The History About The Three Texts

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Student Number: UKDLP870

Email: [email protected]

Course Title: A-Level English Language and Literature A

TMA 3: Analytical Comparison

The three texts which have been presented share a common theme, that being of work or workplace. Yet each text differs from one another in respect of the method used to convey that theme to the audience. Text one is a technical prose (perhaps from a text book or journal) written to inform and educate the reader about the techniques used to be a good project manager. The second text is that of a poem written to express the trials and problems of work life. The final text appears to be that of a spontaneous speech in form of a monologue based on a work related incident. Although the texts share the same context, each would have its own particular audience. Text one has been written to target working professionals who are currently in the role of project management or are in the pursuit of the role. Text two appears to be aimed at an adult readership familiar with interpreting poetry at this level. Clearly not for children, though a child audience may find the musicality of some of some of the lines amusing. From text three we can derive that the audience may well be an interviewer or a friend listening to the description as told by the speaker.

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, all three texts are work related. Therefore, we can agree that the authors of these texts have aimed their written words to reach out to readers who share either a similar interest or a life experience. Text one seems to be aimed at working professionals who want to broaden their knowledge about best practices to becoming a project manager. The poem appears to grasp the darker side of work life and one may say that the author may have shared such an experience and therefore is trying to reach out to others who have tasted a similar experience. The aim of the speaker for text three is to communicate with the listener(s) about the conflicts of work and so reach out to those who have experienced similar situation in their work life, or, perhaps the speaker merely wants to lift the weight of his/her chest by opening up and talking about it.

Let us begin with an analysis of the first text. The academic text has been divided into four paragraphs, and these are a tight and well-organised structure that gives this extract a beginning, middle and end. The first paragraph starts with a brief introduction of the responsibilities of a project manager and the communications that exists between the project manager, client and project team. The second and third paragraph goes into more detail and the specifics of how the project manager then communicates changes to a project planner by analysing the possible outcomes and the decision on whether the new changes should be made disregarded or not. The final paragraph leads to a valuation of the duties of a project manager but is still tightly related to the theme of changes within a current project and how a project manager should effectively incorporate those changes.

The writing styles of this text in formal and in academic English. Standard English spelling, grammar and vocabulary are used throughout the text and the use of any words in dialect or with an accent are non-existent. There is no speech represented within the text since the work is of non-fiction and the author is writing in the written mode. The language the author has used is mainly to inform and explain. There is hardly any use of persuasion mainly because this is a secondary purpose of the author and also, the reader is principally left to make up their own mind on the use of the best practices to becoming a project manager. The text has no metaphor or simile and this is possibly consistent with the authors writing style. Majority of the sentences are of the same length, but the author has made some sentences much longer and on an occasion, employed a semi colon to join two shorter sentences together. This particular structure is used so that the text does not become monotonous and still provide the regular flow and rhythm of a precise prose.

Text two is a poem that is structured into nine verses and the author has used an ABAB rhyme scheme. However, there is only one true rhyme in the whole poem (enough/stuff in the sixth verse), with all the rest being half-rhymes at best (such as toad-like/hard luck and blarney/money). The effect of this is to give the poem a certain amount of structure but not too much. This structure differs in comparison to text one because both texts are from two different genres. An academic text such as text one is required to follow a standard structure and language. However, with regards to a poem, the author has greater flexibility to the way the poem can be structured and indeed the style of language that can be used. The poem contains a number of metaphors and Larking uses toad as a central metaphor to represent work as it is sluggish and ugly. It squats on areas that it is not supposed to, and is an applicable symbol for sluggishness.

He describes two toads. One is the exterior influence that society has on an individual to work, and the other is the interior or personal prompting to work. As the poem begins, Larkin wastes no time in introducing the first toad, "Why should I let the toad work / Squat on my life?" The first toad is said to be equal to work. When this interpretation is used the poet is saying that work is an ugly and repulsive entity. A second metaphor that is used in the first verse is the setting of "wit" being equal to "pitchfork". This is a good parallel because it describes the usefulness of wit in terms of a pitchfork, which is also quite useful. When using this interpretation the question in lines three and four can be restated as, "Why can’t I use my wit to drive off work, and then use that same wit as a pitchfork for picking up hay?" (hay being success). The second verse continues on with a broadening of the description of the first toad. Here another interesting metaphor is used when the toad is linked to a type of poison. No adequate time is left for rest and recreation. Just for the reason that that one has to toil to pay bills, and that is totally out of proportion.

The prospects of such work works like a "sickening poison", one that grows on one's system. In the third verse, Larkin starts to explore the seeming escape of certain individuals from the toad and their apparent happiness. He effectively uses alliteration in the line "Lecturers, lispers, Losels, loblolly-men, louts – They don’t end up as paupers;" to create a droning effect that makes the list seem to go on indefinitely. This seems to make Larkin’s argument better by showing this seemingly long list of individuals who supposedly escape work by using their wits. Perhaps Larkin is trying to create a sense of irony here since he also falls in within the same category. Looking further into the poem we notice many more imageries and metaphors being used and when compared with text one. Prose such as text one, is language that has as its primary goal the sharing of information.

Comparing it to text two we notice that the language is formal, but simple and non-expressive. Poetry has as its primary goal the use of language itself as an art form, music, and the interpretation is mainly left to the readers imagination and understanding. When comparing the syntax between both text we notice a both a difference and a similarity. The difference would be the structure of the sentences. Text one has been structured into standard sentences which is common practice among prose but with poetry, as it appears in text two, it is structured into verses (stanzas) that rhyme or in cases of freeform poetry it doesn’t. The similarity is found within the sequencing of the words used. Both texts follow a standard sequence where one word is expected to appear after the other. We should make a note here however that in poetry, some authors may shift around the word order to meet emphasis, to heighten the connection between two words, or to pick up on specific implications.

Text three is a spontaneous speech so we should expect it to be lacking the tight structure or grammatical flow that one finds with a prose like text one. However, one should also note that despite the difference, a spontaneous speech usually follows a logical and coherent order. One of the most common features with spontaneous speech is turn taking; however, within text three this feature is non-existent and so it has given the text a monologue form. Text three appears to be an extract from a longer conversation, or the start of what could turn into a longer conversation. The text begins with the aim of the speaker to describe the incident from the beginning. Of course here we notice that there are no questions asked beforehand for the conversation to start, but we can use our imagination and think about the question that the listener may have asked. Since this extract is only a transcript of the real-time, live speech, we can’t spot any indications of whether the speaker is male or female; or any background information such as age and class.

However, we can assume some things about the speaker based on the transcript. For instance, there is some evidence of dialect (‘walking on glass we were’ rather than ‘we were walking on glass’, as expected in Standard English). This evidence could reveal the geographical origins of the speaker or his/her current location, though the dialect is fairly light, and does not feature consistently. From this we can deduce that that the speaker is trying to moderate his/her speech to a linguistic norm or that he/she comes from an area/class background with a noticeable, but not hefty, dialect. Notice difference in language that exists between the three texts so far. A prose like text one is expected to be written in Standard English whereas text two and text three have the freedom to be presented in a natural form as you would get with everyday speech.

According to the text, the event that had occurred was quite unpleasant for the speaker and we notice this attitude towards the incident from the very beginning of the speech where the speaker uses adjectives such as ‘angry’ and ‘difficult’. The speaker has emphasized these words to give us the idea of the depth of the matter and how it had nearly ruined his/her ‘life’ and ‘career’. Within text three we come upon a number of micro pauses ‘(.)’ with some indicating the length of the pause ‘(1.0)’. This feature is very common with spontaneous speech and the objectives of these pauses would either be to give time for the speaker to quickly gather his/her thoughts, or to give a chance for the listener to ask a question or give their own thought. In comparison with the text one and two, micro pauses are not a standard feature.

We notice within text three that there is evidence of the use of metaphors such as ‘walking on glass’. This is a common feature that is shared between text two and text three but not within text one. Of course this is not to say that a metaphor is a completely non-existent feature for prose, but it merely depends on the genre like a quote from a historical figure written within a historical text book; or maybe within a newspaper article. There are signs of repetition (‘on (.) on eggshells’) within text three which is another common feature of spontaneous speech. Now this could indicate that the speaker may have a slight case of stuttering, or perhaps he/she is using this as an opportunity to gather thoughts and continue with the speech. For text three it appears to be the latter because of the micro pause that is present in between. In comparison, text one does not contain any repetition mainly because of its genre and neither does text two. However, has mentioned before, a poem such as text two can also appear in a form of freestyle and therefore may very well contain repetition. So it is left to the writing style of the author of the poem.

So we have read and analyzed each text and written a description of the type of structure, language, aim etc., that each text has. We have also compared the three texts together and have found differences long with similarities. On the whole, the theme that is shared between all three texts is work, but each text presents a separate message to the reader. Text one is providing information on best practices, text two is expressing work life and the negativity that comes with it and text three that of a real-life situation. Three texts that originate from the same background and yet, represent different perspectives.