Introduction
The choice of words in written text can convey a different meaning about the same topic. Furthermore, it can reveal more information about the author, for example, the audience may get a feeling of business or hatred from an author by the choice of his words. In order to prove this assertion, we shall look at two articles that reported Chelsea Clinton’s wedding on Saturday, July 31, 2010. The first article appeared on the BBC News website titled ‘Chelsea Clinton marries Marc Mezvinsky on the elite estate’, dated 1st August 2010. The second article appeared in the Mail Online and is titled ‘It’s official: Bill and Hillary Clinton ‘so happy’ as they see their daughter Chelsea marry in front of 500 guests’ and was written on the same day as the former by Laura Collins.
Analysis
From these headings, we recognize that the BBC article, apart from the wedding, also focuses on how posh the wedding is while the latter also focuses on Chelsea Clinton’s parents: Bill and Hillary Clinton. However, in contrast to her title, Collins goes on to describe how stylish the wedding, which she describes as America’s ‘Royal wedding’ of the year, was, then goes on to talk about the closing down of roads and the declaration of ‘a chunk of federal airspace’ a no-fly zone. She also describes Chelsea as ‘a bundle of nerves and her father as ‘so emotional’. She then describes the economics of the wedding such as the approximate cost of the wedding (£3.2million) and the bride’s £600,000 engagement ring (Collins, para. 19). She also lists the celebrities that attended the wedding.
The BBC article basically touches on every aspect of the wedding, from the guest celebrities, the pre-wedding party, to the couple’s religious affiliations and how they met. It also has verbal reports of Mr. Clinton before the wedding. Despite mentioning that the wedding was lavish, it does not go into minor details of the lavishness as Collins did. It only reports the presence of a few celebrities, the approximate cost of the wedding (£1.3m and £1.9m), a figure reported by Collins as £3.2m (BBC, para. 11).
Collins’ report does not give a full representation of the wedding but paints it as a very lavish activity, she seems to critiquing rather than reporting. She accompanies the text with pictures that only seem to affirm my assertion. Out of the 13 pictures that she uses, only five are of the couple, the rest are of the wedding scene, guests, the security, and the limousines. The BBC article is accompanied by three pictures, two of which are of the couple while the last one seems to be a perimeter fence. Collins’ article is easily predictable and assumes that the readers already have background information on the couple such as the fact that that the couple has been friends since childhood and that both studied at Stanford University, information that is given by the BBC.
BBC is not predictable in their article as they give so much information within their article. Despite being roughly 500 words long, it gives us so much more information than the roughly 800-word article on the Daily Mail website. For example, we get to know the pre-wedding events, the nature of Mezvinsky’s parents who have been friends with the Clintons for a long time, and that the couple both attended Stanford University and now lives in New York (BBC, para. 18). The few things we learn from Collins’ article are the prices of ‘tables and crockery’, the ‘five-tier wedding cake’, and that of the Vera Wang designed dress (Collins, para. 18, 20 & 21).
The BBC article, however, fails to use enough pictures for such an important, glamorous, and widely anticipated event, it only uses one picture of the couple during the wedding, their other picture is an old one taken in their earlier years. Its author’s main aim was to give the audience an all-around report of the wedding, to which it succeeded while Collins’ aim was to give the lavish side of the wedding and she too succeeded.
Partiality
Both stories employ dialogue, Collins’ only use of a direct quotation is when she reports on the joint statement from Bill and Hillary Clinton. Otherwise, the rest of the article is written from her outlook and subject to misinformation. BBC strives to use direct quotes and apart from the joint statement from Chelsea’s parents, Mary Steenburgen, an invited guest, and Mr. Mezvinsky are quoted. Mr. Clinton is again quoted towards the end of the story.
Laura Collins gives a biased approach towards the Clinton- Mezvinsky wedding while the BBC made an effort to give a well-balanced account of this event.
References
BBC News. Chelsea Clinton marries Marc Mezvinsky on elite estate. BBC News, 2010.
Collins, Laura. It’s official: Bill and Hillary Clinton ‘so happy’ as they see their daughter, Chelsea marry in front of 500 guests. Mail Online, 2010.