Text 13: Chris Rainier – ‘Tsunami Eyewitness Account by Nat Geo Photographer’  

7:1 Task:

Find and annotate the text identifying: 

 genre, analogy, inclusive first person plural pronoun, phrasal verbs, figurative language, statistical information, western perspective, alliterative linking of ideas, adjective, emphatic repetition, declarative statement, triadic structure, semantic field, object pronoun (final sentence). 

Text 13: Chris Rainier – ‘Tsunami Eyewitness Account by Nat Geo Photographer’  

Audience, purpose and mode 

Audience: Readers of the National Geographic News; fans/followers of Rainier; those with an interest in travel/world affairs in the context of natural disasters. 

Purpose: to inform; to share experiences of a disaster and its aftermath. 

Mode: a prepared, spoken (read out) piece of reportage published as an article online. 

Points for analysis and discussion 

Closely analyse, discuss and evaluate the text and consider the effects of literary or linguistic choices. 

Some points of interest might include: 

How generic conventions of reportage are followed in the balance of personal commentary on the events and factual information. 

How the piece follows a logical, linear structure similar to a news article  

How references to numbers/statistical information, time and timescales, and geographical reference points run through the piece, and how these add interest, context and densely packed information 

How the piece is subtly edited, giving the audience a sense of trust in the author, eg ‘Bandeh Aceh ... US military... Singapore ...’, ‘It’s day 15 [January 10, 2005] ... 200 different [charity organisations] ... 30,000 bodies ... confirmed 95,000 dead ...’ 

How the use of a question as a subheading acts as a discourse marker for the structure of the piece, ie ‘Are the emergency supplies ...?’ 

The following techniques are evident in this text: 

References to shared or assumed knowledge to provide imagery, eg ‘... we grew up with the images and we all know what it looked like ...’, ‘... biblical disaster story ... sketches of Hieronymus Bosch ...’ 

Use of simple sentences to add information, modify and/or give a deeper sense of the description, eg ‘It’s totally destroyed’, ‘But the logistics remain a nightmare’, ‘The bottleneck is a challenge’. 

Use of adjectives and descriptive, figurative phrasing to reinforce and emphasise feelings of horror, eg ‘... looks like Hiroshima after the atomic bomb’, ‘flattened for miles’, ‘... I have to be careful I don’t step on a corpse’, ‘a painter of monstrous scenes of hell’. 

Use of clichés and repetition, eg ‘the US military ... from dawn to dusk’, ’people are very, very appreciative ...’, ‘they appreciate America’s help’.  

This text gives opportunities for students to reflect on a variety of terms and concepts. Some examples might include: 

A semantic field of disaster; a lexis drawn from death, decay, injury, eg ‘entire communities have been swept out to sea’, ‘... exposed bodies can be seen lying around, decaying’, ‘hundreds of thousands of survivors are refugees’, ‘... deep lacerations ...’, ‘... broken limbs and deep wounds’. 

Use of alliteration, eg ‘... don’t die from disease’, ‘(urgent) triage to treating ...’   

How the text (or the author) attempts to balance the piece with items of hope, mediated by the knowledge of the scale of the disaster, the human story and realities of experiencing it, and thus the scale of clearing up in the aftermath, eg ‘... infrastructure is being set up ... but the needs are huge ... so many people are here and so much assistance is coming in ... getting it out to all the people who need it is a problem ... the medical assistance needs to move beyond ...’ 

The use of asides by the author, marked by punctuation, that supports the editor’s role in explaining or inserting information, eg ‘... – probably something like a hundred thousand people – ...’, ‘10 square miles [25 square kilometres]’.  

When discussing the effects of literary or linguistic choices, students might be asked to consider questions such as: 

What are the features which characterise this text as a piece of reportage? 

How is it differentiated from an opinion article? 

What is the overall tone of the piece? How is this achieved? 

What is the intention of the text? How do you know? How successful is it in achieving this? 

What does the writer intend to tell us about himself? How does he create a sense of his persona or personality in the text? 

What is the context in which this text was written? How much has the context influenced the writer/speaker? 

How has the text been crafted to meet the expectations of the audience? 

Links and connections 

How does this text compare and contrast with the Neyland piece as a first-hand account?

Are these points of interest due to the genre conventions? How? 

How does this text holds similarities with -and differences to- the Jessica Read piece.?

To what extent is this text different in approach, tone and context to the Brooker or Birrell extracts? 

Some interesting examples for comparison and contrast exist across genres, including pieces of reportage, articles, interviews and news reports containing interviews:

● http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4146031.stm – a collection of thousands of emails received from readers telling of their stories of the tsunami in 2005 with an interactive, clickablemap 

● www.youtube.com/watch?v=u28N22-xrzA – videos of extracts of interviews with eyewitnesses, mainly from Australia or theregion 

● www.asianconnections.com/a/?article_id=566 – an online article formed froma message sent by Brenda Paik Sunoo, a freelance journalist, and herhusband. 

 Suggested extension activities:

Read the eyewitness account of the Tsunami and assess the linguistic devices used to effectively generate an empathetic response from the readers, exploring lexical, grammatical and discourse choices. 

Write a diary entry for a survivor of a large-scale disaster then, in pairs, peer-assess the extent to which these meet the genre conventions to achieve the objectives of this text type. 

Rework and restructure the piece as a transcription of an interview between a news anchor in a TV (or radio) studio probing Rainier for details on what he has been experiencing. Alternatively, they could convert the extract into a podcast with two (or more) participants. 

Compare how the writers shape their language to create a sense of their experiences (30 marks)

You must consider:

• The use of language and literary features

• The influence of audience and purpose

• The context of texts