Kill Two Birds With One Stone Analysis

In text B, the genre is a magazine article, the audience is younger to middle age women and the purpose of the text is to inform.
In text B, the author uses an idiom as a simple way to make a suggestion. The idiom ‘Kill two birds with one stone’ is used in response to a question regarding single parenting. This idiom is a well-known one, meaning everyone reading the response understands what she is implying, as well as forming imagery about what she is implying. The idiom stands for doing one action to solve two problems, and this idiom in question provides us with vivid imagery about a way to solve the woman’s problem. Using the noun ‘birds’ compacts both problems she has into very similar problems, as they are both described as the same thing,
a bird. This helps the reader to understand that the lady’s two problems are actually very similar, and easy to solve. The pragmatic meaning of this is to understand that many of our problems can be condensed down into two simple things to solve, and that solving our problems are easier than we think.
In text B, the use of an open, but leading question helps us to understand that a lot of the people writing in with problems often know what kind of answer they want. At the end of a statement, the woman asking the question finishes with the interrogative question ‘Surely this isn’t right’. This is an open question, which can have an elaborated answer, however, the use of the word ‘surely’ implies that the questioner understands that this is not right, and just wants clarification to make sure she is right. She has given the author the choice to answer with whatever she wants, but is leading her into agreeing with her opinion, which actually limits the answers the author can give. The answer that the author gives is very upfront, a simple ‘no, indeed it is not’, which is the response that the questioner wanted, showing that the questioner knew what she was talking about and knew that she was right. This makes her feel better about herself, as she knows she is right, and she is proving her friend, and rapist, wrong. This response provides her with the satisfaction knowing she is correct, and also allows her to use this knowledge to do something about her situation.
Text B repeatedly uses visual cohesion as a way to help the audience understand the differences between what is a question from a reader, and what is an answer from Virginia, the author.
An example of this is at the end of the paragraph entitled ‘Bitter news’. This whole paragraph (a question from a reader) is written entirely in bold, making it more noticeable. However, when Virginia answers the question, the text is no longer in bold, but is in a normal text style. This helps to guide the audience into understand when the question ends and the answer starts. Without this, the text would appear very monotonous and dull, which would not attract any readers, causing many people to ignore this entire section completely. This would defeat the purpose of the article, which is to inform, as no one reading the article would mean that no one is being informed, and there is not point of the article. Another use of visual cohesion is at the start of each question, where a title is written in bold and in a bigger font. This informs a reader that this is an entirely new section, which is completely unrelated to the previous paragraphs. An example of this is the title ‘Bitter News’, which signifies the start of the article. Without this, the article would just blend into one, and it would be very
boring.