OPPapers.com

Language Analysis

Controversy arose recently in the wider community over the Victorian Governments proposal to ban junk food from school canteens. Within the media there has been varied opinions concerning the issue, with Herald Sun contributors Neil Mitchell and Bettina Arndt both offering the opinions against the ban in two well structured pieces of prose, but with two different styles. Mitchell uses a sarcastic yet assertive tone and Arndt uses a critical and frustrated tone. The Sunday Herald Suns editorial rationally outlines why the bans are need to deter the growing trend of childhood obesity in Australia.

"Lunch Time Losers" (Herald Sun, 27 April, 2006), Neil Mitchell's opinion piece use an unappealing photo of contestants from the weight loss program "The Biggest Loser" to draw the readers attention, he then uses the rhetorical question "Did they start out by eating the wrong school lunches?" This suggest to the reader that it is foolish to think that adults end up obese all because of what they ate as a child.
The headline the accompanies the article use alliteration in the form of "Lunch" and "Losers" to imply that by banning these items from canteens, children will miss out on some of the fun of being a child.

Mitchell's use of emotive language and exaggeration in the beginning of his piece to capture the reader's attention is used superbly. Words and phrases like "food police", "storm" and "force" give the reader a mental picture of SWAT teams busting through windows and taking coke cans and mars bars prisoners, whilst stocking canteens with carrot juice and "boiled zucchini".
Mitchell's use of sarcasm and humour through-out the article is used to show how much of a joke these bans are, by referring the "lunch box inspectors" who check to see that the students only bring in State approved "tasteless Left-wing vegetarian cardboard" and that grants will be given to who ever can build a junk food detector to capture any student who dares bring in "serious...