How does Tom Leonard present his Views about Language and Culture?
How does Tom Leonard present his Views about Language and Culture? The poems from 'Unrelated Incidents' by Tom Leonard explore different prejudices and social attitudes regarding his culture. The poet uses different methods and means to show the reader his 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 Tom Leonard come from an area 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 poems 'Unrelated Incidents' this is because this is the main prejudice that Tom Leonard is dealing with. He wants his readers to know that there no language or accent that is better or more sophisticated than another. The most obvious technique that Tom Leonard uses is phonetic language, we can see this in a number of his poems for 'Unrelated Incidents', for example: 'this is thi six a clock news'. 'this is thi six a clock news thi man said n thi reason a talk wia BBC accent iz coz yi widny wahnt mi ti talk aboot thi trooth wia voice lik wanna yoo scruff. if a toktaboot thi trooth lik wanna yoo scruff yi widny thingk it wuz troo. jist wanna yoo scruff tokn. thirza right way ti spell ana right way to