Grouping Task

Texts 1, 4 and 6 all use imperatives to achieve the main purposes, which are to persuade and inform. Text 6 is the conditions of use for a First bus ticket and has heavy use of imperatives to achieve it’s purpose, an example of this being ‘PHOTOCARDS must be carried at all times’, which is direct and leaves the statement no room to be worked around and no room for interpretation. This text uses a bald on record face throughout as the firm is not concerned with losing face with the ticket holder as the conditions are set rules that the  holder has to follow, which is emphasized by the use of all-caps on the word ‘photocards’. This is made apparent more so as the text lacks the use of mitigated imperatives, as it would weaken and/or defeat the point of the text as it would have intensity on the condition being met, and does not use cloaked imperatives as it would have no use and only serve to confuse the ticket holder, which would contradict the purpose.

Text 4 differs from text 6 in the type of imperative and face it uses to achieve its purpose, which is to persuade rather than inform. The way text 4 does this is through the use of a cloaked imperative. The text is a transcript of a phone call in which one participant (who is the father of the other participant) and uses a cloaked imperative in saying ‘Get some milk in Lidl on the way home?’ The imperative is cloaked with an interrogative in order to make the participant receiving the request more likely to accept as it gives the recipient the notion that the person asking knows they are imposing on them and that they can refuse even if they have no reason to do so. In contrast, the para-linguistic features of this sample such as the raise in tone at the end of the sentence suggests that the sentence is actually an imperative and the sentence is actually a command dressed up as a question in order to achieve the text purpose, which is even more apparent when you consider that if the asking participant was really trying to avoid losing face, the imperative would have been mitigated as well as cloaked as an interrogative. In addition, the relationship between the two participants (father and son) also suggests that the person asking the question is also banking on their natural authority coming into play in persuading them to fulfill the request. 
Text 1 also heavily relies on the use of imperatives to achieve its purpose primary purpose of persuading. The text is an appeal card from Amnesty International and is appealing to the recipient of the card to sign their name and information on the card as part of an appeal to release a union worker from prison in Bahrain. The front of the card has large, bold and all-caps writing stating ‘Free Mahdi Abu Dheeb’. The imperative used is not mitigated nor cloaked as they would serve little purpose in aiding the purpose of the text. Mitigating this imperative could possibly harm the message of the text as it would sound desperate, make the resolve of freeing the man depicted weaker and make the entire situation sound less important than the text wants the audience to think it is. The imperative used is also very direct with the audience as if to say that they themselves have the ability to free the subject of the appeal and as the audience has voluntarily signed up to receiving these appeal cards, the imperative plays on the audiences humanitarian side in order to convince the audience to sign the card. The imperative uses a bald on record face rather than a positive or negative face as it could give the audience a feeling of authority or strength, which could give an impression that this organisation is capable of doing the things that they appeal to the audience to help them with.

Twitter Posts - Affordances and Constraints

A twitter post is a piece of text from the website Twitter. A tweet consists of up to 140 characters and can include images and vines as well as utilise hashtags (e.g. #IAmACeleb) to join discussions on topics along with others using the same hashtag. The character limit both allows people to be blunt and to to the point, stopping walls of texts but at the same time stopping people from having longer and more in-depth discussions. Users can reply to someone's tweet and start dialogue with others being able to join at any point if they want. People can follow others, meaning that when they tweet it appears in their timeline. Tweets can also be retweeted meaning that the tweet reappears in the timeline of everyone who follows the person who retweeted it so they can also see the tweet. The downside to twitter is that some people can use it to abuse others and hide behind their profile so there are little to no real life consequences.

Transcript Excerpt Analysis

ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT ANALYSIS

‘bout 5 centimeters (3) then below the start of that line about towards the bottom just up from the bottom (2) draw (.) like (.)an opening or closing bracket but like horizontal and on it’s side, so like a curved line over the top’

At the start of this excerpt the speaker shows their local dialect in how they say ‘about’ in that they cut off the ‘a’ out of habit. This serves to quicken the rate at which they speak. It can also be inferred that as they are speaking informally to the other person as they are talking in their local dialect.

After this, there is a 3 second pause (which during a conversation is a considerable length of time) when the speaker waits for the other person to catch up to the point they have explained to, whilst simultaneously trying to think what to say for the next part of the explanation. The pause also allows the conversation to keep going, despite temporarily stopping, as the other person can catch up without having to interrupt the flow of the conversation by asking the speaker to stop. From that you can infer that the speaker is instructing/explaining the other person on how to do something as they are taking care to make sure the other person is able to keep up with what they are saying as well as from the nature of the way they are talking to the other person.

The speaker also uses fillers in their speech (in this case ‘like’), punctuated by short pauses, as they quickly think of how to explain the next part of the task to the other person coherently and so they can follow the instructions given, It also allows the speaker to utilise simile’s in their explanation. The example of this in this excerpt is ‘(.)like (.) an opening … bracket’ which gives more detail when explaining what the thing is and allows the other party to visualise what they need to do. The use of similes in this context (explanation) is that it makes the other person image in their mind which is easier than having to explain it with words.

Mini Saga

The dust floats aimlessly in the air, slowly coating everything in the room, keenly watched through the slither of light, the slow rhythm of his shallow breaths disturbing the stagnant air. The dust covered badge is the paper weight on the stack of colourful cards that came via the post.

Gods Among Us Commentary

English Gods Among Us Commentary

The audience I am aiming at is people with an interest with movies and that industry as well as young adults (20’s/30’s) as the topic of the article spans back 10/20 years to current times. I open my Gods Among Us article with a direct challenge to the reader in order to immediately engage them with the article and to urge them to continue reading. With the reader at this point captured by the article, I start to lay out my reasons for Tarantino being classed as a ‘God’ in the industry, which will hopefully evoke one of two responses from the reader, those being that they either;

1. Agree and continue reading because they agree.
2. Disagree and continue reading to hear my side of the debate to counter with theirs.

I continue with my argument by using repetition to force my point that this director has made many great films consecutively by saying ‘hit after hit after hit’, followed by pop-cultures references as evidence of this when I reference ‘Reservoir Dogs’ (which I in turn follow with the bold statement that it is heralded as ‘The Greatest Independent Movie of all Time’) and later in the article reference that the next title is the equally famous ‘Pulp Fiction’. Following the Reservoir Dogs reference I use a comparison of another famous director (Steven Spielberg) combined with pop-culture reference with ‘Jaws’. The intent of this is that it hopefully puts my argument into perspective to the reader. I close of the opening paragraph with a declarative statement to illicit more debate from the readers who disagree with me.

In the following paragraph I use the metaphor ‘Pulp Fiction … regarded as Tarantino’s masterpiece’. I use this metaphor as ‘masterpiece’ generally makes you think of art and all the connotations that art brings with it. I couple this more pop-culture references by mentioning actors ‘Samuel L Jackson, John Travolta and Bruce Willis’ who are all accomplished actors and show they type of talent Tarantino attracts. Using both of these techniques aides my case during this section of the article.

                                                                                     

Next paragraph, I acknowledge the opposing opinion to avoid a disconnect from the readers whose opinions on the subject disagree with those in the article, which keeps them engaged with the article, as the  articles objective is to persuade/argue my point. I also use jargon appropriate to the movie industry, when I use the term ‘Cinematography’ which refers to the way Tarantino films his scenes. This adds to the credibility and legitimacy to the argument I am making as it displays knowledge and understanding of the subject.

I begin to reach the conclusion of my article I give a brief overview of Tarantino’s career so far as further evidence of my case which contains small amounts of my own personal opinion to add personal feel to the article so the reader can visualise the other side of the debate. I then conclude the article by conceding ground to the opposing argument which lets the reader know that this argument put forward considers other opinions and is for open debate and not bias, one sided argument, meaning they are more receptive of the argument which helps achieve the purpose of the article which is to persuade the reader of my opinion.

Column Article

A love/hate relationship with Twitter

How one of the most useful things on the internet never ceases to annoy me.

[Picture of Twitter logo]
The source of my headache.

If thirty years ago you’d asked someone what the world would be like if anyone, anywhere could communicate with someone on the other side of the globe instantly, effortlessly and for free, you may have received a few reactions. Some may have said that it would help bring the world closer together, that with greater communication would bring greater understanding, leading to peace between contrasting groups around the planet. Or if you’re a cynic such as myself and you don’t believe any of that hippy nonsense, then you may have said something along the lines of ‘Great! More people to annoy me with stuff I don’t care about’. As of 2014, social networking site Twitter has upwards of 250 million people using their site to share the most mundane and uninteresting going-ons in their lives.

As much as I bash Twitter I still find myself oddly drawn to it as a service, as it is more the people that use it that give me headaches rather than the actual site itself. I find that if you can narrow down the people you see to those who share common interest as you it can actually be rather useful and interesting. Imagine the potential from having a group of minds focused around a single subject all contributing ideas and opinions from all over the globe.

                                                                                                

But no. We use this great advancement in communication in technology for stupid reasons like taking pictures of food or to moan about some of the pointless stuff we can. I’m all for having a moan as [SPOILER ALERT] that’s what 90% of this article is about, but complaining to a bunch of people sat in front their computer screens wont make the bus come quicker or make you that sandwich because your hungry.

The worst part is the hive mind Twitter users seem to have. When a hash tag comes up that requires people to even attempt to be witty, the average is five jokes. Five. Five jokes that are constantly repeated between twenty thousand or so people trying to scrounge retweets from others in an attempt to validate their poor attempt at comedy. After seeing the same awful joke for the twentieth time inside an hour, the urge festers inside you to put your fist through something. It’s like the people mindlessly copying and pasting it straight into my timeline never had the thought cross their mind that people may possibly have seen the joke before. It would be like if the Edinburgh Fringe had every comedian repeating the five jokes from the back of Penguin bars, its terrible.

On top of this is the Twitter hate hive mind that befalls people who excessively tweet stuff that (ironically) annoy the masses, honorable mentions going to TV presenter Piers Morgan and footballer Joey Barton, to the point that the people blindly sending hateful comments towards those half the time have no idea what they themselves are going on about. Even worse is the racial hate some get like ex-footballer Stan Collymore, the amount of racial abuse and abuse in general this guy gets is sickening. Admittedly he’s not a saint, far from it, but does the guy deserve to be living with hate more akin to the 60's and 70's than 2014?  No. And chances are half the people abusing the guy over Twitter would never even dream of saying such stuff to the guy in person.

Although this being said, being a football fan, Twitter allows for some great … ‘debates’, if you can call 19 year old's swearing and generally taking a shot at one another about anything other than the teams they support ‘debating’. I can. From a neutral point of view, it’s almost as entertaining as the football itself, some times more so.

I suppose the upside of Twitter is that any annoying crap that some one wants to say they have to be inside 140 characters, which makes it kind of bearable  but not by much. Tweeting about your mad Saturday night and wanting McDonalds to deliver will still make me hate you, just hate you in a small amounts of words.

The worst part is even though I've spent the last god knows how long explaining everything that I hate about Twitter, I can’t stop using it. As much as I complain about it, whenever I have a spare moment, like waiting for a bus or what ever, I whip out my phone and browse Twitter. I wish it was a simple as ‘stop using it’ as many have often said I should do when I bring up how much I hate it. It’s like a subconscious addiction to see what people deem important enough to tell me about.

In all though, I can see why Twitter has had such a wide appeal to people, even it does just boil down to everyone just spouting out what nonsense pops into their heads. Maybe I am being cynical for the sake of being cynical, if close to a quarter of a billion people worldwide use Twitter, it has to be doing something right. Maybe it’s everyone else that’s wrong.

I’m inclined to go with the latter.

Gods Among Us Article

Gods Among Us #10 - Tarantino

King  of Cult Cinema

You look at Quentin Tarantino’s filmography and I challenge you to find some one who is yet to see a Tarantino film. Although being relatively new to the scene, releasing his first feature length film in 1992, Tarantino has quickly shot up the rankings due to hit after hit after hit.

In 1992, Tarantino released independent movie Reservoir Dogs. Cult hit, regarded as ‘The Greatest Independent Movie of all Time’. What other director can pull that off in their first full length release? Even Spielberg had to make lack luster titles before Jaws. Perhaps its his unique and memorable characters or unique scene styles. One thing is certain; Tarantino is undeniably at the top of the list when it comes to creative genius.

You need look no further than the titles under his belt. Tarantino follows up the cult hit Reservoir Dogs with Pulp Fiction, another cult hit, regarded as Tarantino’s masterpiece. The hit film casts Samuel L Jackson, John Travolta and Bruce Willis, and expertly displays Tarantino’s unique style of cinema, which often divides opinion among cinema goers and film fans.

His is a style of cinema which you can see in a film and instantly recognize it as Tarantino’s. The long and detailed scenes of dialogue between few characters are both a source of praise and criticism from viewers; their opinions are irrelevant as no matter what it is this unique type of cinematography that make Tarantino films Tarantino films.

You can’t argue that he isn’t up there with the best, since 1992 Tarantino has released 9 feature films; two thirds of which contain star casts and are critically claimed as some of the best pieces of cinema in the last 20 years.

You can argue that Tarantino cannot stack up against goliaths such as Spielberg and Lucas, an argument that falls on deaf ears. When all have retired, then you can stack up merits, awards and following but few have produced such quality in such short time as Tarantino. Few can compare to his style and casting that always make for memorable scenes and characters. Only 20 years into his career and already at the top, we wait to see what new heights this great mind can reach.