7:1: Chris Rainier – ‘Tsunami Eyewitness Account by Nat Geo Photographer’ Flashcards
(18 cards)
What is the audience?
- people interested in Nat Geo
- people interested in the tsunami
- those interested in current affairs
- fans of Rainier
- people interested in the environment.
What is the purpose?
- to inform
- educate and gain support
- also slightly pro-America.
CONTEXT: Tsunami
- Boxing Day 2004
- 250000 died, many of which were on holiday.
- Indian ocean.
- Devastated many places.
- Caused by a tsunami.
Context: National Geographic
- Makes documentaries.
- Nature.
- Published since 1888.
- Known for its photography.
- Well respected.
- In many languages (so a large readership).
What is the voice?
- At times very blunt and even detached.
- A very factual voice. He really is simply describing what is happening.
- Slightly pro-America at times.
- Very harsh and disturbing in some ways.
“The best way to describe this—because we grew up with the images and we all know what it looked like—is that Banda Aceh looks like Hiroshima after the atomic bomb.”
- In media res - starting in the middle of it, creating a dynamic and captivating opening and also creating tension. Also, this mimics how abrupt the actual event was.
- “best” - superlative.
- “we” - inclusive pronoun to emphasise how it is a common experience.
- Parenthesis - used to make historical allusion.
- war imagery emphasises the destruction of the event.
“It’s totally destroyed.”
- Very short and emphasising sentence. Brings forward the abruptness and atrocity.
- A shift from the prior complex sentence. At the end of the day, you can describe the issue all you want, but the best way to put it is that it is simply destroyed.
- “totally” - works to emphasise.
- Simple declarative.
“The buildings have been flattened for miles and entire communities— probably something like a hundred thousand people—have been swept out to sea”
- “probably” and “something like” - indefinite determiners. The scale of this event is incomprehensible.
- Plosive with “buildings”, “been”, “probably”, “people” - creates a very harsh and abrupt voice. Ensures the atrocity is conveyed in a way that has no sugarcoating.
- Emotive collocation.
- “entire communities” - community has positive connotations of togetherness. This is shattered by the context, creating an even more effective use of emotive language.
- “swept out to sea” - sibilant. Jarringly reminiscent of the sweeping. Sweeping is this idea of pushing away waste, so this description is almost dehumanising.
“It’s day 15 [January 10, 2005] since the disaster, and still there are vast areas where exposed bodies can be seen lying around, decaying.”
- “bodies”, “lying” and “decaying” - semantic field of death and decay.
- “day 15” - use of a temporal discourse marker. True to the genre.
- “It’s” - use of the present tense, giving a sense of immediacy.
- “exposed bodies” - strong connotations of vulnerability and consequently injury. Bluntness. Reflects the situation.
- “vast areas” - he doesn’t shy away from emphasising the scale of the issue.
- “still” - adverb. Emphasising the horror that even after 15 days not everything has been remedied.
“Just cleaning up, picking up the bodies, remains the biggest challenge.”
- “cleaning up”, “picking up” - parallel syntax, almost as if he’s correcting himself.
- “cleaning”, “picking” - dehumanising words to describe the bodies. What was human of them is gone. The tsunami took that.
- “biggest” - superlative.
- “bodies” - repetition.
“Everyone is very impressed with the U.S. military relief effort and the UN’s coordination of some 200 different [charity organizations] setting up here.”
- Pro-America.
- “very” - intensifying adverb.
- “everyone” - indefinite pronoun. Suggests broadness, giving credibility.
- “some” - indefinite determiner.
- “coordination” - everyone is coming together to solve this issue. A message of hope?
“The urgent challenge is to make sure that another hundred thousand people don’t die from disease.”
- “another” - we’re back to emphasising the horror that has occurred even before the events of this reportage.
- “don’t die from disease” - the dental alliteration serves to emphasise the horror with its harshness.
- “urgent” - it is a current issue.
- use of a negative to convey a positive with “don’t die”. Serves to convey how there is no positive in this situation. It is just about not dying at this point.
“The horror of this place reminds me of something from a biblical disaster story or the sketches of Hieronymus Bosch [a painter of monstrous scenes of hell].”
- religious imagery - gives it that fantastical element, perhaps suggesting the horror is so awful that it doesn’t feel real.
- biblical allusions - to Noah’s arc for example. It is a really powerful allusion.
- biblical contrasted with Bosch - perhaps a suggestion of what should have been and what actually is the case.
- comparing this event to art is interesting perhaps. Art is artificial and made by humans, while this was a natural disaster. Perhaps this serves to emphasise that this disaster was so awful it is hard to believe this was simply nature at work.
- “biblical disaster” - poses it as a punishment from God even. An omnipotent, transcendent force was at work in this disaster.
- Why would God allow this to happen?
“Everywhere I go I have to be careful I don’t step on a corpse.”
- “everywhere” emphasises the scale of horror.
- “corpse” - blunt and detached. Adds to the semantic field of death.
“The magnitude of this thing is that this goes on for hundreds of miles in both directions. In one area some 10 square miles [25 square kilometers] of the city was completely flattened.”
- “thing” - an indefinite noun, reinforcing the idea that it is indescribable.
- Takes on a more authoritative and credible voice with use of stats.
- “completely” - intensifying adverb.
“The U.S. military works here from dawn to dusk, and cruise ships have arrived from Singapore with relief workers and supplies. People are very, very appreciative that we are here.”
- “dawn to dusk” - dental alliterative collocation. Could be hyperbolic.
- “cruise ships” - ironic as cruise ships are typically associated with holidays and such. Emphasises how this isn’t the way things should be.
- “very, very” - repetition of intensifying adverb. Becoming almost patriotic.
- “People” - very inclusive noun and vague. Showing how many people appreciate them.hy
SEMANTIC FIELD OF WAR
- “Hiroshima”, “disaster”, “refugees”, “camps”, “military”, “die”
- reinforces this idea of how the destruction is so incredibly awful
SCALE DESCRIBERS
“vast areas”, “entire communities”, “something like a hundred thousand people”, “hundreds of thousands”, “totally destroyed”, “some 200 different [charity organizations]”, “another hundred thousand people”, “everywhere”, “30,000 bodies”
