Comparative HL - NES Launch Article and NES Poster

Text A: http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs24/f/2008/021/9/5/NES_Advertisment_by_dxprog.jpg
Text B: http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/10/1018nintendo-nes-launches/

The two texts I have chosen to compare are a Nintendo advertisement poster and an article titled "Oct. 18, 1985: Nintendo Entertainment System Launches." Both of these texts are associated with the success of the multi-billion dollar Japanese gaming console Nintendo; however, they are both very different in the way it is conveyed. The first text, a poster taken from Deviantart, is to celebrate Nintendo's 20th anniversary and to encourage people to buy the re-re-release of the Nintendo Entertainment System. It reaches out to all ages but particularly the young avid players of Nintendo through it's cartoon illustrations of classic videogame characters. The second text, an article, is written to inform about the history of Nintendo 25 years after the phenomenon began. It describes how in 1985 the American videogame market was not prospering but Nintendo's president was intent on spreading it there. It was published on October 18, 2010 exactly 25 years after Nintendo's launch, on wired.com a popular website for techno-holics so the audience that the article wants to reach is readers who are interested in finding out about gaming and technology.

Text A, the advertisement poster is direct and powerful in persuading the viewer to buy the product. It contains a slogun at first stating, "Celebrating twenty years of classic gaming" demonstrating to the audience that this is something Nintendo has been doing for a long while and it is part of their experience as a trusted gaming console. Next, this text only features 2 sentences in the caption, reading: "Twenty years ago Nintendo released a console that revolutionized the gaming industry. Relive the glory days with the re-re-release of the Nintendo Entertainment System." Just by using strong word choice such as the console "revolutionized" the videogame market and relive the "glory" days implies that excellence of the product and persuades people to buy it. On the other hand, the article from wired.com simply discusses how Nintendo had to undergo some struggle in order to become the huge success that it is. It explains how they had not sold even half as much of the products they had manufactured but still carried on and ended up spreading nationally. The writer, Chris Kohler, maintains a formal tone throughout and his voice is seldom portrayed in phrases like, "In America videogames were dead, dead, dead" and humour such as "anything that just played games and couldn't do your taxes was hopelessly backwards" (Kohler 1).

Text A contains a visual of a Nintendo console as a birthday cake with a candle atop it surrounded by classic Nintendo characters such as Super Mario, Luigi and others. This visual would attract the viewers' eye and cause them to read what it is about as the console representing a cake is quite interesting. There is also minimal text so it would not bore the viewer and could be easily read and understood. Text B contains a visual of boxed sets of Nintendo videogames namely Pinball, Mario Bros and Kung fu. It also contains a list of the 17 games that Nintendo had launched immediately. The visual aid and list is there to inform the reader as well in regard with the text.

Ultimately, the first text is a celebration of Nintendo's huge success twenty years later and to encourage people to purchase it whereas the second is to enlighten readers about the success story of Nintendo and how it went from being a small Japanese preneur to "the most influential videogame platform of all time" (Kohler 1). Despite the different purposes, both the texts pertain to the amazing success of Nintendo and to convince people how influential it is.

Paper 1 Analysis of "Lola" - The Kinks

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/kinks/lola.html

"Lola" is a song originally written by Ray Davies and performed by his band The Kinks, originating in North London and taking the world by storm as a British Invasion band. Their song titled, "Lola" was released in 1970 and is about a man who realizes that the girl he had been dancing with the entire night in Soho London and had started to like is actually a man, too. He reacts horribly at first but then accepts it and "she" takes his hand by the end of the song.
Ray Davies has written the song in first person but it is not an event that took place in his life. He was inspired by his band manager who had gone through this scenario and wrote a song based on his point of view.
The rhyme scheme of the song is not consistent. The first verse is A-B-B-C-B-B whereas the chorus is A-A-B-C-C-B and so forth because the writer has deployed different rhyme schemes for each section of the song. There is also use of alliteration such as "Oh my Lola lo-lo-lo-lo Lola lo-lo-lo-lo Lola" and repeated use of that in between and at the end of verses.
The introduction starts off with the man meeting Lola at a club in Soho where she asks him to dance. The second is when he starts noticing the characteristics that confuse him about her. Some of these include, " When she squeezed me tight, she nearly broke my spine" and "I'm not dumb but I can't understand why she walked like a woman and talked like a man." Here he has now become confused by how she behaves. Here, the person listening to the song gets a hint or simply wonders why Lola is like that. The next verse describes how they had drank too much cheap champagne and were dancing in the electric candlelight and when Lola "picks me up and sat me on her knee/ She said dear boy won't you come home with me?" immediately implies that there is indeed something wrong. A woman would not simply pick a man up and make him sit on her knee.
Upon realizing that Lola is actually a man, he pushes her away at first but then he looks at her and she at him and he states, "girls will be boys and boys will be girls/ It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world except for Lola." Clearly, he sees Lola as an exception now. The conclusion at the end of the song is "Well I'm not the world's most masculine man/ But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man/ And so is Lola." This is where the song ends with the feel that he has accepted Lola. 
The song's genre is folk rock, and the voice is mellow. just as if he is telling a story about what took place one night at a club in Old Soho. He recalls how he felt about Lola at first, his flabbergasted reaction when he found out, and lastly how he disregarded it and still remained with her.

Oral Entries - Tank Code and A Speech by Prince Harry

Oral Entry - Tank Code

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/llog/TankCode.gif