Read the following text, which is a series of extracts from a speech given by the environmental activist Greta Thunberg to the British Parliament in 2019. Analyse the text, focusing on form, structure and language. My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old. I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future generations. I know many of you don't want to listen to us you say we are just children. But we're only repeating the message of the united climate science. Many of you appear concerned that we are wasting valuable lesson time, but I assure you we will go back to school the moment you start listening to science and give us a future. Is that really too much to ask? In the year 2030 I will be 26 years old. My little sister Beata will be 23. Just like many of your own children or grandchildren. That is a great age, we have been told. When you have all of your life ahead of you. But I am not so sure it will be that great for us. I was fortunate to be born in a time and place where everyone told us to dream big; I could become whatever I wanted to. I could live wherever I wanted to. People like me had everything we needed and more. Things our grandparents could not even dream of. We had everything we could ever wish for and yet now we may have nothing. Now we probably don't even have a future any more. Because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money. It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit, and you only live once. You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it's too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard. Is my microphone on? Can you hear me? Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilisation as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%. *** We must also bear in mind that these are just calculations. Estimations. That means that these 'points of no return' may occur a bit sooner or later than 2030. No one can know for sure. We can, however, be certain that they will occur approximately in these timeframes, because these calculations are not opinions or wild guesses. These projections are backed up by scientific facts, concluded by all nations through the IPCC¹. Nearly every single major national scientific body around the world unreservedly supports the work and findings of the IPCC. Did you hear what I just said? Is my English OK? Is the microphone on? Because I'm beginning to wonder. *** Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling. Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfil something, we can do anything. And I'm sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: we can still fix this. But the opportunity to do so will not last for long. We must start today. We have no more excuses. We children are not sacrificing our education and our childhood for you to tell us what you consider is politically possible in the society that you have created. We have not taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us, and tell us that you really admire what we do. We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back. I hope my microphone was on. I hope you could all hear me. ¹IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Mark scheme
Marking points from the official mark scheme (Oct/Nov 2022). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.
- Form: the typical text conventions used in the speech
- Form: the ways in which the purpose affects the content and style of the text
- Form: the ways in which the speech appeals to its intended audience, e.g. through the tone and register used in the text
- Form: any other relevant aspects of the text's form
- Structure: the way the text begins with a clear introduction about the speaker – establishing who she is, where she comes from and who she represents
- Structure: the way the text is structured to develop the sense of urgency about climate change and the need for something drastic to be done
- Structure: varying paragraph length enables the writer to develop certain points in depth/detail
- Structure: the effect of the one and two sentence paragraphs used in the text
- Structure: the reference to hopes and dreams at the beginning and at the end of the text
- Structure: the use of the microphone as a cohesive device
- Structure: the effect of the final two sentences of the text
- Structure: any other relevant structural features in the text
- Language: the way in which pronouns are used in the text (inclusive – we/our/us, and exclusive – you/your) to imply an us and them situation
- Language: the effect of triplicate structures used in the text
- Language: the use of repetition as a rhetorical device, e.g., we children
- Language: sentence structure/variety and its effect on the reader
- Language: the effect of the rhetorical questions in the text
- Language: the way in which facts and statistics are used in the text
- Language: the use of a lexical field associated with climate / science / the environment
- Language: the effect of emotive words and phrases such as your own children/grandchildren, that future was sold, unimaginable amounts of money, stolen from us, lied to us, irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, the end of our civilisation as we know it, permanent and unprecedented changes, catastrophe, emergency, crisis, etc.
- Language: the repeated mention of the year 2030
- Language: the reference to the IPCC to give credibility and weight/authority to argument
- Language: the effect of the extended metaphor – Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling
- Language: any other relevant language features used in the text
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