Analysis Cathy Come Home

Cathy Come Home English text analysis

• What was the purpose of the text and who was the target audience?

The purpose of the text is to inform the reader about what the film is about. It uses words like ‘documentary’, ‘social issues drama’, ‘docudrama’. In the first line of the text it impresses upon the readers the importance this film played in changing the social-economic viewpoint of the viewers. “First broadcast by the BBC in 1966, it was a pivotal in the launch of the housing charity Shelter, and instrumental in changing the law regarding homelessness.”
The target audience for the text would be adults, with a certain level of education and social/ political awareness possibly someone of middle class background as Jon Fortgang uses mostly sophisticated language such as polemical and inexorable. The sentence structure is quite long and complex as well.

• Comment on the writer’s style and language technique.
There are some parts of the text that is informal such as “rough and ready documentary”, “With baby on the way, money is tight.” This is done so as to relate to his readers. The first two sentences and the last three sentences of the review are emboldened to emphasis importance of the text, he also uses positive adjectives such as powerful and pivotal. He also lets his readers know that the film is “One of the most important British works ever, and is then reinforced again in the second to last paragraph of review and relates and how the issues covered in the film can be related to what is happening