Friday, 11 March 2016

Comparing different texts

FIFA Wikipedia website
FIFA article


In the Daily Mail article, the writer uses the personified verb phrase "brought to its knees" in the headline to inform the implied reader, who are interested football fans, that the world governing body of football (FIFA) have been caught out in a 'corruption scandal'; the plural personified noun "knees" additionally emphasises how much of an impact this will have on the organisation. Because the article is an online tabloid, the writer uses the fact it is slightly informal as an affordance to attract the audience to the article from wherever they may be browsing the internet from. In addition to this, the writer uses the controversial rhetorical interrogative "Isn't an ethics committee at FIFA a contradiction in terms?" This affordance furtherly engage with the reader and make them think more about what the article is stating, keeping them hooked to the article. Because of it being an online tabloid, the reader may expect this. The fact that the contraction "isn't" is used signifies that the question may be a tag question to get the reader involved, as the formal use of the interrogative would just start with 'is...'. Despite the fact that the website is based on the same topic, the grammar used is very much more formal, using simple and complex sentences throughout, both acting as ways to keep the reader informed in the most simple way possible whilst also giving more in depth information. Furthermore, most sentences start with the preposition 'in' for example "in December 2010" "In November 2013". Conversely to the Daily Mail article, this website shows very little sign of using strategies to keep the reader fully interested as they potentially know that the visitors of this website would have looked on the website by choice.


The graphological features of the article relate to the fact it is only a tabloid and therefore use multi-modal effects such as multiple images throughout to keep the reader engaged, and use a mix of simple and more 'advanced' language under the captions such as "embroiled and embattled". Although the Wikipedia page informing the similar idealised reader (possibly looking for a more in-depth analysis of the incident) does use a hint of multi-modal effects such as quotes to add a spoken element to the text, it uses very simple orthographical features with simple font sizes and styles throughout, compared to the article which may keep changing its orthographic features to keep the reader focused and attracted to different parts of the article as they may just be browsing the web, compared to readers looking at a Wikipedia page who may have set out to gather information before hand. Although the font styles stay similar throughout, the website uses similar typographical features which are aimed to keep the reader on the webpage such as making hyperlinks; this is an affordance the website uses to keep the reader on the website, likewise do the Daily Mail with links to other articles all around the main article.

1 comment:

  1. Some good close analysis. Check 'affordances' as this can only be used to refer to technological features e.g. hyperlinks. Use both texts in the topic sentence of the paragraph to show what the connection/contrast will be and then explore them in detail as you have done, except with even more comment on the effect of the GRAPE.

    Is graphology and multi-modality really the second most significant aspect of connection/contrast? Choose something a bit more ambitious or go into more subtel exploration of the multi-modality, which does have potential.

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