Identifying key (related) strategies and unpack/evaluate strategic word choices
Exercise 14: Canberra must act decisively: Dear Retailers by Shelly. pp. 58-59
Shelly’s blog: identify the cluster of overlapping techniques/ language choices.
Shelly uses her first-hand experience as an online shopper to compare retail experiences.
- Purpose: Shelly uses this experience to justify shopping online and to reassure her audience (who presumably like to shop online)
- She also uses this experience to better attack and discredit the retailers.
- Personality – colloquial idioms – to win confidence and attention of online shoppers
- “flogging a dead horse”; implies that they do not have reasonable complaints; that the issue has already been decided by shoppers and that they are simply protecting their business at the expense of good service and good prices.
Excerpts of retailers: identify the cluster of overlapping techniques/ language choices. (See Sentence patterns, pp. 78-79.)
- Values and appeals: patriotic; inclusive; moralistic language: (“our people … our economy” : repetition, (parallel phrases) to show the complexity of the GST problem and that there are numerous consequences; Appeal to sympathy and justice/equality: to shame those people who favour online retailers.
- Comparison (antithesis) between local retailers and offshore retailers to suggest that the system favour the retailers : channel our sense of injustice towards the offshore stores.
- Characterisation: present themselves as victims of an unfair tax regime. (Purpose?)
Mr Nut encourages online shoppers to recognise that the system unfairly disadvantages “home grown retailers” who have extra costs than online stores. By injecting some balance into the GST debate, he channels some sympathy towards the retailers…
- Attacks/discredits: online consumers by suggesting that they cling to the “myth” that collection is expensive.
- use of colloquial language: “spouted ….”
- justifies retailers by showing their on-costs. Repetitive rhetorical questions to focus people’s attention on the costs which are often considerable.
Warm-up task: write two sentences capturing each writer’s most important views and strategies.
Shelly creates a colourful personality through the use of idioms and colloquialisms to construct an intimate relationship with her online consumers and to reassure them that they have the right to seek out bargains without feeling pangs of guilt.
- Refer to two (complementary) techniques (and their purpose) that Shelly uses to reinforce her main views and values.
In their defensive excerpts, the retailers seek to justify their complaints on the grounds that they are unfairly disadvantaged. Their inclusive and repetitive use of “we” throughout is a clever ploy to shame those who support offshore retailers and imply that such people are unpatriotic and harming the economy.
- Refer to two (complementary) techniques (and their purpose) that the retailers uses to reinforce their views and values.
Warm up task: write a short comparison of views and techniques between Shelly and the retailers.
If Shelly defends the rights of online shoppers and the absence of a GST under $1000, the retailers in contrast, believe that this tax system is clearly unfair. If Shelly seeks to win favour by drawing attention to the unreasonable high prices of stores, the retailers condemn such practices. Specifically, they play the patriotic card in order shame those who do not support Australian retailers..In their defensive excerpts, the retailers seek to justify their complaints on the grounds that they are unfairly disadvantaged. Their inclusive and repetitive use of “we” throughout is a clever ploy to shame those who support offshore retailers and imply that such people are unpatriotic and harming the economy. (In an aggrieved tone, the retailers clearly position themselves as victims in a hostile business environment in order to provoke sympathy and shame those who are unpatriotic… )