"We're not all young thugs" - Text 13T
Because the writer from the Sunday Express wants to inform older generations that not all teenagers are tearaways who "cause trouble", they immediately use negative language towards their target audience, labelling that everyone who judges the young are "scaremongering". This derogatory dynamic verb from the lexical field of fear implies that in fact the people judging are in fact wrong, as it is included in the imperative "this scaremongering must stop". The modal auxiliary verb 'must' suggests that it is an urgency that the way teenagers are being portrayed must come to an end before it possibly becomes the 'norm' that teenagers can be described as young "thugs" which is a very strong adjective relating to violence and crime, which a whole generation should certainly not be labelled as.
Furthermore, the writer goes on to state that Britain is "in the midst of an education epidemic", and schools are "forgetting to teach the difference between right and wrong". Although the reader may believe this is an excuse for some potentially wrong actions of teenagers, they are stating that the young generation are being neglected in terms of education, through the verb phrase "forgetting to teach" using the dynamic verb "forgetting" to show the failure to teach such a simple aspect of right and wrong' in this 'so called' "epidemic". This powerful post modifying adjective was used to furtherly persuade the reader that Britain is in a bad state when it comes to educating the young.
In addition to this, the writer links the unnecessary scaremongering to a scenario by using a noun phrase with relatable hyperbole, "I wear a hoodie when it's cold... does not mean I am a knife-wielding criminal". This suggests the extremes of which teenagers are thought as, purely based on an item of clothing which a small minority of troublemakers wear; this has an effect on the reader as, although they may interpret that as exaggerated and slightly humerous, in fact this declarative shows just how wrongly misinterpreted teenagers are.
Towards the end of the extract, the writer uses the tongue in cheek verb phrase "believe it or not" when discussing teenagers' views on 'politics and other issues'. This phrase is followed by the adverb "actually"; both of these frameworks imply that it may be usually ludicrous for older generations to believe that teenagers have interests in such issues, relating to the overall purpose of the text to show that teenagers aren't all 'thugs' and interested in crime and uneducated issues, hence the need for the term 'believe it or not'.
Some extremely good anlaysis - you are getting much denser, well-developed points in. Work on your grammar - neither "thugs" nor "epidemic" are adjectives - check your grammar support sheet, and although it feels like a command, the imperative form would be 'stop scaremongering' - look at why you think a declarative was used instead (we can refer to these as 'cloaked imperatives' meaning implied commands delivered in a different sentence mood). You are starting to cluster quotes, which is great, but look closely at your second paragraph - are they really working together? It is best to link quotes on how they communicate the same point in different ways, or how they use the same technique in subtly (or starkly) different ways, making that link absolutely crystal clear through close analysis and discourse markers. Any lapse in quality at any point will drag your marks down.
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