English Language (personal Article Comparision)

I chose to construct both of my pieces for entirely different reasons. My first, 'No rest for the wicked', was written purely because I enjoy both watching and reading Alan Bennett monologues therefore, I wished to emulate him. This is largely due to the fact that I enjoy how he uses the speaker's own subjective viewpoint in explaining their story, and conveying their imperfections, usually emphasised by the irony of the speaker's actions and consequences.

Secondly, for my non-literary piece, I chose to write a newspaper article emulating the unique style of Charlie Brooker who is a journalist for, 'The Guardian'. I decided to do this because, I not only appreciate the articles and world affairs that he discusses, but also in the way that he uses the English language so that he can deliver a message effectively.

Firstly, throughout my literary piece I included multiple post-modifiers that also belong to the lexical field of family and love such as, 'beautiful', 'merry' and 'loving' to really emphasise how important and perfect the speaker's life is. Moreover, the blend of asyndetic listing in, 'Religiously for 10 years I would.fit for a king' and the use of tripling in, 'loving wife, three beautiful children and a banquet fit for a king' fabricates an idyllic image for the audience as the asyndetic listing makes it seem like the list of what can be considered a 'perfect' family day could go on and on. The use of tripling also adds to this, mainly as it's juxtaposed with what can be considered a monotonous task as the adjective 'religiously' implies. However, the speaker is still very emotive towards each member of the family, which explains to the audience that he is extremely happy with his life.

In comparison, pre-modifiers are also included throughout my non-literary piece too. The use of adjectives that belong to the lexical field of danger and alcohol such as, 'serious', 'intoxicating' and 'frightening' really highlight the issue of drinking high amounts of alcohol within Britain. My audience will understand the Latinate lexis choice that has been used throughout and will appreciate the story that has been put forward. This is because, 'The Guardian' is a broadsheet newspaper and is considered to be a newspaper for professionals, and so by reading an article that is well written and includes elevated lexis they will be flattered as they can understand the article. What is more, to ensure that I show my audience that it isn't an article filled full of personal opinion like many of the red top newspapers, like 'The Guardian' I chose to include statistical evidence such as, '221', '£100 billion' and '35-45' alongside this I included expert's reports or pervious interviews from people and institutions such as, 'The NHS', 'Dr Jacob Sereno' and 'Dr Jackie Hertz.' By including these experts I have given my article an element of reliability as the experts included have an air of authority and this will give the audience confidence in what has been written in the article.

To make a link between both texts, the speaker in 'No rest for the wicked' is middle-class with a very respectable profession. The audience will gage that he is middle-class from Latinate lexis used such as, 'oncologist', 'bombarded' and 'leukaemia'. However, to ensure that my audience didn't find it boring I included idioms such as, 'bringing home the bacon', 'mega-bucks deal' and domestic goddess' so that it was widely appreciated and understood by as many people possible. However, to ensure that I reached my aim of writing in the style of Bennett, my character needed to unravel a story of circumstances that they wasn't aware was necessarily wrong, and I chose to do this in a quite sinister, yet amusing way. Firstly, the audience will quickly learn that his step-child had leukaemia as a child and it has recently come back. And although my character (Brian) wants to be an active father, he's always 'just too busy' with work and other work related events. I created my character to be selfish and needy, but not in an openly obvious way - to him at least. Anne, his wife constantly tried to include Brian in family affairs, but he often dismissed them or felt like she was in the wrong, an example anecdote of this is, 'It was shortly after on a Wednesday.She understood.' Here I used irony in the way that Brian ignored the important call from Anne due to the fact that he was in the pub and it was 'rude' to answer. Moreover, he further dismissed the persistent calls due to the fact that he thought that Anne was going to explain how parents evening went.

Throughout my article, I constructed it to have a balanced argument. This is because I styled my writing my on that of my most read Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker. He too creates a merry war between opposing individuals that he uses too. The most memorable to be was that between Dr Hash and Dr Frey in an article explaining the dangers of alcohol. Similarly to that article, I chose to include plosive tripling, 'distressing', 'de-moralising' and 'disgraceful'. By doing this, it reflects the harshness of alcohol which in turn fabricates an image for the audience and makes them stop and think about the effects of alcohol. Similarly to my literary piece, by using adjectives that have an association to the lexical field of harm and danger, this adds to the intensity of the image that the noun phrase creates. What is more, by linking the noun phrase with a photograph, it acts as a visual stimulus which makes the creation of the image easier and the particular image used is very emotional as it pictures a young girl, passed out drunk at night on a public bench. This means that she is vulnerable to attack, assault and other crimes. Therefore, each of the previous has persuasive tendencies to encourage my audience to think about the amount of alcohol that one drinks. However, to ensure that my message is absorbed by as many of my audience as possible, I also used a graph to show visual information in an easy to read layout. This is because, my audience include busy professionals who don't have a lot of spare time on their hands, and therefore, by using a graph it's easily digestible for those individuals who are on the move. This idea I mimicked from Charlie Brooker, who uses the graphology technique frequently when speaking about medical or political issues. I believe that it helps by having a visual stimulus as it compresses a large amount of information into an easy to read data chart, therefore, everyone who reads the article will be able to understand the content easily.

Similarly, throughout my literary piece, I also chose to use tripling, 'she understood.' This repetitive phrase came directly after an excuse to why my Brian couldn't participate in a family activity and instead needing to work, examples include, 'a visit to the doctor', 'a family day out', and 'going to the hospital.' By including the dismissive phrase, it really highlights the selfish nature of Brian to the audience, therefore, each time he uses it, the more self-centred and arrogant he appears to be to the audience, ironically without himself actually realising it. This clever use of irony can be seen throughout Alan Bennett's '

Whilst reading Brooker's articles, I noticed that he uses largely polysyllabic lexis, so I incorporated this throughout my article too, examples include, 'overstretched', 'alarming' and 'correlations'. This lexical choice has been used to reflect my audience's intellectual levels. This is because, if I only used monosyllabic lexis, my vocabulary choice would be limited to simple lexis, which is found in red top newspapers, that are read by the usually not very well educated, working-class. But, as my newspaper is a broadsheet, which is aimed towards the professional, well-educated middle-class, I needed to use Latinate lexis to flatter my audience, as they will feel intelligent if they can read and understand my column.