Text transformation commentary

Base text: The Charge of the Light Brigade

Style Model: Daily Mail
Transformation: Newspaper article
The text transformation presented the opportunity to explore the main themes in
regards to War through the narrator, who isnt given a name but we assume it
could be a firsthand experience from Alfred Tennysons classic poem The Charge
of The Light Brigade. The Mail is a lot better informed than other tabloid articles,
but theyre considered biased. It appears to be aimed at working and middle class
people aged in their twenties and thirties and traditionally incorporate the right
wing ideologies which accept or support social hierarchy. The Mail appears to be
relevant choice as a model Alfred Lord Tennyson used a lot of connotation in The
Charge of the Light Brigade to illustrate the dangers and the struggles the
courageous British soldiers had to deal with during the battle which in turn
honoured the Light Brigade for their triumph. Thus my intention was to create an
article appealing to mainly British to enforce the notion of patriotism and to
generate support from the readers, which led to my choice of tabloid brand which
seemed particularly appropriate as theyre very known to have such views. A
particular feature I had noticed from Alans poem was the tone. Its quite evident
the tone of the poem is a dark one and extremely tragic negative terms such as
death and hell which can evoke the thought that his personal life is being
reflected which could relate back to the narration but still manages to praise the
war and the soldiers quite effectively.

As mentioned above because Daily Mail is known to embed patriotic views so in

order to satisfy their reputation had chosen to use certain lexis which could
connote patriotism, words such as brave Courageous. Proud, to describe the
morality of the soldiers. The use of the noun British, which could also be viewed
in the lexical field of patriotism, is repeated a number of times to further reinforce
the idea of loyalty. Also the use of personal pronouns such as our in: tragedy of
our most joyous soldier further reinforce the idea that war is a very personal
matter and has affected many serving individuals, in fact the country as a whole.
Ive employed Adjectives such as courageous to emphasise the morality and
metal state of these soldiers, who deserved to be remembered by all means and
by from the use of grammar such as the soldiers did not die in vain appears as if
it condones war, so reinforcing the patriotic view in which the solders are doing
the right thing by their country it could be inferred that the transformation
condones war. A quote I have extracted from the poem is the personification: the
jaws of death representing the conditions the soldiers had to sustain through the
war. The tone associated with this quote is very haunting; additionally the author
personifies death to emphasize its superiority and power over others. It could also
be noticed that Ive also attempted to incorporate emotive language in the
transformation such as the soldiers did not die in vain which could allude to the
idea that they must be forever remembered for their heroic actions throughout
the war regardless of the miscommunication between the soldiers and the
generals. Another quote from the transformation which could be viewed as quite
emotive is it was honestly quite overwhelming which is a statement given to the
reporter by a witness who had viewed the incident describing the soldiers bravery
as they had instantly acted upon these instructions expressing the personalities of

these soldiers; possibly trying to gain empathy from the readers and the adverb
honestly suggests its very truthful and quite unbelievable creating an attitude of
support.
The purpose of a newspaper is to inform its audience on the current everyday
situations which may affect them in some way. The transformation piece
succeeded in informing the audience because it had taken the structure of a
typical newspaper article the 5 W which are known as the Who, What, Where,
When and Why. The who factor is fulfilled as the headline is clearly written as
British Soldiers. The what factor is achieved because the article informs the
reader exactly what has occurred through utterances such as declaratives Soldiers
were killed during an operation to disrupt insurgents giving the reader a quick
and real insight of the tragedy. The where factor is attained as the
transformation is set in Afghanistan, which is known to have problems with the
civilians. The location in this text transformation is very significant as Wikipedia
has reported As of 6 March 2014, the British forces have suffered 448 fatalities
and 2,173 wounded in action, another 5,049 have suffered from disease or nonbattle injuries. By choosing the location it makes it seem as if tragedies in terms
of death and war are a very regular occurrence which the tabloids such as Daily
Mail and the media also manage to portray it as a regular affair. The when
factor is accomplished as its stated when exactly the tragedy had occurred,
clearly achieved by the declarative The heroic soldiers were targeted after going
out on patrol on Friday night
I had used graphology features such as images, as Daily Mail tend to use images
to possibly gain attention from its audience by using shocking images (which in my

transformation piece I have used an image of a crime scene and a man fleeing
attempting to escape) I have chosen this picture as it could be deemed as
emotional therefore creating a sense of personal attachment further making
relation to the theme of patriotism.