Writing this made me hungry

We were given an extract from our textbook called "Chocolat" to analyse in class.

Though this text is presented to the reader as a written piece of prose, there are many features which correlate strongly with a spoken mode of English. There is a lack of subordination and thus syntactical sophistication. Most clauses are linked via coordinating conjunctions such as “and”. In several instances, where a complex sentence could potentially be formed by utilising a subordinating conjunction, the reader has instead punctuated with a full stop; thus forming smaller simple sentences instead. For example; “straining to hear any signs of activity from the floor above. There are none”. This style is distinctive of spoken language, where discourse is not pre-mediated, lacks layers of editorial intervention and is often spontaneous. This prose has a lessened formality which can be attributed to its flippant subject matter, large nominal and adverbial groups, and to the fact that this text appears to be an individual's inner monologue (though it later becomes a semi-dialogue). From this perspective, it is a matter of logic; even for the supremely prescriptive, it would be superfluously unnecessary to maintain a frozen degree of formality in one's own mind.

The syntactical parallelism of the utterances which constitute lines 13, 17 and 19 and their unwavering repetitiveness renders the “Try me, test me, taste me” as a quasi-mantra underlying the prose like a beat. The speaker even describes it as a “ song”. Informal language is often ameliorated to be described as a 'people's poetry'. This euphemism is inspired by the creative linguistic choices people often make particularly in spoken language such as this text. The prose is laden with flamboyant and highly imaginative figurative language and adverbial and nominal groups. These elements enable the text to omit a poetic vibe.

The image in the bottle right hand corner coupled with the text provides an element of realism. The reader becomes so entangled in the speaker's adjective-rich, euphemistic and emotive language that it is almost humorous to realise that they have been describing a chocolate cake as though it was the cream-laden reincarnation of some deity.

The syntactical divergence of lines 13, 17 and 19 render them more striking and outspoken to the audience. The recurrence of these 3 imperative clauses functions to further assert their importance within the text and their ongoing affect on the individual, both in their structure and particular verb use. Generally speaking, due to the omission of the singular (or plural) 2^nd person pronoun and subsequent present verb conjugation; imperative sentences connote a greater sense of urgency than declaratives or exclamatives as they resemble a command or instruction. It is apparent that these clauses personify the cake as an object capable of persuasion, at least in the mind of the individual. This notion is obviously an element of fiction incorporated into the next which subsequently connotes a sense of playfulness to the overall text.

From lines 13 to 20, the prose resembles spoken conversation as there is some turn taking between the speaker and the persuasive voice, that we have assumed as belonging to the cake. Lines 13, 17 and 19 embody a fictional construct (a talking cake) born from a chocolate-lust driven mind and that is ultimately an element of the same internal monologue as the rest of the prose. Line 20 concludes the prose with a rhetorical question which cuts off the final syllable of line 19 (as indicated by the hyphen). The urgency and eagerness of the speaker as implied by the interruption in conjunction with their inability to perceive any consequences for their actions (“no one would be any the wiser”) encourages the reader to ascertain that at this point the speaker is on the precipice of succumbing to the cake's beckoning. This lingering notion of finality contributes to the coherence of the hybrid poetic/narrative nature of the text.