Daily Mail and Guardian Comparison



The title of the article includes the personal pronoun ‘we’ to immediately make the article personal to each reader and cause them to question themselves but still not excluding them as ‘we’ implies the writer will be doing the same. The verb ‘deride’ that follows this is equally as powerful as it means to label negatively and implies that this is what the British public have been doing to an entire group of people. This shows that the article means to shed positive light onto refugees and change the usually negative British opinion on them. The tagline then includes the phrase ‘strip them of their humanity’ which is very emotive and mentions the noun ‘humanity’ which conveys that the term ‘migrants’ is dehumanising. The quote that follows this contradicts it by referring to the ‘migrants’ as ‘mothers and fathers’ and is unreferenced, suggesting that what is said is more important than who says it. This represents that the article wants the British public to focus more on the personal needs and stories of refugees and help them to recover from potential trauma they have gone through, rather than looking down on them.


The use of the generalisation ‘the Left’ in the title immediately implies the article is written by a right-wing journalist who believes they are being ‘browbeat[en]’ by left-wing views. The rhetorical question that follows this is used to make people think about whether this is the case but this is immediately discarded by the adverb ‘suddenly’ that suggests that the decision made by the British public was too impulsive and emotionally-driven to be a rash one. This shows that the article is a representation of right-wing political parties (especially the Conservatives) and means to tell people to resist the Left trying to force people to accept more refugees. The co-ordinating conjunction ‘if’ is later used in front of ‘the BBC is to be believed’ implying that the BBC is not to be believed otherwise ‘the BBC has said’ would be more appropriate. This represents how the Right feel the media is no longer trustworthy.

Comparison

The articles are similar in the way that they are both focused on the subject of refugees and they both use sarcastic and ironic remarks to mock the beliefs of the other. Text A is left-wing and includes the right-wing quote ‘bogus asylum seekers’ to make fun of how they believe asylum seekers are ‘bogus’ ‘Bogus’ is an adjective that implies silliness or fun and is ironic as the article’s earlier quote ‘photograph of the dead three-year-old Syrian boy’ shows that asylum seekers are anything but silly. The writer of Text B also does this by talking about the ‘would-be’ Labour leaders and the ‘impression’ they give. The semantics behind these words imply dishonesty or manipulation the way that Labour tries to convince the British public to accept more refugees. The shows that both articles intend to put the views of the other down and persuade their readers to not believe them as their beliefs are wrong and not beneficial to the UK.

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