Textual Analysis 1 theonion.com
The text I’m going to talk about is originally published on The Onion, which is a satirical website known for its effort in deriding and ridiculing the trending social phenomena, and hence the text type of the article is a journalist online report. However, the text disguises as the journalist news report, which juxtaposes with its absurd information to deliver a strong sense of mockery, the choice of format also resonates with the theme of comedy of the text. The major purpose of the text is to encourage people to start conserving natural resources by exaggerating the consequences of not to do so, which resonates with the context of global warming, population growth and resource depletion. The text also implies how critical the situation is, which urges people to give more attention to the environments. The targeted audiences of the text are mostly online readers who seek for entertainment rather than the actual news, and hence the satire format and the comedic tone will help to attract their attention and provoke their reading interest, which helps to convey the messages of the text.
From the first look, the layout of this text is similar to common news report format. If the audiences doesn't know the nature of The Onion, they might treat this text as the normal journalist report from standard news agencies. The text has all the details of a journalist news report, for instance, the publishing time and place. These elements are visually deceptive, which blur the nature of the text and manipulate the audiences’ first impression towards the text. However, the author fills in the structure with absurd content to remind the readers that the text is not for informative uses. Moreover, this extreme contrary provokes a strong sense of humour, which resonates with the comedic tone of the text and conveys the purposes in an amusing way. The author uses a preposterous oxymoron “die” and “civilisation” to point out that the major discussion of the text is based on how to kill people to make our civilisation sustainable, which shocks the audiences and attracts their attention. On the hand, the title resonates with the contexts such as environment destruction and global warming, which implies that the article has the intention of discussing these serious issues apart from bringing the audiences laughter. To enhance the comedic theme of “how to die”, the author uses death related words such as “die” and “killing off” throughout the passage. The repetition also provokes a sense of emergency, which underlines the author’s firm belief of carrying out the liquidation in order to achieve the sustainability. The phrase “how they want to die themselves” delivers a strong sense of irony through the contrasting terms “want” and “die”. Perhaps the author uses this phrase to warn the audiences that death is better than living in the future if we don't start thinking of environmental issues now, and hence the purposes of encouraging the audiences to conserve the resources and protect the nature are conveyed. The line “die slowly, quickly, painfully, or peacefully” uses adverbs to state the options for the audiences to end their lives, which is really absurd as no one wants to die willingly. The author uses this phrase to imply that the destruction in environment equals to the destruction in mankind, which resonates with the theme of resource conversation. The caesura between each adverb slows down the pace of the sentence, which offers the audiences time to reflect on what they’ve done wrong and what they can do to alleviate the environmental issues. These absurd, bizarre and ridiculous contents use exaggerations to show the consequences of ignoring the environmental destructions, which will have a strong impact on the audiences and persuade them to protect the nature. This message is delivered in a humour tone through the uses of oxymoron and juxtaposition, which suits the text’s satirical format and attracts its targeted audiences who seek for a source of entertainment.
Since the article is based on the research outcomes of a group of scientists, the author shows some scientific applications in text. However, the main purpose of the scientific content is to accentuate the comedic feature of the text, since most of them are ridiculous and impractical. The line “2 billion dead…fossil fuels” suggests a way of renewing resources on earth, which sounds really professional and believable. However, it is impractical in real life as the formation of the fossil fuels requires really long time and extreme weather conditions. The faulty scientific reasons behind the massacre plot implies that the outcomes of the research are fake, which serves as a plot twist to calm the audiences down after reading the title. Moreover, it adds on comedic elements to the text, which emphasises its humorous tone. In other cases, the author states the real scientific information but gives it a wrong interpretation or solution. For example, he discusses the issue of the “destruction of global environmental systems in heavily populated regions”, which is an universal problem facing by most of the governments. However, the author addresses the “scientific solution” to this issue as “half the world’s progeny will have to be sterilised”, which is a ridiculous method that contrasts with the nature of science. The first part of the statement serves to introduce the issue to the readers, which conveys the purpose of showing the critical environmental situation and hence persuades the audiences to participate in the conservation activities. The second part, which is apparently the scientists’ interpretation to the issue, actually serves to add comedic elements to the text, moreover, it provokes the humorous responses from the audiences, and hence they will more likely to accept the messages delivered. To highlight the implication of science, the author introduces the fictional scientists in a formal way, which includes their names, institutions and researching fields. On the other hand, these titles accentuate the ridicule and derision theme of the text, which highlights the author’s joking manner.
The other prominent feature of the text is the use of graphology. The author uses a relatively big space to display the photo to attract the audience’s immediate attention, and hence the majority of them will choose to look at the picture first before read the actual article, which means that the picture will manipulate the audience’s first impression towards the text. The event depicted in the photo is some sort of important news events, and the large number of microphones on the table suggest the event is highly recognised by the media.The spokesman in the white coat suggests that the text is related to science. After receiving these information, the audiences might use their imagination to interpret the purpose of the text. Moreover, the spokesman and the accompanied ladies’ facial expressions are serious and worried, which imply that the text is written based on serious issues. Therefore by the time the audiences start to read the passage, their pre knowledge and interpretations to the text will mislead them to think that the text is an actual news report, which accentuates the effect of contrary and resonates with the comedic theme of the text. The use of the quick poll at the back offers the audiences a chance to interact with the author, which makes their reading experience more personal and amusing. On the other hand, the absurd options really enhances the humorous tone of the text, which helps the author to deliver the message more effectively as it has some permanent impact on the audiences.
Overall, the text conveys the message of conserving the resources and protecting the earth in a satirical manner through the uses of irony, exaggeration and juxtaposition.Moreover, the text provides the audiences an amusing reading experience through the vivid uses of humour and comedy, the audiences will more likely to accept this profound message beneath the ridiculous and absurd outlook of the text.
Link to the original article: http://www.theonion.com/article/scientists-look-one-third-of-the-human-race-has-to-27166
Final mark: 19/20 Level 7
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