Text A & B Immigration Articles Comparison

Compare and contrast how Text A and Text B use language to create meanings and representations.

In articles 'The Guardian' and the 'Daily Mail', both texts discuss in depth the subject of immigration, talk about politics and the media's involvement in this controversial topic through the use of multiple facts, statistics and quotes and take into account their target audience, British residents, when trying to change or counteract the public's mood and opinions. Similarly, both text A and text B are opinion articles therefore each have an informal register because the writers are expressing their views, through several uses of personal pronouns, whilst trying to influence their readers, but at the same time inform them about the representation of migrants.

In text A, the article aims to 'alarm, not inform, the public and propagate an agenda that says: migrants = bad (and then to blame the European Union)'. The noun 'alarm' suggests that the guardian take the exploitation against the contentious term 'migrant' and the stigma that surrounds it much more seriously than the Daily Mail's article does, as their main concern is how the left wing, which could be aimed at The Guardian, that has a reputation for a liberal and left wing editorial, seems to 'browbeat' the British people into accepting 'yet more' migrants. The transitive verb 'browbeat' in the heading immediately denotes a sense of competition, and the fact that this is repeated in the ending sentence of the article; 'British people are sure of their own minds, and can't be crudely browbeaten into changing their beliefs' emphasises that text B cares more about public opinion and criticising the left rather than using their platform to discuss immigration, but instead slate it and the media consistently and complain about 'yet more' entering the country. This is shown through the adverb 'crudely' which suggests they don't agree with the British residents having the topic forced down their throats, but in reality how else are people going to get the message across that the discrimination against 'migrants' is becoming an 'international crisis'? Therefore, each of the articles intentions seem to be different as this is in comparison to Text A which recognises the prejudice migrants receive from the media and some politicians yet stop themselves from slamming them for it and instead focus on the bigger problem, which is the 'sorry saga' that we are losing sight of the fact these 'migrants' are people and the lacking humanity that these vulnerable individuals have to face. The adjective 'vulnerable' used to describe the migrants indicates a sense of helplessness and makes the reader feel sympathy and concern towards the situation.

Additionally, The Guardian article uses unknown quotes at the start of their opinion piece which are suppositionally more personal and appealing to the reader but also they encourage people to agree with their views. A quote from a Prof, Alexander Betts, again makes the text seem more reliable because of the use of expert opinion. This is in comparison to Text B which instead of using quotes to 'encourage' their audience, they seem to overuse statistics continuously throughout the text which makes it seem unnatural and in a way, forced as they attempt to make it more complex. Admittidly, both texts begin with the use of interrogatives. Text A's being their heading 'We deride them as 'migrants'. Why not call them people?' which immediately exposes the article's understanding on the bias, compared to Text B which uses a not so hopeful interrogative as their opening sentence; 'Have most British people suddenly set aside their reservations about immigration, and are they now strongly in favour of accepting tens of thousands of Syrian and other refugees?'. The possible hyperbole 'tens of thousands' reinforces the idea that immigration is a great problem to these people and they are already complaining about the excessive number of 'migrants' entering Britain, instantly implying a negative tone.

Overall, despite their shared subjects, Text A and B are separated as they seem to hold completely different viewpoints on the subject of immigration. This is proven also through their grammatical structures, where Text A seems to use a wider range of shorter sentences such as 'this is a story about humanity.', in juxtaposition to Text B which tends to include a larger number of longer sentences which could help suggest that the text is less reliable than The Guardian article as the constant rambling and criticisms could only been used to strengthen their debate, regardless of the multiple examples of polls and evidence they have included in attempt to balance their argument out.