language Flashcards
(3 cards)
first point + methods
Firstly, Adichie engages the reader by presenting her experiences of stereotyping in her childhood.
Adichie uses memories of her childhood and anecdotes from her later life to illustrate her ideas about story telling.
Adichie adopts a humorous and, at times, self-deprecating tone, for example when referring to the stories she wrote as a child that ‘my poor mother was obligated to read’.
The use of the conjunction ‘but’ as the start of the fifth paragraph leads into the ‘mental shift the writer underwent when she ‘discovered African books.’
second point + methods
The writer engages the reader by conveying her own experience of being stereotyped.
The single short sentence paragraph ‘She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove’ draws attention to the ignorant and limiting judgments about others that people unwittingly make
The parallel construct in ‘a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe’ deliberately links the two final words to show how deleterious people’s assumptions can be.
final point + method
Finally, the writer engages the reader by summarising her main message at the end of the speech
The shift from personal pronoun ‘i’ to inclusive personal pronoun ‘we’.
highlighting the responsibility of everyone to stand against single story’s creates a sense of unity and togetherness.
The idea that if we follow this advice that we can ‘regain a kind of paradise.’ The metaphor within the concluding phrase provides us with an image of innocence and purity
