How do the poets in 'Half-Caste' and 'Unrelated Incidents' explore prejudices and social attitudes?

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Amy St.John Glew 11p        06/05/07        Poetry Essay

How do the poets in ‘Half-Caste’ and ‘Unrelated Incidents’ explore prejudices and social attitudes?

  • Languages
  • Tone
  • Structure
  • Rhyme
  • Images
  • Poetic techniques

The poems ‘Half-Caste’ by John Agard and ‘Unrelated Incidents’ by Tom Leonard both explore different prejudices and social attitudes regarding their culture. The poets both use different methods and means to show the reader their thoughts, they use different techniques for different reasons to help convey their message.

Both of the poems use mainly non-standard English, which is written phonetically, this is because both of the poets come from areas where there are accents and the poets want to show the readers that they are the same as everyone else, their accent and culture makes no difference.

Accent is very important in the poem ‘Unrelated Incidents’ this is because this is the main prejudice that Tom Leonard is dealing with. He wants his readers to know that people don’t always talk with the ‘BBC accent’ and that other people in Britain see the ‘BBC accent’ as some people see the stronger regional accents. To show that he is cross with the way that the ‘BBC accent’ is seen as the right way people should talk, he has written this poem in Glaswegian patois.  

In ‘Half-Caste’ language and accent is important but it is not as important. This poem is also written in a regional patois but this time it is in the Afro-Caribbean patois. The poem ‘Half-Caste’ is easier to understand because the language is nearer to Standard English and the English reader will find this poem easier to understand. This may have been Tom Leonard’s plan though, he is stressing that Standard English is not the right way to speak and that no one understands it, but no-one understands what he has written so he may be using a paradox to get his messages across.

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The tone in the poem ‘Half-Caste’ is quite sarcastic to begin with, John Agard is ‘making fun’ of the term half-caste.

‘half of mih ear’

This quote show him being sarcastic he is implying that if he a half-caste then he is only half there and only has one eye, one ear and so on. The reader knows that this is not what the term means and picks p on the fact that Agard is being sarcastic, this also add a bit of humour to the poem because the reader get the image that there is only half a ...

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