Language

Style and level of formality

The language used by Robinson Meyer in his article, “The Righteous Anger of the Parkland Shooting’s Teen Survivors” is generally formal, using forceful words and medium-length sentences. The main exception is the insertion of informal tweets from teenagers which give the language and structure a contemporary feel and add a note of authenticity, backing up Meyer’s arguments.

The formal style is suggested through complex phrases and words. Here are two relevant examples: “The current cohort came to heightened political awareness during the 2016 election” (l. 35); “They bicker about the intersectional politics” (l. 37).

The use of words such as ‘cohort’, ‘heightened’  ‘intersectional’, etc. suggests that Meyer is appealing to an educated readership. At the same time, they help the writer comes across as knowledgeable and educated himself.

The tweets in the article have different styles than the rest of the text. You can read more about them here.

Choice of words

The choice of words in this text suggests the writer prefers to use strong adjectives and phrases such as: “deadliest high-school shooting” (l. 4), “false reports” (l. 7), “unignorable” (l. 9), “conservative pundit” (l. 18), “heightened political awareness” (l. 35), “keen reportorial instinct” (l. 42), “striking symbol” (l. 62), “frustrated and realist politics” (l. 66), etc.

Meyer wants to draw attention to the gravity of the event (a mass shooting) and the debate (gun control) he is covering. This is further suggested by Meyer’s uses of nouns with a negative meaning: “calamity” (l. 6); “tragedy” (l. 6), “violence” (l. 10), “catastrophe” (l. 40), “an inexplicable catastrophe, not as an unforeseeable tragedy” (ll. 51-52), etc. Such words have the effect of keeping the reader focused by appealing to readers’ emotions and empathy.

The choice of pronouns show that most of the article is written in the third-person impersonal style: “What made Parkland different were the people who stepped forward to describe it” (l. 5). This has the effect of suggesting that the writer acts as an observer.

Nevertheless, Meyer switches to a more personal tone at one point in the article: “This is what astonished and confronted me” (l. 49). The use of the first person in this case has the purpose of highli...