Less word better???

-

 




The Onion is a news source that instead of focusing on the actual details of the world's events, satirizes it. This specific article goes along and satirizes one of the latest executive orders signed by President Trump and how the latest one shows that apparently political decisions undermine education and critical thinking. 

The article achieves this idea by using mainly three strategies, exaggeration, Irony, and juxtaposition. Exaggeration is located in various parts of the short article be can be best seen as follows, "going forward, all government communication must be short and lack any kind of coherent grammatical structure". This exaggeration creates the idea that simplifying language is ridiculous, especially at the highest level of the country, the federal government. Showing how such an approach can make communication worse instead of better by using absurd examples.    

The irony is also something that is used to poke at the government for its poor decision-making, "we will no permit fancy-sounding grown-up words, but will instead use ones that are easy to sound out if you think real hard". The irony here is that the government is probably something that would encourage education and the growth of communication and learning instead of enforcing a lack of sophistication in language.

Lastly, juxtaposition is something that I witnessed that was used in the article, " Department of Education.. new guidelines forbidding schools from teaching students more than five words total". Using juxtaposition with the placement of the DOE with the forbidding of teaching words makes the whole idea or highlights the whole idea of lowering our sophistication in language to create humor or in this case criticism of the choice.

All of this is to conclude that the current government is kinda selling right now and making some questionable choices right now.

https://theonion.com/trump-signs-executive-order-making-official-language-of-u-s-remedial-english/ 















https://theonion.com/trump-signs-executive-order-making-official-language-of-u-s-remedial-english/  

Comments

  1. Eric ZhouMarch 2, 2025 at 9:27 AM

    Evan, I really liked your analysis of the article and finding devices that the Onion used in such a short article. I think this article is also poking fun at the tremendous number of executive orders that Trump has signed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your BFF Toro ❤️March 2, 2025 at 9:31 AM

    I feel like the critique of communication within the government is justified by their poor decision making. The whole thing about simplifying language I feel plays at a desire for transparency. Like how during the presidential election there was much back and forth regarding the future “tariffs” and if they would benefit the country. This diction of “tariff” created much confusion due to a lack of transparency, and I think the idea of simplifying language wants to combat that in a satirical approach.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hamza ShaikMarch 2, 2025 at 10:29 AM

    Evan I really like the choice of satirical devices you chose to analyze in the article. I also think that exaggeration, irony, and juxtaposition is heavily implemented and seen, not just in this article, but also many others including the one I read. I also like the switch from informative to informal in your conclusion. It was a nice way to light-heartedly end your blog.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Language is stereotypical and hard

-
Image
Not many people realize that we stereotype before we meet a person, if we see someone with a unique name we might assume what kind of person they are. Or if their name is from a different country, say Iran, then some might make assumptions. That's what happened to Firoozeh where she vividly describes in her essay, The "F" word". During her application for jobs she never got a single interview, even though she, "graduated with honors from UC-Berkeley" but it wasn't only after she began to add her american name "Julie" into the conversation that job interview began flowing in.  This example not only shows that you can be limited solely based on your name, but stereotypes can also be made. Many people assume that I can speak, write, and read chinese, which to a degree I can. However, truly, I can barely read or write. But speaking is the easy part, because at home your always speaking your native language to your family and maybe friends.  As I e...
Read more

The Great Gatsby fan fiction

-
Image
“Ok… and do you know what car it was?” Asked the police officer. “No sir… bu bu bu butt, the color was some greenish-yellow, and the car had a distinct whine to it.” Answered Wilson. “I know whose car it was and what car it is.” Replied Tom from the dark. “Really” questioned the officer. “Whose is it?”   A week later I should have known. I should have told Gatsby. The body sprawled in front of me in the pool lay lifelessly, only a few yards away was Wilson's body. With a hole in his head. Despite all this, I couldn’t help that I was forced to keep silent. Tom had all the leverage and threatened to kill Jordan at the next golf tournament if I told Gatsby that Wilson was coming. Now the media is talking all about Gatsby, press flooding the gates, and photos of the Hellcat with blood on the front bumper flooding the internet. God, what do I do? Well, the most logical thing is to have a funeral. Halfway across the world “Oh, thank God for our wealth. How else could...
Read more

Types of ways to show information

-
For the last few weeks, we have been reading comic books, graphic novels, and whatever you want to call them, and then we have watched movies. These and many other formats can display information to viewers. But which one is the best way? For starters, novels that only use words are less descriptive than graphic novels. This is because you can only be so descriptive with words, while other formats, such as graphic novels and videos, are better alternatives.   In class, the graphic novel we used was Thi Bui's, the best we could do. Bui's decision to format her journey as a mother and as someone learning their history and culture in the form of a comic allowed us to learn more compared to the traditional novel. For example, simple things like colors helped us understand the background of her childhood and how Vietnam felt during the war.  Moving on, with the movie we were introduced to The Swimmers  which entails the story of three refugees and their journey to Ge...
Read more