Germaine Grier Case

This is a comparative commentary on the Germaine Grier ‘Slut Walk’ article, as well as the Spectator ‘Rise of the ‘Dalis’’ article, written by Andrew M. Brown. Both articles primarily use the third person narrative stance, use language tactics to sway the readers opinion on the subject, and create new words to communicate connotative concepts to the reader, which all in turn encourage the reader agree with the writer’s opinon. In both texts adjectives and other descriptive devices are used to subversively communicate both positive and negative connotations to the reader, which is what encourages readers to draw a certain opinion regarding an issue. The Grier article however, encourages readers to critically analyze, and perhaps even tease the issue that she is writing about, whereas the Brown article encourages readers to make a judgment.

The first element of persuasion that the writers employ is their use of structure. Regarding structure, both articles are incredibly similar. They are both newspaper articles written in a third person narrative, in which the first person form is used rarely if at all. By not using the first person, a distance between the narrator and the reader is established, which allows the writer to say and describe things in a less subjective manner. For example, Grier states in the first paragraph that “The Toronto policeman who in January told a “personal security class” at the city’s York University that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” said nothing unusual.” The absence of any first person elements here create a more matter of fact base for this argument, which in turn creates information that appears to be more concrete. If there were elements of first person added to this phrase, such as “I read about a Toronto Policeman who said…”, the sentence here becomes weaker and easier to disagree with. The omniscient, third-person narrative stance allows the writer to write things and be able to present them as fact. In Brown’s article, the same is done, for the same reasons; In the open paragraph of his article, it reads; “It sounds like a cushy life for a man. On weekdays he potters about at home, running a duster over the surfaces, tinkering with a short story he’s struggling to compose, painting, day dreaming, listening to a bit of Jeremy Vine…” The highlight of both of these excerpts is that the information being presented here is still subjective; Grier writes that what the Policeman said is “nothing unusual”, which makes an assumption on current culture and norms within society. Brown’s entire example of a man “pottering about at home” is based off of evidently no real life scenarios, nor is it written about any real person that he mentions. One of the ways that these passages still read well is because of their third person stance regarding the issue.

Both articles deviate from this convention,