To What Extent Does the Language of Dissidence Change over Time and How Does This Reflect Changing Attitudes Towards Protests?

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To what extent does the language of dissidence change over time and how does this reflect changing attitudes towards protests? This investigation is centred on whether change in dissidents reflects a change in attitudes towards protests. The materials used for this investigation are the introductions of two letters sent from a protestor who were involved in a riot themselves regarding the same dilemma but are completely angled differently towards who initiated the riot. Text A is letter from a protestor who was involved in the Petreloo Massacre in 1819 and their account of the riot entitled “letter from Hunt to Lord Sidmouth”. Text B is also an account of a former protestor who was involved in the Poll Tax riots in 1990, titled “A Rioter’s Account” which was sent anonymously. We instantly see from text a, there is no barrier nor no fear between who sent the letter and who read it as it clearly shows that “Hunt” sent the letter aimed to Lord Sidmouth who was the home secretary for the prime minister. This suggests that it was the law that was the wicked party in the massacre as Hunt was not afraid to express his opinions across. Text a, which is initiated with the noun phrase “My Lord” which clearly indicates a significance of respect towards Lord Sidmouth. Whereas text b, the rioter’s account, we can evidently see that there is a barrier and that there is a sense of distress and anger. In the second paragraph of text b, the verb phrase in the declarative, “The sight of tooled up riot police being given a good trashing”, from this we can undoubtedly see that the protestors wanted to cause discomfort to the police. In addition to this, we can perceive that text b has an informal register, and a very tense and dramatic tenor, in contrast to text b, text a, has a formal register and a calm tenor. In text a, Hunt’s determination to demonstrate that it was not his

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