Growing up with the Media” by P.G. Aldrich

The article under consideration is headlined “Growing up with the Media”. It is written by P.G. Aldrich and published in The Guardians. The headline of the given article is written with the violation of the Rules of Headline English, because firstly the article “the” is used and all the words are written from the capital letters, but still the headline is quite short and informative. The readers can make an assumption that it is about the development of mass media and it’s influence. We can build approximate time constraints, as we possess some information about the outbreak of mass media and it’s branches. The purpose of the given article is to comment upon the interfering of mass media with our life beginning from the childhood. The author starts with exposing the importance of mass media, especially in the current years. He compares the childhood of the past years with the up-to-date situation.

Then the author informs us about the content of the words “mass” and “media” and it’s division into branches. Further, he dwells upon positive and negative influence of mass media, but warns that it is always “power for control”. The current article is pretty coherent and cohesive, because it is logically built, well-structured and author uses a lot of linking words to build the article properly. The type of writing can be identified as narrative and discursive, as he supplies his thoughts with some actual facts and recent researches. Talking about style it may be regarded as formal with impartial slant, because the language is filled with special terminology and any kind of slang is avoided. Talking about vocabulary it may be regarded as neutral or formal for us to believe in the credibility of the given article.

In order to emphasize the interference of mass media with day-to-day life the author uses personification. In addition, the metaphor “people are like puppets on strings” is used to show the great and endless power of media upon our lives. I found the article rather informative and objective, but quite depressive, because it confirms how addicted and defenceless we are under this powerful machine.