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Language Variation: Register
Task C - our answer Text 1
This extract is from a tabloid, page 2 of The Sun for Monday, September
9, 2002. The large size and graphological style of the headline (white
capitals on a black background) is typical of the attention-grabbing style
of the tabloids, as is the grammar of the headline (a noun-noun sequence:
all three words are nouns, with more than one way of construing the semantic
relationships among them, which then have to be spelled out in the first
sentence of the article). This in itself indicates the typical relationship
between the paper and its relatively uneducated typical readership, many
of whom who may well not read much more than this newspaper each day.
So attention has to be grabbed and then held. Two of the three words in
the headline ('axe' and 'vow' are nouns derived from verbs, making them
feel very active, and the processes referred to are fairly emotive, helping
to keep attention.
The first sentence of the text is pretty straightforward grammatically,
and is only 14 words long. Where possible, simple straightforward lexical
items are used ('bosses', 'workers'), and in a way that brings out as
starkly as possible their oppositional nature. There is also quite a lot
of other emotionally loaded lexis - 'threatened', 'wave', 'axing' - again
aimed at portraying the issue is as extreme terms as possible. This contrasts
considerably with what we find in the other extract.
So this writing is simple and colourful, in order to catch, and hold,
the attention of its mainly working class, relatively uneducated readership.
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