COMMENTARY EXAMPLE
Commentary based on the following task:
Text A is from an article entitled ‘Thank God I Let My Baby Live’ by India Knight. It was first published in the newspaper ‘The Sunday Times’ in 2004.
Write an editorial for a newspaper on the subject of abortion. You may take either side of the argument.
Using the source material, write your editorial.
The purpose of my editorial was to persuade the reader of the difficulties in justifying abortion and to inform the reader of issues concerning its morality. I have written in a formal register, given that the audience is likely to be educated adults, and the topic is a serious one. For example, I have utilized low frequency lexis such as ‘defects’, to uphold this degree of formality. I have made use of rhetorical questions (e.g. ‘surely it would be unreasonable to deprive a child of a mere chance of life?’) in order to promote critical thinking in the reader and persuade them of the reasons against abortion. The use of lexis ‘deprive,’ and ‘mere chance,’ also serves to persuade given their emotive nature.
I have begun with an introduction to the topic of abortion, using declaratives such as ‘it is legal for a women to have an abortion at 24 weeks,’ in order to immediately inform the reader of the issues surrounding abortion.
I have used inclusive language such as ‘many mothers and ‘everyone’, as well as the inclusive personal pronouns, ‘we’ and ‘you,’ in order to directly engage the reader. In the same way, I have included opposing arguments to show empathy towards other viewpoints (e.g. ‘mothers are told their children may be born with defects’) and have refuted these arguments in an attempt to persuade the reader once more.
I have included lists of three such as ‘happy, loved and enjoying their lives,’ as well as syntactic patterning in the repetition of ‘whether’ in the conclusion, to make for a memorable argument. I have concluded with the rhetorical question beginning with the grammatically incorrect ‘But’ to create impact, also using the contrast of ‘right’ and wrong’ (But can something you believe to be morally wrong… be the right choice?) to leave the reader with a strong final argument to consider.
