Saturday 16 April 2016

Textual analysis correction

The audience of this text is any British citizen who has an interprets in learning another language and and who think the government is making a wrong decision. "The British have an obligation, it seems to me, to reciprocate." is a very concrete example. The text only talks about Britain and the effects that the decision taken by the government will have on them. As we can see in the example, the author addresses directly to British people. 
The picture in the text is very accurate, as it represents what will happen to British people if they stop learning other languages. The isolation that Britain will face if they speak (or learn) only English is depicted in the image with the lonely fish, while the rest of the fish are together watching Britain, maybe expecting it to join the rest of them. This is a representation of the text, as it talks about the "narrowness of life encased in one language (...) or your own cage." The first tank makes reference to the cage, to the "narrow life" that you will have the if you do not learn a second language. You will always move around the same ideas.
As for the techniques used to convince the audience, the author use an emotional appeal, as he appeals to respect and courtesy towards non-English speaking people "(...) what greater disrespect can there be that not speaking to others in their languages?" By using pathos, the author reaches to the reader's emotions, making it wonder if the decision that they have taken correct. Likewise, the author also appeals to self-respect "It's that you are not making enough of your individual potential if you allow yourself to be enclosed by one language." This is a very important device, since humans in general do not like when someone criticise or question their self-respect. The author also uses facts and numbers, also known as logos to support what he is saying "(...) English is spoken as a first language by just 7% of the worlds inhabitants 75% of people speak no English." By doing this, he wants to convince the audience once again, that the decision taken by the government is not the right one.