Analysis of Synthesis Sources

David Rohde is a professional writer and journalist for The Christian Science Monitor magazine. His article seems to be written to a general audience, not conforming to any one side. He shows this by including different viewpoints on the subject that supported his purpose: “Alan Firth, a linguist at the University of Aalborg in Denmark,” multiculturalists, “Tom McArthur, editor of the Oxford Companion to the English Language,” linguists in general, and many others. The purpose is to give educational information. We can see this through the medium it is presented in: PBS.org; PBS is often used as an informative service for the public. There is not much to say for his motivational occasion, but he did seem to be slightly annoyed at the differences between English in its traditional form and English in any other way. His angle of vision seems somewhat clouded to the subject in that he thinks that the change is not able to be stopped, although this may be true. It focuses on the changes that are caused by the spread of English. The article was logical, but it was also somewhat uncoordinated in its examples and focus; for example, the article has a part right at the beginning that was about the multiculturalists and does not return to it until the end. The author was fair to see other viewpoints, but it may have been nice to see a side that was in favor of the language changing. The appeal to emotion seemed absent, but sometimes that depends on the reader. The examples were clear and vivid enough to get a picture of what the spread was doing. The “hardware” example, for instance, was put in an understandable way. The values of the author were unclear; he used others’ opinions to shape the article. This led me to think that the article was more of a research paper.

George Orwell is a well-known author and wrote many books including the popular 1984. In his essay, he was writing to other professional writers and authors. He said, “The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English … is full of bad habits that spread by imitation…” (par. 2). That suggests that the essay’s purpose is to be inspirational and persuasive in order to reverse a few of the problems that come with the change of language. The political uses of the language after World War II must have frustrated him enough to write this essay. After all, one of his examples in his essay was, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so” (par. 13). His angle of vision is determined to stop the degradation in language. Although it is an old essay it still holds some important principles to notice about the change or degradation in language. The points are logically backed up, and the essay is well-structured and thought out. The author is very knowledgeable about the subject; this is visible in how, throughout the essay, Orwell used many diverse examples that showed his intentions plainly. The appeal to emotion is most prominent in the part about the politics. For example, he says, “Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.” (par. 13) This may be a simple example, if you want it to be, but it clearly has emotional investment in it to show Orwell’s feeling on the matter. The appeal to values is also there because the ideas were important; Orwell even points out, “…if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” (par. 15).  The corruption of thought should be a concern to everyone. I share a lot of the values that Orwell does in this essay, but my own ideas differ with his when his main point is to use simpler language. Today’s complications are often the simplicity itself. I think the appeal to emotion was of the most help for me to understand the problem that we face in the decadence of language.