This text is an example of the social purposes of language
This
text uses a sarcastic and ironic tone to suggest that despite what
the title “ten reasons against gay marriage” and first clause of
each "reason" infers,the most popular arguments against gay
marriage are hypocritical and without substance.
The
author this tone to highlight the hypocrisies within American (though
it can easily be extrapolated to the majority of the word) society
regarding the contentious issue of gay marriage. The comedic tone
achieved through the cynical nature of the language enables the
author to convey their opinion rhetorically without being explicitly
abrupt or rude in order to cater for those who are actually against
gay marriage. This cautiousness acts as both a politeness strategy
and a hedge so as to not actually directly insult anyone or their
beliefs, but rather present an alternative perspective in a way that
is humorous and intelligent to facilitate room for people to actually
reconsider their stance on the issue.
The
audience's ability to pick up on the author's inference is imperative
to the text achieving its actual function (rather than be taken
literally from the title). They have catered for this by italicising
certain clauses to draw the reader's attention to the required
places. For example : "That's why we as a society expressly
forbid single parents to raise children".
This text has a
functions to persuade the reader to purchase Australian goods and
services through informing them about how simple it is what the
consequent benefits are for both the Australian economy and the
consumer.
The title is a
rhetorical device in the form of an irregular interrogative clause.
In order to provide a short, concise and attention grabbing title,
the author has omitted something along the lines of “Why should
we all buy Australian Made products” and relies on the
audience's ability to understand that it is referring to goods and
services which are Australian made or owned. To compensate for
possible confusion, the “m” in “Made” has been capitalised.
This renders the fact that “Australian Made” is an an adverbial
group (“Australian” describes the place in which a product has
been “made) more explicit.
This
text systematically addresses the
question asked within the title. The graphological feature of a
larger capitalised heading followed subsequently by a smaller
declarative sub headings (Eg: It's good for you, It's good for
Australia”) functions to differentiate the topic markers from the
related information. This assists in coherence as it immediately
informs the reader of the subject and domain of the following text.
Each question functions as a subheading and these also facilitate
textual coherence as they clearly outline the specific features of
the following prose. Another similar cohesive device is the
structuring of the economical effects generated for every “1
million dollars of new or retained manufacturing business in
Australia”. A dot point format is employed to present the numerical
information and a clear and concise manner for the reader.
The
use of parenthesis allows the clarification of a previous statement
to optimise comprehension and facilitate textual coherence. This
occurs when the Australian Made / Grown is mentioned. The author not
only describes the logo “the green triangle with a golden kangaroo”
but provides an underlined hyper-link (which when clicked, presents
an image of the logo) and explains what it means. Another example of
parenthesis occurs in the explanation of what a consumer actually is.
The author takes the liberty of defining the term as “the people
and businesses that buy things every day”. This makes it easier for
the reader to identify themselves as a “consumer” and therefore
realise that they should be held accountable for their actions and
choices to buy Australian or international.
The
author consistently manipulates the information flow of the text to
grant focus to the benefits available to the consumer and how
convenient it is to purchase Australian goods. For example, in the
first paragraph, end focus is granted to the fact that the consumer
gets “great products and produce” and in the second paragraph
that “the supplier is just a phone call away”.
The
texts under each of the subheadings are each ended with a concluding
statement which reiterates the point made in the text and links back
to the framing idea of the benefits of Australian made products. The
first and last ending statements begin with conjunctions “so” and
“that means” which serve a dual function in transitioning from
old ideas to new ones and facilitating textual cohesion. The second
and third ending statements employ “it-constructions” where a
dummy subject using the pronoun “it” is placed in the position
that would normally be occupied by the subject noun phrase, thus
giving the information “to buy things that have been made right
here in Australia” and “to consciously purchase Australian”
more prominence.
The
register of the text is relatively casual. The author maintains a
conversationalist tone throughout the entirety of the text through
incorporating cohesive, transitional phrases such as “so” and
“that means” when linking ideas. They also lessen the social
distance between themselves and the reader through employing the
second person pronouns “you” and “yourself” when referring to
the reader. Utilising the collective pronoun “our” (in reference
to our farmers, fisherman etc.) and deictic pronouns “right here in
Australia” has a similar effect.
This is an analysis of Donald Rumsfeld's (in)famous speech. Ignore the line references, my piece was written based on a transcript, but I figure its easier to watch the video.
This
speech is a statement made to the press by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002.
At that time he was serving as the American secretary of defence. His
statement was intended to address the distinct absence of evidence to
substantiate President Bush's claims that the Iraqi government was in
possession of nuclear weapons which they planned on distributing to
various Iraqi terrorist groups. Despite that these allegations were
later proved false (as was the general opinion) it was Rumsfeld's
duty to convince the press (and by extension, the general public)
that the American government had sufficient evidence to justify their
invasion of Iraq, regardless of whether they did or not. In actual
fact Rumsfeld
was really discussing an "unknown known" which provided
faulty justification for the war
The
speech conforms relatively well to its formal, spoken mode. Whilst
the frequent repetition of the words “known” and “unknown”
(and their many combinations) renders the speech more difficult to
follow and ambiguous, (as the ideas are not presented very
explicitly) parenthesis is employed to combat this (lines 5 7 8 10)
by unpacking the concepts and facilitating comprehension.
The
speaker is evidently mindful that spoken language is generally harder
to make sense of than written language, particularly when it is more
formal, as the drafting and editing processes enable it to become
more complex and condensed than spontaneous spoken language. Instead
of using this knowledge to present his argument in a concise and
clear manner, it could be contended that Rumsfeld has crafted his
speech to obfuscate his audience. Formal language enables users to
carefully negotiate social taboos and delicate subjects through the
employment of euphemisms, non-discriminatory language, figurative
language and political correctness. Through answering a question
(line 1) which seems to necessitate a explicit and straightforward
answer with one that is ambiguous, Rumsfeld successfully appears
objective and diplomatic to the issue, rather than directly accusing
Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction (that is until anyone
attempts to derive meaning from his speech)
The
lexical choices made by Rumsfeld are significant to the cohesiveness
of the speech. The semantic field
of the speech remains constant over its entirety. Repetition of the
“knowns” and “unknowns”
ties the text together by having the same idea running through the
speech, creating cohesion. Conjunctions such as “also” (line 9)
and “and” (line 14) serve a dual purpose in connecting old ideas
and transitioning them to new ones. The transitional phrase “that
is to say” functions in the same manner (line 10)
Often
material with high communicative value and new information is left
for the end to enable the contact to maintain is impact. In this
speech however, the new information (I.e known knowns etc.) is given
initial focus in order to prevent the reader from becoming too
confused. By bringing forward material which would usually be placed
last, in accordance to the usual organising principle the information
which Rumsfled esteems to be the most important it mentioned first,
before it is unpacked slightly using parenthesis
Rumsfeld
attempts to alleviate the complexity of his speech and persuade the
audience through employing various visual cues and hand gestures to
“point to” and effectively distinguish the known knowns, from the
unknown knowns and from the unknown unknowns. He is also cautious to
place strategic pauses after mentioning each of his concepts; the
known knowns (line 7), the unknown knowns (line 10) and the unknown
unknowns (line 12) to let them sink in. Further facilitating
comprehension of Rumsfeld's speech is the choice to place immediately
after the statement of each of the ideas, the parethesis which
explains them (lines 5 7 8 10). Contrastingly, the discourse
particles (lines 16 18 19), false start (line 4), complete lapse in
memory (line 19) and subsequent laughing (line 20) is utterly
detrimental to the prosodic and rhetorical elements of Rumsfeld's
speech.
