Travel Writing Commentary PDF

Preview

Summary

Download Travel Writing Commentary PDF

Description

Commentary I wrote my travel writing piece ‘Blackpool: A new perspective’ on Blackpool set during early august. I commented on the various attractions and entertainment opportunities within the city using a variety of techniques and literary devices to captivate my audience of people in their 20’s and 30’s and families with younger children. I aimed to create an entertaining piece which would appeal to my audience. The style model I used was called ‘Tales from the riverbank’ and was written by Geoff Dyer. I used this model as an example from which I took elements and well used techniques to create my original piece. This piece was written about Varanasi in India and comments on the overall atmosphere of the area and includes a section on the spiritual side that he experienced. I believe that the audience that this piece is aimed at would be people who have just finished university and are planning to go on a gap year. It would also be beneficial to people who are looking for a vibrant spiritual and cultural experience. Although the genre of both of these pieces is travel writing they both have a slightly different tone and angle with their use of pragmatics. My piece tries to revisit a beloved childhood place from an adult’s perspective with a chatty and entertaining approach. The style model I used does rely very heavily on humour but the use of humour within it has quite a big impact. Within my piece I tried to use humour such as “winds which could give even a chicken the power to fly”. I did this to try and create a more light hearted tone which would be more informal and easier for an audience to follow. The style model used humour within an anecdote, “‘Don’t look to your left. Just keep walking this way’… ‘A holy man with a huge snake’…’was coming towards us/ I think he was going to ask you to pet his snake.’ ‘If I’d seen it I would have died.’ ‘Well this is the place for that.’” The kind of humour which the author uses is very dry and helps to ease the tone and break up quite a lengthy article. Speaking of death also allows the author to flow right on to the next topic of how “Death is everywhere is Varanasi”. This type of humour could also be seen as self-deprecating and I believe that it humanised the writer and made his piece more informal and entertaining which encourages the reader to tackle the heavier subject matter, effectively re-hooking the reader. In my own writing I used a large amount of proper nouns such as “The Blackpool Tower to Stargate”. I think that this was effective and had a good impact on the reader because it helped to make my anecdote seem more accurate and allowed the reader to immerse themselves more fully into the story. The style model uses proper nouns in much the same way. The use of them make the writing more realistic and entertaining and as a consequence they help to keep the reader engaged. Overall I believe that my piece was effective in using a variety of techniques however I think that these techniques were used in a way which could be improved when compared to my style model as I believe this let my piece down. For example my use of humour.



Conclusion o Here the writer is aiming for !””” however this was less effective because o Overall I think my piece was effective in using a Varity of techniques to achieve its end. Predominantly I believe my use of this technique let it down. o Trying to capture this bit of stuff for the audience made the piece too dense. I tried t lighten it with humour but was ineffective.

 

Introduction P1 – Genre o Grammar o Pragmatics  Puns  Idioms  Similes  Metaphors  Humour  Personification o Anecdote P2 – Purpose o Stative verbs o Proper nouns o Abstract nouns P3 – Audience  Colloquialisms  Taboo lexis  Informal words  Popular culture Paragraph structure o Technique/ thing being analysed o Style model o Quote o Impact and influence o Own writing o Quote o Impact o Compare effects of each





...