[0:00]Hi everyone, welcome to Miss Adams Teachers English Language and Literature A Level. This video is the first of a series taking you through the Ed Excel voices in speech and writing Anthology, otherwise known as the parrot book, because that's a parrot on the front. So we're going to be looking at the first text today, Charlie Brooker, Too Much Talk for One Planet, why I'm reducing my word emissions. I'm going to take you through content, context and gap first of all, and then we'll have a little look at some key quotes and try and consider what voice is being created and how his experience is being presented through literary and linguistic devices. So hopefully, very helpful for your revision. Let's get started.
[0:44]Okay, so let's just start off with a quick recap about what, um, this article is about. This is an article written by Charlie Brooker where he's talking about the, the sort of dangers of online communication and social media. And he starts by explaining why he has stopped writing his usual column, um, with a little anecdote about, um, whether or not he had asked for particular comments to be turned off underneath the article. But it then turns into an article that is really focusing on how and why people are able to communicate in the way that they do and how kind of dangerous that is. Uh, in terms of context, things that you need to, sorry, things that you need to know, Charlie Brooker is a writer, he's a producer, he's a presenter. Most importantly, he is a satirist. Okay, you might recognize him because he is the person that has created Black Mirror, which is currently on Netflix. Um, in case you're not sure about what satire is, satire is a way of criticizing, uh, normally aspects of society, uh, and usually through humor. So it can be satire can be created through exaggeration, overgeneralization, incongruity, uh, and various other things, but basically it's using humor but to criticize an aspect of society. Uh, other contextual factors to consider is the, uh, rising or, you know, rising numbers of social media users and platforms, um, and how that has led to the kind of the trolling sensation is worth considering. You'll want to realize that Charlie Brooker is a regular writer for the Guardian, which is why the article starts with him saying, oh, you might have noticed I haven't been doing my usual piece. And then, um, the other, um, form that is mentioned is the Private Eye, which is a satirical magazine run by Ian Hislop, magazine and online, and so that's where this kind of anecdote of Charlie Brooker supposedly wanting the comments to be, um, taken off comes from. Um, if we want to think about gap, genre, audience, purpose, always important when starting with these parrot texts. Uh, so obviously it's an article, but more specifically it's an opinion piece, okay? So Brooker has a column where as long as the, um, viewpoints that he presents are in line with the viewpoint of the Guardian, um, he is able to express his opinions. So it's different from a news report. Um, so we're obviously looking at a public audience here, um, yes, Guardian readers, who are they? Well, they're going to be people who are politically on the left, um, they're going to be educated, reasonably, uh, adult, you know. Uh, but you're also going to get the people that specifically tune into Brooker himself and people that enjoy satire because he's got quite a, uh, a definitive style, you know, you can, you can tell a Brooker piece a mile off. Um, and what's the purpose? Well, of course it is to entertain, you know, he's employed, yeah, the Guardian want to sell newspapers. Um, so yes, it's to entertain, but it is certainly to inform and it's about expressing those opinions about the harmful effects of social media and communication, so, uh, to a degree there is persuasion in there as well. Okay, so this next part of the presentation, I am going to give you some key quotations, um, with a focus on, well, hang on, what is the voice? And then start thinking about some of the literary and linguistic devices within the writing. When it comes to voice, it's such a strange thing, just be like think to yourself, how does he sound? Yeah, how does he sound? If you can find some adjectives to describe, how does he sound, you're talking about his voice. So, most important things here are, he's quite confrontational, he's certainly very satirical and sardonic, he's quite sarcastic, you know, all in line with the kind of idea of humorous, he's very conversational, very conversational indeed. It's it's a very informal style of writing, there's a lot of direct address. So, on each slide, I've given you a couple of sort of descriptive words that you could use to describe voice. Some of them are quite different because depending on how you take the quote. Um, let's get started. Okay, so, um, I'm saying that within the headline and the pull quote that's used as a tagline, um, you can say that he's been quite reflective, he's been quite self-aware in his voice. Sounds quite reflective, sounds quite self-aware. So let's start with the headline, too much talk for one planet, why I'm reducing my word emissions. One of the things that I want to draw your attention to is this use of juxtaposition because what we do is we start with, um, with the broad, with the big, with the general, okay? One planet, too much talk. Note it's, it's, it's about volume, there's too much talk for one planet. Note how kind of vague that is onto why I'm reducing my word emissions. So we've got this shift from the broad, from the general to the specific, first person pronoun, I, which suggests that Brooker is conscious not only of the big issues, but also what the individual can do. So that's where we get this idea about being self-aware, he's willing to point out what he has been doing wrong as well. Most important thing here is that we, this is the start of an extended metaphor that communication, particularly online communication, can be seen as a form of pollution, as global warming. So it starts here with this metaphor of word emissions, you get a little bit of it again in that pull quote. So I'm saying pull quote because it's taken from later on in the article. So if you were using this, you might look at it in the context of the headline, but you might look at it in the context of the paragraph that it comes from. Okay, so yeah, uh, vast cloud is an extension of this idea of pollution here, but we also have these wonderful nouns, jabber and blah. So deliberately vague language, blah is also associated with kind of teen speak that might be telling us something about the rise of social media and young people. Jabber, you might think of the jabber walkie. So it's quite nice interesting allusion to the sort of idea of the made up word, the kind of nonsense word. Um, and he's saying that is what is, uh, sort of filling our world, this sort of meaningless jabber. So the premise is really, really set from the headline and the, uh, pull quote. Uh, next aspect of voice, self-deprecating tone he uses. Now, this is all the way through, it's everywhere, um, and again, we've got the idea about, about it being quite conversational, again, you can use so many different quotes, um, but I thought I'd start this one off. This is the actual opening paragraph, so I've said quote, it's a big old chunk. Um, but I thought I'd just draw your attention to a couple of things. So first off, we've got this sort of assumed, like knowledge, this shared knowledge between Brooker and his readership. So when he talks about a paragraph in Private Eye claimed I'd asked Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian to switch off the reader comments. So there is this kind of assumed knowledge that his readers will know what the Private Eye is, will understand that dynamic, that this is another kind of satirical paper. It tells us something about the the readership. Um, so yeah, to switch off the reader comments underneath my articles, not true, and that he'd refused to do so, also not true, and so I'd quit, not entirely true. So this is a lovely little bit of crafting, uh, very, very conversational, lighthearted in tone and really this comes from this series of parentheses. Look, we've got three little lots of parentheses where the, uh, adjectival phrases within are repeated but just with slight variations. So creates a bit of humor, it's about the idea about what is real and what is not real, which I think this article is about as well, um, sort of clearing things up. Um, but again it it creates a sense of like this conversational tone with the reader. And then we've got more humor here, more self-deprecation when he says this led to an intense flurry of activity, so we get a little bit of hyperbole here. Uh, certainly in the adjective intense, flurry suggests like frenzy and panic. Um, and then he immediately juxtaposes it by saying by which I mean four people asked me about it. Okay, so again, there's something overly specific here in this number four, uh, which creates a bit of humor. But the self-deprecation also comes from the sense of bathos, which also means like anti-climax. So you're like, oh, how many people got upset, oh, four. So, very, very Brooker in style. But again, this is setting up the premise, like it's the story behind the article. Like what has got him thinking about word count, you know, how much people are putting out there. Okay, another little bit of, um, self-awareness, certainly self-deprecation as always, but you get this quite critical tone here in his voice. Um, so he's just been talking about the idea of people making mistakes and then means, uh, being sent all around until there are sort of however many billions of, of jokes being made, uh, online. So he have events and noise, events and noise, everything was starting to resemble nothing but events and noise. So lovely bit of repetition here. So we've got repetition of this noun phrase, events and noise, events and noise, but then it we've got a form of repetition called anadiplosis here where it's repeated again at the end. So you get this almost cyclical ongoing, oh, events, noise, events, noise, it never stops. So by having it at the beginning and at the end, anadiplosis, it emphasizes just how much noise there is. Um, we've got some lovely vague language as well here with the everything was starting to resemble, so all being sort of, um, overwhelming, like no escape from it at all. Got a lovely extended metaphor, you could talk about it in terms of semantic fields, it would work here, uh, which is a semantic field of war. So firing more words, so we've got firing into the middle of all that began to strike me as futile and unnecessary. Obviously futile and unnecessary are adjectives that are often used to describe war, futility of war. So, suddenly this online communication is now like a battleground, again, it's emphasizing how dangerous it is. And then for more self-awareness, I started to view myself as yet another factory mindlessly pumping carbon dioxide into a toxic sky. So wonderful extended metaphor there, extension from the, uh, opening headline and the pull quote. Um, but just look at the, look at it in, in detail. So we've got this, yet another factory, so this determiner here reminding us of just how many people there are contributing to this issue. I like this adverb as well, mindlessly, the kind of sense that people are sort of oblivious to what they're doing. Um, pumping carbon dioxide into a toxic sky, great adjective there, again reminding us of the whole kind of concept of pollution, but also toxic is a word that we use quite a lot nowadays to mean, um, sort of cruelly harmful. Like the kind of corrupted version of self, so the fact that it's a toxic sky is perhaps referring to, um, that sort of meanness, that cruelty that you see online. Okay, we've got a brilliant bit of kind of critical tone here where he starts to parody, um, the voice of the trolls on the internet, so this is really worthwhile commenting on. He says I get an incredibly easy ride from passing well-wishers compared with any woman who dares write anything on the internet anywhere about anything at all, the ugly bitch, boo, go home bitch go home. This is absolutely brilliant, okay, so first off, we've got, um, this, uh, vague language here with, you know, any, anything, anywhere, anything, nice bit of repetition there to suggest it doesn't matter what a woman is writing, content is is meaningless, it's irrelevant, it's the fact that it's a woman writing. Um, and then this lovely verb here, you know, who dares write anything. So he's obviously creating quite an ironic tone there suggesting, oh, the audacity of a woman who's going to dare to write something. Um, and then here we have non-standard forms where he mimics the voice of the online troll. So in mimicking that voice, we've got toboo language or profanity, so traditional, uh, insult for a woman, the ugly bitch, appearances and, uh, um, profanity that is specific to female gender. We've got use of imperatives, non-standard forms of punctuation, note that the, uh, punctuation just completely goes away because it's meant to literally be mimicking the typos and the mistakes of the person that keyboard warrior at home writing abuse. So, bring in a little bit of context there as well, but that's a lovely bit to analyze. Last little bit, um, before, um, I leave you to it. Um, so this is the end of the article, so the penultimate paragraph, because the last paragraph is obviously just a little one, one sentence job. Um, we get this really nice kind of cyclical structure where we come back to the imagery that we had at the beginning. In other words, I'm reducing my carbon emissions. So we've got that extended metaphor once more, um, back to the kind of notion of emission. So really nice and cohesive as an end, and then we get this really kind of wonderful sarcasm where he, um, continues making fun of himself but also of the situation by explaining what a newspaper is. So you've got lots of lovely specific details, it contains words and pictures. It catches fire easily. Excuse me. So nice and sarcastic, but then the very, very, very final sentence of the piece, now get out, lovely imperative, and again, it's that extended metaphor from the, uh, article as being a newspaper. So, good way to end it.
[18:38]That's it for me. I know I didn't go through absolutely everything, it is quite a long article, so I just chose a few little interesting bits that, um, hopefully will help you kind of marry up voice and analysis. If there are any parts of the article that you'd like any help with, just drop me a line in the comments and I will come back to you. Otherwise, that's it for me, thank you so much for watching. Uh, if you haven't subscribed, please do so. I'm going to be loading more of these, um, parrot anthology book, uh, texts in the next couple of weeks to help you with your revision.
[19:32]Thanks again, happy revising.
