Comparison: Writing styles

Question 2 in your assignment asks you to compare the writing styles (language and tone), in texts 2 and 3 and illustrate your answer with examples from the texts.

Text 2, “Four comments on ‘The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde: It’s Evolution, Stupid’”, was published on the website WIRED, and it represents comments to text 1, “The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde: It’s Evolution, Stupid”.

Text 1 presents the opinion of Peter Sunde, co-owner of the torrents site The Pirate Bay on copyright violation and illegal downloading in the entertainment industry.

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Writing style: Text 2 vs. Text 3

When you analyse the writing styles of the two texts, you should first note that they belong to different genres.

While text 2 represents comments on the Internet to an article, text 3 is an opinion article. This automatically implies that the writing style in text 2 is more...

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Tone

The tone of the comments in text 2 is sarcastic and ironic, with the users making an analogy between copyright infringement in the entertainment industry and a cake shop:

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Language

When it comes to language, texts 2 and 3 have both similarities and differences.

Similarities are the use of allusions and analogies. In text 2, copyright violation and illegal downloading are discussed using the analogy of a cake shop. The authors/creators are the owners of the cake shop and those who download illegally are the customers: “If the coffee and cookies are good value, i will not resent paying for them, but if you have joined a cartell with every other coffee shop and are overcharging, i will not buy, and if hungry enough, may even steal.” (p. 3, ll. 32-37)

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