Tom Leonard and John Agrad - How Do The Two Poets Highlight The Difficulties Of Living In A Different Culture?

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Rachael Elliott 11D.

How Do The Two Poets Highlight

The Difficulties Of Living

In A Different Culture?

In the two poems 'Unrelated Incidents' by Tom Leonard and 'Half-Caste' by John Agard the obvious connection is the language is written phonetically to emphasise the dialect and contrast in culture to the real English language. In order to convey their opinions on the prejudices they face they take an almost humorous approach to ridicule their opposers.

Both the poets' use of punctuation means that when spoken aloud there is an aggressive tone as in 'Unrelated Incidents' there are no capital letters, this emphasises the 'wrongness' of his dialect. He pokes fun at the way people would presume that news given by someone who doesn't speak with a 'voice of authority' is lying, it is clearly wrong and he shuns this assumption:
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'n thi reason I talk wia BBC accent iz coz yi widny wahnt mi ti talk aboot thi trooth wia voice lik wanna yoo scruff.'

As the poem progresses the language becomes more and more dialect-like, this is to make it seem as though the poet is translating the 'BBC accent' into his own way of speaking. The words run together to convey the characteristics of colloquial language.

Te poet ends the poem with 'belt up.' It seems that either he is disinterested with anyone who labels him because of their accent or he's directly ...

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