Intention
Jeremy Clarkson’s article “Binge Drinking is Good for You” explores the topic of drinking in the UK by focusing on those who promote anti-drinking campaign…
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Criticising anti-drinking campaigners and entertaining the readership
The writer’s main purpose is to present a sarcastic critique towards those who campaign against drinking. This overall intention is noticeable from the beginning of the article when Clarkson uses offensive words like “the busybodies” (p. 105, l. 2), and “the nitwits” (p. 105, l. 3) to describe them. In this way, he produces humour and questions the credibility of authorities and media who are usually behind awareness campaigns: “Who are they? The people who decide how we should run our lives. The busybodies who say that we can't smoke foxes or smack our children.” (p. 105, ll. 1-3)
To achieve his overall intention, Clarkson first sets out to discredit anti-drinking campaigns by describing t…
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Differentiating between social drinking and alcoholism
Moreover, Clarkson’s intention is to criticise British authorities and media (ll. 16-21) for wanting to interfere too much in people’s private lives while failing to deal with what he considers to be the real problem, alcoholism. He achieves this intention by using antitheses that oppose different attitudes to alcoholics and different types of drinking: “Not with stern words and dire warnings, neither of which will make the slightest bit of difference, but with help and understanding and patience.” (p. 107, ll. 23-25); “Forget about the p…
