Growing up with media

Rymska Polina, group 454

ANALYSIS

“GROWING UP WITH MEDIA”

The text taken under the analysis is headlined “Growing up with the media”. It is written by P. G. Aldrich. Unfortunately, there is no information about the author but it is known that the essay was published in “The Guardian”, British daily newspaper. The author tells us about influence social media has on us and how enormous this impact is.

In my opinion, the theme of the text can be formulated as “Media as an integral and big part of our life”. I think that the author wants to make the readers understand and realize that we should reconsider our attitude towards the media and try to be more critical to the information we perceive. That is the idea of this essay. Intentions of social media are not always good, it can make us buy different products we do not really need, believe in things that actually sound like absolute nonsense and generally it can make us “dull-witted”, “credulous”, “uncritical” and “passive”. The author asks for our attention, he wants to convey his view on mass media and to tell people how harmful the misuse of that can be.

The author tells us how totally mass media has got in our lives, while people tend not to pay much attention to it. He tells about different kinds of social media thus everyone understands that at least one of them is used everyday even in out-of-the-way parts of our world. He proves his opinion by presenting different facts, statistics, asking us direct questions. He persuades us easily because the problem he raises is in fact very important but adults do not notice or do not want to notice the harmfulness of their addiction. Harmfulness not only for them but also for their relatives, children and surroundings in general.

The genre of this text is essay, or rather an article. The story is completely based on personal opinion, supported by facts. The author observes daily life, common and significant problems, gives his own arguments, trying to influence people’s attitude towards them. Besides his own arguments, Aldrich also presents a statistical data to prove his words and persuade the readers (“An experiment recently conducted in Europe by the Society of Rational Psychology showed that watching television is psychologically addictive”; “…more than a third of all children by the age of three are viewing TV with some regularity and more than a half are listening to books read to them. Before they are old enough for school – a third of the children are looking through magazines, 40 % are listening to radio, and 80 % are viewing television. At age seven, newspapers enter a child’s life, usually through the comic strips”).

The text begins with open questions the author states to the audience. They immediately catch our attention, forcing us to read further in order to find out what the author wanted to say by asking such questions. Answers of the audience are predictable so Aldrich continues his story telling us about place social media takes in our lives. To make his article clearer and to avoid different misunderstandings he gives his own definitions of media and medium and tells us about different kinds of it. Next, the author becomes more straightforward and he dwells into the advantages and disadvantages of mass media. He encourages us be more “critical”, “well-informed” and “active”. He speaks about media’s influence on different aspects of our being: emotions, psychological state, language, intellect, ideas etc. He persuades the readers that different newspapers, magazines, pamphlets are always written, designed, stated in such way that they can easily catch our attention, influence our opinion, force us to do something.

The article was written approximately in the beginning of XXI century, because the author tells about radio, television, films of all kinds that came into our lives less than hundred years ago (“The electronic media – radio, television, films of all kinds, records, tapes, anything that is transmitted by the use of electricity – are less than a hundred years old”). Actually, even nowadays it is still less than hundred ago the technical devices were totally implemented in our lives especially if to talk about computers and telephones, which emerged only 1970^s. Aldrich speaks about all the people around the world, but according to the fact that the author relies on European research (“an experiment recently conducted in Europe by the Society for Rational Psychology showed that watching television is psychologically addictive”), the audience the writer addresses mainly to the people, who live in the countries of the European Union(till the 2016 the United Kingdom was also the part of the EU).

The essay can be divided into two parts: the exposition is formed by the author’s leading questions that look together like a test, and the story itself that takes all the rest of the text. In my opinion, there is no climax, because the text is not artistic, and there is no denouement, the author just ends his story without any conclusion. He gives us facts, his own point of view and leave us think it over on our own.

The story is written in the first form of narration. It is narration with descriptions and subtle hints on a dialogue because the questions the author asks mean that he wants to involve the readers to the conversation.

The things of importance in this text are all the things concerning mass media. Reading this we realize how much space they actually occupy in our lives: TV cartoons, a newspaper, a magazine, a television commercial, TV series, a movie, a record, radio, mass media, books, pamphlets, catalogues, circulars, brochures, films, tapes, comics, comic strips, teevee, television, TV, telly, stand up, TV drama, article, advertisement. There are also several realities used to make readers perceive the information more clearly and to make them feel themselves as a part of a mass: Captain Kangaroo (American children’s morning television program), Mickey Mouse (a funny animal cartoon character) and the Society for Rational Psychology mentioned to persuade the readers by presenting the evidence from credible resource. Emotional atmosphere of the narration is neutral but still there are both negatively colored (dull-witted, ill-informed, vicious, tawdry, harmful, superficial etc.) and positively colored words (friendly, altruistic, having fun, enjoy, positive aspects etc.). It makes the argumentation sound more objective as we see both bad and good sides.

The author uses neutral words to make the text understandable for the majority of the audience. Aldrich uses such colloquial words as “teevee”, “telly”, “mike”. Still there are some medical terms and bookish words (sophisticated, isolation, psychologically addictive, brainwashing, conglomerate etc.). Most of the sentences are long but easy to read. Aldrich uses inversion (“With all this you also absorb ideas about behavior”) in order to emphasize the media itself and its great influence. The author often uses rhetorical questions to involve the readers into the conversation: “What do you remember most about your childhood…?”; “What did you and your friends talk about, at least part of the time, before class…?”; “Or are the mass of people well-informed, sophisticated, thoughtful and active?’; “Is this good or bad?”, “And what did you absorb?” etc.). In the essay there are also antonyms used to show the contrast and to make the difference more clear, to force the readers think the information over: “…a phrase too often associated with adjectives like dull-witted, credulous, ill-informed, uncritical, and passive/ or are the mass of people well-informed, sophisticated, thoughtful, and active?”; “…brainwashing that could be friendly or vicious, altruistic or self-serving”; “…about right and wrong, good and bad, the permissible and the forbidden”.

There are different thematic nets that make the text more highly specialized:

• 
  thematic net of technique (cars, electricity, telephones, radio, television);
  
• 
  thematic net of mass media (TV, TV cartoons, comics, magazine, commercial, newspaper, TV series, movie, mass media, media, medium, recordings, books, pamphlets, catalogues, circulars, brochures, records, tapes, comic strips, stand-up”);
  
• 
  thematic net of professions (reporter, film editor, copy editor, script writer, continuity writer).
  

To make the description more vivid and quite subjective the author uses such stylistic devices as epithets (powerful ideas, psychological depths, vicious/friendly/altruistic brainwashing, etc.), metaphors (emotionally digested, builds other people’s power, pick them up through your pores), simile (as though people were puppets on strings”. There are also some examples of periphrasis in ironical aims: “global village”, “would-be-jokes”. There is a catch repetition used to emphasize the subject discussed: “The mass audience of mass media – are then programmed to buy, vote, contribute, believe, and supports other people’s interests, interests which may be commercial, political, charitable, philosophical, or educational”. This last sentence is also an example of enumeration often used in this essay: “newspapers, magazines, books, pamphlets, catalogues, circulars, brochures, anything you read…”. Enumeration is often followed by parallel constructions: “…about right and wrong, good and bad, the permissible and the forbidden”, “It changes our language, stimulates our emotions, informs our intellect, influences our ideas, values and attitudes”. Sometimes the author uses asyndeton to make the narration look like endless flow, to make us read it without stop: “When the material is written, staged, photographed with or without audio, printed”. The author also uses graphon to catch our attention and to make us focus on important things: italics (“If the use of them referring to media <…> the word media linguistically is plural”) and capitalization (“Another meaning of the word mass suggests is ‘the people’…”; “The MAJORITY of material is chosen or designed to produce a predetermined response”).

Although the text was written more than ten years ago, it is still topical nowadays. Even though television and radio have taken second place, giving way to the internet, computers and telephones, the problem of our attitude towards all these technical devices has not changed. We are still addicted to it, we are still uncritical, quite credulous and passive. The majority of us are easily swayed by the commercials and by these beautiful faces from circulars that encourage us to buy necessary things and to pay for entertainment we do not need. The author urges us to be more thoughtful, active and well-informed. By giving the statistic data he makes his words more convincing. In my opinion, this essay is very constructive and well formulated and if the aim of the writer is to make us think about the problem he raises, - Aldrich managed to do it.