content to be convincing.

27
 Letter to the Editor

Unlike personal letters and business letters, which target a narrowly defined audience, a
letter to the editor nominally addresses a single individual (the Chief editor) yet in practice
reaches out to a wider public. They offer readers an opportunity to piggy-back on previous
coverage and add their opinion on what they feel or think about an issue covered in a
given newspaper or magazine. Letters to the editor offer a great opportunity to praise or
critique past coverage on factual or ideological or factual grounds. They allow the letter
writer to jump into a discussion (rather than having to argue a case at length). Newspa-
pers and magazines likewise benefit from such letters, as this makes them appear as out-
lets that listen to their readers and are open to considering multiple views on a given
topic.

The following letter, printed in the Portland Press Herald, a local Oregon paper, is a classic
example of a letter to the editor expressing a personal opinion on recent news coverage:

Posted May 2 [2022]

Letter to the editor: Climate change ‘catastrophe’ is already here
I cringe when I hear we have to accomplish some goal by a certain date, framed in decades (“by
2030”; “by 2050”) to avoid climate change “catastrophe.” We’re already well into the catastrophe!
There is no clear, bright line on one side of which is no catastrophe and, on the other, catastro-
phe.
We already have major, damaging droughts affecting farmland, forests and aquifers; more fre-
quent, disastrous forest fires with extended fire seasons (releasing methane and carbon dioxide,
major greenhouse gases); weather extremes regularly breaking records; climate migrations
(Because of Miami Beach’s frequent flooding, wealthy residents are starting to move to higher
ground occupied by low-income residents, who are to be priced or forced out, and to where will
they move?); island nation residents watching their nations disappear; ocean warming and acidi-
fication documented, for years, and thawing permafrost pumping more methane and carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere.
Climate change is lowering the amount of nitrogen in plants, meaning poor growth and nutri-
tional value of the plants, the foundation of the terrestrial food chain. Don’t take comfort from
statements that we have until 2030 or 2050 to prevent the catastrophe.
With unprecedented effort we might be able to slow [a] worsening of the catastrophe already
upon us. After “Earth Day,” and the cries of “save the environment,” it was pointed out that we
can’t save the environment; there will always be an environment but, likely, one that doesn’t
work for us.
XXX [anonymized]
Westbrook
(Krell, 2022)

Several features are very typical of a letter to the editor. The piece is quite short (251
words including title and signature), which is important for the paper, so as to allow for
multiple letters in a given issue. (Many papers cap letters to the editor at 100 or 150 words;
see for example The Economist, a high-end UK-based business weekly, which prints letters
as short as 25 words.)

28
The letter omits a formal salutation (“Dear Sir/Madam,” or “Dear editor”), and instead
jumps right into the fray with the powerful opener “I cringe when I hear we have to accom-
plish some goal by a certain date.” This immediately grabs the audience’s attention and
effectively launches the argument the writer wants to articulate. Note that the phrase “I
hear [we have to accomplish]” references one or several previous articles from the same
publication. Sometimes letters to the editor make such links more explicit, in sentences
like “I take issue with your coverage of the Greek tourist industry in the last issue, which
seems imbalanced and biased,” or “Thank you for drawing attention to the need for finan-
cial incentives to promote green energy in the UK.” Establishing such a link, whether
explicit or implicit, is important for the publication, as it acknowledges the relevance of
the news coverage of the publication. Spelling out such a link is also important for the
writer of the letter, as it shows the reader engages in a larger current discussion rather
than simply ranting out about a grudge that is unrelated to the content of the paper.

Note how the language offers a mix of different registers. Some parts of the letter feel
quite personal, similar to Cathy’s letter discussed earlier. The phrase “I cringe” opens on a
dramatic, deeply personal note, and highlights how strongly the reader feels about cli-
mate change. The writer also punctuates the letter quite informally, using a dramatic
exclamation mark at the end of the second sentence (“We’re already well into the catas-
trophe!”) to highlight the gravity of the situation. Exclamation marks are typically reserved
for personal letters and absent in formal correspondence, where they would appear overly
dramatic. Using an exclamation mark in this letter ensures that it comes across as a per-
sonal, deeply felt response.

A similar effect is achieved further down in the discussion, where a quickly inserted rhet-
orical question signals similar emotional involvement: Rhetorical Question
A question raised for dra-
matic effect rather than
Because of Miami Beach’s frequent flooding, wealthy residents are starting to move to higher to seek information.
ground occupied by low-income residents, who are to be priced out or forced out, and to where
will they move? [...]

The rather ungrammatical replacing of standard sub-clause like “[...] who are to be priced
out or forced out, and do not know where to move to” with a rhetorical question that is
meant to raise awareness rather than seek an answer “[...] who are to be priced out or
forced out, and to where will they move?” once again adds urgency to the point being
made.

In many other instances, however, language and tone are highly sophisticated:

• “accomplish some goals” for “achieve” or “meet”

• “disastrous forest fires” for “damaging”
• “extended fire seasons” instead of “long”
• “unprecedented effort” for “huge,” “massive”

Reaching for high register in instances like these underscore the writer’s sophistication,
and thus lends the letter legitimacy.

29
 Professional Language Note also the use of technical terms that echo the professional language one might find
Used by experts in a field in a scientific paper:
(e.g. lawyers or scientists)

• “aquifer” for “rock that holds groundwater”

• “climate migrations” for “movements caused by climate”
• “acidification” for “decreasing the pH value of oceans”
• “terrestrial food chain” for “food chain on land”

The skillful use of these scientific terms not only presents the writer as generally sophisti-
cated but also knowledgeable on the subject at hand. Terms like aquifer also help keeping
the language concise and to the point, and erase possible misunderstandings or ambigui-
ties arising from using non-professional language.

At the same time, the writer does not overuse technical terms where simple word choices
are sufficient, which ensures that it remains understandable to a wide audience, as well as
relatable on a personal level. Note the blending of personal and professional language in
the clause “[...] thawing permafrost pumping more methane and carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere” where technical language is not sustained throughout, but broken through
the simple phrase “pumping” (more methane and carbon dioxide) instead of releasing
(more methane and carbon dioxide) which one would expect in a scientific paper.

Mixing high and low register is typical of a wide range of journalistic texts where writers
want to appear both sophisticated and knowledgeable as well as relatable. This letter to
Journalese the editor aspires to the same kind of journalese: language that bridges the gulf between
Typical language used by specialist and personal language, making knowledge accessible to a wide reader base.
journalists

Open Letter

Open letters may be both formal and informal, depending on the target audience and
where they are published.

The following excerpt is from an open letter published in Forbes magazine, a high-end
finance magazine famous for its annual ranking of the wealthiest individuals on the globe.
It was written by a columnist who had previously published several pieces in Forbes maga-
zine. The opening lines of the letter run as follows:

Dear Protesters,
I share your frustration. And I agree with your premise: economic inequality, Wall Street excess
and corporate greed are appalling and unacceptable.
But might I make a suggestion? Maybe there’s a more potent way to produce change.
What if you took at least a portion of your fury and redirected it toward the only place real
change can ever occur, the only place you truly have power … yourself.
What if you focused some of your energy into becoming part of the top 1% yourself … then
change the system as an insider? In other words, become the change you want to make.
(Stanny, 2011)

30
Several elements echo the letter to the editor discussed earlier. There is a similar balanc-
ing of high and low register, and of formal and informal language. The salutation “Dear
[Protesters]” seems unexpectedly warm and welcoming for a Forbes columnist addressing
a protest movement that habitually staged protests that involved the defacing and dam-
aging of property at Wall Street and elsewhere. The following sentences “I share your frus-
tration. And I agree [...]” continue in a similar vein, reaching out to the demonstrators in
the hope of getting their attention. Note also the unusual punctuation separating these
sentences. Placing a full stop rather than a comma between “frustration” and “And I
agree” feels informal and adds a dramatic pause, suggesting that the writer indeed shares
the protesters’ frustration, as she claims.

The following lines switch to high register. The expressions

• “premise” for “argument,” “theory”’

• “economic inequality” for “unfair society”
• “Wall Street excess” for “corrupt banking sector”
• “corporate greed” for “greedy companies,” and
• “appalling” for “shocking”

elevate the tone from personal to professional and frame the injustices the protesters rail
against in depersonalized, abstract terms. Phrases like “economic inequality”and “corpo-
rate greed” sound much less accusatory than “unfair society” and “greedy companies”
because they remove any mention of alleged victims (“society”) and perpetrators (“com-
panies”), and instead present the issue as a structural issue that ought to be viewed
through a dispassionately economic (rather than a moral or an overly emotional) lens.

The letter then feeds into a number of rhetorical questions in an attempt to stem the pro-
testers’ discontent. With “But might I make a suggestion” (rather than “Can I make a sug-
gestion?”) the writer gently transitions into a didactic mode, aiming at giving advice while Didactic
still treating the protesters with utmost respect. The following questions “What if you took Having an intent to edu-
cate the audience about
at least a portion of your fury and redirected it [...]” and “What if you focused some of your something
energy into becoming part of the top 1% yourself [...]” are effective as they are both per-
sonal (addressing the recipient with “you”) yet simultaneously gentle and calm through
the use of conditional tense (“What if you took” instead of “Why don't you take”), and
modifiers like “a portion of [your fury]” (rather than just “your fury”) so as not to appear
imposing or lacking understanding. The suggestion that protesters might as well aim
towards becoming “part of the top 1%” seems another clever strategy, as the phrase feels
less like an actual suggestion (that protesters aim for such wealth) than a disguised com-
pliment suggesting that the protesters have what it takes to become part of the top 1%.

While it is hard to tell whether the letter had any effect on the Occupy Wall Street move-
ment, or whether it was read by any of the protesters in the first place, the writing seems
highly successful and strategic in that it establishes rapport with a demographic that Strategic
strongly opposes Forbes magazine and the wealth it represents, and tries to redirect their Deliberate, carefully plan-
ned, with clear intention
anger so as to bridge the differences and defuse the protests that damaged the reputation
of Wall Street at the time.

31
 A second letter to the editor written in a very different style appeared in the online news
platform Medium, a liberal news outlet known for its inclusive views on diversity. An indi-
vidual signing as “Ms. White” offers a highly personal take on language use she finds
deeply problematic and personally insulting:

August 12, 2017

An Open Letter To Those Who Use “Triggered” As A Joke
Dear society,
I have a bone to pick with you. (In reality I have several bones to pick with you, but those I’ll save
for a later date.) I’ve seen lately that you have taken to use phrases such as “oh, are you trig-
gered” as a joke [...]
By using triggered in this manner, you have made the word a joke. It is now an internet meme.
You’ve watered it down to the point where it cannot be used in its original and intended manner
without people believing you’re not serious. As someone with bipolar disorder and anxiety, I am
very uncomfortable with even using the word. That should not be.
The word trigger is used in psychology to describe a stimulus that causes feelings of anxiety
and/or trauma. [...] It is used by both medical professionals and people with mental illnesses to
describe a very serious event. I don’t understand how and why it is taken so lightly.
Would you like to know what happens when you’re actually triggered? I’ll tell you what happens
to me. My heart starts racing, I get lightheaded, my stomach drops and I feel nauseous. If the
trigger I hear or see is tied to a specific event, I’ll have flashbacks to said event. I’ll feel the exact
same emotions I felt in that moment. The fight/flight/freeze impulse kicks in hard, my palms
start to sweat, and in some cases I may cry uncontrollably or suffer a crushing depression or
mania that lasts for weeks on end.
All that happens at once. It’s hell. Pure, unadulterated hell. Why and how could you derive pleas-
ure out of doing that to someone? Why would you seek to reduce something like that to a joke? I
know that some of you may not have known all of this. It’s possible that you may have been
ignorant of what triggered meant. Well, now you know. Maybe you can adjust your language
now? Please?
[...] There are other words you can use to criticize, there are other words you can use if you must
mock one another. All I ask is that you adjust your language, and maybe correct those who insist
on using it still. I’m not asking for the world on a silver platter; I’m asking for a little respect.
Sincerely,
Someone who is very, very tired of it all.
(White, 2017)

Despite some formal similarities to the letter directed at the protesters, it feels very differ-
ent, mostly due to striking contrasts in tone and language. From the outset the writer
strikes a very personal note with the unusual salutation “Dear society” (curiously exclud-
ing her, thus suggesting an outside perspective or outsider status), followed by the con-
frontational line “I have a bone to pick with you”, which sets up a conflict between writer
and reader, while at the same time creating interest in the letter, as it is still very unclear at
that point what “bone” (or issue) the writer has in mind.

While the letter to the protesters used informal language merely to establish rapport and
then quickly transitioned towards more technical language, the letter by Ms. White
remains largely personal, or even intimate, sharing personal experiences of being trig-
gered (“It’s hell. Pure, unadulterated hell”) through language that is concrete, colorful, and

32
memorable. The language becomes technical when the writer wants to establish the
severity of trigger symptoms in a medical sense: “The word trigger is used in psychology
to describe a stimulus that causes feelings of anxiety and/or trauma [...].”

Note how technical language (“stimulus”) is embedded in a long, smooth sentence that
contrasts with the choppy syntax of the confrontational opening sentence (“I have a bone
to pick with you”). Also note how further down in the text syntax is used to create sus-
pense when the writer shares the experience of being triggered in a medical sense:

My heart starts racing, I get lightheaded [...]. If the trigger I hear or see is tied to a specific event,
I’ll have flashbacks to said event. I’ll feel the exact same emotions I felt in that moment. [...]

One way in which this paragraph picks up momentum is through simple sentence struc-
tures (SUBJECT – VERB – OBJECT/COMPLEMENT) that speed up the reading:

• My heart starts racing

• I get lightheaded
• I‘ll have flashbacks [...]

A streamlined syntax of subject (the agent that performs an action) followed by verb
(describing the activity) and object or complement (completing the sentence) is the sim-
plest possible manner of creating basic sentences in the English language. Uniform syn-
tactic structures like these, speed up the writing, and in this particular case allow the
writer to mimic the sensation of being triggered. By feeling with (rather than just cogni-
tively understanding) the writer, readers are more likely to be open to the argument that is
proposed.

The final section of the letter communicates through a range of rhetorical questions that
appeal both to reason (or logos) and emotion (or pathos), similar to what one might
encounter in a speech. Sentences like “Maybe you can adjust your language now? Please?”
establish a close emotional connection through respectful language (“Maybe you can
[...]”) and sophisticated diction (“adjust” rather than “change”) culminating in a strong
appeal (“Please?”). Other sentences appeal more to reason: “There are other words you
can use to criticize, there are other words you can use if you must mock one another.”
Here, the writer hopes to convince by pointing out that not using the word “triggered” is
hardly a limitation, given the wide range of linguistic tools speakers have at their disposal.

Much like the blending of formal and informal language broadens the popular appeal of a
text, the merging of emotion and reason, coupled with the credibility (ethos) of the writer
(which is here clearly established through her medical history), offers a variety of access
points for readers to engage with the writer’s message. While readers may still reject the
letter as contrived and unconvincing, the writer has succeeded in offering a case that is
founded in both medical expertise and personal experience, using varied and lively lan-
guage to share those various perspectives. Creative lines like the unusual valediction “Sin-
cerely, Someone who is very, very tired of it all” sets this letter apart from many other
open letters, making it a memorable piece.

33
 Letters can take many different shapes and forms, depending on what sub-genre they
belong to (a personal letter, business letter, letter to the editor, or open letter). In each of
these sub-genres writers still have a great deal of freedom to craft a memorable piece that
differs from the norm, be it through its bluntness and directness (as in the confessional
letter by the troubled immigrant Cathy Greene), through overly sophisticated language
bordering onto the absurd (in Paul Devlin’s rejection letter), through a clever balancing of
professional and personal language (in the letter to the editor on climate change), or in
the various strategies employed to convince a skeptical crowd (such as protesters or
thoughtless language users) to mend their ways.

While differences in language and style complicate a simple formula as to how letters
ought to be analyzed (or crafted, for that matter), the following elements are central to
most, if not all, successful communication in that genre:

• audience: Who is being addressed, and for what purpose?

• place of publication (if any): Is this personal correspondence or a published document?
• register: To what extent does the text blend personal (informal), sophisticated (formal),
and professional (technical) language?
• pathos (emotion), ethos (credibility), logos (reason): How does the letter make use of
emotion, reason, and credibility to persuade its audience?

SUMMARY
As this survey of classical and contemporary speeches demonstrates,
there is no single recipe to a perfect speech as audiences will have very
different expectations of what constitutes a moving, effective, or appro-
priate speech. Had DeGeneres delivered her speech to an audience that
had never seen her shows, it is doubtful they would have appreciated
her humor. To TV audiences unfamiliar with American football and
American popular culture, D’Amato’s pep talk might seem crude and
inappropriate instead of inspirational. Audiences of Julius Caesar that
have never come across a Shakespeare play might justly be puzzled
rather than moved or intrigued by Marc Antony’s performance.

Deciding what is effective in a speech and what features one should

seize on in an analysis is ultimately up to the reader or listener of a given
piece at hand. Key aspects one should consider when analyzing a
speech (and even more so when writing a speech oneself), though, are:

• the use (or absence) of rhetorical devices (such as metaphors or lists

of three)
• syntax or word order (linear or convoluted)
• diction or word choice (simple or advanced)
• pathos (emotion), ethos (credibility), logos (reason), and kairos (time-
liness)
• the extent to which irony and humor undercut the message conveyed

34
Letters can take many different shapes and forms, depending on what
sub-genre they belong to (a personal letter, business letter, letter to the
editor or open letter). In each of these sub-genres writers still have a
great deal of freedom to craft a memorable piece that differs from the
norm, be it through its bluntness and directness (as in the confessional
letter by the troubled immigrant Cathy Greene), through overly sophisti-
cated language bordering onto the absurd (in Paul Devlin’s rejection let-
ter), through a clever balancing of professional and personal language
(in the letter to the editor on climate change), or in the various strategies
employed to convince a skeptical crowd (such as protesters or thought-
less language users) to mend their ways.

While differences in language and style complicate a simple formula as

to how letters ought to be analyzed (or crafted, for that matter), the fol-
lowing elements are central to most, if not all, successful communica-
tion in that genre:

• audience: Who is being addressed, and for what purpose?

• place of publication (if any): Is this personal correspondence or a pub-
lished document?
• register: To what extent does the text blend personal (informal),
sophisticated (formal), and professional (technical) language?
• pathos (emotion), ethos (credibility), logos (reason): How does the let-
ter make use of emotion, reason and credibility to persuade its audi-
ence?

35
 UNIT 2
AUDIENCE

STUDY GOALS

On completion of this unit, you will be able to ...

– identify the audience in a diverse range of text forms.

– recognize different strategies used by an author to address their audience.
– comment on the effect an audience has on the meaning of a text.
– decide for which purpose a given text is produced.
– distinguish personal from public writing.
 2. AUDIENCE

Introduction
This unit will look at the many ways in which texts reach out to different audiences –
potential customers, clients, supporters, voters, donors, subscribers – as well as the public
at large. Many texts do not simply engage with one single or uniform audience, but with
multiple ones simultaneously. Recruitment posters for the army, captioned “I WANT YOU,”
try to win over young recruits, yet also family members and friends that play a role in their
decision-making. Politicians frequently address mixed groups and try to tailor their
speeches to different demographics simultaneously. In his victory speech on November 5,
2008, President-elect Barack Obama famously embraced Republican voters who had
voted for his opponents by saying: “[T]o those Americans whose support I have yet to
earn, I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be
your president, too” (Obama, B., 2008), thus signaling his readiness to consider multiple
perspectives before making major policy changes.

Audience expectations also matter greatly in travel writing, which is heavily shaped by cul-
tural norms and portrays foreign places and peoples in a manner that is both understand-
able and convincing to its target audience. Even private genres like diaries are defined by
audience. A diarist writing purely for themself may freely jot down thoughts and observa-
tions in a less organized, more cryptic fashion than someone writing a diary for publica-
tion. Audience also matters in promotional texts, such as advertisements and appeals,
where advertising agencies have to find a language that resonates with their customer
base.

This unit will consider the many ways in which different audiences are addressed in a vari-
ety of texts, and how writers attempt to create a rapport with their audiences. The discus-
sion pays particular attention to how various language choices are used to compliment,
entertain, shock, impress, challenge, or humor an audience, offering you helpful pointers
for analyzing and creating effective texts.

2.1 Promotional Texts

Establishing a close rapport is crucial to all textual communication, but especially so with
promotional texts that hope to elicit a particular response from their readers, be it pur-
chasing a product, subscribing to a service, cherish a brand, or join a community or group
for a particular purpose.

38
Recruitment Posters

A classic example of a promotional text making that relationship very explicit are World
War I and II recruitment posters that use imaginary figures like Uncle Sam to reach out to
potential recruits, attempting to establish intense eye contact while urging them to enlist
(see figure below).

39
 Figure 1: US Recruitment Poster by J. M. Flagg (1917)

Source: Flagg (1917)

Flagg’s iconic recruitment poster uses a number of compositional, visual, and linguistic
devices to instill a sense of guilt in the viewer. The strategic color coding (red/white/blue),
inspired by the American flag, is echoed in the poster’s frame, Uncle Sam’s attire, as well
as the caption “I WANT YOU FOR [THE] U.S. ARMY” written in massively bolded font. The
Pronoun particular emphasis on the pronoun “YOU,” larger than the other letters, and kept in an
A word that replaces a arresting red, identifies it as the most significant utterance, presumably corresponding to
noun, like I, you, she, they.

40
the non-verbal gesture and intense eye-contact of the figure. The outstretched index fin-
ger pointing at the observer serves as a powerful visual hook that complements the loud
Hook
caption and amplifies its message. A smaller caption kept in black letters (“NEAREST An element that intrigues
RECRUITING STATION”) hopes to translate a reader’s attention into action by reminding an audience and makes
them how to join the war effort. them want to read on.

While the effectiveness of this particular propaganda poster on America’s war effort is dif-
ficult to assess, the mass printing of more than four million copies between 1917 and 1918
(Knauer, 2017) have turned it into an iconic visual text that looms large in the American
collective consciousness. Its familiarity and popularity have also sparked countless paro-
dies that twist the poster’s original language in different ways:

• I WANT YOU TO JOIN THE DARK SIDE (spoken by Darth Vader)

• I WANT YOU TO LAUGH (stated by Joker)
• I WANT YOU TO BUY THE DIP (spoken by a regular Uncle Sam figure)
• I WANT OUT (delivered by Uncle Sam as an injured Vietnam veteran)
• I WANT YOU TO KNOW BLACK LIVES MATTER (stated by a regular Uncle Sam figure), and
• I WANT YOU TO STAY HOME: STOP THE DISEASE (spoken by a medieval plague doctor)

Note how strongly these various parodies depend on the right kind of audience to be
effective. While some of them appeal to movie fanbases (of Star Wars and the Batman ser-
ies), others express strong ideological (pacifist and antiracist) leanings. While many of
these demographics can easily be identified, the third version (“I want you to buy the dip”)
pokes fun at the original poster without assuming a definable ideological position. Is this
version trying to undermine a war effort, or simply appropriating the original icon to pro- Appropriation
mote a product? Whatever its intention, the poster is instantaneously recognizable as a To copy an element with-
out asking for permission.
text that tries to establish an intense rapport with the viewer, just like the countless Uncle
Sam posters that preceded it.

Charity Appeal

Similar strategies are used in other advertisements such as a charity appeal by UNICEF Ire-
land, a children’s welfare organization (see figure below), which combines the heart-ren-
dering gaze of a wide-eyed baby in a hospital ward pleading with the audience under-
neath a bolded white caption “COVID-19 CHILDREN’S EMERGENCY APPEAL.”

41
 Figure 2: Charity Appeal by UNICEF Ireland

Source: Alibi Creativo (2022)

The emotional impact of this first impression is amplified through a dark background
accentuating the white medical equipment attached to the baby’s left temple. Dramatic
text to the baby’s right

42
 One child
could die every
15 seconds
because of the
Coronavirus,
but you can
stop this now.

casts the reader as a savior rescuing the shown infant. Text below the image in blue font,
echoing UNICEF’s typically blue logo, confirms the difference the reader’s donation will
make:

YOU can save a child’s life today

Please give online now at www.unicef.ie
[...]

The repeated use of the pronoun you in “you can stop this now” and “YOU can save a
child’s life today””attempts to establish a dialogue between audience and image, encour-
aging the viewer to imagine a parent or medical professional tending to the child speaking
directly to them, begging for support (similar to Uncle Sam addressing a potential recruit
earlier).

Note the multiple ways in which the poster simplifiesthe relationship between text, organ-
ization and viewer, and the issues at hand. The poster supposedly speaks in a voice that
neither belongs to the child, nor to the invisible adult holding her, nor to UNICEF, nor to
the advertising agency creating the design; the voice is simply made up, or constructed, Constructed
to create the illusion of an interaction between text and audience. In a similar vein, the Created through strategic
choices (not authentic)
poster obscures both the dangers facing the child, and how donations can help. The sen-
sationalist lines

One child
could die every
15 seconds

dramatizes the danger facing children (which presumably includes the child depicted?),
though the exact nature of that danger (lacking vaccines? lacking adequate facilities or
equipment? lacking medical staff?) is not further specified. The simple, monosyllabic dic-
tion (“one”, “child”, “could”, “die”) is punchy and dramatic, leaving no doubts about the
accuracy of the statements. The unsubstantiated claim that one child might die “every 15
seconds” raises the stakes of the imagined scenario and urges the viewer to respond with-
out delay.

The UNICEF appeal culminates in the final call for action “please give online now,” which
uses an imperative articulating a demand (“give”) that is softened through the modifier
“please,” thus exerting gentle pressure on the reader’s conscience to step in and help. Sim-
ilar language is used in a Christmas appeal by NHS West Hertfordshire (see figure below),
where the slogan “HELP PUT THE MERRY IN MARY’S CHRISTMAS” starts with an imperative
(“HELP”) that is echoed in further commands in the text:

43
 raise A SMILE THIS CHRISTMAS
GIVE A GIFT
DONATE
Help us make sure that every older patient in our hospital gets a little magic this festive season.
Ask us for a wish list, buy a present and drop it into the reception desk at [...]
Make a donation to our older people’s services team via [...]

Figure 3: Christmas Appeal by NHS West Hertfordshire

Source: Alley (2018)

Another powerful way in which the poster speaks to the audience is by tapping into the
reader’s associations with Christmas, the “festive season” as it is referred to in the poster,
which will only prove to be “MERRY” for “MARY” with the reader’s help. Note the very real
possibility that the patient depicted is not called Mary, but just an individual who fits the
stereotype of an elderly patient who needs help and attention over Christmas, when a

44
lack of close family will feel much more poignant than at other times of the year. Building Stereotype
on the Christmas theme, the poster offers multiple options in which readers can make a A simplistic idea or image
of a person
difference: by dropping off gifts, purchasing a gift online, or making a donation. Being
given these options feels empowering, and restores a sense of agency to the reader, who
has just been pressured to act in a particular way through the long list of imperatives quo-
ted earlier. Placing some text in boxes resembling Christmas gifts likewise tones down the
harshness of the imperatives, which might otherwise come across as imposing and overly
demanding.

Car Advertisements

Whereas charity appeals typically opts for direct language urging a reader to donate, pro-
motional ads of commercial goods tend to opt for more indirect approaches that fore-
ground the benefits and values associated with a particular brand, prompting readers to Brand
imagine the joys and benefits that come with a particular purchase. Vintage car ads are a Unique label that identi-
fies a company and its
perfect illustration of how commercial ads invite reader to picture themselves as enjoying products or services.
a new, improved lifestyle facilitated by the convenience provided by the car.

Figure 4: Studebaker Ad (1955)

Source: Appel (2016)

A Studebaker ad from 1955 (see figure above) promotes its car around traditional family
ideals, calling its sedan as “America’s ‘best deal’ in an all around family car!” The large
photo of a family of six illustrates the sheer size of the car in string red, matching the color

45
 of the logo in the bottom right corner. The advertising copy in small print reassure the
reader that “YOU’RE driving something really smart when you’re the proud owner of this
distinctive Studebaker station wagon[,]” emphasizing the social prestige and satisfaction
one allegedly derives from being the “proud owner” of such a “distinctive” car. Note the
use of a modifier in “really smart,” which tries to anticipate and override doubts a cus-
tomer may have about the stylishness of the car.

The following lines spell out who the “you” addressed in the previous line encompasses:

Easy to park – easy to handle – mothers with active youngsters love it for shopping and other
errands. Dads find it just right for business use and vacationing.

Using language that endorses conservative gender norms of the 1950s, the ad presents
the car as the perfect all-round vehicle, both for housewives doing “shopping and [run-
ning] other errands” and for male breadwinners using it “for business use and vacation-
ing.” The language used not only normalizes the idea that men and women occupy very
different roles in a household; the syntax, or arrangement of sentence elements, further
plays into conventional stereotypes of “passive” women versus “active” men. The frag-
mented opener “Easy to park – easy to handle –”, which seems disconnected from the rest
of the sentence, directly precedes the word “mothers”, and thereby creates the impression
that it is women rather than men that will need extra help maneuvering the large vehicle.
(Compare the sentence above to the alternative version “Easy to park – easy to handle –
dads find it just right for business use and vacationing” where we would naturally assume
that the ease of parking and handling somehow links to male drivers.

Commercial ads frequently mirror dominant cultural codes in a given setting. As a result, it
is not surprising to see major shifts in the ways advertisers have approached their audien-
ces over time. A family car ad by Chevrolet from 1972 presents the new Impala as the per-
fect vacation vehicle for a modern family (see figure below).

46
Figure 5: Chevrolet Ad from 1972

Source: Appel (2017)

47
 Placed against the background of a beach in Florida, the Impala is presented as the
embodiment of a perfect holiday. The model is almost portrayed as a character, with a life
on its own, as it is given pride of place on the photograph, being place in front of the fam-
ily, rather than behind them, as in the previous Studebaker ad. The same importance is
expressed verbally in the caption underneath the image “Impala at the beach south of
Miami, Florida,” rather than “Family with their Impala at the beach [...]”, thereby treating
the car as the all-important, all-defining presence in the text.

The advertising copy uses distinct features to convey a sense of relaxation and leisure.
This is achieved through a description of a lush beach setting in ”You settle back on a
white sand beach surrounded by fresh coconuts, pineapples and guavas” but also through
punctuation that interrupts the flow of sentences, and expresses the idea of taking a break
from stressful daily routines:

Some exotic island? No. Florida.

Right here in America. And Chevrolet is building a better way to get you there.
Impala. It get you there comfortably.

Note the unusual interruptions of the sentences above, where the full stops in front of
“And Chevrolet” and “Impala” lend weight to the names of model and brand, presenting
them as important and serene.

Woke Advertising

Over the last few years several brands have recognized the importance of embracing pro-
gressive views on social and racial justice issues, and making them an integral part of their
advertising campaigns. Perhaps the best-known example is Nike’s campaigns featuring
the American football star Colin Kaepernick, whose support for the Black Lives Matter put
Woke a sudden end to his illustrious sports career. A woke Nike ad from 2019 (see figure below)
Having a strong social draws a direct connection between the company’s vision of social justice and Kaepernick’s
commitment
fate through the slogan:

Believe in something
Even if it means sacrificing everything.

It references Kaepernick’s personal sacrificing of his career, and his unwavering belief in
the Black Lives Matter movement. While the slogan is powerful even to people unfamiliar
with Black Lives Matter, the contexts of the movement and of Kaepernick’s personal story
deepen its impact.

48
Figure 6: Nike Ad featuring Colin Kaepernick

Source: Tripathy (2021)

Similar social commitments have been embraced by a number of companies that have
launched gender awareness and gender equality campaigns. Hershey, a UK-based choco-
late manufacturer, creatively rebranded itself in 2020 as HerShe (Gerety Awards, 2022a) in
the wake of the #metoo movement, and made the support of young female artists – sing-
ers, illustrators, dancers, writers – central to its new brand image as a socially committed
company. An award-winning ad campaign by Starbucks (2021) entitled “I AM” is even
bolder in its advocacy of social issues by promoting understanding for gender fluidity in
the slogan and voicing support for trans communities all across the world.

Imagine how it feels

to be someone who changed
your gender and body

49
 Figure 7: Starbucks Ad

Source: Gerety Awards (2022b)

Note how the smooth flow from one line to the next lends the text a simple elegance that
is highly suitable for the image and the subject at hand. The Starbucks poster uses very
different strategies than the text-heavy car ads from the 50s and the 70s, and simply asks
audiences to “[i]magine” what gender change feels like, highlighting the importance of
empathy in human interaction.

2.2 Diaries and Travel Writing

Autobiographical This section covers two autobiographical genres: diaries in which a writer chronicles per-
Writing that deals with sonal experiences in a series of daily, weekly or more irregular entries. The second text
the writer’s own life.
type is travel writing: narratives where someone shares impressions from a trip to unfami-
liar places with an audience that has (presumably) not shared the same experiences.

While exploring these text types, we will pay close attention to the textual structure under-
Chronological pinning the writing: whether the writers follow a chronological (or linear) structure,
Following a timeline organize their storyline around carefully crafted episodes, incorporate free-floating asso-
ciative structures, or deploy an argumentative structure where the writing is meant to
question or support a hypothesis. As this sampling of diaries and travel accounts will
show, various writers have opted for different approaches, and aspire to different degrees
of coherencein their writing, particularly when texts are not meant for publication (as is
often the case with personal diaries, which are frequently written just for the diarist and

50
no-one else). Diarists and travel writers also use very different kind of diction and imagery
to create an atmosphere, influenced by their cultural heritage and core values they aim to
express through their writing.

Diaries

Audience is also central to texts that are not meant for public consumption but for private
use only. Diaries are among the most intimate forms of writing, and allow a writer to
record events, aspirations and dreams in a safe space. Diaries capture impressions and
moments in hasty, casual and often unedited language that is idiosyncratic, and requires Idiosyncratic
a great deal of explanation for an outside reader. Making sense to the
author but not a wider
audience
The following is a good example of how diarists create highly personal texts to remember
moments that defined their lives. The writer, Samuel Pepys, was an influential civil servant
in 17th-century London, whose life was disrupted by the Great Fire of London (September
2–6, 1666), which destroyed large parts of the city. In his secret diary, which was only deci-
phered more than 150 years later in 1825, Pepys describes how events surrounding the fire
unfolded, from him being woken with the news of the fire at 3 a.m. to how he rushed
through the city in an attempt to stop the spreading of the flames in his role as a civil serv-
ant. Pepys’ diary entry for the first day of the fire (in modernized spelling)1 starts as fol-
lows:

Sunday 2 September 1666

(Lord’s day). Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready [for] our feast today,
Jane2 called us up about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I
rose and slipped on my nightgown, and went to her window, and thought it to be on the back-
side of Market Lane at the farthest; but, being unused to such fires [...], I thought it far enough off;
and so went to bed again and to sleep. About seven rose again to dress myself, and there looked
out [...] the window, and saw the fire [...] further off. So to my closet3 to set things [a]right after
yesterday’s cleaning. By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses
have been burned down tonight by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish
Street, by London Bridge.
(Pepys, 2022)

To a modern reader, the writing feels quite strange, though it would have felt quite natural
to the intended audience, Pepys himself. The vocabulary is often antiquated and refers to Antiquated
unfamiliar items or customs. Sunday is referred to as “Lord’s day” (since regular church Old-fashioned

service is the norm), and Pepys is woken by the maid Jane, who is still working at night,
reflecting the social structure at the time. Pepys puts on a “nightgown” to take a first look
at the fire. Sensing that it is still quite far off, he goes back to bed, and is woken by the
news that more than 300 houses have been burnt on “Fish Street,” a street that no longer
exists in modern London.

Much of the writing is also oddly punctuated, with half-finished sentences throwing off the
reader. The opening lines of the excerpt above

1 The spelling has been modernized, yet the wording is faithful to the original text.
2 One of the maids in the Pepys’ household
3 closet: small private room or study

51
 Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready [for] our feast today, Jane called
us up about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City.

are grammatically speaking wrong, as some words seem to be missing:

[As] [s]ome of our maids [were still] sitting up late last night to get things ready [for] our feast
today, Jane called us up about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City.

Pepys’s writing feels rushed and suggests that he was not bothered by such omissions as
he wrote merely for himself. Similar gaps appear in later sentences like “So to my closet to
set things [a]right after yesterday’s cleaning” which again omits a number of words: “[I
therefore went/rushed] to my closet [...].”

Another historical diary that has similar elisions, or gaps, is the travel diary by Joseph Con-
rad, a Polish-English novelist, sailor, and adventurer, who traveled through colonial
Congo, administered by Belgium at the time. His entry for July 29, 1890 reads as follows:

Tuesday, 29th.
Left camp at 7h after a good night’s rest.
General direction ENE.
Dist[an]ce–15 miles.
Sun visible at 6:30. Very warm day.
Inkissi River very rapid, is about 100 yards broad. Passage in canoes. Banks wooded very densely
and valley of the river rather deep but very narrow.
Today did not set the tent but put up in Gov[ernmen]t shimbek. Zanzibari in charge–very oblig-
ing. Met ripe pineapple for the first time. On the road today passed a skeleton tied up to a post.
Also white man’s grave–no name. Heap of stones in the form of a cross.
Health good now.
(Conrad, 2014, pp. 7–9)

Fragmented Conrad’s language is fragmented and concise. Many lines consist of short snippets like
Full of gaps or holes in a “General direction ENE” (for “We were travelling in a general direction East-North-East”)
text
presumably because the diary was written in haste. The words most commonly omitted
are articles and verbs, as in “Sun visible at 6:30. Very warm day” for “[The] sun [is] visible
at 6:30. [It is a] very warm day.”

Most of these omissions helped to save time and energy at the time of writing. With some
Taboo taboo subjects, Conrad may not have wanted to elaborate any further.
Forbidden or too awk-
ward to discuss
On the road today passed a skeleton tied up to a post. Also white man’s grave—no name. Heap of
stone in the form of a cross. Health good now.

These ominous last lines hint at systematic violence against Black colonial subjects (the
skeleton on the post), and the many threats facing White colonists (“white man’s grave”),
both due to ongoing conflicts and tropical diseases. The strange gap between “stone in
the form of a cross” and “Health good now” shows that Conrad is concerned about his

52
well-being, since the cross-shaped stone heap makes him think about his own health. His
diary, thus, offers insight into his thought process through the gaps or erratic jumps in the
text.

Figure 8: Excerpt from Kurt Cobain's Journals

Source: Cobain (2022)

An interesting modern example of a diary entry offers Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the band
Nirvana, who kept a journal (see figure above) during his formative years as he was
becoming a rock legend. Although quite articulate in much of his writing, he frequently
chooses to jot down his thoughts in clipped, truncated sentences:

WORDS suck.
I mean, everything has been said.
Music is ENERGY.
A mood, atmosphere.
FEELING.

Using words in all caps lends emphasis to what matters to him. Though there is a slight
chance Cobain might have intended this particular page (typed, not handwritten like most
of his other journal entries) to be read by other readers, there is something quite intimate
and personal about his language use. The free (over)punctuation, and the liberal breaking
of grammatical conventions results in a text that feels authentic and real, and reflects his Grammatical
thoughts as a rebellious, aspiring your artist. Convention
Rules about what consti-
tutes proper language use

53
 Since diaries are by their very nature so private that they only become public knowledge
through sheer accident (such as historians cracking the secret code of Pepys’ diary, or fans
publishing Cobain’s journal after his premature death), there are two forms of diaries that
are widely publicized: literary diaries, and public diaries written specifically for publica-
tion.

The following excerpt, from Sue Townsend’s humorous novel The Secret Diary of Adrian
Mole Aged 13 ¾ (1981) introduces the main character Adrian, who traces his own journey
from childhood to adulthood through a series of diary entries.

Winter 1981
Thursday January 1st
Bank Holiday in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales
These are my New Year’s resolutions:
1. I will help the blind across the road.
2. I will hang my trousers up.
3. I will put the sleeves back on my records.
4. I will not start smoking.
5. I will stop squeezing my spots.
6. I will be kind to the dog.
7. I will help the poor and ignorant.
After hearing the disgusting noises from downstairs last night, I have also vowed never to drink
alcohol.
My father got the dog drunk on cherry brandy at the party last night. If the RSPCA hear about it
he could get done. Eight days have gone by since Christmas Day but my mother still hasn’t worn
the green lurex apron I bought her for Christmas! She will get bathcubes next year.
Just my luck, I’ve got a spot on my chin for the first day of the New Year!

Much of the writing is purposely humorous, mainly achieved through the contrasting of
serious elements (Adrian’s orderliness and his ambition to help the blind across the road
etc.) with rowdy, uncontrollable disruption: the “disgusting noises from downstairs,” his
father “g[etting] the dog drunk on cherry brandy,” and Adrian’s naïve outlook on life in
general. His listing of his New Year’s resolutions also shows a desire to find structure in his
life, and reveals that for him the diary is a safe haven where he can voice his emotions
without having to fear being overheard.

For a second public diary, consider this excerpt written by a journalist describing his expe-
rience of being quarantined in the UK after having travelled there from China during the
Covid-19 pandemic. Published in the Guardian, the piece seems to have been purposely
written for publication, though it could potentially have been first intended as a personal
text, which the author later submitted for publication.

Thursday
Some idiot has complained about the breakfasts. Up until this morning, breakfast has been really
good – a banging bacon and sausage sandwich. That’s the way to start the day, especially when
you can’t get good bacon in China. But somebody complained about always having the same
thing every day so when I went downstairs for breakfast, there were these dismal-looking Danish
pastries, some rubbish-looking Dutch cheese and some salami. I thought: “What is this?” When

54
 you’re in quarantine, you don’t have much to look forward to. Meals are a big thing – and then
the thing you look forward to has been replaced by a fairly poor effort at a continental breakfast.
I don’t know if breakfast is worth going down for anymore.
We got a release date. As long as nobody’s showing symptoms, we can leave on Thursday morn-
ing. I feel good because I was expecting to leave the Saturday after, so that’s two days gained. [...]
(Purvis, 2020)

What makes this diary stand out from the previous examples is, obviously, its coherence Coherence
and orderliness. The author uses full sentences rather than sentence fragments, and main- A text is coherent when all
the pieces fit together,
tains a fast pace rather than the irregular pace of Joseph Conrad’s Congo diary. The author forming a unified whole
has thrown in various bits and pieces to entertain the audience such as his colorful rants at without contradictions
“idiot[s]” whose complaints about breakfast have meant that the diarist no longer has his
beloved “banging bacon and sausage sandwich.”

Comic references to “dismal-looking Danish pastries” and “rubbish-looking Dutch cheese”

humor the reader, and create an emotional bond to the diarist, whose complaints reveal
genuine distress. The brief sentence “We got a release date” captures his excitement,
while direct speech in “What is this?” adds liveliness, and breaks the monotony of the Monotonous
long smooth sentences preceding it. Dull and repetitious, lack-
ing variety

Diaries, then, come in various forms and guises depending on the audience at hand. As
deeply personal texts, they often break with established norms, and deliberately veer
away from orderly prose for dramatic effect. Diarists typically use lists, sentence frag-
ments, abbreviations, direct speech and quick transitions from one topic to the text to jot
down their thoughts in concise form. Diaries meant for publications typically offer back-
ground information on people, places, and events. Diarists writing for themselves usually
skip such information, and reduce the entries to their very essence, recording only events
and information they are themselves interested in.

Travel Writing

Travel writing is another text type where audience matters greatly. Travel writing has been
popular for centuries, going back to Pausanias’ account of traveling across his native clas-
sical Greece (2nd century CE) and Ibn Battuta’s explorations of the Middle East and South-
East Asia (14th century CE). Travel writers have written about very different kinds of jour-
neys: commercial or scientific expeditions, pilgrimages, and hitchhiking on a shoestring.
While exploring unfamiliar places is at the heart of any travel narrative, such journeys are
often also an exploration of the self, and of the values and norms of the traveler as well as
the people encountered along the way.

The travel narratives excerpted here represent very different journeys. Bashō, a 17th-cen-
tury Japanese monk and poet, walks Northern Japan to be at one with the universe; Rob-
ert Louis Stevenson, explores the lush landscapes of French Polynesia in the hopes of
restoring his health; war correspondent James Fenton tries to connect with lost individu-
als in war-torn Cambodia to better understand the human toll of this violent proxy war;
and Melanie Hamlett records her adventurous couch surfing tour across South America to

55
 comment on gender inequalities and gender norms. The different purposes of these jour-
neys shape the texts, the quest at hand, and the style of writing. The language also reveals
what audience was being addressed, and with what purpose in mind.

A particularly memorable travel narrative was created by the 17th-century monk Matsuo
Bashō, here excerpted in a modern English translation. Bashō embarked on a two year-
long pilgrimage from his native Edo to northern Japan, commemorating his experiences in
prose and verse as he traveled along. Throughout the trip he was gradually accompanied
by a range of fellow pilgrims who, impressed by his piety, became his disciples. A typical
entry of his journal reads as follows:

Matsuo Bashō. The Narrow Road to the Deep North

On the first day of the fourth month [20 May], we went to worship at the mountain shrine. In
ancient times, the name of the mountain was written Ni-kō [the Mountain of Two Storms]; but
when the great teacher Kūkai built a temple here, he changed the name to Nik-ko [Sunlight]. He
must have had the power to see a thousand years beyond, for the radiance of the shrine now
shines throughout the heavens. Its blessings flow over the land to the farthest corners, and all
the people live in security and peace. I was awestruck, barely able to tell it in words:
how holy a place … green leaves, young leaves, and through them the sunlight now bursts
[...]
(Basho, 2004, p. 7)

Contemplative Bashō’s calm prose effectively captures the contemplative nature of his journey, and the
Characterized by reflec- spiritual peace he and his travel companions hope to find in nature. Note the simplicity
tion
and brevity of the sentences (in the English translation), which create a sense of perfect
calm:

In ancient times, the name of the mountain was written Ni-kō [the Mountain of Two Storms]; but
when the great teacher Kūkai built a temple here, he changed the name to Nik-ko [Sunlight]. I
was awestruck, barely able to tell it in words[.]

The calm elegance of these sentences is achieved through the pairing of simple syntax
consisting of subject - verb -object/complement as in

• “the name was written Ni-kō”

• “he changed the name”

with powerful symbolism. The simplicity of the sentence structure amplifies the signifi-
cance of the mythical names (Ni-kō / Nik-kō) and characters (“the great teacher Kūkai”),
which stand out by way of contrast.

Note also the use of imagery that celebrates the localities Basho visits. When asserting
that “the radiance of the shrine now shines throughout the heavens” he celebrates the spi-
rituality of the place through metaphors of light (“radiance”, “shines”). Also note the rhym-
ing of “shrine” and “shines”, which again lends the temple spiritual significance.

56
Interrupting his prose with short haikus (the traditional Japanese verse form, which Basho
popularized through his writing) further connects writer, text, and nature, as these short
poems attempt to mimic the beauty of nature through their sheer elegance:

how holy a place …

green leaves, young leaves, and through them
the sunlight now bursts

The calmness established in the fragmented first line, feeding into a list of three (“green
leaves, young leaves, and [...] sunlight”), lends these lines a sense of simple elegance that
lets the audience imagine the settings he witnesses, enveloping them in Bashō’s narrative.

An English travel writer who aims for a similar eulogizing of nature is Robert Louis Steven- To eulogize
son, who writes about the beauty of Anaho bay, in French Polynesia: To celebrate or praise

Robert Louis Stevenson. In the South Seas (1896)

Of the beauties of Anaho books might be written. I remember waking about three [o’clock], to
find the air temperate and scented. The long swell brimmed into the bay, and seemed to fill it full
and then subside. Gently, deeply, and silently the Casco [traditional boat] rolled; only at times a
block piped like a bird. Oceanward, the heaven was bright with stars and the sea with their
reflections. If I looked to that side, I might have sung with the Hawaiian poet:
Ua maomao ka lani, ua kahaea luna, Ua pipi ka maka o ka hoku. (The heavens were fair, they
stretched above, Many were the eyes of the stars.)
And then I turned shoreward, and high squalls were overhead; the mountains loomed up black;
and I could have fancied I had slipped ten thousand miles away and was anchored in a Highland
loch; that when the day came, it would show pine, and heather, and green fern, and roofs of turf
sending up the smoke of peats; and the alien speech that should next greet my ears must be
Gaelic, not Kanaka.
(Stevenson, 1996, Chapter 3)

At first glance Stevenson seems to eulogize the Pacific landscapes in a similar way that
Bashō writes about his native Japan, using prose and short verses to celebrate its beauty.
Then again, Stevenson’s language is much more flowery, and full of expressive imagery
while Bashō’s language seems very simple. Compare Stevenson’s language to lines
describing the same elements in common language.

The long swell brimmed into the bay … (Stevenson)

Large waves moved towards the bay … (common language)
… and seemed to fill it full and then subside. (Stevenson)
… and seemed to fill it and then ebb out. (common language)

Unusual word choices like “brimmed” and “subside” celebrate nature as precious and
noble. The phrase “brim[med]” is often used when describing emotions (“brimmed with
tears”) or artefacts (“the cup was filled to the brim”). By applying the term to the bay, read-
ers are invited to think of the shoreline as having human or animated qualities. The
sophisticated term “subside” has a similar effect, as it weaves a mystique around the sim-
ple phenomenon of waves flattening out, elevating them to something valuable and rare.

57
 The praising of the landscape also happens through language that describes certain phe-
nomena in pairs and lists of three, lending the language symmetry and balance. The wave
does not simply “fill it [the bay],”, but “fill[s] it [the bay] full.” The repetition of first letters
Alliteration (‘f–’, ‘f–’, also called alliteration), and of final letters (‘–ll’, ‘–ll”’, also called consonance) are
The repetition of initial common forms of poetic devices one finds in poetry or classical speeches. A list of three is
consonants (as in ‘fiery
fumes’) used in the line stating that the boat rocked “[g]ently, deeply, and silently,” a description
which combines physical observation (gentle and deep rocking) with mere association
Consonance
(rocking deeply?), thus encouraging the reader to think of the natural landscape as an ani-
The repetition of final
consonants (as in “a mated entity with (deep-running) emotions.
streak of luck”)
Through this string of associations, the reader does not simply think of the bay as pretty
scenery. Instead, it becomes a spiritual place that is animated, embraces humans and
seemingly responds to their emotions. Readers recognize it as an exotic place that is both
foreign (associated with Hawaiian language) and familiar (resembling a Scottish loch), and
thus an integral part of Stevenson’s narrative universe.

A very different perspective on unfamiliar territories is offered by James Fenton, who

describes his travels across Vietnam and Cambodia as a war correspondent during the
Vietnam War. In a particularly arresting episode, Fenton describes a conversation with a
Vietnamese soldier via an interpreter:

James Fenton, “Conversations in the Dark”

“Ask him why he paints his little fingernails.”
And it wasn’t just the fingernails either. It was the little toenails as well – carefully pedicured and
varnished a deep shade of red. This seemed most inappropriate in a professional soldier. What
would his officers say on parade? In the British army, I reflected patriotically, the offending nails
would have been ceremonially torn out.
As the question was transmitted, I watched his face. A slow and secret smile came over it. He
looked down at the table and mumbled inaudibly. The face was like a baby’s, it was quite
unmarked by the experience of war. It went, in a way, with the painted nails, but not with the
ranger’s uniform. At all events, he didn’t want to answer the question, so I asked him what he
thought about the war.
[...]
(Fenton, 2005)

Unlike Bashō and Stevenson, Fenton focuses primarily on human interactions. The child
soldier with painted fingernails and toenails fascinates him, as he falls outside what Fen-
ton considers the norm: “In the British army, [...] the offending nails would have been cer-
emonially torn out,” he notes, thus translating the strangeness of the experience in terms
a Western or British reader can relate to.

The soldier’s “inappropriate” use of manicure functions like a hook, or mystery, that Fen-
ton (the narrator) and the reader hope to solve. When asked about the question by the
translator, the soldier “mumble[s] inaudibly” while a “slow and secret smile” comes over
his face. His failure to resolve the mystery intensifies the enigma around his figure, and
prompts Fenton to closely observe his face, a face which allegedly resembles “a baby’s, [...]
quite unmarked by the experience of war,” and seems to rather fit with “the painted nails”
than a “ranger’s uniform.”

58
Fenton’s focus on the enigmatic child soldier in the opening of the passage represents a
very effective means of grabbing the audience’s attention. The narration jumps in without
explanation, in media res (“in the middle of things”), as literary theorists usually put it, In media res
before gradually expanding the focus and feeding information until the entire scenario Starting a story in the
middle of an action, with-
becomes clear at the end of the passage. The narration moves from a mysterious title out further explanation
(“Conversations in the Dark”) to the fingernails (which are not further explained) to the
soldier’s reluctance to discuss them, or the war, to the next paragraph where the soldier
finally offers a comment and compares the war to a ““guttering candle.” The final para-
graph, then, offers background to the soldier and other people finding themselves in a
similar situation: being forced to enlist as soldiers due to the lack of alternatives (“There
was no job he could do [...]”). The passage ends with a gunshot tearing the silence and the
café, and “[t]he ranger straighten[ing] himself up, put[ting] on the look of a professional
soldier and disappear[ing] into the blackness of the street,” thus looping back to the unex-
plained title “Conversations in the Dark,” which references both the darkness that envel-
ops the restaurant, but also the confusion and unspoken suffering which affects the native
population in Vietnam during the war.

The manner in which Fenton sets the scene and spellbinds the reader can be described as
episodic. Whereas Bashō and Stevenson offer a continuous chronological account which is
temporarily interrupted through poetic descriptions (in prose or verse) of landmarks and
natural vistas, Fenton offers a series of shorter episodes that function as self-contained
mini-narratives within the text. The narrative structure resembles a camera lens that grad-
ually zooms out from fingernails to soldier to the conflict at large. As a result, the soldier
becomes symbolic of the conflict he participates in. His fate is portrayed as representative
of a larger population’s struggle to make ends meet in war-torn Vietnam. Compared to
Bashō and Stevenson, Fenton seems far more interested in the people that surround him
than in his own personal journey. He acts like an observer rather than an agent, recording
interactions that can offer insight into the lives of ordinary people in times of crisis.

Contemporary travel writing frequently blends cultural awareness and adventurous jour-
neys with strong social values and social criticism, as exemplified by Melanie Hamlett’s
daring “The Truth About How Men Behave When You're A Female Solo Traveler” (2021). In
unvarnished, cheeky prose, Hamlett offers an engaging account of the challenges of cross-
ing South America as a woman, describing in detail the ways in which she tried to appreci-
ate a foreign culture while at the same time warding off a series of advances by locals.

As an online piece published in the Huffington Post, a left-leaning American daily that pro-
motes gender equality, the article uses a number of visual and typographical choices in
the headline and the accompanying photo to set the tone for Hamlett’s account. The bol-
ded title, starting with the powerful words “The truth about [...],” states the main premise Bolded
of the article: that the readership needs to learn about the harassment and challenges fac- using bold font to add
emphasis
ing female solo travelers. That this threat comes from (potentially all) “men,” not just a
narrower demographic (such as “young men” or men from a particular country) evokes a
sense of danger that the writer has supposedly learnt to handle. The accompanying photo
of a confident-looking woman in climbing harness acts as a powerful counterweight to the
threat, that is hinted at in the headline, and suggests that a strong woman can success-
fully deal with potential threats linked to that archetypal male behavior.

59
 The text itself follows the structure of Fenton’s piece on the Vietnamese soldier by jumping
into media res, then gradually explaining the scenery bit by bit. While Fenton mainly uses
ominous imagery to capture the desperation driving impoverished Vietnamese into the
army, Hamlett relies on comedy and humor to describe the unusual experiences while
travelling through Chile.

The Truth About How Men Behave When You're A Female Solo Traveler
After a 14-hour bus ride to Valparaiso, Chile, I hauled a backpack up the steps to Luigi’s apart-
ment and rang the bell. He cracked the door open, forced a smile, and waved me in.
This dude sure didn’t look like a clown.
Luigi sported a mohawk and was peppered in tattoos, and his apartment was like a frat house
[...] —cluttered with empty beer cans, top hats, dirty dishes, a unicycle and some juggling pins.
This may sound like a nightmare to some because clowns in North America make us think of IT,
child molesters on Law and Order SVU or that doll that terrorized Carol Anne in Poltergeist, but
I’ll have you know South American clowns are way cooler.
Inside, a circle of hippie dudes with tattoos, fauxhawks and ironic rat tails sat on the floor [...].
They spoke virtually no English. But within minutes [...] they started making me balloon animals.
(Hamlett, 2021)

Hamlett’s colorful prose effectively sets the scene through an energetic start that contrasts
a nondescript “14-hour bus ride” with a string of powerful adjectives that describe ener-
getic actions by her and Luigi upon her arrival. She “hauled [a backpack up the steps] and
rang [the bell]” while Luigi, whom she visits “cracked the door open, forced a smile, and
waved me [Hamlett] in” (emphasis added).

Agency Verbs signal agency, or the degree to which an individual controls their actions. A physical
Having control or power verb like “haul” (as opposed to a more generic alternative like “lift”) connotes physical
over something
strength, and indirectly characterizes the traveler-narrator as tough and determined. The
series of verbs associated with Luigi (cracked, forced, waved) signal shyness and wariness,
suggesting that he is not accustomed to welcoming visitors. The contrast of the deter-
mined solo traveler visiting and the circumspect host take the reader by surprise, and cre-
ate an interest in how the narrative will continue.

A second technique the writer relies on to create atmosphere is using a list. The apart-
ment, we are told, is like a “frat house” (a party home), “cluttered with empty beer cans,
top hats, dirty dishes, a unicycle and some juggling pins.”

Random The random jumbling of rubbish, kitchenware and circus props conjures up a colorful pic-
Without order or logic ture of a messy living room where the clown host and his flat mates hang out. The sense of
randomness is amplified through the seemingly accidental listing of the items. One could
rewrite the above sentence by listing the same items in a different order such as: cluttered
with top hats, a unicycle, beer cans, some juggling pins and dirty dishes. Unlike a control-
led list of three as we saw it earlier when Stevenson describes the waves as breaking
“[g]ently, deeply, and silently,” offering a symmetrical, harmonious triad where the first
(“gently”) and last item (“silently”) form a neat pair, there is little structure, harmony, or
system to the erratic collection of dishes and circus props in Hamlett’s lines. This makes
her narrative memorable, distinct, and quite plausible.

60
A third technique Hamlett effectively uses is comparisons between the peculiar scene she
witnesses in Chile and a more familiar scene from creepy horror movies the reader can
relate to. Having stated that the “dude” (Luigi) answering the door did not “look” like a
clown, she creates suspense and interest in the reader, who is curious to know to what
extent the circus employment of these characters will shape or change their behavior in
relation to other people one might know. Before telling the reader how the clowns respon-
ded to her visit, she offers the reader a quick contrast of what they were not: “child molest-
ers”, or people resembling “that doll that terrorized Carol Anne in Poltergeist [a popular
movie series].” Instead, we are told, “South American clowns are way cooler.”

The comparing and contrasting of creepy clowns (from Western movies) with cool clowns
(encountered by the traveler) helps the reader navigate the story and adds humor through
dramatic exaggeration. Creepy movie clowns are referred to as “child molesters on Law
and Order SVU [Special Victims Unit]” as opposed to simply “child molesters”, while “that
doll” from the Poltergeist series is said to “terroriz[e]” rather than scare its victims. Exag-
geration, also called hyperbole in literary criticism, is an effective device to make a text Hyperbole
memorable, and quite frequently, humorous. The humor in this situation emerges from Deliberate exaggeration
for stylistic effect
the fact that the writer comes up with a dramatic scenario that is not real, but only plays
out in her head. Humor, however, also often intersects with fear, and one might argue that
part of the effectiveness of the humorous exaggeration of Poltergeist clowns is the very
real threat (of the unknown) she faces when moving in with this Chilean clown commun-
ity. That fear is to begin with, at least, dissipated through the clowns’ very innocent ges-
ture of making her balloon animals rather than offering drinks, as other men might have in
a similar situation. This unexpected element of comic relief connects with her comment
that the clown community was “way cooler” than one might think, and creates interest in
the reader to continue indulging in the narrative.

SUMMARY
In this section we have seen how addressing a specific audience influen-
ces the structure and style of a text. Advertising techniques have under-
gone huge changes over the last decades, largely in response to social
change. Keeping in mind the values embraced by the company and cus-
tomers is crucial for successful advertising campaigns, and should be
uppermost in your mind when creating advertising campaigns within
the AS exam or in real life.

Diarist and travel writers use very different syntactic structures and
styles to reach out to their audiences. Diaries typically follow a chrono-
logical structure, with daily entries capturing key events of the day. How
these events are noted down differs widely, largely due to the audience
at hand. Personal diaries tend to be more idiosyncratic, kept in elliptical
and cryptic language that can be challenging for an outsider. Diaries
written with the intention of publication are much more coherent, yet
perhaps also less authentic, as they primarily humor and engage the
audience rather than preserve memories for the writer.

61
 Travel accounts are shaped by the journey at hand, and the cultural con-
text in which they appear. Spiritual journeys as described by the Japa-
nese monk Bashō and Robert Louis Stevenson, who considers the
Pacific islands as a holy place, foreground nature and its relationship to
humankind through memorable imagery and other poetic devices,
including short quotes in verse. War correspondent James Fenton and
the intrepid climber-traveler Melanie Hamlett highlight social distinc-
tions and primarily explore the web of human relationships in a given
setting. Their textual structures tend to be more complex, use jumps in
timelines, surprise openings and belated reveals to keep the reader
interested. Rather than just following a linear or chronological
sequence, they opt for associative and argumentative structures, using
the arrangement of textual objects to take the reader on a mental jour-
ney, or to argue a case.

62
 UNIT 3
MEANING

STUDY GOALS

On completion of this unit, you will be able to ...

– understand how purpose, context, and text type influence the meaning of a text.
– identify which text types are being used for what purpose and in what context.
– apply this information to decode different forms of journalism.
 3. MEANING

Introduction
This unit will look at meaning-making, and the ways in which you can move towards a
convincing interpretation of what a text means. Please note that determining the meaning
of texts is inherently complex, and often hard to achieve. A child who loves The Little Mer-
maid will inevitably struggle to explain what it means, and adults often do not fare much
better. What, for example, is the movie Titanic about? Incompetence, arrogance, bad luck,
social prejudice, intrigue, love, or sacrifice? All of these meanings seem somehow linked to
plot, characters, the acting, and the production as a whole. Discounting any of them as
irrelevant would seem misguided, leaving us with multiple possible meanings for one sin-
gle movie.

Four helpful criteria that can help us narrow down an otherwise endless range of possible
meanings are

• purpose or intention
• text type or genre
• context
• irony and humor

Being able to identify the purpose of a text is very helpful, as it limits the range of possible
meanings in a text. Knowing that a billboard promotes a product or brand helps greatly
with decoding its meaning, as one might link most if not all visual and verbal elements to
that purpose.

Purpose is often related to the text type at hand. An appeal, as the name suggests, asks
the public for support, while an open letter allows an individual to share their point of
view with a wider audience. Propaganda posters try to sell a particular narrative, while
parodies make fun of a text or a belief through comedy and humor. Some texts may of
course be difficult to classify and may belong to more than one genre. The trailer for
Superman vs Batman: Dawn of Justice (2016), for example, promoted not only the upcom-
ing movie, yet also Turkish airlines, which had entered a franchise with the movie produc-
ers; the clip thus worked both as a movie trailer (offering a taster of the film) as well as an
airline commercial (celebrating its classiness and entertainment factor), thus proving that
a text may belong to more than one genre, though this seems by far the exception.

Meaning is not only shaped by intention and text type, but also context. The Negro Moto-
rist Green Book, which appeared annually from 1936 to 1966, may seem like an unspectac-
ular tourist guide for travelling through the US at first sight. However, once one learns
about the cultural context where it was produced, it changes meaning completely. Up
until the mid-1960s, African American drivers were excluded from most American hotels
and restaurants. The Green Book lists the establishments where Blacks were welcome,

64
making it an indispensable tool for itinerant African Americans. The context here shapes
the meaning of the Green Book, which seems less like a promotional text than a liberating
one, offering safety, and furthering a sense of community among African Americans.

This unit will discuss a number of texts from different genres (including newspaper arti-
cles, editorials, parodies) to demonstrate how purpose, text type and context connect with
meaning. Throughout the discussion, there is an emphasis on stylistic devices and lan-
guage choices that shape the meaning of these respective texts.

3.1 Purpose
Most texts are written with a clear purpose in mind, whether this purpose is to entertain,
to inform, to convince someone of an opinion, or to sell something has a huge impact on a
given text. In the following we are looking at how the purpose influences the text produc-
tion.

Newsprint

News – as the name suggests – are designed to offer novelty of some sort, be it informa-
tion on important recent events (such as a political coup or a natural disaster), or updates
on a continuing story (such as the latest economic trends, weather patterns or sports
results). The main purpose of news, therefore, can be said to inform readers of key infor-
mation that is vital for their safety, well-being, finances, and personal interest. At the same
time, news are also a source of entertainment, both about celebrities, but also about
sports events and concerts that form part of the entertainment industry. This tension
between informing and entertaining readers is often very pronounced in news stories that
deal with celebrities that are linked to political events. See for example the story below on
the execution of Mata Hari, a celebrated Dutch exotic dancer, who was accused of being a
German spy during World War I. As you read the text, ask yourself how you would describe
its purpose. Does this text inform? Does it entertain? Or does it seek a middle ground
between the two?

Death Comes to Mata Hari

Mata Hari, which is Javanese for Eye-of-the-Morning, is dead. She was shot as a spy by a firing
squad of Zouaves at the Vincennes Barracks. She died facing death literally, for she refused to be
blindfolded.
Gertrud Margarete Zeller, for that was the name of the beautiful Dutch-Javanese dancer, did
appeal to President Pointcaré for a reprieve, but he refused to intervene.
The first intimation she received that her plea had been denied was when she was led at day-
break from her cell in the Saint-Lazare prison to a waiting automobile and then rushed to the
barracks where the firing squad awaited her.
Never once had the iron will of the beautiful woman failed her. Father Arbaux, accompanied by
two sisters of charity, Captain Bouchardon, and Maitre Clunet, her lawyer, entered her cell, where
she was still sleeping — a calm, untroubled sleep, it was remarked by the turnkeys and trusties.
The sisters gently shook her. She arose and was told that her hour had come.
“May I write two letters?” was all she asked.

65
 Consent was given immediately by Captain Bouchardon, and pen, ink, paper, and envelopes
were given to her.
She seated herself at the edge of the bed and wrote the letters with feverish haste. She handed
them over to the custody of her lawyer. Then she drew on her stockings, black, silken, filmy
things, grotesque in the circumstances. She placed her high-heeled slippers on her feet and tied
the silken ribbons over her insteps.
She arose and took the long black velvet cloak, edged around the bottom with fur and with a
huge square fur collar hanging down the back, from a hook over the head of her bed. She placed
this cloak over the heavy silk kimono which she had been wearing over her nightdress.
Her wealth of black hair was still coiled about her head in braids. She put on a large, flapping
black felt hat with a black silk ribbon and bow. Slowly and indifferently, it seemed, she pulled on
a pair of black kid gloves. Then she said calmly:
“I am ready.”
[...]
(Wales, 1917)

Many elements in this report suggest it was written with an intent to inform the reader
about an important event. The use of place names (“Saint-Lazare prison”) and proper
names (“President Pointcaré,” “Father Arbaux,” etc.) to lend the text precision and specific-
ity. After reading the entire piece from beginning to end, the reader will have learnt a great
deal about the last hours of Mata Hari, and the manner in which her execution unfolded.

At the same time, much of the language suggests that the reporter wrote a deliberately
Sensationalist sensationalist text that would appeal to a wide Western audience. The reporting primarily
Generating excitement focuses on the celebrity to be executed, who is not introduced with her Christian name
rather than offering rele-
vant evidence and facts Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod but through her stage name Mata Hari, which (as the jour-
nalist Henry G. Wales explains), means “Eye-of-the-Morning.” By foregrounding her for-
eign-sounding stage name, the journalist presents her as an exotic figure who seems to
have little in common with an average American or European reader.

Note also the constant attention to her physical appearance and her clothing, which are
quite irrelevant to the news event as such. We learn that on her way to her execution, she
put on black stockings, “high-heeled slippers,” and a “long black velvet cloak” on top of
her “heavy silk kimono.” We also have a confirmation of her good looks in the lines
“[n]ever once had the iron will of the beautiful woman failed her. [...] She arose and was”
told that her hour had come. “May I write two letters?” was all she asked.

The emphasis on her attractiveness marks the article as clearly sensationalist. The text
shows an interest in the prisoner’s looks, in her exotic wardrobe, and in her identity as a
dancer and performer. The focus on her stage career and attractiveness eclipses any men-
tion of the actual crimes she has committed, and of the evidence that led to her convic-
tion.

A closer look at the reporting also raises several questions about the text’s reliability. We
are led to believe that the reporter who describes the scene witnessed all these events
first-hand, yet we never know for sure how this knowledge was obtained. The text men-
tions that Mata Hari was surrounded by a number of people, including an army Captain, a
prison director (“Maitre”), her lawyer, and two unnamed sisters, yet it remains unclear

66
which of these people offered the sensuous description of how she “drew on her stock-
ings, black, silken, filmy things, grotesque in the circumstances.” The manner in which
Mata Hari is sexualized in this and other descriptions raises questions about the motiva-
tion inspiring this piece. The heavy focus on Mata Hari, her attractiveness and her getting
dressed suggest that the piece was perhaps to some extent invented or embellished by a
(male) writer seeing her early morning routine as a kind of act: her last performance on
the way to her execution. The constant praise of Mata Hari’s bravery (her “iron will,” her
refusal to be blindfolded, her calmness) celebrate her as a heroine of sorts; at the same
time, the lack of evidence supporting these observations suggest that the reporting might
be quite unreliable and either exaggerated or else certainly embellished, as is often the
case with sensationalist articles.

Ethical Codes

One useful way of distinguishing between investigative journalism (that offers well- Investigative
researched reportage) and sensationalist journalism (that sells stories of limited news Journalism
Journalism basing their
value for monetary gain) is to consider to what extent a piece at hand observes ethical stories on extensive
codes of journalism, such as the ones published by the British National Union of Journal- research
ists, which includes the following rules:

A journalist
[...]
2. Strives to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed, accurate and fair.
[...]
4. Differentiates between fact and opinion.
5. Obtains material by honest, straightforward and open means [...].
6. Does nothing to intrude into anybody’s private life, grief or distress [...].
(NUJ, 2022)

Clearly, the author Henry G. Wales seems to have broken many of these rules, most obvi-
ously the one about “intrud[ing] into anybody’s private life, grief or distress.” Even if Mata
Hari is celebrated as the ultimate heroine, the text remains voyeuristic, and seeks to mon- Voyeuristic
etize her suffering through a close account of her distress. Though the text superficially Deriving pleasure from
watching others (like a
seeks to inform, its main motivation clearly seems to be to offer entertainment to (pre- voyeur)
dominantly male) readers.

3.2 Context
The context in which a text is written and published greatly matters. Imagine for example a
circumstance where outlets are censored and surveilled. Authors will phrase their text
more subtly or carefully. But also the historical and cultural contexts influence their make-
up.

67
 Freedom of Press

A news article from China Daily, published in March 2018 (see figure below), offered a sur-
prising news item entitled “Beijing tops list for improved air quality,”with the sub-header
“Healthier atmosphere for city residents during months when pollution is usually high.”
The first two paragraph read as follows:

Beijing tops list for improved air quality

Beijing has emerged as the best city in its region for air quality improvements over the past four
months — a time when the capital usually suffers its worst air pollution — according to the Minis-
try of Environmental Protection.
From October to January, all 28 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and surrounding areas
saw their air quality improve. Beijing topped the list, as its average concentration of PM2.5
decreased by 58.3 percent from the same period year-on-year. PM2.5 refers to inhalable particu-
late matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less that is linked to health problems.
[...]
(“Beijing tops list,” 2018)

In order to evaluate the reliability of this article, a key consideration should be context.
The text is kept in a register that is technical and precise, and makes use of scientific meas-
urements (“PM2.5”), data (“58.3 percent”), and jargon (“inhalable particulate matter”),
which lends it credibility, or ethos. At first sight, this report seems to offer really good
news, as improved air quality will be a major concern for many readers.

68
Figure 9: News Article from China Daily

Source: “Beijing tops list” (2018)

Then again, when put in a larger context, several questions emerge. Even though the text
states that pollution has “decreased by 58.3 percent,” we do not learn how high the actual
values of pollutions really are. Were they above recommended limits as stipulated by the
WHO and other health organizations? Are they still above such norms even after a 58.3 per-
cent reduction? How good is the improved air quality in real terms? And how common or
unusual is the photo of blue skies over a Beijing park in the accompanying photograph?

Digging a little deeper, a reader may ask themselves questions about the context within
which this article was written. The by-line identifies the journalist as Hou Liqiang and By-line
gives his email for correspondence, offering transparency that is in keeping with good A line naming the journal-
ist writing an article
journalistic practice. Then again, the China Daily is published in a country that ranks very
low on the Press Freedom Index (RSF, 2022) and has a history of repressing independent
investigative journalism (China ranked number 176 out of 180 countries on the Press Free-

69
 dom index for 2018). This, coupled with the fact that the main authority backing up these
findings is the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection, raises questions about the
reliability of this report.

Given that this paper was freely available at Western airports in March 2018, one might
also speculate as to the actual purpose it served. Written in English rather than Chinese, it
was presumably designed to attract investors or businessmen to Beijing. While the report
might be a reliable piece based on accurate scientific data, the context questions its relia-
bility, and raises the possibility that it offers highly selective reporting that is not necessa-
rily factually wrong but eclipsing unfavorable aspects of the story.

Soup Advertisement

Another text where context greatly matters is this print advertisement for Campbell soup
(see figure below), which appeared in the US in the 1930s. Take a close look at the visuals
and the textual excerpt reproduced below and ask yourself to what extent this ad might
have been influenced by historical and cultural contexts.

70
Figure 10: Campbell Soup Advertisement, 1930s

Source: Paul.malon (2022)

The first paragraph reads as follows:

There’s no “zero hour” for the hostess who approaches the dinner with every detail “just so”.
When her guests are assembled at her gleaming white table and the soup is served, not so much
as a flutter is noted in her demeanour. She has seen to that —beforehand. [...]

Two contexts seem central to meaning-making here: the economic downturn in the 1930s
that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, and traditional gender roles of the 1930s.
There is a distinct mismatch here between the promoting of canned soup, one of the
cheapest food items in a shop, and the idea that Campbell soup is so exquisite that it can
be served in pure form at a formal dinner. The bizarre fantasizing over the alleged classi-
ness of this soup seems designed to comfort customers who have fallen on hard times
that they will be able to maintain a privileged middle-class lifestyle by purchasing this
soup, and still be respected as great hosts.

71
 A second context, of gender roles, is reflected in the way the ad presents cooking and
entertaining guests as typically female duties. The visual presents an elegant lady
(dressed in striking red) descending the stairs to welcome “her” (as opposed to the fami-
ly’s) guests, who will be seated at “her gleaming table.”The tastiness of Campbell soup
presumably means that she can be “UNAFRAID” of the judgment passed on the quality of
Scare Tactics food served in the house. The ad thus builds on scare tactics that exploit the fears of not
A strategy of evoking fear only impoverished middle class families, but also of women, who are represented as being
to manipulate someone
solely responsible for treating the guests due to their domestic role as housewives.

3.3 Text Type

While purpose and contexts are essential for establishing the meaning of text, taking a
closer look at the conventions of a text type or genre is equally helpful. Speeches, letters,
advertisements, and news articles all work in a different way, and raise different expecta-
tions in the reader. Since not all elements in a text are equally important, being able to
identify key signifiers that are typically used in a particular genre (such as headlines in a
news article) offer helpful guidance for the interpretation of a text.

Different Styles of Reporting

On August 4, 2022, the right-wing host Alex Jones of Info Wars was convicted for having
harassed a family of a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 through his online hate.
Jones repeatedly claimed that the victims had been child actors, and that their families
had been manipulating the public. As a result, these families experienced considerable
online hate, which led them to launched a lawsuit against Jones, who kept making large
amounts of money through his Info Wars shows. When Jones lost his trial, the Huffington
Midmarket Post, an American midmarket paper, covered the story as follows:
A publication between
popular press and quality
press Alex Jones Hit With $45 Million Ruling In Damages For Sandy Hook Lies
For years, Jones has used his platform on Infowars to spread horrific lies that the 2012 school shoot-
ing didn't happen. Now he'll have to pay up.
By
Sebastian Murdock
Aug 4, 2022, 05:28 PM EDT
Updated Aug 5, 2022
[embedded video]
A jury ruled Friday that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $45.2 million to the parents of
a child killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting after spending years spreading lies that the
shooting didn’t happen.
Jurors deliberated for less than a day before coming to its first decision Thursday that Jones
must pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages. On Friday, jurors again deliberated for less than
a day when deciding further punitive damages against Jones of more than $40 million.
[...]
For years, Jones and his outlet have claimed the shooting was fake, of the families from listeners
of his show. Jones lost the case ― along with several others ― before it could even go to trial
against him for not turning over court-ordered documents related to the case last year.

72
 [...]
(Murdock, 2022)

The way meaning is constructed in this Huffington Post article is closely related to the
genre or text type it is written in. The piece differs from the article on the execution of Mata
Hari in that the entire story is already presented in the headline “Alex Jones Hit With $45
Million Ruling In Damages For Sandy Hook Lies.”This is followed by a sub-header that Sub-header
sums up the gist of the story: “For years, Jones has used his platform on Infowars to Second, smaller caption
below the headline
spread horrific lies that the 2012 school shooting didn't happen. Now he'll have to pay up.”
Below the sub-header, an embedded video offers glimpses of the court trial, and of how
the families of victims are still shaken by the harm caused by Jones’s conspiracy theories.

The elaborate headline and sub-header, coupled with the video, mean that a busy reader
can take these in and move on to another story without having missed out on the essen-
tials: Jones’s conviction, and the damages he has been asked to pay to the victim’s family.

The following lines of the article, called the main body, essentially just contains back-up
information that is interesting but not crucial for understanding the story. It offers details
on the sentence (“A jury rules Friday that [...]”), on how the verdict was reached (“Jurors
deliberated for less than a day [...]”), and on the trial’s backstory (“For years, Jones has
used his platform [...] to spread horrific lies [...]”). The further one reads down in the arti-
cle, the more specific and insignificant the information becomes. This arrangement is
known as the inverted pyramid structure (see figure below), the most common shape of
articles in tabloids, but also in quality papers that offer investigative journalism. The for- Tabloid
mula’s success rests on the fact that it allows readers to quickly take in key information Synonym for a popular
paper (like the Sun)
without having to commit to reading an article in full.

73
 Figure 11: Inverted Pyramid Structure

Source: Lorenz (2022)

Note the difference in structure in the text on Mata Hari, where the headline states her
death (“Death Comes to Mata Hari”), yet reveals nothing about how that came to pass, or
how one should view her death (in contrast to the Info Wars article, where the headline
leaves no doubt that Jones’s conviction should be viewed as a triumph.) Also note that the
Mata Hari report lacks elements like a sub-header or an embedded video that would allow
a reader an alternative to reading the entire article.

With news articles following an inverted pyramid structure, it is the properties of the text
type that define its meaning. The headline is meant to spells out the main take-home mes-
sage of the text, and while one could try and find hidden meanings in the text that are not
connected to the headline, this seems highly unlikely. A news story’s first impression, con-
veyed through header, sub-header, and image or video, sets the scene, and thus repre-
sents a key to decoding the overall meaning of the article at hand.

A look at a parallel news article from a quality paper, the Guardian, shows that the same
inverted pyramid structure at play:

[headline] Alex Jones ordered to pay $45.2m in punitive damages to Sandy Hook family

74
 [sub-header] Combined amount of $49.3m is still below the $150m Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis
sought after his Sandy Hook shooting lies
[by-line] Ramon Antonio Vargas
[time stamp] Sat 6 Aug 2022 00.17 BST
[embedded video]
[caption] Alex Jones must pay $4.1m over false Sandy Hook claims, jury finds – video
[main body] After already ordering him to pay $4.1m to the parents of a child killed in the 2012
Sandy Hook school shooting, the jury hearing the defamation case against far-right conspiracy
theorist Alex Jones over his falsehoods about the massacre told him to surrender another
$45.2m to the grieving family who sued him.
The combined amount of $49.3m is hefty but still below the $150m Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis
– the mother and father of slain six-year-old Jesse Lewis – had demanded over Jones’s repeated
lies that the Sandy Hook elementary school murders in Newtown, Connecticut, were an elabo-
rate ruse carried out by “crisis actors” hellbent on forcing gun control reform.
[...]
(Vargas, 2022)

Just like the Huffington Post article, the Guardian piece spells out the main point of the
story in the header (“Alex Jones ordered to pay [...]”), with the sub-header, embedded Embedded
video, and main body offering supporting evidence. The further down one reads on in the Integrated in a text (often
used in multimedia
article, the more technical and detail-oriented the narrative becomes. The reader learns reporting)
about other related court cases, how Jones spread fake news about the attack on the US
Capitol, and how a mother of a victim has started a foundation for “general compassion in
schools”: valuable information that is interesting yet not central for understanding of the
news item at hand.

Stylistically, however, the Guardian piece and the Huffington Post differ significantly, which
is largely due to the difference in text type, with the Guardian representing a quality paper
while Huffington Post is midmarket, and echoes elements typical of the popular press.
Note the difference in vocabulary between the two headlines:

Alex Jones Hit With $45 Million Ruling In Damages For Sandy Hook Lies (Huffington Post) Alex
Jones ordered to pay $45.2m in punitive damages to Sandy Hook family (Guardian)

The Huffington Post headline uses simple and blunt language to describe the ruling (“Alex
Jones Hit With $45 Million Ruling”) and Jones's offense (“[...] For Sandy Hook Lies”). The
Guardian avoids the physical metaphor of being “hit,” and opts for formal expression
(“ordered to pay”) and legal jargon (“punitive damages”) instead. The Guardian also adds
precision to the sum (“$45 Million” versus “$45.2m”), which underscores its ambition to be
recognized as a quality paper.

A similar difference can be seen in the two sub-headers and the main body. The Huffington
Post’s sub-header uses phrasal verbs like “pay up” (for “compensate”), as well as emotive Phrasal Verb
language describing Jones’s “lies” as “horrific.” Most words are monosyllabic (“For,” Verb followed by a prepo-
sition that changes the
“years,” “has,” “used,” etc.), which speeds up the reading pace, and reflects the article’s meaning of the verb (e.g.
low register. “look for”)

75
 The Guardian sub-header uses more complex language characterized by mostly polysyl-
Noun Phrases labic words, and dense noun phrases (“Sandy Hook shooting lies”) that are more difficult
A sentence that has a to process than the Huffington Post’s reference to the “spread[ing] horrific lies [about
noun or pronoun at its
head. Sandy Hook].” The Guardian also omits words in “Combined amount of $49.3m is still
below” (instead of “The combined amount [...]”) and below “the $150m Neil Heslin and
Scarlett Lewis sought” (instead of “[...] have sought”), thereby further condensing its lan-
guage.

The Huffington Post article, by way of contrast, does not omit any words in its sub-header,
and writes in complete sentences followed by full stops, which simplifies the reading. It
also uses perfectly linear sentences like: “A jury ruled Friday that conspiracy theorist Alex
Jones should pay $45.2 million to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook school
shooting after [...],” running smoothly from the subject to verb to object.

A jury (subject) rules (verb) that [...] (object) Alex Jones (subject) should pay (verb) $45.2 million
(object).

This is the simplest possible sentence arrangement in the English language.

Sub-Clause The Guardian article, in contrast, uses a twenty-word-long sub-clause to describes previ-
A sub clause depends on ous actions by the jury:
a superordinate clause
and cannot stand alone.
After already ordering him to pay $4.1m to the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy
Hook school shooting, the jury hearing the defamation case [...] told him to surrender another
$45.2m to the grieving family who sued him.

Note how after the long introductory clause (“After [...] shooting”), the subject “the jury” is
Clause not immediately followed by the verb “told,” but by another, sixteen-word-long clause
A clause is any simple that offers specifics on the case. These long clauses make the reading more demanding
main clause or subordi-
nate clause that is part of and require concentrated reading. The Guardian deliberately by-passes simple syntactic
a larger sentence. structures, and instead writes in an ambitious style that is characterized by more complex
sentences.

The Guardian article also uses more advanced vocabulary as to be expected in a quality
paper (like “defamation case”), and states that Jones has been forced to “surrender”
$45.2m while the Huffington Post simply speaks of Jones having to “pay” that amount. The
Guardian does not refer to Jones’s “lies” but to his “falsehoods,” thus reaching for a more
sophisticated, polysyllabic, and less openly hostile word.

For the Huffington Post and the Guardian, meaning-making is centrally linked to genre or
text type in the sense that the text type prescribes how one should present the material
(using an inverted pyramid structure), and what kind of language seems appropriate (a
mixture of high and low register in Huffington Post, and mostly high register in the Guard-
ian). Knowing about the conventions is thus helpful for a successful decoding of the mean-
ing in a given article.

76
Editorial

News content is not only shaped by whether it features in quality or popular news outlets.
There are also major differences in terms of how overtly they express opinion, and how
seriously the news item is meant to be taken.

Compare the Guardian news article above with the following piece from CNN, another
quality outlet, which appeared on the same day, yet covers the trial of Alex Jones in a very
different way:

[headline] Opinion: The scariest part of the Alex Jones story

[by-line] Opinion by Nicole Hemmer
[time stamp] Updated 2046 GMT (0446 HKT) August 3, 2022
[embedded video]
[video caption] See Alex Jones' reaction when mom confronts him with the truth about her son
02:58
[explainer of the by-line] Nicole Hemmer is an associate research scholar at Columbia University
[...] The views expressed in this commentary are her own.
[main body]
(CNN) “Jesse was real. I'm a real mom.”
It's an unthinkable statement for a grief-stricken parent to have to make: testifying that her 6-
year-old son, murdered while he sat in school, had actually lived, and that she was the woman
who had given birth to him and raised him for the too-few years he was alive. But that was the
testimony Scarlett Lewis gave this week at a hearing to determine damages against Alex Jones, a
conspiracy theorist and media personality. [...]
The Sandy Hook conspiracy made Jones the talk-radio equivalent of the Westboro Baptist
Church, which staged vile anti-gay protests at soldiers' funerals. But within just a few years,
Jones would become part of the right-wing power structure, from his interviews with soon-to-be
president Donald Trump to his alleged role as an organizer at the January 6 insurrection. [...]
(Hemmer, 2022)

In contrast to the previous articles, this piece offers few actual facts about the trial out-
come, not because the journalist did not know them or found them irrelevant, but
because she writes an editorial, or opinion column, which serves a different purpose than Editorial
a regular article. An editorial offers an opinion endorsed by the editorial team (hence its An opinion piece pub-
lished in a newspaper or
name) and covers an issue from an unapologetically subjective point of view. magazine

The subjectivity of the piece is already reflected in the headline “Opinion: The scariest Subjectivity
part of the Alex Jones story,” which uses opinionated language (“scariest”) to describe Degree of personal opin-
ion in a piece (as opposed
events relating to the trial. The text is labeled “Opinion,” which is essential from a journal- to objectivity)
istic ethics point of view. The British National Union of Journalists quoted earlier includes
Opinionated
the principle that journalists must “differentiat[e] between fact and opinion” to ensure
Overtly expressing an
readers can be properly informed about events and decide to what extent they agree with opinion
the interpretation of these events. News and views ought to be kept separate, journalist
associations argue, to protect the consumer from manipulative coverage.

77
 Nicole Hemmer, who authored this CNN editorial, uses it to express her own opinion
rather than a view shared by CNN, the explanatory caption below the video states (“The
views expressed in this commentary are her own.”) This disclaimer is helpful as it offers
transparency, and also allows CNN to publish views it might not agree with without worry-
ing about having to defend the opinions expressed in these articles.

Adding such a disclaimer opens a number of possibilities for the paper, which can invite
people to express more pointed, or even controversial, views than it would otherwise be
ready to publish.

As an opinion writer, Hemmer has much more freedom in terms of textual structure than
the writer of a regular article. This can be seen in the opening sentence, where Hemmer
kickstarts the piece with a puzzling quote – “Jesse was real. I'm a real mom.” – before
revealing who said it, in what context, and how it relates to the Sandy Hook trial. Hemm-
er’s strategy of opening with a riddle or mystery is called a hook. Such surprise openings
are often used in personal essays, opinion columns but also novels or short stories, where
a chapter might start with a similarly perplexing quote to generate interest in the story and
thereby hook the reader.

Hemmer follows the quote with a powerful sentence that emphasizes the emotional hurt
the parents of Sandy Hook victims have sustained as a result of Jones’s conspiracy theo-
ries:

It's an unthinkable statement for a grief-stricken parent to have to make: testifying that her 6-
year-old son, murdered while he sat in school, had actually lived, and that she was the woman
who had given birth to him and raised him for the too-few years he was alive. [...]

The language Hemmer uses is not much simpler than the one used in the Guardian piece
discussed earlier, yet it feels more personal as the writer uses various highly emotive
terms to capture the personal experience of the parent, such as:

• unthinkable
• grief-stricken
• murdered
• given birth

which put the trial into a human perspective. Some specifics mentioned may be seen as
quite manipulative by some readers. Why should it be relevant to state the obvious fact
that the mother had “given birth to” and “raised” the child whose death was denied by
Alex Jones? The additional statement that she had raised her child for “the too-few years
when he was alive” feels even more sentimental, irrelevant, and nonsensical. (Of course
he was alive during all those years, so why mention it?).

However, when keeping in mind the purpose of the editorial, to put events in a meaningful
(human) perspective, these statement choices become much more meaningful. Hemmer
wants to share the experience of the distressed mother testifying in court, and therefore
uses personal, emotive language to achieve that effect. Since she is not expected to

78
describe the trial (which would have been covered in a regular article instead), she can
freely bring in points and observations she finds relevant for a broader understanding of
the story at large.

One such point is a comparison between Jones and an extremist religious group, the West-
boro Baptist Church, which is notorious for “stag[ing] vile anti-gay protests at soldiers’
funerals.” The analogy between Jones and the Westboro Baptist Church and their “vile” Analogy
protests reflect her personal opinion rather than objective fact as Info Wars and the West- A comparison between
two things (usually in
boro Baptist Church are obviously widely different organizations. Generalizations like order to explain some-
these would not be appropriate in responsible investigative journalism, yet are perfectly thing)
permitted in opinion pieces, as this particular text type invites columnists to express their
views in colorful, suggestive language.

Parody

Another genre where conventions shape how meaning is constructed is parodies. A parody
is a text that superficially resembles a particular text (such as a news article), yet lacks
actual substance and typically offers silly or absurd content to make fun of actual report-
ing. Two popular English-speaking publications which specialize in parodies are The Onion
and The Daily Mash. A good example of the kind of parodies they offer is the following
piece, which appeared in the US-based The Onion in January 2018 at a time when the US
government and US congress were discussing tightening gun control on a federal level.

English Teacher Already Armed With Deadly Weapon Called Shakespeare

3/01/18 10:48AM
[portrait photograph of serious-looking English teacher in her classroom]
CHAMBERSBURG, PA—As the national debate surrounding school shootings continues with Pres-
ident Trump recently suggesting educators carry guns in the classroom, high school English
teacher Mary Bacher told reporters Thursday that she was already armed with a deadly weapon
called Shakespeare. “There’s nothing more lethal than the razor-sharp wit of the great Bard of
Avon,” said Bacher, noting that when it comes to defense, she is “locked and loaded” with the
devastating free verse found in the 37 plays and 154 sonnets of the late 16th century English
playwright and poet. […] Bacher confirmed that if she were in an active shooter situation, she
would merely quote Henry V’s “St. Crispin’s Day” speech aloud to her students to give them cour-
age and instill confidence that the pen is truly mightier than the sword.
(“English teacher already,” 2018)

From the headline to the end of the main body, the piece maintains a semi-formal register
defined by sophisticated diction (“national debate surrounding school shooting”) and cul-
tural references to Shakespeare (“the razor-sharp wit of the great Bard of Avon”), as one
might expect from an English teacher. Bizarrely, these words of wisdom are intercut with
references to gun violence and US gun legislation. Mary Bacher is “locked and loaded”
with Shakespeare’s work, we are told, and is ready to deploy Shakespearean verse in an
“active shooter situation.”The idea of an English teacher hoping to inspire students by
reciting “Henry V’s ‘St. Crispin’s Day’ speech” sounds absurd in the extreme. That a teacher
should take the popular saying that “the pen is truly mightier than the sword” literally
and try to use literature as a weapon seems absurd, and makes the reader wonder what
the text’s real intentions are.

79
 Literally While this piece could be enjoyed by both gun lovers and supporters of stricter gun con-
Believing in the literal trol, it is probably funnier for the latter group, as it makes fun of the suggestion (voiced by
meaning of a saying; the
opposite of “metaphori- Republican politicians at the time) that “educators carry guns in the classrooms” to pro-
cally” or “figuratively” tect their students against possible attackers. By presenting the reader with a teacher who
feels no need for a gun as her arsenal of memorized Shakespeare quotes is allegedly suffi-
cient, the parodist cleverly mocks that proposal as misguided. However, the absurdity of
the scenario is such that gun lovers might likewise enjoy it and laugh at the absurdity of
this teacher attempting to battle bullets with literature.

By relating to their readers through humor and irony, the text establishes a close rapport
with its readership, and makes the readers reflect on what they would consider purposeful
gun legislation. Note that this parody, like many others, is not clear about its own mean-
ing, as none of its language can be trusted. The headline and main body all poke fun at the
Parodist real intention of the text. The reader can deduce that the parodist finds President Trump’s
Writer of parodies proposal to arm teachers silly and unworkable. Why exactly the writer rejects that idea is
not further clarified in the text.

“The man's guide to celebrating International Women's Day,” published in The Daily Mash
on 8 March 2022, likewise imagines a bizarre scenario that offers humorous entertainment
without spelling out what it signifies. Headline and photograph signal that something is
amiss by showing a man holding up a feminist protest sign, yet pointing at himself, thus in
essence diverting attention from the sign. By discussing International Women’s Day
through the form of a “man’s guide,” the headline expresses the visual take-over of the
image in words.

The main body continues to mock the voice of a self-important male, “[s]ensible, objective
man James Bates,” who sums up his approach to handling the International Women’s Day
with the advice: “Make it all about you.” He continues:

International Women’s Day recognises the achievements of women. And that’s lovely. But repre-
sentation matters, and the lack of male voices is discrimination against the bloke. Speak up
about this injustice. Ladies love a fella who fights for what’s right.
(“The man’s guide,” 2022)

The language brilliantly parodies antifeminist rhetoric by having James Bates use aware-
ness-raising language in a silly, nonsensical way. Phrases like “recognis[e] the achieve-
ments,” “representation” and “discrimination” suggest that the text is fighting for social
justice. However, the idea that “the lack of male voices is discrimination against the bloke”
makes little sense given that women are still discriminated against all across the globe.
The drop in register from “discrimination” to “bloke,” and from “injustice” to “Ladies love
a fella” add a humorous twist and present the writer as a clueless individual who struggles
to maintain a suitable register while delivering his case.

Like the Onion piece, the parody from The Daily Mash successfully ridicules an idea (here
Mansplaining the mansplaining of feminism) without offering a clear statement of what it really means.
An explanation by a man Judging from the context, we can infer that the text seeks to draw attention to the Interna-
to a woman in a patroniz-
ing tone tional Women’s Day (being printed on that very day, March 8) in a humorous way. The text

80
type (as parody) also tells us that what is being presented is tongue-in-cheek. The exact
purpose, however, remains elusive, which leaves a final interpretation of what the text
means up to the reader.

SUMMARY
Meaning can be constructed in a variety of ways, and there are no hard-
and-fast rules about how one can determine with absolute certainty
what a text means. Three helpful considerations when trying to interpret
a text are purpose, context and text type.

Knowing the purpose of a text helps to determine how the content

ought to be interpreted. In some cases, like an advertisement, the pur-
pose (product or brand) is easy to establish. With texts like the news
reports on Mata Hari, determining whether a text aims to inform or
entertain requires taking a closer look at language. Style is often a good
indicator of purpose, as shown in the journalist’s obsession with Mata
Hari’s physical appearance, which shows that his real intention is not to
inform but to sensationalize her death.

Context can be valuable to put a text’s meaning into perspective. Know-

ing about the economic situation and gender norms of the early 1930s
allows readers to interpret the Campbell soup ad much more reliably
than if such knowledge were missing. Knowing about the amount of
censorship in a given country sheds light on how reliable a news report
truly is.

Reflecting on the conventions of a given text type is also very helpful, as

much of the writing will be dictated by whatever text type a writer has
chosen. An appeal is meant to appeal to a reader and is promotional in
intent. A news article informs, an editorial offers opinion, and a parody
pokes fun without spelling out its precise meaning.

Considering these various factors is thus helpful for interpreting any

non-literary texts. When writing a news article, editorial or parody your-
self, keep in mind the expectations regarding purpose, context and text
type, so as to mimic the genre successfully.

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 UNIT 4
READING AND ANALYSIS

STUDY GOALS

On completion of this unit, you will be able to ...

– read and demonstrate understanding of a wide variety of texts.

– analyze the ways in which writers’ and speakers’ choices of form, structure, and lan-
guage produce meaning and style.
– recognize and comment on the overall style of a text and exemplify this through spe-
cific instances of language analysis.
– write analytically about the effects produced by a range of linguistic elements and liter-
ary features.
– select and interpret words and phrases from a text with care and precision.
– use quotations and evidence, with judgement, to produce precise and meaningful
commentaries.
 4. READING AND ANALYSIS

Introduction
Texts come in an impressively wide range of forms. From advertisements to three-volume
novels, diary entries to the user manual for your new phone, the lyrics of a song or a news-
paper article: texts are a part of our everyday lives. Different texts fulfill different functions,
they can move you to do something ‒ or leave you cold. Texts have a range of effects on
the reader, whether intended by the author or not. They can be written or spoken or sung,
short or long, simple, or complex.

In this unit, you will encounter a range of textual features that distinguish one text from
another. They are the most important elements to keep in mind when trying to under-
stand a text; and I mean really understand a text: not just it’s message, but how it brings
the message across. So, when you analyze a text, you have to look at the various textual
features and how they contribute to the overall experience of reading the text. To do this
well, you need to be able to identify the different textual features, decide which ones are
important for the specific text you have in front of you and describe the effect they have.
By the end of this unit, you should be able to comment on the features of a variety of tex-
tual forms and to produce a meaningful commentary based on your analysis. You will be
able to comment on the overall structure of the text, the linguistic elements, and the effect
they have on the reader.

4.1 Textual Features

In this section we will look at various genres and their distinguishing features. You will be
introduced to the role form, composition, context, audience, narrative structure, charac-
ters, and setting play in the creation and analysis of a text.

Genre

How do you recognize the genre of a text? Each text has a range of features or elements
that mark it as belonging to one genre or another. With each genre come specific literary
Literary Convention conventions, that is, rules and established techniques typical of the genre in question.
Literary conventions are Breaking with these conventions would be disappointing readers’ expectations. Some
the set of features that
define a genre. authors play with this, like this section from Richard’s Bicycle Book, which looks like an
instructive text but isn’t.

Having it back
When a motorist does you dirt, one acceptable response is an explosive yell. It’s the cycling
equivalent of blowing a horn to signify potential or immediate danger.

84
A good yell can help you to release some of the adrenalin energy that danger generates. It can
make a motorist just a touch uncomfortable, and is more effective if there are passengers in the
vehicle. A lot of ruckus and commotion means that the motorist is doing something wrong, and
the more passengers as audience, the greater the awareness of discord.
One of the most frequent sins of the motorist is to overtake a cyclist and then suddenly brake
and turn left. The motorist knowingly creates trouble for the cyclist, and hopes to get away with
it through sheer greater size. This is a moment of opportunity. The cyclist is usually in the blind
rear quarter of the vehicle and invisible to the motorist, who will be under some tension about
the outcome of his or her misdeed. In such circumstances, a well-timed yell can startle a motorist
a clear six inches off the seat up into the air, and cause a momentary loss of vehicle control. If
there is a traffic bollard or other nearby obstruction, the motorist may hit it.
Another unsettling tactic in a situation where a motor vehicle is actively risking an accident is to
hit it hard with the flat of your hand. This makes a tremendous bang inside the vehicle (espe-
cially if done on the roof) and again strongly suggests that something is out of order. The best
moment for a direct attack is when a vehicle entering the roadway from the left and intending to
turn right cuts across your path. By swerving behind the vehicle, you create the welcome safety
of diverging trajectories and with good timing you can give the vehicle’s stern a noisy bash. Do
not use this ploy without a clear escape route. If you bang on the roof of a vehicle which is run-
ning alongside and crowding, you are just asking for the motorist to panic and do something
wrong, or for a hot-head to give that little twitch of the wheel that will smear you forever.
It is sometimes tempting to deliberately have an accident. This is illegal. The most appealing
moment for such a gross infraction of the rules is when a motorist noses out in front of you from
a side road, forcing you to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. Sooner or later it will cross
your mind to deliberately slack the brakes just a little and hit the side of the vehicle, rolling on
your shoulder and back over the bonnet to a safe landing, but thereafter continuously complain-
ing of an unspecified pain in your back. You must never do such a terrible thing.
Do bear in mind that in discussing this having it back business, I am walking on the dark side and
speaking of evil things. Well, that is how people feel sometimes. Evil.
(Ballantine, 1975, pp. 157-158)

85
 Figure 12: Richard’s Bicycle Book

Source: Ballantine (1975)

Note: The black and white print has been copied in and modified by the editor. The devil’s
horns on the biker’s head were not part of the original print.

EXCERCISE
Explain one effect of breaking with the conventions of a genre. You can
use Ballantine’s text as an example.

86
To better understand what establishes a text as belonging to one genre and not another
(and thus to see how exactly a text may break with the conventions of the genre), we will
look at a range of distinguishing features.

Form

Some texts are very easily recognized as belonging to a genre by simply looking at their
form. A letter, for example, usually begins with an address such as “Dear Lucy” or “To
whom it may concern” and ends with a greeting like “best regards” or “love” and the name
or signature of the author. The degree of formality depends on the type of letter, that is,
the context in which it is written, and who the intended recipient (that is, the audience) is. Context
The context describes the
setting in which a written
A news article can also be easily recognized by its distinguishing features: the headline, a work is situated.
sub-header summing up the main point of the article, a by-line indicating the name of the
author and the date it was published, followed by the main body of the text, and often
accompanied by a photograph for illustration.

EXERCISE
Make a list of all the text forms you know. Think about which of them are
easily recognized just by looking at their form.

Table 1: Text Types and their Formal Features

Text type Formal Features

Scripted Speech Opening, argument, closing.

Advertisements, Brochures, Leaflets Eye-catcher, message/call to action, visual ele-

ments (images)

Editorials Long text structured in paragraphs. Title; introduc-

tion; main part containing explanation, evaluation
of arguments for and against a claim and support-
ing evidence; conclusion

News Stories Header, sub-header, author and date, summary

paragraph; can be found in a newspaper (print or
online); text interrupted by photograph or graphs.

Articles Long text structured in paragraphs. Title; author(s)

and their affiliations (= the institutions they work
for); abstract (= brief summary); introduction; main
part (scientific finding or argument, counterargu-
ment, evaluation) using technical jargon; conclu-
sion; bibliography

Investigative Journalism Introduction; main part in-depth and factual, could

contain interviews; conclusion; overall longer than
news story.

87
 Text type Formal Features

Reviews Introduction, exposition, pro and contra argu-

ments, context, evaluation using evidence, opinion
or recommendation; often accompanied by images
of the book / play / movie / exhibition that is being
reviewed.

Blogs Published online, span multiple text forms (diary,

travel writing, recipe, review, and more). Often
accompanied by images or gifs.

Letters Details (sender, date, receiver), address (dear...),

varying level of formality, greeting (e.g., kind
regards, kisses, all the best)

(Auto)biographies About another person’s life, based on facts; usually

book length with multiple chapters; often chrono-
logical.

Travel Writing Descriptive text of a place the reader has not vis-
ited; illustrated with images (photos) from the
place

Diaries Chronological, no particular form

Narrative Writing Follows a plot, often five plot points: exposition,

rising action, climax, falling action, resolution.
From a couple of pages (short stories) to book
length.

Descriptive Writing Detailed description, no dialogue

Source: Wilde, L. (2022)

Design and Composition

Other visual features that may characterize a text include images, graphs, or illustrations.
Some text forms are typically accompanied by images. News articles, user manuals, adver-
tisements and travel guides contain a range of pictures and graphics to supplement the
written text. Most novels and essays, on the other hand, lack pictures. Of course, there are
exceptions, like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.

88
Figure 13: Illustration from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Pixabay (2022)

89
 Figure 14: How to Take a Screenshot

Source: Wilde, L. (2022)

Visual features can fulfil various functions. They can be illustrative, like the images in
“Alice in Wonderland,” or instructive, like the technical drawing indicating which combina-
tion of keys to press to take a screenshot.

The way words and images are arranged on the page (or screen), that is, the composition
of the text, does not only characterize the text form or genre. It can guide the reader’s
attention, and aid (or obstruct) the reading flow, like in the example below.

90
Figure 15: Exercise: Text Type “Guiding Attention”

Source: Wilde, L. (2022)

Context and Audience

Context and Audience are decisive features of a text and very important to consider in your
analysis. The meaning of the text depends, at least to some degree, on the context in
which it was written and published, and who the intended audience is. When reading a
text, ask yourself

• Where was this text written/published? (local context)

• When was this text written/published? (historical context)
• Who was this text written for? (audience)
• Does this in any way impact the meaning of the text, and if so, how?

Circumstances can significantly impact the meaning of a text. This is also the reason why
texts that have been written hundreds of years ago can sometimes gain a new meaning
when read in another context. Shakespeare’s play The Tempest (written ca. 1610), for
example, has been analyzed in depth in the context of late 20th century postcolonial stud-
ies. It had thereby gained new meaning and significance to a modern audience.

91
 The audience of a text is not always as explicit as in a letter, in which the reader is directly
addressed. It may only be implied by the context in which the text appeared, or the kind of
language the author chooses. J. R. R. Tolkien famously wrote The Hobbit with children in
mind, presumably including his own young children. When it was published in 1937, “fan-
tasy” was not yet a strongly developed genre. The Hobbit would have been considered
children's literature. Knowing that it was written for children draws the reader’s attention
to the “bedtime story” elements of the text that invite reading it aloud. Today, however, it
can be found in the “fantasy” sections of most bookstores and attracts many adult read-
ers. Does thinking about The Hobbit as a book for kids or as a fantasy book for an adult
audience change how you would approach it? Does thinking about it as a stand-alone
book or a prequel to a very famous series of books change your view? Probably!

Censorship Some texts are published in environments where censorship is extremely common. When
Under censorship we people are not allowed to openly voice their opinion, the use of double-meanings and
understand the suppres-
sion of speech, public symbols in published texts can be a way to do so. Animal Farm is, on the surface, about a
communication, or other group of animals that rebel against the farmer to live together freely and equally.
information.

The animals were happy as they had never conceived it possible to be. Every mouthful of food
was an acute positive pleasure, now that it was truly their own food, produced by themselves
and for themselves, not doled out to them by a grudging master.
(Orwell, 1945, Chapter 3)

Allegory The story is an allegory of Stalin’s Russia, which Orwell heavily criticized, at a time when
An allegory is a narrative the UK (his home country) and Russia were allies against Germany.
or an image that repre-
sents a hidden meaning,
often a political or moral Point of View
one.

The point of view from which a story is narrated is a central feature of literary texts. The
First-person Narrator easiest point of view to recognize is the first person. Many works of fiction are written in
A first-person narrator the first person, that is, using the first person singular “I” and describing the events from
tells a story from their
personal point of view. It the narrator’s own perspective.
uses the pronoun “I”.
This is the first paragraph of John Greene’s The Fault in Our Stars. It features the first per-
son singular “I”, marking it clear from the beginning as having been written from the point
of view of the narrator, Hazel, a teenager with a terminal diagnosis of cancer. Besides the
use of the first person singular, this passage is furthermore marked as being told from
Hazel’s perspective: in the second line, Green (the author) uses the word “presumably” to
describe the reason why Hazel’s mother decided her daughter was depressed. Hazel does
not know the reasons for her mother’s thinking, she only presumes these to be the rea-
sons. Being written from Hazel’s point of view, the narrative can only contain what Hazel
knows or has experienced herself. Other characters’ experiences are told from Hazel’s per-
spective.

In stories written from the first-person point of view, the narrator is often – but not always
– the main character. A notable exception is Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville’s
Moby-Dick, who only plays a minor role in the story itself.

92
Because Ishmael does not feature much in his own narrative, it almost appears to be writ-
ten in the third person. We can distinguish different kinds of third person narrators Third-person Narrator
(Abrams, 2015). A third-person narrator
exists outside the events
of the story and relates
the actions of the charac-
ters by referring to their
names or by the third-
EXERCISE person pronouns he, she,
Assign each excerpt the point of view from which it is narrated. Write or they.
down the reasons for your choice. What is the effect of offering this kind
of point of view?

George Eliot: Middlemarch

“How very beautiful these gems are!” said Dorothea, under a new current of feeling, as sudden as
the gleam. […]
“And there is a bracelet to match it,” said Celia. “We did not notice this at first.”
“They are lovely,” said Dorothea, slipping the ring and bracelet on her finely-tuned finger and
wrist, and holding them towards the window on a level with her eyes. All the while her thought
was trying to justify her delight in the colours by merging them in her mystic religious joy.
“You would like those, Dorothea,” said Celia, rather falteringly, beginning to think with wonder
that her sister showed some weakness, and also that emeralds would suit her own complexion
even better than purple amethysts.
(Eliot, 2012, p. 10)

Christina Henry: The Ghost Tree

“It was, um, nice to see you,” she said, not wanting to prolong this awkwardness any longer than
necessary. “I have to get to my grandma’s house.”
“Oh,” he said, and he seemed kind of disappointed, although maybe that was her imagination.
“Well, I’ll see you around, Lauren.”
“Yup, see you around,” she said, and rode away as fast as she could.
When she got to the stop sign at the corner she gave a quick sideways peek back over her shoul-
der and found him staring after her. He had a strange look on his face, one she couldn’t define.
[…]
Why did he seem to be everywhere all of a sudden? Lauren hadn’t thought about Jake Hanson in
years, and now she’d seen him twice in two days.
(Henry, 2020, p. 144)

Ernest Hemingway: “Hills Like White Elephants”

The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown
and dry.
“They look like white elephants,” she said.
“I've never seen one,” the man drank his beer.
“No, you wouldn't have.”
“I might have,” the man said. “Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything.”
The girl looked at the bead curtain. “They've painted something on it,” she said. “What does it
say?”
(Hemingway, 2003, pp. 211–214)

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 Omniscient narrator

The omniscient narrator knows everything there is to know, from events that happened in
different times and places, to the thoughts, feelings, and motives of the various characters
of the story. The omniscient narrator also has immense freedom when it comes to choos-
ing which character(s) to focus on, the order of the events, where to place thematic
emphasis, and so on. Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse illustrates this nicely: Here, the
narrator’s point of view shifts, one by one, to each of the main protagonists (Woolf, 1927).
Because the omniscient narrator is not tied down to one point of view, the reader can flu-
idly compare and contrast the actions, responses and emotions of the different characters
and gain a complex view of the events in the narrative. Notably, the different perspectives
may conflict with each other, encouraging the reader to consider how each point of view
contributes to their overall understanding of the text.

Solution: George Eliot’s Middlemarch is another example of this.

Limited omniscient narrator

The limited omniscient narrator, has, as the name betrays, only limited knowledge of this
kind. The story is still told in the third person, but it is limited to one character’s perspec-
tive. Take Katherine Mansfield’s short story Bliss as an example. The reader is introduced
to the protagonist of the story, Bertha Young, in the first line: “Although Bertha Young was
thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk ...” Despite
being written in the third person, the narrative remains close to Bertha’s inner life,
describing her opinions and thoughts in detail:

What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome,
suddenly by a feeling of bliss–absolute bliss! … Oh, is there no way you can express it without
being “drunk and disorderly”? How idiotic civilisation is! ...
(Mansfield, 1920, p. 116)

The remaining characters are described from Bertha’s perspective. What we learn about
their inner lives, we only know through Bertha’s musings about them:

But Bertha knew, suddenly, as if the longest, most intimate look had passed between them–as if
they had said to each other: “You too?”–that Pearl Fulton, stirring the beautiful red soup in the
grey plate, was feeling just what she was feeling.
(Mansfield, 1920, p. 128)

The reader cannot know for sure what Miss Fulton is really feeling. Bertha might be mis-
taken to think that they share in the “absolute bliss” that is carrying her through her day.
The narrator’s omniscience is limited to Bertha’s perspective.
Solution: Christina Henry’s The Ghost Tree is another example of this.

Objective narrator

Finally,the objective point of view has a narrator who describes, camera-like, the events as
they unfold, without granting the reader any insight into the characters’ emotions. This
can create a sense of distance between the reader and the characters. However, it may

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also build a sense of intrigue and encourage the reader to speculate on the characters’
thoughts and feelings. Other features of the text such as the setting may also be empha-
sized over the characters themselves.

EXERCISE
Why is Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” an example of
an objective narrator? Write a short analysis, drawing on the excerpt
above, and say what the effect of offering this point of view on the
reader is.

Unreliable Narrator

Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s poem “Are All the Break-Ups in Your Poems Real?” is an example
of an unreliable narrator.

If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck

in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick,
the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse—
then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance,
bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them—
and when I say I am married, it means I married
all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves.
Can you imagine the number of bouquets, how many
slices of cake? Even now, my husbands plan a great meal
for us—one chops up some parsley, one stirs a bubbling pot
on the stove. One changes the baby, and one sleeps
in a fat chair. One flips through the newspaper, another
whistles while he shaves in the shower, and every single
one of them wonders what time I am coming home.
(Nezhukumatathil, 2011)

As you might have guessed, the unreliable narrator cannot be relied on to tell the truth. In
this case, the poet clearly plays with the authority she has been granted by the reader,
making us first believe one thing, then another, and finally leaving us with the humorous
understanding that she just cannot be trusted.

Advanced material: second person perspective

A rare instance of a novel written in the second person is Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re
Briefly Gorgeous.

Let me begin again.

Dear Ma,
I am writing to reach you—even if each word I put down is one word further from where you are.

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 (Vuong, 2019, p. 1)

The second person perspective is common for letters, in which the author addresses the
recipient of the letter directly. Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is structured
like a letter and addresses the protagonists’ mother throughout, creating a sense of inti-
macy and directness. However, we learn early in the work that his mother is, in fact,
unable to read:

The time I tried to teach you to read the way Mrs. Callahan taught me ... after the stutters and
false starts, the sentences warped or locked in your throat, after the embarrassment of failure,
you slammed the book shut.
(Vuong, 2019, p. 5)

The attempt to teach his mother how to read failed after just one try. “The time” indicates
that it was just once, and it ended in “failure” with “the book [slammed] shut.” This may
explain why the narrator thinks that “each word I put down is one word further from
where you are.”His mother is somewhere where words, written down, cannot reach her.
This does not make the writing pointless, however. There is an implicit audience, the
reader of the published novel, not the letter it purports to be.

Characters

Once we have established who the narrator of the text is, we can turn to an analysis of the
characters. You might even be asked to write a character analysis. Depending on the text,
you will learn in more or less detail who the characters of the story are.

First, you want to establish what role a character plays in the text. Are they a protagonist
Protagonist and Antag- or an antagonist? Are they a major character, that is, is a lot of the story about them, or a
onist minor character who does not play a central role? Do they develop over the course of the
The protagonist of a story
is the leading character or narrative? Those characters that change are the most interesting ones for an analysis. You
one of the major charac- can compare what they were like at the beginning of the story to the way they are at the
ters, possibly the hero of end and say something about how the events changed them. Do their goals, hopes,
the narrative. The antago-
nist opposes their ideas, dreams, or motivations change? Did they have an epiphany, a sudden insight that
motives, and actions. changed everything?
Epiphany
An epiphany is a sudden Dorian Gray, the protagonist of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a vivid
cataclysmic moment of example of a character that changes over the course of a narrative. The story begins with
realization. It will change
the behavior of a charac-
Dorian Gray as an innocent young person with many prospects in the world: “There was
ter and most likely the something in his face that made on trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there,
progression and outcome as well as youth's passionate purity” (Wilde, O., 1890, p. 19). However, over the course of
of the plot.
the story, he becomes obsessed with his portrait, which takes on the ugliness of his own
crimes and sins and grows more and more corrupted with time.

Sometimes a character’s name is introduced directly, like in the above quoted section
from Mansfield’s “Bliss”, or in Melville’s Moby-Dick, which famously begins with the words
“Call me Ishmael” (Melville, 2001, p. 3). Other times, the character’s name is introduced
indirectly, for example when another character directly addresses them by their name.

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This is often the case in narratives written from the first-person point of view in which the
narrator does not explicitly introduce themselves. In The Fault in Our Stars, Hazel’s name is
introduced in a dialogue she has with her mother.

Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.”

Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager ...”
(Greene, 2013, p.7)

The way a character speaks and expresses their emotions can betray a lot about them,
too.

Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.”

Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGG.”
(Greene, 2013, p.7)

Did you notice? The repetitive use of the colloquial “ugh” by Hazel is a much more vivid
illustration of her being a teenager than her mother’s indirect description of her as such.

It is also worth looking out for the things that are left unspoken. This can shroud a charac-
ter in a mystery and create a sense of distance or leave room for other character features
to take up more space and significance.

Descriptions of physical features and body language can give the reader further clues
about the character. Physical descriptions can also give clues about the narrator's
thoughts and feelings, as these descriptions usually reflect their perspective. Here is an
example from a newspaper article that appeared on BBC News, in which the judges’ first
impression of the Scottish singer Darius is described.

EXERCISE
Which role does the description of Darius’ physical appearance play in
this news article? Write down some notes on why you think the author
included it in his piece.

Darius first rose to fame with an appearance on the ITV show Popstars in 2001.
He became known for his audition performance where he appeared in a black turtleneck, with
his hair slicked back in a ponytail and wearing a goatee.
His quirky rendition of Britney Spears' Baby One More Time and animated facial expressions left
the judges unimpressed and they gave him a “no”.
(BBC News, 2022, Aug 17).

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 Solution: Darius’s “quirky” performance of “Baby One More Time” in a black turtleneck,
slicked back hair, and a goatee stands in stark contrast to the image the average reader
will have of Britney Spears as a young woman known to favor pink and girlish outfits. This
highlights how unusual Darius’s performance was and makes the reader wonder why it did
not impress the jury.
Some characters have names that tell us something about their character or history. Draco
Malfoy in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, for example, is named after the Latin word for
dragon, pointing to his viciousness. Other characters remain nameless, like the central
characters in Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, who is referred to throughout as “the
prince” (Saint-Exupéry, 2010).

When analyzing a text, pay attention to how the different elements of the characterization
complement or contrasts each other, and think about the effect this has. Do you think a
well-rounded character is more convincing? Or do the contradictions make them more
believable, more like a real human?

Finally, you may encounter a narrative without any characters. What is the effect of the
absence of characters in a text on the reader?

Setting (Temporal & Spatial)

We can also analyze the setting of a text. The setting can be temporal, that is, a text can be
set in a specific time, or spatial, which means, in a certain place. Often, the way it is descri-
Mood bed sets the mood of the narrative. A striking example of how the spatial setting of a text
The mood of a narrative complements the narrative is Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s short story “The Yellow Wallpa-
refers to the emotions
that it evokes in the read- per,” first published in 1892.
ers.
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sun-
shine galore …
I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing
every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and
provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly
commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradic-
tions.
The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the
slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.
(Perkins Stetson, 1999, pp. 648–649)

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Having been prescribed a resting cure against her “temporary nervous depression—a
slight hysterical tendency” (p. 648), the narrator of this story spends an extended period of
time in the “big airy room” described above.

EXERCISE
Write down which mood the description of the wallpaper creates before
you continue reading.

Solution: The wallpaper is “dull,” “repellant,” “revolting.” The narrator has never seen a
worse one in her life. It is described with a number of alarming words, such as “irritate,”
“provoke,” “outrageous,” and “destroy,” that could be said to reflect the narrator’s inner
struggles, “smouldering,” and “sulphur” awakening associations with hell fires, and, last
but not least “suicide,” eerily foreshadowing the decline of her mental health. Over the Foreshadowing
course of the story, the wallpaper indeed takes on a life of its own, at least in the narrator’s It is an indication of what
is going to happen in the
mind. She begins to see the pattern as bars and believes to perceive behind them the future, often only by hint-
shape of a woman, until finally she succumbs to her psychosis, in which she believes to be ing at or alluding to
the woman from behind the wallpaper. something.

“I've got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of the paper, so
you can't put me back!”
(Perkins Stetson, 1999, p. 656)

The setting thus not only sets the mood of the story but is intricately related to the main
character’s struggle and foreshadows her mental decline.

4.2 Linguistic Elements

Linguistic elements are those features of a text that can be identified by looking at individ-
ual words and phrases, as well as their literal and figurative meaning. In the following, we
will look at a range of different linguistic elements and their effects.

Figurative Language

Many words and phrases can be used in both the literal and the figurative sense. The lit-
eral meaning of a word (or phrase) is the ordinary or primary meaning of the word, the
meaning we can look up in a dictionary. The figurative meaning, on the other hand, is one
that is not normally expressed by that word. In other words, the figurative meaning devi-
ates from the literal meaning we are ordinarily accustomed to. When I say, “I see a horse in
the garden,” I mean this literally: I want to point out the animal that is standing outside my

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 window. On the other hand, when I say, “I could eat a horse,” I do not mean this literally
but figuratively, expressing that I am very hungry and could eat a large amount of food,
but not an actual horse.

EXERCISE
Can you spot the figurative expressions in the excerpts below?

My relationship with my mom was like the relationship between a cop and a criminal in the mov-
ies—the relentless detective and the devious mastermind she's determined to catch. (Noah,
2016, p. 80)
In high school, the attention of girls was not an affliction I suffered from.
(Noah, 2016, p. 45)

Simile and Metaphor

In the first excerpt, Noah compares his relationship to his mother to the relationship
between a cop and a criminal. A simile such as this is used to compare one thing to
another and is expressed using the words “like” or “as.” Here are some examples:

• We were like a cop and a criminal.

• The sky looks like fire.
• He was like a brother to me.
• I’ll run as fast as the wind.

In the second excerpt, Noah uses a metaphor to characterize “the attention of girls” as an
“affliction.” The “affliction” stands in for the attention of girls. Metaphors are not used with
the expressions “like” or “as” but are used in place of another word or expression, like
these:

• The sky is on fire.

• Time is money.
• Lend me your ears.
• You are a star. (Merriam-Webster, 2022)

Similes and metaphors are devices used to make a text more vivid. They invoke images in
the reader’s mind and enable the author to convey ideas that are difficult to describe in
literal terms, such as feelings and emotions.

Personification

When an author attributes human characteristics like feelings, thoughts, or expression to a

non-living thing, we speak of a personification. The Greek and Roman gods, for example,
are the personifications of the qualities or ideas they have come to represent. Justice is
personified as a blindfolded woman balancing the scales; love becomes a young boy with

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bow and arrow. On a linguistic level, personifications are more easily recognizable. Just
look out for non-living things being described as carrying out human acts or having
human characteristics, such as these:

• The unopened book stared at me.

• The breaks screamed.
• His knees complained.

Another example of a personification is Death in Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could

not stop for Death.”

Because I could not stop for Death— He kindly stopped for me— The Carriage held but just Our-
selves— And Immortality.
We slowly drove—He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His
Civility— …
(Dickinson, 1998)

Personifications bring non-living things to life, figuratively speaking. They can make a text
more vivid, and an inanimate thing more relatable.

Exaggeration and contradiction

A hyperbole is the literary equivalent of an exaggeration that is so extravagant that the

reader knows, without question, that it is merely a figure of speech and not to be taken
literally, such as the following:

• I’ve told you a million times.

• The buildings were so high they touched the sky.
• Over my dead body.

Hyperboles are a playful way to emphasize a statement, but they can also create a sense
of urgency.
A paradox might be harder to spot as it is a self-contradictory statement or phrase that still
appears to make sense, such as “less is more,” “the only constant is change,” or “to be nat-
ural is such a very difficult pose to keep up” (Wilde, O., 2000, pp. 291-358). An oxymoron is
very similar to a paradox: It is a self-contradictory expression, so a combination of incon-
gruous words (rather than entire phrases), such as “cruel kindness,” “the living dead,” “a
bright darkness,” or “deafening silence” (Merriam-Webster, 2022). Both paradoxes and
oxymorons engage the reader in a more intellectual way, asking him or her to think about
the statement in depth and questioning their previously held beliefs.

Rhetorical Devices

Rule of three

Rhetorical devices are used by the author, amongst other things, to engage the reader,
emphasize the content, and convince the audience of their ideas. I have just used the rule
of three, naming three functions of rhetorical devices. Also called the “list of three,” it is an
elegant way to add emphasis to a list and it makes it easier for the reader to remember the

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 elements. It is used very frequently, be it in politics, religion, or the cinema. “Liberté, Éga-
lité, Fraternité”; “The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”; “The Good, The Bad and the
Ugly.” I am sure you have heard these before.

Anaphora and parallelism

Another way to add emphasize in a text is through repetition. This can come in different
forms. The repetition of a sequence of words at the beginning of phrases is called an ana-
phora and is a famous feature of Martin Luther King’s speech I Have a Dream:

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a
dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of
former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of
injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom
and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
(King, 2022)

A parallelism is the repetition of a structural feature of the text.

And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
(King, 2022)

The lines “We cannot walk alone” and “We cannot turn back” do not only begin with an
anaphora, but their sentence structure also repeats itself, further adding emphasis to the
statements.

Pace & Rhythm

Repetitions like anaphora and parallelism add emphasis to the ideas they convey. This is
not only achieved by the mere fact of reading the same word or phrase again and again.
Repetitions also help create pace and rhythm in a text. “Pace” refers to the speed con-
veyed or suggested by the text itself, especially when reading it out loud. The “rhythm” of
a text refers to the patterns in emphasis and speed. These patterns might be very strict
and regular, like in some forms of poetry, or intentionally broken to emphasize certain
words, ideas, or even sounds.

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Punctuation and sentence length contribute to these effects. When you read a text, you
inadvertently make little pauses where a comma interrupts the flow, and slightly longer
pauses after a full stop. An exclamation mark adds force to the end of a sentence! And
have you noticed that your voice goes up before a question mark? Using multiple short
sentences in quick succession creates a staccato effect. Using multiple sentences of simi-
lar length and structure can make a text sound a bit drab and rather boring to read, while
alternating between longer and shorter sentences creates a more pleasant reading flow.
Shorter sentences gain significance. They interrupt the flow just enough for the reader to
notice the importance of the sentence.

When analyzing the structure of a text, take note of how punctuation and sentence length
contribute to pace and rhythm. Are there any irregularities that you notice? Which parts of
the text are emphasized? Do you notice a pattern, and is it broken at some point? Some-
times, individual words add to the rhythm of a text or have a rhythm themselves.

Consider the first four lines of the poem “Tyger Tyger” by William Blake, originally pub-
lished in 1794:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
(Blake, 2009)

Notice how “bright” and “night” are perfect rhymes, whereas “eye” and “symmetry” are
not. This creates an emphasis on the final word of this part of the poem, “symmetry,” and
suggests that this concept is important to the overall theme or meaning of the poem.

The rhyme scheme is part of the structure of the poem and contributes to the experience
of reading it, especially when read out loud. Notice how the first three lines of text have
the same number of syllables, exactly seven, but the final line has eight. This encourages Syllables
(or even forces) the reader to take more time to read the final line, placing even more A unit of pronunciation
having one vowel sound,
emphasis on the last word. with or without surround-
ing consonants, forming
the whole or a part of a
word

EXERCISE
Think about how the experience of reading the poem would differ if
each line had the same number of syllables, or if each line had a com-
pletely different number of syllables? How would this change the pace
and rhythm of the poem?

Solution: Each line of the poem follows an alternating pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables. When you say the word “Tyger” (which is a spelling of “tiger”), notice how your
voice seems to go up when saying the first syllable “Ty-.” In contrast, your voice naturally
goes down when saying the second syllable, “-ger.” This means that the first syllable is

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 stressed and the second is unstressed. If you are asked to analyze a poem or a song’s lyr-
ics, try saying a few lines of the text aloud to really notice the pace and rhythm. Is there a
pattern that contributes to its rhythm? If you read “The Tyger” aloud, you will notice it has
a very regular sound, almost like the banging of a drum (“Ty-ger, Ty-ger, burn-ing
bright”). Try it now! Would you describe this sound as gentle or soothing? How might the
sound of a text highlight its themes or ideas? Can the sound help set a mood?

4.3 Directed Response & Text Analysis

Now that you have learned to identify a range of formal, structural, and linguistic features
of a text, in this final section we will look at the practicalities of using this knowledge to
write your analysis.

First, you need to make sure you understand the prompt and you know exactly what is
being asked of you. Note if there is a word count make sure not to write any more (or less!)
in your response. If you are asked to use 250-300 words, you should write no more than
300 and no less than 250 words in your response. If an exact number is given, for example
“write 400 words,” a variation of +/- 10% is usually acceptable, so in this case you could
write between 360 and 440 words.

Also pay attention to the number of points each response is worth. This is usually indica-
ted in square brackets “[…]” behind the prompt. If you are given two prompts that are
awarded with 10 points each, you should spend approximately 50% of your time on each.
Be careful not to spend more than 50% on the first prompt and run out of time once you
get to the second one. If one response is worth more points than another, you should
spend correspondingly more time on it.

Brainstorm

Before you start writing your response, you should read through the text you are asked to
analyze several times. First, you can read it through quickly, gaining an overview of the
material. Take some notes on your overall impression of the text. What is it about? Is there
a key theme or idea?

Now, read the text again a little more carefully than the first time and think about the over-
all form and structure of the text. What do you notice? Again, take notes. You can scribble
in the margins of your text or highlight first passages in pencil or a light color. Take notes
on:

• The text form: Which genre does this text belong to? Does it follow the conventions of
the genre?
• Is there anything in its composition and structure that strikes you as interesting?
• Who is the audience? Does the text directly or indirectly address an audience?

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Now, read the text a third time, and concentrate on phases and individual words. Do you
notice any specific linguistic elements? Does the author use any rhetorical devices, figura-
tive language, or play with rhythm? If so, to what effect? Again, jot down some notes on
everything you notice. It may be helpful to highlight individual words and phrases with a
different color. This is to help you keep an overview of the different features of the text
that you find interesting. But don’t go overboard with the colors, or you will confuse your-
self!

Plan and Structure

Now that you have a whole lot of notes on your text, try to structure them into a list. You
will find that not all features appear in every text, and the ones that do appear do not all
matter to the same degree. You should therefore think carefully about which things to
include in your commentary.

Think again about the key idea or theme you wrote down after reading the text for the first Theme
time. Do you still think that this is what the text is about, or do you want to reformulate it? The theme or key idea
describes the underlying
Now, take a new sheet of paper and structure notes into the 3 to 5 points that you think meaning of a literary
are most important and interesting and that you definitely want to include in your analy- work.
sis. You can cross them out from your first list to keep an overview. How you structure your
commentary is up to you, and depends on the key points you identify, and how they relate
to the overall idea of the text.

Regardless of what structure you adopt, try to progress …

• … from simple to complex. Tackle easy and obvious points first before wrestling with
the more difficult cases.
• … from concrete (that is, what is visible) to abstract (like myths, codes, and ideologies).
Don’t dive in at the deep end but start with what you can concretely see in the text.
Address deeper meanings and abstract ideas afterwards, and make sure these observa-
tions are still grounded in the text itself.

Finally, take some notes on evaluation. What is the organizing principle of the text, its
overall effect? How do the linguistic elements and textual features contribute to it? Why do
you think the author chose those features? What do they convey? Are there any surprises,
contradictions, inconsistencies, and if so, why do you think that is? What effect do the
author’s choices have on the reading experience?

Now that you have detailed notes on what you want to include in your analysis, you can
start writing.

Writing a Meaningful Commentary

In the following, you can apply all that you have learned to two example prompts similar
to those you will encounter in the AS Level exam Paper 1: Reading. Before we get there,
here are a few things to keep in mind when writing your response.

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 Language

While you want to demonstrate your full grasp of the English language and express your-
self in a sophisticated way, keep your writing clear. Do not use overly complicated, long-
winded sentences. Keep things simple. Use clear, matter-of-fact language, and technical
terms and jargon only when necessary. You want to demonstrate your understanding of
the linguistic concepts, so it is good to name them, but don’t make things more complica-
ted than they need to be. Clarity always comes before sophistication!

Evidence

When you analyze a text, it is important to use evidence from the text to support your
arguments. You can quote parts of the text to illustrate the points you are making. Quotes
should always play a supporting role in your analysis. Do not quote entire passages.
Instead, quote single words and phrases that illustrate or support your point using double
quotation marks (“...”). Careful: Using words that are not your own without marking them
Plagiarism appropriately is considered plagiarism.
If an idea is passed off as
your own but taken from
someone else without Plagiarism: According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary (2022), the word “plagiarism”
giving them credit for it. comes from the Latin word for “kidnapper.” Even if it is not quite like stealing someone’s
children, to plagiarize is a serious offence: It is stealing someone else’s words.

Example prompt I: Text Analysis

The agony aunt page lives! Who would have thought that advice columns – arguably the
most poopooed non-literary genre in human history – would make it into the 21st century?
In actual fact, agony aunt pages seem to have undergone a revival of late, with even highly
respectable publications such as The Guardian running its own weekly “Dear Mariella”
(included below).

For all the fun and mirth we may derive from exploring fictitious and real agony aunt
pages, there is no denying that many columns do serve actual readers facing true hardship
and real dilemmas.

EXERCISE
What techniques are used to make this a comforting or entertaining
advice column? Analyze the text, focusing on form, structure, and lan-
guage. Use 250-300 words.

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Figure 16: The Agony Aunt

Source: Wilde, L. (2022), adapted from The Guardian (2018)

107
 The prompt asks you to pay attention to form, structure, and language (that is, linguistic
elements) in light of it being a comforting or entertaining advice column. To write a good
analysis, you need to address all of these elements. It may be useful to structure your
notes accordingly. What do you notice in terms of from, structure, and linguistic features
respectively? How do each of these elements contribute to the text being a comforting or
entertaining advice column? You can go back to sections 1 and 2 of this unit to remind
yourself of different formal, structural, and linguistic elements, and see if you notice any
other features in the text that are relevant for your analysis.

Example prompt II: Directed Response

Biographies, or accounts of people’s lives, have existed for millennia and are common to
all cultures in some shape or form, be it in writing, oral traditions, or song (think of the
songs celebrating mythical heroes like Robin Hood). In the Western tradition biographies
were originally limited to iconic statesmen (as in Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and
Romans), saints (see e.g. The Life of Saint Patrick) or artists (as celebrated in Giorgio
Vasari’s 1550 account of Renaissance painters and sculptors). In the modern period new
sub-genres emerged, such as sensationalist accounts of criminals (see the excerpt on the
petty thief and trickster Anne Holland below), openly political biographies (of leaders such
as John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King), or biographies of cultural icons and celebrities
(such as Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, or Alfred Einstein).

EXERCISE
Read the following text, which is an excerpt from Michelle Obama’s biog-
raphy Becoming.

a) Imagine you are the girl who invited her friends over for a birthday
party and write a diary entry on the experiences of the day. Use 150–
200 words. [15]
b) Compare your diary entry with the Obama’s biographical writing,
analyzing form, structure and language. [10]

Some of my peers felt their otherness more acutely than I did. My friend Derrick remembers
white students refusing to yield the sidewalk when he walked in their path. Another girl I knew
had six friends over to her dorm room one night to celebrate her birthday and promptly got
hauled into the dean’s office, informed that her white roommate evidently hadn’t felt comforta-
ble with having “big black guys” in the room. There were so few of us minority kids at Princeton, I
suppose, that our presence was always conspicuous.
(Obama, M., 2018)

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In writing your Directed Response, in a first step (a) want to make sure that it follows the
conventions of the text form you are supposed to write, in this case, a diary entry. Before
you start writing, take notes on form, structure, and language you should use to make it
sound like a diary entry. Once you have written your response, you can use your notes to
check your writing.
In a second step (b), you need to analyze both the given text as well as your own and com-
pare your insights: Reflect on how the form, structure, and language of your text differ
from the original text. Think about the genre of the given text and how it follows its respec-
tive conventions. Point out the differences. Use examples from the given text and from
your directed response.

Note that (a) can give you a maximum of 10 points, and (b) is worth 15 points. Therefore,
you want to spend more time and effort on your analysis than on the diary entry.

SUMMARY
In this unit, you have encountered a range of textual features and lin-
guistic elements. From the formal and structural features of a text to fig-
urative language, rhetorical devices, and rhythm: the choices an author
makes create meaning and have specific effects that change the experi-
ence of reading (or hearing) the text.

The first step in your analysis is to establish which type of text you are
dealing with. Above, we have addressed some markers, like form, com-
position, and context. Each genre follows certain conventions, but
sometimes authors choose to play or break with the conventions of a
genre to achieve a special effect, like irony, or to elicit a specific
response from the audience. Some texts are borderline cases and fall
between genres: a biography that is actually fiction; a diary entry that is
published on a blog; a novel that appears to be a letter, and so on. When
you come across borderline cases, or texts that play with the limits of
their genre, make sure you take this into account in your analysis. Why
do you think the author chose to write the text like that? Which effect
does it have on the reader?

You have also encountered a range of rhetorical devices, figurative lan-

guage, and the concepts of “pace” and “rhythm.” You should now be
able to recognize and comment on these textual features and the effect
they have when you come across them in a text, no matter its genre. You
can select and interpret individual words and phrases from a text with
care and precision and write analytically about the effects they produce.
Make sure you read the prompt attentively and stick to the word limit!

109
 UNIT 5
WRITING

STUDY GOALS

On completion of this unit, you will be able to ...

– write effectively, creatively, accurately, and appropriately, for a range of audiences and
purposes.
– respond reflectively, discursively, and creatively to a text.
– develop a plan and structure for writing a text, tailored to a specific writing prompt.
– adapt your writing style to your audience.
– identify and meet the requirements for shorter and longer writing prompts.
– evaluate the quality of your text and write a reflective commentary.
 5. WRITING

Introduction
Writing is a complex skill and creating your own texts may appear daunting at first. In this
unit, you will be given the opportunity to explore and experiment with a variety of genres
and styles. The three sections on planning, writing, and evaluation, respectively, will guide
you through the process of creating your own texts step by step. You will learn to adapt
your writing to a variety of textual forms, audiences, purposes, and contexts. We will look
at how word choice, sentence length, and structure can be utilized to make your writing fit
its purpose. Be they short pieces or longer texts, you will learn to write effectively, crea-
tively, accurately, and appropriately, for a range of audiences. You will also be asked to
reflect on your own writing so you can improve your written work. Finally, you will learn
how to write a commentary.

5.1 Planning Your Written Work

The secret to successful writing is to start with a solid foundation: a plan. How you plan
your written work depends to a large extent on what kind of text you want to write. This
choice is not always yours. When you are given a writing prompt, it is highly important
that you take the time to understand it properly. Knowing exactly what is asked of you is
essential to producing a good answer. Below you see a typical writing prompt.

The Writing Prompt

EXAMPLE PROMPT SECTION A: SHORTER WRITING AND REFLECTIVE

COMMENTARY (SCRIPTED SPEECH)
You are going to participate in a peaceful climate protest in front of the
local town house. As the student representative of your school, you have
been asked to give a speech at the event.

a) Write the text for the speech, using no more than 400 words. In your
writing, bring across how you feel about climate change and what
you think the government should do to tackle it. [15]
b) Write a reflective commentary on your text, explaining how your lin-
guistic choices contribute to making your speech effective. [15]

After reading the prompt carefully, you should be able to answer the following questions.

112
• What type of text are you being asked to write?
• Who is the audience?
• What should the content be?
• What is the intended effect of the text?
• What is the required word count?

Answering these questions should give you a good idea of what is required of you. In order
to do so effectively, you need to have some knowledge of text conventions, such as the
linguistic elements and literary features of a range of text types.

EXERCISE
Think about the conventions for the different text forms and which
effect they ideally have on the audience. Think about formal features,
content, and language and fill out the table below.

Table 2: Text Types and their Conventions

Text type Conventions Effect

Scripted Speech Formal features: opening, argu- Captivating, motivating

ment, closing
Language: dynamic, persuasive
Style: pathos (emotion), ethos
(credibility), logos (reason),
kairos (timeliness)

Advertisements, Brochures, Formal features: Eye-catcher, Informing the audience of your

Leaflets message/call to action, visual product
elements (images) Motivating the audience to buy
Content: message/call to action, your product
targeted at specific audience
(implicit or explicit)
Language: catchy, simple

Editorials Formal features: longer text Informing, explaining, criticiz-

structured in paragraphs. Title; ing, praising, convincing
introduction; main part; conclu-
sion
Content: Presents opinion of a
newspaper on an issue; explana-
tion / exposition & evaluation of
pro and contra arguments, sup-
porting evidence
Language: objective, professio-
nal, not written in first person

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 Text type Conventions Effect

News Stories Formal features: Header, sub- Informing, explaining

header, author and date, sum-
mary paragraph; can be found in
a newspaper (print or online);
text interrupted by photograph
or graphs.
Content: facts (accuracy &
objectivity), up to date;
Language: informative, impar-
tial, formal, active words, details

Articles Formal features: Long text struc- Weighing and evaluating, objec-
tured in paragraphs. Title; tive conclusion, convincing
author(s) and their affiliations (=
the institutions they work for);
abstract (= brief summary);
introduction; main part; conclu-
sion; bibliography
Content: scientific findings or
arguments, counterargument(s),
evaluation
Language: formal, technical jar-
gon

Investigative Journalism Formal features: Introduction, Conveying information, uncov-

main part, conclusion; overall ering news
longer than news story.
Content: original, in-depth, fac-
tual, could contain interviews
Language: avoids absolutes, fac-
tual

Reviews Formal features: Introduction, Informing, helping to decide

exposition, main part, conclu- (whether to buy/read/see the
sion; often accompanied by reviewed thing), persuasive
images of the book / play /
movie / exhibition that is being
reviewed
Content: pro and contra argu-
ments, context, evaluation using
evidence, opinion / recommen-
dation.
Language: formal but persua-
sive, directly addresses reader,
authoritative and knowledgea-
ble

Blogs Formal features: Published Depending on text form and

online, Often accompanied by audience
images or gifs.
Content: Spans multiple text
forms (diary, travel writing, rec-
ipe, review, and more), topic
focused
Language: first person, informal

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 Text type Conventions Effect

Letters Formal features: Details (sender, Creating a sense of intimacy

date, receiver), address (dear...), (informal letters), conveying
greeting (e.g., kind regards, information, making a request
kisses, all the best) etc.
Content: personal or professio-
nal, directed at addressee
Language: varying levels of for-
mality

(Auto)biographies Formal features: book length Creating a sense of knowing the

with multiple chapters, often person, educational & informa-
chronological tive
Content: Biography: about
another person’s life, based on
facts, written by someone else;
Autobiography: first-person
point of view
Language: anecdotal

Travel Writing Formal features: illustrated with Creating a sense of having been
images there; informing and exciting
Content: Description of a place
the reader has not visited, using
sensory details (what you see,
smell, hear etc.)
Language: informal, chatty,
using imagery; usually first-per-
son point of view, past tense

Diaries Formal features: chronological Creating a sense of intimacy

Content: thoughts and feelings,
recent events
Language: First-person point of
view, intimate, emotive, not
meant for an audience

Narrative Writing Formal features: Follows a plot, Captivating, telling a story, cre-
often five plot points: exposi- ating suspense
tion, rising action, climax, falling
action, resolution. From a cou-
ple of pages (short stories) to
book length.
Content: creative, following a
plot, fictional, character(s)
Language: specific point of view,
can use imagery, rhetorical devi-
ces, descriptive language

Descriptive Writing Formal features: detailed Illustrating, enabling the audi-

description, on dialogue. ence to imagine the scene,
Language: use of figurative lan- engaging;
guage, imagery, and other rhet-
orical devices

Source: Wilde, L. (2022)

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 You also need to be aware of the way in which the intended audience, the context, and
purpose of your text shape how you write. It depends on these factors what kind of lan-
guage is appropriate, from word choice to paragraph structure. We will address how to tai-
lor your writing to your audience in more detail in the next chapter.

Writing Shorter Texts

You might think that the shorter your text is, the easier it is to write, but that is not neces-
sarily the case. When you only have 300-400 words available to bring across an idea, your
Concise Writing writing needs to be concise. This means that you should only include in your text what is
A concise text achieves absolutely necessary. Stick to the prompt and do not write more than what you need to.
maximum impact with a
minimum of text and Make each word count.
includes only what is nec-
essary. Efficiency means Short writing prompts
that every word counts.

In your AS-levels exam paper 2, you will be asked to write a short text in a specific style,
depending on the text type. The exact word limit will be given in the prompt. Make sure
you stick to the word limit! To help you do this, make a plan before you start writing, fol-
lowing the questions you were introduced to in the previous section.

Begin by noting down the type of text that you are required to write. Then take a few notes
on the conventions of this text type, just to remind yourself. You can later go back to your
plan and check whether your text fits the conventions or breaks with them.

Think about the audience. Who is going to read or listen to your text? This will influence
how you write.

Plan your content in two steps. (1) First, think about the minimum content requirements
given in the prompt. (2) Then think about how you will address these exactly. Be as precise
as possible. Being vague at this stage will make it easier to waffle when you get to writing,
leading to poor results. Note down some key words and the precise themes that you want
Creativity to address. You can be creative at this stage. In the next step, sort your ideas in the order
Creative texts demon- in which you want them to appear in your text. You can use this list as a guide when you
strate the vivid imagina-
tion and originality of the start writing.
author and are interesting
to read Think about the effect you want your text to have on your audience. This is partly depend-
ent on the text type, partly on the specific circumstances detailed in the prompt. Again,
avoid being vague. Finally, double-check the word limit and make sure you stick to it.

In the first part of the example prompt you were asked to draft a scripted speech.

EXERCISE
Write a plan for your written response to prompt (a), detailing text con-
ventions, form, structure, linguistic elements, content, and effect.

116
Table 3: Your Plan Could Look Something Like This

Your Plan

Type of text Scripted speech

Form and structure: 1. catch the audience’s atten-
tion, 2. support your claims with reason, 3. going
forward: inspiration / call for action
Linguistic choices: formal but engaging tone, rhet-
orical devices like anaphora and parallelism;
pathos (emotion), ethos (credibility), logos (rea-
son), kairos (timeliness)

Audience You can address your speech either at the govern-

ment (that is, the people who work at the town-
house where the protest is taking place), or at your
fellow protesters. Because the prompt specifies
that you need to include a statement on what you
want your government to do, it might make more
sense to choose the first.

Content At a minimum: how I feel about climate change;

what the government should do (from prompt)
More precisely: how I feel: scared of extreme
weather phenomena & angry that the government
is not doing enough to stop climate change; the
government should take the needs and concerns of
the youth seriously & call for action: plant 1000
trees in town for cleaner air and better temperature
regulation!

Effect Captivating your audience, communication your

feelings (emotive), motivating

Word count 400 words

Source: Wilde, L. (2022)

Now that you have a good overview of the requirements of the prompt and how you will
address them, it is time to structure your writing. Rather than just starting to write down
what comes to mind, make a list of the content you want to include in the order in which it
should appear in your text.

Most texts are divided into paragraphs. These are marked by leaving an extra space
between them, or by indenting the first line of each paragraph. You will devote one para-
graph to each theme or idea. With a word limit of 400, you can plan, e.g., 5 to 7 paragraphs
of 60 to 80 words. What you include in each paragraph is entirely up to you. Here is one
example of how you could structure your speech at the climate protest.

• Paragraph 1. In the first paragraph, you want to captivate your audience. Perhaps you
want to introduce a timely hook, maybe a climate report or the recent heat wave, some-
thing that your audience cares about and ensures they will continue to listen to you (or
keep reading).
• Paragraph 2. In the second paragraph, you could describe how you feel about this cur-
rent event: scared, angry, sad? What made you stand up on stage today?

117
 • Paragraph 3. Now that people are listening and know what your motivation or role is,
tell them your core idea: the problem. What is currently going wrong?
• Paragraph 4. Do you have a solution to the problem? Or a suggestion? How about
planting 1000 trees in your city!
• Paragraph 5. You want to motivate your audience: How can they help?

The standard paragraph

Not only does a text have an overall structure, split into paragraphs; each paragraph fol-
lows an internal structure, too. The standard paragraph is the classic way of organizing
your writing. When you write an essay using standard paragraphs, each paragraph has
exactly one “job.” A paragraph can, for example, express an idea, explain a concept, state
an argument, express an objection, or evaluate the strength of one argument over
another. You do not want to evaluate an argument in the same paragraph in which you
explain it!

The standard paragraph follows its own structure. It begins with a simple sentence that
Topic Sentence states the topic, task, or theme of the paragraph. This is called the topic sentence. It
The first sentence of a should make it clear to the reader what the paragraph is going to be about. It then goes on
standard paragraph that
states the core idea of the to elaborate on this topic, that is, it carries out its task. Finally, it can end with a sentence
paragraph or two that sum up the content of the paragraph and perhaps indicate how it connects
with the following paragraph. This so-called “tail” is optional. Knowing the structure of the
standard paragraph, we can now turn to evaluating its advantages.

EXERCISE
Did you notice? The previous paragraph is a good example of a standard
paragraph. Underline the topic sentence, the main part of the para-
graph, and the tail in different colors. What is the paragraph’s “job”?

The standard paragraph is particularly well suited for longer pieces of writing but can be
employed in shorter texts, too. Its clear structure helps your reader know right away what
the paragraph is going to be about. It also makes writing easier, as it helps you structure
your work. If each paragraph carries out just one task, it is much easier to keep an over-
view of the overall structure of your text. Having a good overview, in turn, helps you create
a coherent piece of writing. Moreover, if you need to change the structure of your text, you
can easily move paragraphs around. All you will need to do is reformulate the “tail” to
accommodate the changes. We will talk about structuring longer pieces of writing in the
next section.

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Responding to a text

Sometimes a prompt will ask you to respond to a text, either by writing in the same style
as another text, or in a different style but re-using the content or material of the original
text.

EXAMPLE PROMPT SECTION A: SHORTER WRITING AND REFLECTIVE

COMMENTARY (LETTER)
Your friend sends you an email with a link to a book review and a raised
fist emoji. You disagree with the tactics the book seems to advocate and
are afraid your friend is going to follow its advice. You decide to write an
email to convince them not to engage in violent protest.

a) Write an email to your friend, using no more than 400 words. In your
writing, give reasons to support your opinion. [15]
b) Write a reflective commentary on your text, explaining how your lin-
guistic choices contribute to fulfilling the task set. [10]

119
 Figure 17: How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on
Fire by Andreas Malm

Source: Verso Books (2022)

Why resisting climate change means combatting the fossil fuel industry
The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet
despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and
peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry,
rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With the stakes
so high, why haven’t we moved beyond peaceful protest? In this lyrical mani-
festo, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines)
Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to esca-
late its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force

120
 fossil fuel extraction to stop—with our actions, with our bodies, and by
defusing and destroying its tools. We need, in short, to start blowing up some
oil pipelines. Offering a counter-history of how mass popular change has
occurred, from the democratic revolutions overthrowing dictators to the
movement against apartheid and for women’s suffrage, Malm argues that
the strategic acceptance of property destruction and violence has been the
only route for revolutionary change. In a braided narrative that moves from
the forests of Germany and the streets of London to the deserts of Iraq, Malm
offers us an incisive discussion of the politics and ethics of pacifism and vio-
lence, democracy and social change, strategy and tactics, and a movement
compelled by both the heart and the mind. Here is how we fight in a world
on fire.
(Verso Books, 2022)

You can follow the same strategy as above to plan the letter to your friend. First, you need
to think about the conventions of the text type, the formal and structural features you are
going to use. Although this is an email, it has similar conventions as an informal letter. You
need to use an address and end with a greeting. Because it is an email, you also want to
add a subject line.

Take some notes on the content of the text you are responding to, and the things you want
to bring across. What does the text claim? What are your reasons for disagreeing with the
ideas in the review? Do you have reasons to argue for peaceful protest instead? How are
you going to convince your friend that you are right?

Then, think about how you are going to tailor your language to your audience, which, in
this case, is your friend. You want to strike just the right tone to convince them that a
peaceful protest is better than using violence. You do not want to sound patronizing, nor
make them angry for thinking you are naïve. Can you think of linguistic elements that can
aid you in bringing across your point elegantly but with emphasis? Repetitions of words
(anaphoras) or structural features of your text (parallelisms), as well as the rule of three
can be subtle but efficient rhetorical devices. Perhaps a simile (a comparison with “like” or
“as”) or a metaphor can help you illustrate a point more vividly.

Take some notes on how you plan to make use of these devices. But don’t forget that the
overall tone of your letter should be informal: it is still your friend you are writing to, it
should not turn into a manifesto!

In the third chapter of this unit, we will look at the second part of the shorter writing
prompt: how to write a reflective commentary. But before we get there, let us take a look
at how to structure longer pieces of writing.

121
 Longer Pieces of Writing

Longer texts require slightly different planning. While you still want to keep the things in
mind that we looked at in the previous section (key idea, audience, form, structure, lin-
guistic elements and so on), there are additional considerations when it comes to longer
pieces of writing. Depending on the type of text you choose (or are asked) to write, differ-
ent strategies to structure your text can help you achieve specific effects. In the following,
we will look at three different approaches to structuring longer pieces of writing.

In Section B of Paper 2: Writing of your Cambridge Exam, you will usually be given the
choice between three writing prompts: imaginative writing, discursive writing and critical
writing, and asked to choose one of them.

DIGRESSION
Can you identify which of the prompts asks you to write an imaginative,
discursive or critical text, respectively?

EXAMPLE PROMPT SECTION B: EXTENDED WRITING

Answer one question

EITHER

Question 2

Your local newspaper is running a writing competition and you decide to

enter. Write a descriptive piece with the title The Day After the Rain
Came. In your writing, focus on sound, light and movement to help your
reader imagine the scene. Write between 600 and 900 words. [25]

Or

Question 3

In class, you have been discussing whether the use of social media has
negative effects on teenagers’ mental health. Write an article for your
school magazine. In your writing, discuss the advantages and disadvan-
tages of social media use for young people. Write between 600 and 900
words. [25]

Or

Question 4

122
 You have recently visited an exhibition at a museum. Write a review of
the exhibition, which will be published on a website called The Art Lov-
er’s Blog. Write between 600 and 900 words. [25]

Solution: 2 – imaginative, 3 – discursive, 4 – critical

Imaginative Writing

Imaginative writing is—arguably—the holy grail of text production. Done well it can sweep
the reader off and away into alternate realities or grant intimate insights into another (fic-
tional) person’s life. There is no single strategy to make creative writing successful. How-
ever, a lot of very popular stories follow a simple but effective five-point structure, descri-
bed as Freytag’s Pyramid, detailing the different phases of the narrative’s plot. Freytag
Gustav Freytag was a Ger-
man novelist who studied
According to Freytag, the most successful dramas follow these five phases. the structure of famous
dramas and plays and
identified a structure they
Figure 18: Diagram of Freytag’s Pyramid have in common, today
known as Freytag’s Pyra-
mid

Plot
The sequence of the main
events in a narrative

Source: Wilde, L. (2022)

The story begins with an exposition (or introduction) that sets the scene for the narrative.
Here, the setting, time or character(s) may be described, in more or less detail. Note that a
story can be made more interesting by withholding key information. You would not want
to give away too much information right at the beginning. This first phase is to contextual-
ize the narrative.

In the second phase, that of rising action, things begin to happen, and the events of the
story begin to unfold. Sometimes, the second phase begins very suddenly with an inciting
moment, the moment-that-changes-everything, like when Luke receives Princess Leia’s Inciting Moment
message (Star Wars), Alice falls through the rabbit hole (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), The moment in which the
character is thrown into
or Harry is being told he is a wizard (Harry Potter). Over the course of the rising action the narrative
phase, the reader gets drawn into the narrative and their interest in the story (if done well)
increases. Tension is built up, and techniques can be used create suspense. You can hint

123
 at events that are yet to happen but not give away all the relevant information, which is
Suspense
The feeling of excitement, called “foreshadowing.” You can hook your readers by playing into their expectations—
anticipation, or anxiety at and then perhaps disappointing them, leaving them to wonder what will happen next
what will happen next (Master Class, 2022).

Climax As things unfold, the story nears its climax. This is the most exciting part of the narrative,
The highest point of ten- the pinnacle of tension, the highest part of the pyramid. If there is a cliffhanger (when a
sion in the narrative,
sometimes the turning story is divided up in two parts), this is where it will be the most effective. The climax can
point also be a turning point.

The climax is followed by the phase of falling action, in which the effects of the events that
happened during the climax play out. It can be a return to how things were before the
inciting moment, or a description of the way in which the events between then and then
climax have changed the character and their world.

Resolution Finally, the story ends with a resolution, also sometimes called “denouement.” All loose
This is the final phase of a ends are tied up, perhaps a conclusion is drawn. Open-ended stories abstain from doing
narrative in which all con-
flicts are resolved and the this and leave the ending (or continuation) of the story to the reader’s imagination
story ends (Glatch, 2020).

Not every piece of creative writing follows a plot like this. In longer pieces, we often
encounter multiple parallel narratives, each following their own structure, and some are
Descriptive writing more convoluted than others. Some pieces of descriptive writing might not rely as heav-
A text form that creates ily on plot development. Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” published in
vivid images in the read-
er’s mind through 1927, is an example of a story in which nothing much happens except for a conversation
detailed descriptions with between a woman and a man waiting for a train. There is no built up of tension, or a par-
many sensory details ticular climax to the story; the narrative lives off the vivid description of the story’s setting
and the couple’s dialogue (Hemingway, 2003).

Discursive Writing

Another common form of longer writing pieces is discursive writing, in which arguments
for and against a certain position are introduced and weighed up against each other. One
of the oldest examples we have of this are Plato’s Socratic Dialogues, from around 360 BCE
(Plato, 2017), in which the character Socrates, written by the Ancient Greek philosopher
Plato, engages in dialogues with his fellow men with the aim of getting to the bottom of a
problem, of finding out the truth. Usually, Socrates realizes that there is a concept or idea
he does not fully understand. He then seeks out the smartest person on the topic and
questions them, drawing out their presuppositions and ideas about the topic. All the
while, he questions their arguments and proposes counterarguments, weighing up the
various positions against each other. The dialogue becomes a cooperative endeavor to
uncover the true meaning of the concept, much like a debate. The dialogues thus follow a
Dialectic dialectical structure.
A logical argument
between two (or more)
individuals or parties with In discursive writing, just like in the Socratic Dialogues, arguments and their counterargu-
different opinions on a ments are juxtaposed to inspire the reader to use their critical thinking skills. Many aca-
topic, with the aim of
demic articles are written in this style. A discursive writing piece usually begins with an
finding out the truth
introduction, outlining the question or issue at hand. The introduction can already give
away the final answer. Here is an example of an introductory paragraph:

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 In this article, I will argue that social media can have some negative effects on teenagers’ mental Juxtaposition
health, but that the overall benefit of staying connected with your peers outweighs the risks of Placing two things side by
side to compare and con-
social media use. I will do so by first elaborating on the possible negative effects of social media. trast them
Then, I will emphasize the positive aspects of social media use. Finally, I will suggest ways in which
we can mitigate the risks that social media use poses to teenager’s mental health, leading to my
evaluation that the positive aspects can outweigh the risks.

The main part of the discursive text introduces the argument for or against the central
claim. Then, it proposes a counterargument, which highlights the shortcomings or weak-
nesses of the arguments. Finally, it evaluates which of the arguments is stronger, usually Evaluation
by pointing out whether the counterargument is more convincing than the argument. It The assessment and
judgement of the merits
can do so by emphasizing shortcomings of the counterargument, or by weighing the posi- and downsides of an
tive aspects of the counterarguments against the positive aspects of the argument and argument or position
giving reasons for why the counterargument is stronger or weaker than the argument.

EXERCISE
Identify the central claim in the introduction above. Then formulate the
argument and the counterargument in line with the paragraph.

Solution:

• Central claim: social media has negative effects on teenager’s mental health.
• Argument: This was not made explicit in the introduction, so you can be creative here.
Perhaps spending time on their phone rather than with their peers makes young people
feel lonely? Or seeing the shiny side of other people’s lives without witnessing their
struggles and problems leads to feelings of insecurity? Just pick one and explain it in
detail, rather than trying to take everything into account.
• Counterargument: Social media enables teenagers to stay connected with their peers.

The conclusion of the discursive text only summarizes the content and highlights the out-
come of your evaluation. Importantly, it does not introduce any new ideas.

Critical Writing

Critical writing follows a similar structure. It also has an introduction, a main part with an
evaluative section, and a conclusion. In contrast to discursive writing, its aim is to convey
your well-informed stance on a topic. Reviews are a common type of critical writing. Review
These can be on books, movies, exhibitions, and more. A critical appraisal or for-
mal assessment of a
book, movie, exhibition
The introduction gives the reader all the information they need about the piece you are or similar.
reviewing. To stick to the example prompt: which museum did you go to? What was the
name of the exhibition? How long is the exhibition on (give the exact dates).

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 The aim of the review is to give the reader an idea of what they can expect were they to go
visit it themselves, and to make an informed decision whether they want to go or not. In
Exposition the main part, you should begin with an exposition, in which you describe and explain the
A comprehensive, value key ideas and issues of the piece you are reviewing. In the case of an exhibition, you
neutral description and
explanation of an idea or should say whether it is a solo exhibition or a group show, who the artist(s) is/are, what
theory kinds of artworks are on show, how big the exhibition is (and perhaps how much time it
takes to see it all), etc.

Once you have given a good description of the exhibition (or movie, play, book …), you
can turn to your evaluation of it. In this part, you point out the things that were done par-
ticularly well and highlight any shortcomings. Given the qualities and shortcomings of the
exhibition, you then provide the reader with your well-informed opinion of the exhibition.

The conclusion can be very brief; you don’t need to repeat much of the content. Impor-
tantly, a piece of critical writing does not need to offer an objectively true conclusion, like
“this exhibition is good.”You can simply end with your recommendation. Do you think the
exhibition is worth seeing? Perhaps you would not recommend it to everyone, but those
who enjoy concept art will certainly not want to miss out! Socrates might not be satisfied
with it, but your readers will!

5.2 Tailoring Your Text to Type and

Audience
Imagine calling your best friend and telling them about an experience you had earlier that
day. After you hang up, you send a postcard to your grandparents and tell them the same
story. The next day, your teacher asks you to write a vivid description of an experience you
recently had, and you decide to write about the incident that you described to your friend
and your grandparents the other day. It is very likely that, without giving it much thought,
you adapt your language to the different text styles and audiences. You choose a different
tone, use words and phrases with one person you would not use with the others, and the
form and structure of your texts will differ, too. It would not be appropriate to you use the
same language in each context.

In this section, we will look in detail at the different choices we can make to tailor our texts
to its specific type and audience. The kinds of words you choose to use in your text create
the tone of your writing and can influence how formal (or informal) it sounds. They can
help guide a reader through your text more easily, highlight some statements over others
Hierarchy and clarify their hierarchy.
A hierarchy is a ranking
system that establishes
the order and importance Clarity
of its elements as being
more or less than or equal
to each other
Across text types and irrespective of your audience, the one thing you should always strive
for in your writing is clarity. You write in order to bring across an idea, communicate a
thought or to tell a story. The clearer your writing, the easier it is for your audience to fol-
low you. When your text leaves open multiple interpretations, the reader needs to put in

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the work to figure out which of them is the one that you intended. This kind of ambiguity Ambiguity
makes it difficult to follow the text. Of course, clarity in imaginative writing can look very Ambiguity leaves open
multiple interpretations
different to clarity in a discursive text. In imaginative writing, you might even want your of a phrase, sentence, or
reader to be a little bit confused and lost in the narrative. Being clear, in this case, means text.
being able to use your words in a way that lets you manage exactly how much the reader
knows. What you want to avoid is unintentional ambiguity that results from expressing
yourself in an imprecise way.

Accuracy and precision

In discursive and critical writing, it is even more important to write clearly. Furthermore,
you want your writing to be accurate (that is, correct) and as close to the truth as possible, Accuracy
in other words, precise. If your ideas are both accurate and expressed in a precise manner, This refers to how correct
a statement is.
you will have a persuasive piece of writing that is easy to follow.

Figure 19: Accuracy and Precision

Source: Atencio Moscote (2016, CC)

A: accurate and precise

B: precise but inaccurate

C: accurate but imprecise

D: neither accurate nor precise

EXERCISE
Write down four statements about what you had for breakfast today,
corresponding to A-D.

Solution:

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 • A: I ate a bowl of porridge with raisins, almonds and slices of banana and drank a cup of
coffee for breakfast.
• B: I drank a bowl of porridge with raisins, almonds and slices of banana and ate a cup of
coffee for breakfast.
• C: I ate and drank something warm for breakfast.
• D: I ate and drank something cold for breakfast.

Sentence length

To further increase the clarity of your text, pay attention to the length of your sentences.
The longer and more convoluted a sentence becomes, the harder it is to follow. Therefore,
wherever possible, try to keep your sentences short. As a rule of thumb, convey no more
than one idea per sentence.

You can use a semicolon (;) to join independent clauses that are thematically connected
though a conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet) and whose relationship remains clear
even if you were to take the conjunction away. Take this sentence for example:

Expressing ideas accurately and clearly is very important for accuracy and clarity make a text eas-
ier to follow.

The semicolon can split the two independent phrases, making it easier to read:

Expressing ideas accurately and clearly is very important; (for) accuracy and clarity make a text
easier to follow.

Notice how both clauses can function independently as grammatical sentences:

Expressing ideas accurately and clearly is very important. Accuracy and clarity make a text easier
to follow.

Even without the use of the conjunction their relationship remains clear. The semicolon
simply adds flow while emphasizing that the two sentences are thematically related.

Jargon

Jargon is the technical language employed by a group of experts or professionals in a

field. Using jargon flags that the author belongs to this group of experts, makes them
sound well informed, and demonstrates that they are educated in the field. Those who
Terminology have not engaged with the field in depth might not understand the technical terminology
Terminology is the collec- of that group. When you use jargon, you should always think about whether your audience
tion of the specialized
terms or phrases used in a is familiar with the terminology. If you are unsure, you should give a brief explanation of
specific field. the term’s meaning when you use it for the first time in your text. When writing assign-
ments, briefly explaining the terminology also serves to demonstrate your own under-
standing of it to your examiner. Importantly, before you use technical terms in your writ-
ing, make sure that you fully understand them and know how to use them correctly. Using
a dictionary can help you with this.

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Discourse Markers and Connectives

Discourse markers and connectives, as their names betray, connect the phrases and sen-
tences of a text in a meaningful way and mark their function and hierarchical structure.
They add fluency and cohesion to a text and make it easy for your reader to follow your
train of thought or the structure of your argument.

“So,” “to begin with,” and “for a start” are examples of discourse markers that mark the
beginning of a new part of the text.

To begin with, I will explain the difference between accuracy and precision.

“Moreover,” “furthermore,” “also,” and “besides” are connectives that can be used to mark
an additional point or idea that is thematically related to the preceding utterance.

Moreover, I would like to introduce you to the concept of “ambiguity.”

The connectives “likewise,” “similarly,” and “like” can be used to compare statements,
whereas “however,” “nevertheless,” “whereas,” “conversely,” “in contrast,” and “while”
indicate that the following statement contrasts with the previous one.

These are important concepts. Therefore, you should pay close attention. However, do not worry, as
they are easy enough to understand.

“Therefore,” “hence,” and “in conclusion” mark a conclusion that can be drawn from what
has been said before.

Some connectives are spread out across multiple sentences and mark their relationship,
like “on the one hand … on the other hand …,” “if … then …,” “first … second … third …”
and so on.

If you pay close attention to the movement of the stars, (then) you will be able to see the future.

Note that the word “then,” marking the result or implication of what was said in the “if”-
clause, is often omitted.

“In other words,” “what I mean is,” “that is” (also “i.e.,” which is an abbreviation of the
Latin “id est,”meaning “that is”) are connectives that can be used to introduce a sentence
that clarifies the previous statement. “To illustrate this” and “for example,” also abbrevi-
ated as “e.g.” (standing for the Latin “exempli gratia,”meaning “for the sake of example”)
can be used to introduce an example.

Using these discourse markers and connectives will make your text sound more formal.
Other discourse makers can have the opposite effect, like “well,” “alright,” “anyway,” “you
know,” “right,” “okay,” and so on. They are more common in spoken language. When used
in fictional dialogues, they can make the utterances sound closer to a real-life conversa-
tion (IELTS, 2022; Cambridge Dictionary, 2022).

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 • “You know, you should use more connectives in your writing.”
• “Alright, I will do that.”
• “Anyway, don’t stress about it.”

Rhetorical Devices

Using linguistic elements can make your writing more engaging, effective, and convincing.
Rhetorical devices are particularly useful in discursive writing, but they can also add
emphasis to your statements when writing fictional or critical work.

Figurative language

Using figurative language, like metaphors, similes or hyperboles, can illustrate your ideas
and help express emotions. While they are not—strictly speaking—accurate expressions
and should therefore not be taken literally, they can add a layer of meaning to your writing
and make it more impactful. When Martin Luther King spoke of the “the chains of discrimi-
nation” (King, 2022), he was not referring to actual chains. He used the words as a meta-
phor to create a powerful image in the minds of his listeners, describing to them what it
feels like to be discriminated against.

Rhetorical questions

A popular device often used in speeches is the rhetorical question. Although they look and
sound like questions, the speaker does not expect to receive an answer. Rather, rhetorical
questions are asked to bring across a point, like “how cool is that?” or “when will this
end?.”Because they sound like questions, the audience feels directly addressed and pays
attention to what is being said, but due to how they are phrased, it is clear that no
response is expected.

Alliteration

An easy to spot rhetorical device is alliteration, in which a sound is skillfully repeated to

create emphasis, rhythm or musicality. Unsurprisingly, it is a popular tool in rap music:

Ten o'clock Tuesday, Tahoe traveling through traffic /

Two thieving teenagers, tailgating, talking tragic /
Tough talk turned to tragedy, two teflons thrown /
They trying to take the TVs, the touch-tone telephone
(Papoose, 2006)

Not every word in a phrase needs to feature the same sound to make for an alliteration. A
single repetition is enough, like “talking tragic” or “tough talk.” Depending on the sound
that is repeated, alliterations can give the text a certain mood: the repetition of the hard
consonant ‘t’ creates a brittle, tough sound, in this case reflecting the content of the rap’s
stanza. Repetitions of ‘w’ or ‘z’ sounds have a quieter, calming tone. Note that “thieving
teenagers” is not an alliteration, as the ‘th’ and ‘t’ are pronounced differently.

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Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia are musical devices that contribute to the sound of a text and are often
rhythmic, too. They are word creations that imitate the sound of the thing they describe,
like “buzz,” “pitter-patter,” “gurgle,” “mumble,” or “cuckoo.”

Rhetorical devices such as these can make a text more engaging and persuasive and
emphasize certain parts of the text over others. They are popular tools, especially in dis-
cursive writing.

Evaluative Lexis

Critical writing, as we have seen above, involves an evaluation of arguments and aims to
be persuasive. Some linguistic elements can help you make your critical writing more con-
vincing. Using descriptors such as “convincing,” “compelling,” “clear,” “(in)sufficient,”
“problematic,” “false” and so on, or comparatives like “better” or “worse,” “stronger,” or
“weaker” can make it really clear how you think about an issue.

• “While the argument for lowering the legal drinking age to 16 is somewhat convincing,
the counterargument has proven to be much stronger.”
• “Given the criteria outlined earlier, using lithium-ion batteries is clearly the better
option.”
• “The effects of fracking on the environment are highly problematic, as I have demon-
strated above.”

Make sure that your evaluation is firmly grounded in the facts and arguments that you
described in the exposition of your text and refer to them when you write your evaluation.

Imagery

Imagery is a great tool to make written work come to live Particularly imaginative writing
can benefit from detailed descriptions of light, sounds, smells, tastes and the ways objects
feel to the touch of the character(s). They can create a sense of “being in the narrative,”
making it more persuasive, vivid, and touching. Imagery does not have to stick to the
superficial or physical descriptions of things but becomes even more effective when it
captures the character’s experience, like in this excerpt from Marcel Proust’s In Search of
Lost Time:

She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as
though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically,
dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a
spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid
mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped, intent
upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my
senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.
(Proust, 1992, p. 60)

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 Proust (in translation by Moncrieff and Kilmatrin) describes both the physical shape of the
madeleines (“squat,” “plump,” “moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell”) and the
sensation of eating them mixed with tea (“the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs”), but
most striking is his description of the experience of eating them, the “exquisite pleasure”
that invades his “senses.”

Imagery does not have to be restricted to literal descriptions but can make use of figura-
tive language, too:

Few believe we’re in the middle of the end /

because ruin can happen as slowly as plaque /
blocking arteries, and only later feels as true /
as your hand resting on my hip, both of us quiet as /
roses waiting for the bees to arrive.
(Danho, 2017)

The last phrase (“quiet as roses waiting for bees to arrive”) is both a simile (comparing the
characters to roses in their quietness, using “as”) and an auditory imagery; it evokes the
absoluteness of their silence and makes it possible to imagine the perfect absence of any
noise in that moment. An important characteristic of imagery is that it evokes in the
reader a sense of being able to experience what the character is experiencing, with either
or all of their senses.

5.3 Evaluating Your Writing

Once you have written your text, it is time for you to evaluate the quality of your writing. In
the second part of the Short Writing prompt, you will usually be asked to write a reflective
commentary on your text. In the following, you will learn what to include in your commen-
tary. We will show you how to reference correctly, using direct or indirect quotations, and
how to check the quality of your work once you are done.

Writing a Reflective Commentary

When you are asked to write a reflective commentary on your text, you need to explain how
your linguistic choices contribute to fulfilling the set task. You may also be asked to com-
pare the style and linguistic elements of your own writing with those of the text you have
been given. You proceed as you would with analyzing any text, only in the latter case, you
Compare and Contrast compare and contrast the textual features of two different texts, your own and the one
A prompt that asks you to given in the prompt.
highlight both similarities
and differences of two
pieces of writing You already know the text very well (after all, you wrote it yourself), so you won’t need to
spend much time on gaining an overview. It might be still useful to note down the key idea
or purpose of the text, just so you don’t lose sight of it. Next, take some notes on the form
and structure of your writing. How does it align with the conventions of the genre? Who is
your audience, and how do you address them? Then, highlight all the linguistic ele-
mentsyou used to create an effective, engaging or convincing text. Did you use any rhetori-

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cal devices? Which effect do they have? Finally, write an evaluation, detailing why you
think your linguistic choices contributed to successfully fulfilling the set task. You can
draw on the notes you initially took when planning to write your response to the first
prompt—another good reason to take them in the first place! Finally, if you notice any
shortcomings, you can suggest how you would improve your text.

The purpose of a reflective commentary is to demonstrate that you wrote your text follow-
ing the conventions of the text type and tailored it to your audience. You need to show
that you did not just do so intuitively, but reflectively, too. This requires knowledge of Reflection
word classes, vocabulary, figurative language, rhetorical devices, mood, tense, narrative The use of reason and
knowledge to reach an
perspective, word choice and sentence structure, paragraph- and text-level structure, for- insight
mality/informality of tone, and so on.

Evidence

The most effective way of demonstrating your reflective understanding of the textual fea-
tures is by giving a clear description of them in combination with quotations from your Quotation
text. You want to make it as easy as possible for your reader to follow your train of A word or phrase taken
from another text and
thoughts. As a rule of thumb, you should only quote those words and phrases that you clearly marked as such
directly address, not entire sections of your (or someone else’s) text. The quotations using quotation marks
should be supportive of what you write in your commentary, which means that the text (“…”)

itself should still make sense were you to take them out.

Using quotations and evidence is not only a useful strategy in writing reflective commen-
taries of your own work, but just as important in many other text forms, especially in dis-
cursive and critical writing. Drawing on and directly referring to other writers’ work will
make your own writing more convincing. Whenever you discuss someone else’s ideas, it is
important to credit them. Whether you indirectly refer to their ideas or directly quote their
words, you must make it absolutely clear that they are not your own. If you fail to do so,
you run the risk of plagiarizing, which is a serious offence and invalidates your own work.

Indirect quotations

This is the most common form of drawing on another writer’s text. Simply put, you refor-
mulate their ideas in your own words. You can introduce a quotation using a phase like
“according to,” “following,” or “the author argues/posits/writes that,” followed by a
description of their idea or argument. At the end of the sentence, you add a reference, Reference
typically consisting of the name of the author and the name or date of the text you are Information about the
source of a quotation,
referring to. such as the author’s
name and the date of
Dr. Purr argues that all cats love milk (Purr, 1983, p. 176) publication, indicated in
brackets at the end of the
quote
Direct quotations

Direct quotations, on the other hand, use the exact words the author uses in their work.
They must be marked clearly with quotation marks (“…”), followed, again, by the refer-
ence. You can use the same phrases as above to mark the direct quotation.

133
 Dr. Purr argues: “cats simply adore milk, each and every one of them” (Purr, 1983, p. 176).

Direct quotations should be used sparingly. As a rule of thumb, there are only two reasons
to use a direct quotation rather than an indirect one.

1. You refer directly to how the author phrased their idea or argument. It is important
which words they used to convey their idea, so you want to repeat them in your text.
However, you only quote as many words as is strictly necessary to make your point.
Do not quote entire passages, unless:
2. Reformulating the words of from the original text would alter their meaning. This is
more common in philosophical texts, where small changes to the formulation of an
idea can change their meaning.

Once you have reproduced an author’s idea, in your own words or using a direct quota-
tion, you need to integrate them into your text. It is important to not just let them stand
there without comment. Why is the idea relevant to your text? Does it illustrate a point you
are making? Or do you want to offer a counterargument? In this way, your text, including
the quotation, can form a cohesive whole.

When you write your reflective commentary, you can use direct quotations of words and
phrases you used in your text to achieve a specific effect. Merely listing them is, however,
not enough. You need to explain how your linguistic choices contributed to fulfilling the
task set out in the prompt. The quotations are merely supportive of your reflections on
your linguistic choices.

Checking the Quality of Your Writing

Once you have written a text, you want to make sure that it really is the best it can be.
Here, we will introduce you to a few techniques that can help you polish your work and
really make it shine.

Read your text out loud

Find a quiet spot and read out loud what you have just put down on the page. You can
read to yourself, or you can work together with a friend and read your texts to each other.
You will notice that a well-written text has a certain flow and is easy to follow. If you stum-
ble over complicated expressions, lose track of the ideas your sentences convey, or need
to back-track to make sense of them, consider how you can re-write your text to make it
easier to understand. If you cannot read your text out loud, at least read it back to yourself
in your head and try to imagine what it would sound like.

Take a break

We do not always have the luxury of time, but for longer writing tasks it is worth schedul-
ing at least a day in which you don’t look at your text at all. Do something else! Take a
break, or work on a different assignment. When you come back to your text, you will look
at it with fresh eyes. It is almost as if someone else wrote it! Do you still find it easy to
follow, or can you improve the clarity and flow of your writing? Of course, you would not

134
be able to do this in an exam. But you can still take a break from one text by working on
the next prompt, and then come back to edit the first prompt once you have written the
response to that. After you have completed your corrections, you can return to the second
prompt and do the same.

Change the font

This might sound silly, but it is a useful trick to deal with so-called “text-blindness” when
working on a computer. When you work on a text for a long time and you already know it
inside out, it is sometimes really difficult to spot mistakes or to think of ways to formulate
your writing more clearly. Changing the font, e.g., from Calibri to Times New Roman,
forces you to see your text ‘in a new light’ and to spot things that can still be improved.

SUMMARY
This unit introduced you to the skills and techniques you need to pro-
duce a wide variety of textual forms. In the first section, you encountered
a range of textual forms and their conventions and desired effects. We
looked at how to develop a plan and structure for both shorter and lon-
ger writing prompts that can be adapted to the respective text type.
Whether you write imaginatively, discursively, or critically, thinking
about and mapping out how you are going to approach your text will
help you meet the requirements of the prompt. Deciding on the struc-
ture and the linguistic features you are going to use will help you adapt
your writing style not only the text type, but also to the audience.

The second section emphasized the importance of clarity. We intro-

duced you to a range of discourse markers, rhetorical devices and eval-
uative lexis that can help you further tailor your writing to its purpose
and audience. Using imagery in your imaginative writing can make a text
more engaging and enable the reader to imagine the narrative with all
their senses. The dialectical structure of a debate can make it easy for
your reader to follow your discursive text. Finally, your critical texts will
benefit from offering a clear exposition and evidence to support your
evaluation. Knowing the different text conventions and linguistic ele-
ments typical of a certain text type will help you create convincing, effec-
tive, and engaging pieces of writing.

In the third section, we discussed how to write a reflective commentary

to demonstrate that you have the skills and knowledge to write effec-
tively, creatively, accurately and appropriately, for a range of audiences
and purposes. We also showed you how to use evidence and quotations

135
 in your texts and credit the authors of the texts on which you draw.
Finally, the chapter provided you with some useful tips that can help
you proofread your own work to make it shine.

136
BACKMATTER
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 LIST OF TABLES AND
FIGURES
Figure 1: US Recruitment Poster by J. M. Flagg (1917) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Figure 2: Charity Appeal by UNICEF Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Figure 3: Christmas Appeal by NHS West Hertfordshire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Figure 4: Studebaker Ad (1955) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Figure 5: Chevrolet Ad from 1972 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Figure 6: Nike Ad featuring Colin Kaepernick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Figure 7: Starbucks Ad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Figure 8: Excerpt from Kurt Cobain's Journals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Figure 9: News Article from China Daily . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Figure 10: Campbell Soup Advertisement, 1930s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Figure 11: Inverted Pyramid Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Figure 12: Richard’s Bicycle Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Figure 13: Illustration from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Figure 14: How to Take a Screenshot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Figure 15: Exercise: Text Type “Guiding Attention” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Figure 16: The Agony Aunt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Figure 17: How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire by Andreas
Malm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Figure 18: Diagram of Freytag’s Pyramid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

Figure 19: Accuracy and Precision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

143
 Table 1: Text Types and their Formal Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Table 2: Text Types and their Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Table 3: Your Plan Could Look Something Like This . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

144
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