Commentary on perspectives blog

I chose the subject of immigration because it's very relevant at the moment and I thought it would be interesting for me to learn about different opinions on the subject and then develop those opinions to make the characters.

The idiolect of the first character I wrote from was meant to be a formal and educated 58 year old man with knowledge on the subject. It was supposed to show he had strong views on the subject. I tried to reflect this in my work by writing formally and staying on the factual side of the subject. I wanted this person to have a clear opinion and to show it would be hard to persuade him otherwise. I did this by almost writing in an angry manner 'we should not be allowing more people in if we can't even house our own people.' This quote from the blog was meant to show a slight irritation from the character and reflect his anger at the fact that we are struggling. I also used lexis' such as 'should not' and 'need to be' to show the certainty and a strong belief in his opinion. This definitely portrayed the fact that he would not be persuaded otherwise and that he does not really have an interest in what others may think, as he believes his opinion is correct.

I did not use many facts or statistics in the blog as I wanted the character to be giving his opinion. I wanted his opinion to be strong and I tried to present this strength by not involving numbers and just writing from his perspective. I imagined this character to have developed his opinion from reading a lot about the subject. That is why I decided he would be very educated on the topic. I did all this by making the blog very one sided. For example 'Britain is becoming overcrowded'. This statement is to the point and does not leave room for any other opinion. The word 'is' could have been 'may be' but I decided this would have made it seem as if he had less of a strong opinion.

The idiolect of the second character was meant to be a young 26 year old man who's opinion was quite weak and did not know a lot about the topic. I wrote this blog a lot more informally and tried to show the unsure side of the character. I started the blog with 'I don't think' compared to blog 1 that started with 'I believe'. I did this as I wanted the audience to see how the characters were different to each other from their opening lines. The 'I think' shows he is unsure about his own opinion as it is just a thought. In the second paragraph I wrote 'immigration may not need decreasing'. The words 'may not' shows that he is not definite about this. The use of words such as 'in my opinion' reflects that he is not sure whether he is correct, it is just his personal beliefs. I think this shows a real contrast of the idiolect from the other blog as the first character was very definite about right and wrong. I ended the blog with 'Obviously you and others have different opinions to mine for fair reasons but this is mine.' This reflects how he is not trying to be argumentative and is accepting of others opinions unlike he fist blogger.

I made the second blog quite short because I really wanted to show almost a lack of background knowledge on the topic from. I wanted the person to have maybe come across the others blog by accident and just want to give their opinion without being educated on the topic. I also tried portraying this by showing a sense of openness to others opinions. 'Obviously you and others have different opinions to mine for fair reasons but this is mine' is the final sentence the person writes. I did this to really show the characters idiolect and acceptance of the others opinion.   

The blog is written with a smaller and less formal vocabulary than the first blog to show the age gap and also to reflect the different the different levels of intelligence/ability between the two. The use of 'don't' instead of 'do not' in the second blog is a subtle contrast with the grammar in the first.

I wanted to make the two idiolects different and have them contrast with each other. I tried to make not only their opinions different but also their writing style and their knowledge on the topic. I did this because someone may find this blog from searching the topic of immigration on Google and it may interest them more if there are two completely different views on the topic from two opposite people. I think this would mean the audience of the blog would be people who already have some knowledge of immigration and are interested in different opinions on it. This blogs purpose would be to persuade people one way or the other.