Introduction
The text- ‘The new rules of eating al desko” mentions an array of opinions concerning the issue of eating or drinking at people’s desks from some experts and office workers’ perspectives. Thus, aspects of genre, audience and purpose are going to be discussed in order to analyze the above text’s different features.
Genre
To begin with, the genre of the text should be an online newspaper article which may belong to the aspect of lifestyle. It is obvious that the article includes topics of eating, drinking at people’s desks with colorful pictures about food and exact time of the publication while it will not be provided by traditional newspapers. When the writer asked if there were any food people should avoid, City worker Rosie Johnson, one of the interviewees, who said never fish as it was smelly. Other than food, drinking is also another concern. For example, most of the interviewees agreed with the idea of drinking tea and coffee at people’s tables except boozing. Accordingly, all these reflect that it should be a lifestyle newspaper article online when its themes are surrounding people’s daily lives.
Furthermore, the formality of it probably is semi-formal or informal while it is different from normal newspapers which discuss serious international issues. It includes a multitude of contractions, such as “It’s madness” and “It’s absolutely OK to eat a snack at your desk…”. Not only does the text offer contractions, but it also provides readers with short sentences, such as “we asked some experts and office workers.”. It seems that the tone is casual, sentence structures are not complicated and in-text citations have not been used which may let readers understand the content easily. Consequently, the above explanations show that it should belong to a newspaper article on the Internet.
Audience
Not only do the language and content imply its genre, but they also indicate its audience which may be the general public, especially office workers. The wide use of personal pronouns demonstrates it mainly introduces eating al desko to every citizen while eating is indispensable and not only suitable to food professionals. For example, it possesses “I thought it would last about a week” and “it will do wonders to your physical and mental health” these wide varieties of first and second pronouns to enable readers to be more engaged in it. Only by using personal pronouns can increase interaction with readers and trigger them to consider the topic of eating al desko.
Additionally, this newspaper article does not involve a host of professional words which may let readers feel puzzled. For instance, the writer has already explained the meaning of eating al desko at the beginning as these words always appear. Moreover, not only has the writer asked some experts’ views, but he also interviewed with office workers since they are the people who always stay at offices. Their answers are simple, such as “Absolutely not” and everyone who reads the article will understand. In view of the lack of jargons, it is thought that the topic is universal and relates to every resident’s life instead of associating with job and professional areas. Hence, its audience should be the general public, specifically the office workers.
Purposes
Lastly, purposes of this newspaper article should be raising readers’ awareness and stating that eating al desko may depend on different situations. For the former, there are a number of rhetorical questions which enable readers to reflect on the issue. For instance, he asked if there was a right and wrong way to lunch at people’s desks. After being inquired, readers may start thinking about the answers and be more interested in reading the following content. For the latter, the writer only quotes ideas of interviewees who have two different stances directly and some of them believed that snacks could be eaten on tables. This shows that not all the food should be prohibited and the writer may think people have their rights to choose whether eating al desko should be implemented since he does not indicate his stance clearly. Thus, the writer aims to achieve these two goals although he may want to help The Guardian, one of the newspaper offices in England, gain financial support.
Conclusion
All in all, genre, audience and purposes of this newspaper article have been investigated. This essay is conducive to my understanding towards methods of analyzing a text and motivates me to learn more in the future.