Police Text Analysis

How does text A use language to create meanings and representations?

In text A, the writer uses language to create meanings and representations through the superlative 'proudest' used towards the end of the informal interview. This is reinforced to focus on the positive aspects of the career and represents the police profession as rewarding because of the work they do. The superlative also contributes to the overall purpose of text A as it attempts to represent the police force as accessible and appealing for their target audience; teenagers who are looking for a career path.

Additionally, the whole text contributes to attempting to influence this particular age group into policing through the graphology that is clearly portrayed. The writer intends to inform their audience about the police but simultaneously uses it's secondary purpose to persuade with the police being such a high status industry to go into. Therefore, bright colours such as vibrant green for sub boxes have been used to make the text captivating for the intended audience, and the urban, graffiti font has also been used to appeal to young people as it looks exciting and engaging.

Moreover, the discourse structure of the interview style being simplistic makes it easier to read combined with the related images and again age appropriate as it does not include an excessive amount of colloquial terms that young people would find hard to interpret. Despite this, a colloquial term that the age group will inevitably be familiar with is the noun 'cop' indulged in the hyperlinks 'being a cop' and the interrogative 'could you be a cop?' The term 'you' evokes a direct address as it opens a dialogue and the use of hyperlinks overall give access to the entire website to explore the profession in depth; it is appropriate for the adolescents and the simplistic lexis helps to support this.

How does text B use language to create meanings and representations?  
   
In text B, the regional police departments are using the social platform of Twitter as a way of connecting with the West Midland / Solihull residents more locally. Firstly, the text begins with a humorous slogan in the first tweet '#EatSleepBarkRepeat' which is used as a pun for the song 'Eat Sleep Rave Repeat'. This presents the police as being down to earth and attempting to be cool and 'current' to grab their intended audience's attention, thus being the residents who are twitter uses so mostly middle age adults who are interested in keeping up with occurrences in the West Midland and Solihull area. The police have also attached an image of one of their police dogs to this tweet which allows a more personal insight into the police profession.

In addition, the verb jailed has been used in capital letters to highlight the significance of the tweet and grab the readers attention that the two 'career criminals', used through the technique of alliteration, have been jailed with them having over 100 previous convictions. It also adds to a serious tone that the police may be trying to portray, despite text B being informal, as the police industry is one of the most, if not the most high status job in the UK and anything reported is not to be taken lightly. The rhyming statement used with an ellipsis to close  'It's not wise to advertise..' has also been used in a tweet to emphasise a warning but not in a way that would scare the twitter users into doing so, the police department are just using their purpose to inform residents about thieves and how they could prevent robbery happening to them.

However, in some tweets, like the first with the catchy hashtag previously mentioned and in another published on February 13th, the police go against the serious tone interpreted as they state 'Here's a bit of a challenge tweeps'. The lexical terms 'challenge' and 'tweeps' makes the tweet more fun and connecting to the Twitter users, and the fact they finish it with the use of an emoticon ':-)' adds to this intention.

Text A and B comparison:
Similarly in both texts A and B, the writer has used a variety of techniques to in a sense, promote the police industry to be something appealing to everyone through the positive tone each text portrays. For example, in Text A, the writer has designed the interview to look modern through the fun, graffiti font in the heading and bold colours to make the site overall look more visually pleasing to the eye. This is likewise to Text B which has used Twitter, one of the most commonly used social media platforms, to provide local users with frequent news and updates but in an entertaining way, through the use of hashtags and naming their audience using the plural noun 'tweeps' for instance, which guides them away from the more serious tone which is being in police profession as it is such an important, high status job.