What to compare for steers

Porterhouse Blue and Eating Out

Context: Both texts explore how food can have certain traditions attached to it. Porterhouse Blue was written about the struggle between tradition and reform at Cambridge - satirical - while Eating Out is about the loathing of tradition - also a satire to a certain extent.

Form and Structure: Different perspectives throughout Porterhouse show different views of tradition: (a) warm description of luxurious feast (b) Godber's distaste for the event (c) Lower servants admiring (d) Skullion's like of limited authority of servants. Eating Out: Can't escape tradition across whole life. 'Later' suggests shift in time - chronological - last line (coda) sums up upper class ideas of tradition (for a woman).

Word Choice: Contrasted semantic field between Godber's thoughts (greasy with perspiration etc) and luxury of food (swan, caviar etc). Generations have passed and nothing has changed.

Fig Lang: Personification (silver dishes came, announced by swish) - importance of materialism - become a part of tradition. Members lose importance to objects. Eating Out: juxtaposition/ antithesis (adventures into rehearsed) - unprepared to conform to tradition.

John Torode's Red Meat and The Butchers Shop

Context: Torode has status and power from role in society - TV presenter - authority on food. Secondary purpose to persuade audience by using his power. In Butchers Shop, animals are weak, humans are powerful. Same purpose as Torode - to persuade, but to not eat meat. Opening eyes of children to what the world is like - powerful prey on powerless.

Word Choice: Torode used colloquialisms to relate to audience, but statistics to persuade and show that he has the power and authority - he is the expert. Butchers Shop: Lexis of disgusting images to reveal brutal reality, how powerless animals are (strung up, who knows what) and childish depiction of them as 'cute illustrations' show how wrong their portrayal by society is.

Form and Structure: Uses pronouns differently throughout (Text 9) starting with personal pronouns (connote his own belief of his status) --> direct address (using power to make reader feel guilty) --> Collective (uses 'we' at end to make audience believe they made decision to eat meat. Butchers: Back of the shop (setting that shows weakness of pigs - trapped at back) --> window display (Tory's: poet wants pigs to have power) --> leaving (direct address makes audience feel guilty for having power they didn't ask for)

Sound patterning: Plosives used in both for different effects. Torode: show his dominance and authority of food. Butchers: Anger at circumstances. 'Bleeds' - continuous, suggests wounded life, not death - animals will always be weak.

Glory Glory Be To Chocolate and The Butcher's Shop

Context: Glory Glory: Chocolate as a temptation, epigraph from book that explores gender differences in food cravings, purpose to praise chocolate, audience is women who feel judged by society for having cravings. Butchers: Seeks to explore barbaric nature of humans to kill animals, show this to children to break their bubble, evoke sympathy in a child audience for animal.

Fig lang: Hyperbolic language to emphasize pleasure brought by food 'every mouth a god?' - makes audience think chocolate is positive. Juxtaposition creates a tone of temptation. Imagery in Butcher's Shop connotes disgust; 'open-mouthed.. porky heads .. stained with who knows what' and comparing them with humans by 'voting Tory' (anthropomorphism) creates barbaric tone.

Form and Structure: Decreasing line length creates tension and anticipation (Text 6) - entices reader to continue. Short stanzas combine sin and good, leaving reader with interrogative to answer at end. Butchers: Appears to be a general description, but becomes a universal description that everyone can relate to, so everyone can feel the disgust from the poet's perspective. An investigation of an issue leads to the culprit (audience) being identified - guilt.

Word Choice: Religious lexis connotes chocolate being worshiped, 'manifestation' - chocolate is enticing in all forms. Idea of a false God created, painting chocolate as the only comfort in sad times. Butchers:Contrast of children's stories with barbaric nature of humans creates a conflicted semantic field.

Grandpa's Soup and Oliver Twist

Context: Positive memories of grandpa. Jackie Kay adoption context. Purpose to examine relationships (explicit) and the loss of them (implicit). Scottish audience - postcards, evoked a lot of nostalgia in Scottish people. Oliver: Dicken's purpose to explore how growing up in a workhouse leads to crime. Secondary purpose to get higher class audience to empathise with suffering children - published 1837.

Form and Structure: Poem set in childhood with childish language --> change in tense at line 16 indicates childhood had already happened - living in past --> back to present tense in final line. Oliver: Tension built, boys have different status in workhouse (tall boy) - acts as catalyst for Oliver. Treated badly by Masters.

Word Choice: Scottish colloquialisms - 'hough' pronunciation, poet shows it 'rhymes with loch' for non-Scottish audience. Effect of lexis: comfortable with grandpa. Oliver: Contrasted semantic field of cooking suggesting mealtimes are positive, with inanimate objects showing lack of food. Shows children being seen as unimportant by society.

Grammar: Syntax and enjambment creates sense of a child speaking (Text 4) - progressive structure of syntax; clauses connect with 'and' - sense of wonder. Oliver: Basic sentence structure reflects inexperience of children and lack of a voice in their class. Single clauses reflect loneliness of boys - shouldn't be lonely as childhood is a time to be happy.

John Torode and Butcher's Shop

Context: See Power and Weakness card.

Form and Structure: Use of pronouns by Torode (other card) and how Butcher's Shop appears to be a description but it actually an accusation - direct address of 'you' to audience.

Word Choice: Torode uses facts and statistics to persuade, show he has expert knowledge on the matter. Butcher's: Uses semantic field of anthropomorphism to humanize the animals and barbaric description of butcher to dehumanize him and, by extension, the audience.

Grammar: Exclamatory 'Well, calm down everyone!' which is also an imperative, seems as if he knows what the audience is thinking. Unusual grammar of sentences starting with 'But' to reflect everyday speech and reflect to a varied audience - not just typical reader of Daily Mail (middle class). Butcher's: Extensive enjambment 'open-mouthed / dignified' to emphasize the oxymoron and show they are anything but dignified. Iambic pentameter in final line creates sense of conclusion - argument won and purpose achieved.

Eating Out and Oliver Twist

Context: Fanthorpe comes from a wealthy background, went to Oxford, her perception of luxurious lifestyles. Oliver Twist is written by Charles Dickens, a poor background himself, writes about poor children in workhouse, how badly they are treated in poverty.

Form and Structure: A brief 15 lines encapsulates a lifetime of experience, shows how you can never escape from a lifestyle you're born into. Assonance created 'Mother died older, later' shows monotony of lifestyle. Coda sums up experience. Oliver: Treated badly by the food they're fed, gruel only named not described. Superiority of Bumble and man in 'white waistcoat' shows that boys are experiencing poverty.

Word Choice: Semantic field of control 'supervised..rehearsed.. leaned heavy on my arm' show that being wealthy doesn't always bring happiness. Father in his frailty still pressuring her and playing role of being in charge - patriarchy. Oliver: Lack of food represented in description of room, inanimate objects reflect underclass of the boys.

Fig Lang: Metonym (pun) of 'indigestible' associated with food shows how familiar luxurious food can be, but also how unfamiliar the experience and expectations of behaviour are. Oliver: Personification of bowls shows how unimportant the boys are in the classification of society.

Eating Out and Text 19 transcript.

Context: See previous cards on Eating out. Steer: About Fanthorpe's relationship with her parents that was influenced by their fine dining lifestyle. Transcript: Two old friends from South Wales having lunch in London, informal transactional schema - deciding order.

Form and Structure: How her relationship with parents changes throughout her life. Childhood completely controlled by father and mother comforts, teenage more satirical of lifestyle, loathing of parents, adulthood appreciating them, but still not 'accustomed' to lifestyle. Transcript: Informal conversation between friends, phatic talk, more formal when waitress arrives, her treatment, more fillers used, interrogatives to decide what to order, successful order and purpose achieved.

Fig Lang: Indigestible bullshit in previous card. Represents relationship with her father - can't stand him. She only wanted a cheeky Nando's and got 'lobster'. Speaker 2 in the transcript used hyperbolic language to emphasize hunger, 'addicted to it' and 'loads of ice' shows how society looks forward to eating out at a restaurant.

Grammar: Various lines sound robotic and disjointed, without connectives, show sarcasm and how distant narrator is from being comfortable, when her family is. Transcript: Waitress is not treated well, her utterances are therefore shorter and less friendly, 'and drinks' is not a complete sentence but her pitch (intonation) means it's understood in context.

GUESS WHAT.

It's Eating Out and Oliver Twist.

Basically the same as wealth and poverty.