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Audience vs. Speaker
March 3, 2008 | Tagged audience, perspective, Point of View, purpose, speaker | 1 Comment
Sometimes students have a hard time distinguishing the speaker (particularly of a poem) from the author. The fact that authors pick specific speakers for their work is an important literary technique to develop meaning; not only does it lend subtext via the point of view, but often satire and other techniques are predicated upon it.
Objectives:
- Figure-out via contextual clues who the speaker of a work is.
- Understand what effect the use of a speaker has on the purpose & audience.
Warm-up:
- What do you think the nature and value of pretending is?
- Why do children do it? Do animals do it? Adults?
- Can you state a claim with examples/evidence?
Mini Lesson:
Discuss the students’ ideas about pretending.Relate pretending to the author’s “speaker” as a literary/writing techniqueParallel the purposes given for pretending with their appropriate audiences/targets, and then also to the author’s purpose for her/his audience.Prepare the exemplar:
- Pass-out the lyrics to Nada Surf’s “These Bones”
- Guiding questions:
- Who is the speaker? How do you know?
- What effect does it create for the audience?
- How can this purpose be achieved more easily/differently than by the author alone?
- Play nada-surf-see-these-bones.mp3.
- Available from KEXP’s “Song of the Day” podcast for free.
- Discuss the guiding questions ’till the satisfaction of the goals.
Application: (according to your classroom/curricular needs)
Does anyone reading this entry know of any other mini-exemplars that would work with this lesson? How about modifications to the lesson? Leave comments if you would like.
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Lyrics to Nada Surf’s “See These Bones”
[Everyone's right and no one is sorry
That's the start and the end of this story
From the sharks and the jets
To the call in the morning] X2
And life is just bets anyway
Look alive, see these bones
What you are now, we were once
Try as they might, no one’s immune to
Misfiring and acting on the wrong clues
And thinkin’ it’s time to redo and redo
I feel rain in the movies and the talk before the screen lights
I hear strings in the park
I don’t like to call her right, except when its too late at night
I mostly just think in the dark
Look alive, see these bones
What you are now, we were once
Just like we are, you’ll be dust
And just like we are, permanent
You were too tired to eat, too hungry to sleep
Just imagine the speed, it’s just what you need
Look alive, see these bones
What you are now, we were once
And just like we are, you’ll be dust
And just like we are, permanent
The lights in the city are more or less blinking
Which side of the story decides what you’re thinking
We’ll amount in cold faces?
We’re squinting, we’re hurrying
We’ll take inventory
We’re digging, we’re burying
Do you remember when the line was blown
Do you remember when it fell
Do you remember when you went to her house, remember ringing the bell
Look alive, see these bones
What you are now, we were once
Just like we are, you’ll be dust
Just like we are, permanent’