Comparative Commentary

Essay by zadamCollege, Undergraduate January 2006

download word file, 3 pages 3.0

Both Text A and Text B have common subject matter the personal computers and their development. However, text A which is taken from the field of education, while Text B is an advertisement specially created into a business magazine. Consequently the two texts show some linguistic features, but the differences are in majority, because they are differ in the target audience, their structure and register as well.

The principle aim text B is to inform us about the Intel Company's strengths while text A is just about to give the personal observations and opinions of the author James Gleick. As a result, information is presented more clearly as well as more objectively and in a declarative form in the ad, while the extract from the book in text A contains narrative form and obviously it was written from a subjective standpoint. Both texts use many nouns which are eye-cathing e.g.:

technologies, business, performance, research or challenge. Moreover, both texts were written by using everyday-like sentence structure so that everybody will be able to understand the informal and trusting nature of the texts.

Although both these informative texts draw on similar word classes, the intended audiences mean that there is a marked contrast in the actual lexical items chosen. In text A there are many unusual and not sophisticated words are used for example: connoisseurs, distraction, the author tried to create a satirical environment in my opinion with these words. Whereas the vocabulary of text B is more sophisticated using mainly technical words such as engineering, business, communication, manufacture, these are also demonstrating the firm's strength in order to create a confidence in the reader towards Intel.

Furthermore, the relative complexity and detail in the content can be contrasted. Text A is about that how the computers and technology affect humans,