Language Analysis Essay
Language Analysis:
Lower the voting age to 16…NOW!
The website of Young People Unite had published an article by Melissa Young on the 5th of May 2010. The opinion piece by the 17-year-old addresses the issue of whether or not the legal voting age should drop to 16 years of age. Melissa Young makes a claim that with the laws already placed upon 16-year-olds (e.g. legal age to getting their learner license) they should have the same right to vote and elect a government to rule their country. The author’s tone shifts from a dramatic one to one which is reasoned and controlled, the consequence of such a shift allows the reader to maintain a standard register with a mixture of informal and formal language. The effect of the word ‘NOW!’ in the title acts as an ellipsis for the urgent demand that the YPU initiative is seeking. Instantly there is a sense of emergency with the use of the exclamation mark. Their main audience is to the youth who can’t vote. At the beginning of her opinion piece Melissa creates a series of similes and comparisons that are designed to make the audience link the present to the past. She also employs the imaginative language tool in her introduction to fabricate a scenario that Australia will eventually undergo in the year 2050. Her exaggerated and fairly graphic portrayals of what the future holds swiftly grab the audience’s attention. By using sensory descriptions about the atmosphere created from the consequences of global warming on Melbourne she is able to further engage with her reader as it makes the reader visualise the picture. Examples that could be extracted were ‘a permanent haze that hangs over the city’, and exaggerations of the to-be climate as mild and pleasant ‘a balmy 48°C’. The image built by such informal language structure manipulated the reader’s visual interpretation on the problematic issue. It crafted the critical crisis people would be in
Lower the voting age to 16…NOW!
The website of Young People Unite had published an article by Melissa Young on the 5th of May 2010. The opinion piece by the 17-year-old addresses the issue of whether or not the legal voting age should drop to 16 years of age. Melissa Young makes a claim that with the laws already placed upon 16-year-olds (e.g. legal age to getting their learner license) they should have the same right to vote and elect a government to rule their country. The author’s tone shifts from a dramatic one to one which is reasoned and controlled, the consequence of such a shift allows the reader to maintain a standard register with a mixture of informal and formal language. The effect of the word ‘NOW!’ in the title acts as an ellipsis for the urgent demand that the YPU initiative is seeking. Instantly there is a sense of emergency with the use of the exclamation mark. Their main audience is to the youth who can’t vote. At the beginning of her opinion piece Melissa creates a series of similes and comparisons that are designed to make the audience link the present to the past. She also employs the imaginative language tool in her introduction to fabricate a scenario that Australia will eventually undergo in the year 2050. Her exaggerated and fairly graphic portrayals of what the future holds swiftly grab the audience’s attention. By using sensory descriptions about the atmosphere created from the consequences of global warming on Melbourne she is able to further engage with her reader as it makes the reader visualise the picture. Examples that could be extracted were ‘a permanent haze that hangs over the city’, and exaggerations of the to-be climate as mild and pleasant ‘a balmy 48°C’. The image built by such informal language structure manipulated the reader’s visual interpretation on the problematic issue. It crafted the critical crisis people would be in