Synecdoche, ‘Cider’, is used to represent the whole idea of all English writers except Shakespeare. The writer not only loves ‘Cider’ but also ‘T. Hughes’ and ‘P. Larkin’, as he mentioned before and of course ‘Mr Lee’, as it is an admiration letter. ‘Cider’ is only a representative of one of the English writer and is used to create the general idea how the writer loves the English writers.
The lexis used by the writer, ‘coke and kitkat’, signifies the age of the writer, who is about 10 years old. The names of favorite food and drink for little children are used to show the age group and so the expected education background about the writer. Predictably, simple lexis is used, as the writer is not sophisticated enough in writing. Moreover, the English terminology is used, such as ‘anthology’, ‘character-sketch’, terms of assessment objectives ‘terse’, ‘cogent’, and the famous writers’ names ‘’Shakespeare’, T. Hughes’ and ‘ P.Larkin’. They show the status of the writer, who is a student studying English; the situation of the writer, which is facing the exam.
The imitations of authentic speech, such as elision, repetition, digression, reformulation, colloquial expression, coordinating conjunction, are used to mimic the genuineness.
Elision such as ‘it’s’, ‘he’s’, ‘that’s’, are used to imitate the style of authentic speech, as the contraction of the verb to be still keeps the original meaning clearly without causing confusion.
Repetition of ‘Dear Mr Lee’ is an echo-like expression, dispersed throughout the passage. When the writer digresses, he reformulates himself by starting with ‘Dear Mr Lee’ as a sign of ‘back to the topic’. Digression, such as (Mr Smart says it’s rude to call you Laurie…), is used to give extra information to the audience without interruption.
Colloquial expression, ‘a laugh a minute’, is used to create a sense of authenticity of an unplanned writing and an informal register. It also indicates that the casualness, the writer’s attitude towards ‘Mr Lee’.
Coordinating conjunction ‘and’ is always appeared in the text. ‘And’ is the most frequent use conjunction in the actual speech, for it is used to mimic the realism.
Grammatical field of the text is informal and conversational. The use of colloquial expression not only imitates the style of authentic speech, but also creates a conversational atmosphere. Adverbs are omitted; simple past, simple present tenses are used in this text; as it is deliberately written as a piece of child’s writing, everything keeps in a simple form. Therefore, the complexity of the text is low. The text is combined with simple, short sentences. And the misuse of punctuation commas is inappropriate, but is acceptable in a conversational, informal register. As in this text, the writer tries to narrow the gap between himself and ‘Mr Lee’, creating a close relationship with ‘Mr Lee’ by means of informal style of writing.
The writer addresses himself as ‘I’, as it is a first person narrative text. He addresses ‘Mr Lee’ as ‘You’ in such a way that the writer is building a closer relationship between ‘Mr Lee’ and ‘him’; though the text is fans letter, the term of address should be more polite and approving.
An attitude toward English is fondness, although he thinks that ‘Shakespeare’ is ‘a national disaster’ and he ‘used to hate English’, he learns in a way —‘know by heart’. He ‘still love Cider’ even though he may fail the exam. However, he dislikes exams, as he is ‘not much good at terse and cogent’, and from what he writes ‘don’t feel guilty for me failing the exam’, tell the audience that he did badly in the exams. ‘Mr Smart’, as is named positively, should be someone that the writer likes. Ironically, ‘Mr Smart is roughly my least favorite person’, verbal irony is created as the literally positive image of ‘Mr Smart’ is ‘the least favorite person’ of the writer. In a whole, he loves English, but not his teacher ‘Mr Smart’, Shakespeare and exams.
