In the first section, the introduction, the main points of the article are all summarized to give the reader an understanding about what the article is about and whether it interests them.
This introduction introduces the article, the basic story and gives the reader a good impression of what it is about. The first paragraphs in the article tend to make the article sound much more exciting and especially in tabloid newspapers ‘controversial’ than it actually is. This article also does this in the headline. In the headline it states ‘Head’s Love For Girl, 15’; this headline attempts to make the article seem much worse than it actually is as what the headline calls the ‘Head’ the article actually states he is the assistant head, it says
“Mr Stevenson was the assistant head until he retired early last term,”
This is obviously an attempt by the writer of the article controversy.
This section of the article has a number of quotes taken from the character ‘Sally’ and puts her in a good light, this shows that the article is biased towards her and tends to make the characters of Mr and Mrs Stevenson come off much worse.
Another example of this bias comes from the headline. In the headline it states the girl to be 15 putting Mr Stevenson in again a very bad light while it clearly states further into the article that nothing happened until the girl was 16.
This first section is used to get the reader interested in the article and as such uses vocabulary that’s can sound both exciting an controversial to the reader as well as being very descriptive, examples of this type of vocabulary would be words such ‘Sizzling’ and ‘Torrid’
The second section which is written from ‘Sally’s’ point of view shows Sally’s said of the story and how she feels about the situation; this is done as the majority of this section contains quotes from sally describing what took place.
During this section the quotes which are used make Sally out to seem very mature for her age, this is done through the vocabulary that sally uses. This type of vocabulary is in complete contrast to the vocabulary used further on in the article by Mrs Stevenson as her vocabulary comes off as being quite childish, an example of this would be ‘School Girl’. This contrast again shows the article to be in favour of Sally over Mr Stevenson.
The third and final section of the article clearly shows that the article heavily relies on a number of stereotypes especially when it comes to representing Mr and Mrs Stevenson. In the article these two people come off to the reader as being quite posh or higher class – Mr Stevenson being named as the headmaster and Mrs Stevenson standing by her husband throughout all of the events that took place brushing it off as just a ‘Teenage crush on an older man.’.
Throughout this article it is clear that the writer was defiantly in favour of Sally. Information has clearly been stretched and altered in order to manipulate the reader such as the age of the girl in the headline. When looking at the amount of spaced given to each side of the argument in sections 2 and 3, section 2 is easily twice the size. This lets the reader relate to Sally much more and accept the writer’s point of view.
Overall this text can at times be quite inaccurate and misleading for the reader and is used mainly for entertainment purposes not informative ones unlike an article from say a broadsheet newspaper.
