The character of Michael in my Mills & Boon passage is represented as a dominant person, as the verbs used to describe his actions are mainly transitive to show the things he does to Sophie. For example, ‘he helped her up’ and ‘he sat her carefully down’. This shows on the other hand that Sophie is a passive character, as most of the verbs used in describing her actions are intransitive, for example, ‘she noticed’ and ‘had dreamed’ which do not involve any physical action. James Oakfield, the criminal character in my tabloid article is presented as a malicious character, with the use of adjectives, such as ‘devious’. The use of such adjectives persuades the reader to take the opinion of the reporter, and believe that Oakfield is wicked. The other main character in my article, Callum Griffin, is presented as sweet with the use of adjectives like ‘young’, which have connotations of innocence.
My Mills & Boon piece uses more complex sentences, such as ‘As he drew nearer, she noticed his athletic body, and his dark, windswept hair’ which give details of the characters and the setting of the event in a more interesting and in depth way. This is to aid the purpose – to entertain – so details are needed to enhance the novel. However in my tabloid article simple sentences, ‘A young man in his 30s has been sentenced to a life imprisonment for murder of a child’, are used a lot more as they simply relay the event and are much easier to understand, therefore appeal to the audience.
The nouns used in my Mills & Boon tend to be mainly concrete nouns of parts of the body, for example, ‘eyes’, ‘mouth’ and ‘knees’. This is because it is describing what is happening and also objectifying the woman, for example, ‘...as he delicately cupped her chin and kissed her passionately.’ This shows how the female character is passive. The description is also expectant from the readers as the typical Mills & Boon style is intimate and sexual. The nouns in my article are also mainly concrete nouns which describe the events leading up to the murder, for example, ‘cinema’, ‘body’ and ‘wounds’ which emphasises the facts of the article, which makes it seem more reliable and authoritative.
When I was writing both pieces I tried to create an authentic style, therefore the article had to resemble the style of a real tabloid article, and my romance novel had to resemble the style of those published by Mills & Boon. To achieve this I used the tabloid article we were given to analyse as my model to base my article around. Thus I looked at the sentence types, use of bias and many other linguistic techniques to form my own article. We were also given a passage from a Mills & Boon novel which I used as my model, by examining the techniques, such as objectification and use of verbs.
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