Voice Audience Register Purpose of written texts. A simple overview of VARP

2. We all have a personality that is unique to who we are.
Whatever our personalities - ambitious, caring, passionate, stable, and
everything in between - they are unique to how we see ourselves and
the world around us.
 In writing, voice can be expressed when a writer puts him or herself
'into' the words, providing a sense that a real person is speaking and
cares about the message.
 When a writer is engaged personally with the topic, they impart a
personality to the piece that is unmistakably theirs alone.
Voice is the distinct personality of a piece of writing.
What Is Voice in writing?

3. What is Audience in writing?
In writing, audience is who you are writing for.
If you know who you are writing for, you can make good
decisions about what information to include, as well as your
tone and language in conveying it.
Our content, tone and language changes according to what
we know about our audience.

4. How to find out who the Audience is?
The audience for a local newspaper is very different from a
national music magazine.
Writers tailor their texts to their audience carefully. They
consider them in how they write sentences, what
vocabulary they use and the style of their writing.
 Who is the text aimed at?
 What age group ?( work this out form the form the
language or layout)
 Are they people who are interested in a specific topic?

5. How to find out who the Audience is?
Contextual information about a text may give you some
clues to its audience.
 The topic – is it of interest to a particular group?
 The tone – is it chatty or formal?
 The words – use of specialist vocabulary, or easy words,
or polysyllabic vocabulary?
 Does it use Standard English or dialect?
 Does it use ‘you’ and if so, what kind of characteristics
does that ‘you’ seem to have?
 Is the layout changed for the audience and purpose?

6. How do you identify a text’s Audience?
Word Level – look for:
• Register
• Complexity of words
• Noun and verb forms e.g. use of abstract nouns
Sentence Level – look for:
• Narrative voice
• Complexity of sentence forms
Text Level – look for:
• Presentational features like font size, amount of text versus
image, colour, layout...

7. What is the text’s Register?
Register is the form of language appropriate to a particular
situation i.e. formality.
Formality has a spectrum: Highly formal to Highly informal.
 where would you place the following situation on this
spectrum:
• A meeting between a teacher and the head teacher?
• A conversation between a customer and a shop assistant?
• A letter from a firm of solicitors?

8. Level of formality
How is the level of formality influenced by basic language
features?
 Word formality
 A text’s register is determined by the way a writer uses
language and structure.
 When a writer chooses their words they have any number of
synonym choices and have to decide on the formality of the
word they want.
 Formal language and informal language are associated with
particular choices of grammar and vocabulary.
 Contractions, relative clauses without a relative pronoun and
ellipsis are more common in informal language.

9. Level of formality
Compare

10. Level of formality
Compare

11. Level of formality
 We often choose to use certain modal verbs to be more
formal and polite:
 Can I suggest you try this new model? (neutral)
 May I suggest you try this new model? (more formal)
 Might I suggest you try this new model? (very formal)

12. Difference between Connotation and
Denotation
 Denotation is the literal meaning of a word as defined by its context.
 Connotation is the suggestion or implication represented by a word
which alludes to its social context.
The most common example to use is the red rose.
 Red is the denotation of a colour, and rose is the denotation of a
flower. Together they present a description of a flower of a
particular colour: a red rose.
 The connotation of red rose is a symbol for love.
 The words red and rose simply describe a noun in terms of its colour
and define a type of flower.
 Social convention has meant that the red rose as an idea represents
or symbolises love.

13. Register and Audience
 Register' means the tone and level of formality of
language.
 Always choose the register appropriate to your audience
and purpose.
 Standard English is always appropriate to formal
situations as well as many informal situations
 Consider the age and background of your expected
audience along with your purpose in writing or speaking.

14. How do you identify a text’s Purpose?
Word Level - look for:
• Fact and opinion.
• Subject specific words.
• Description e.g. adjectives, imagery.
• Verb types e.g. imperatives or modal.
• Persuasive language e.g. rhetorical devices.
• Personal e.g. use of pronouns.

15. How do you identify a text’s Purpose?
Sentence Level – look for:
• Tense and narrative voice.
• Balance of sentence functions e.g. interrogative,
statement, exclamatory, imperative.
• Balance of sentence types e.g. simple, compound,
complex, minor.

16. How do you identify a text’s Purpose?
Text Level – look for:
• Topic sentences.
• Length of paragraphs.
• Layout and presentational devices like images, colour,
headings.
• Connectives.
• Order of information like chronological.
Text Form - look for:
• Text level features like presentational devices and layout.
• Word level features like ‘yours sincerely’ or ‘dear diary’.

17. Purpose And Audience
A text may have many purposes. Some examples are to:
 entertain – to make the reader enjoy reading
 persuade – to change a reader’s opinion
 advise – to help people decide what to do
 analyse – to break down something for better understanding
 argue – to make the case for something
 describe – to give details about a person, place, event or thing
 explain – to make clear why or how something works
 inform – to tell a reader about something
 instruct – to tell a reader how to do something

18. Purpose And Audience
Some types of non-fiction text are linked to specific purposes.
For example, advertising is intended to persuade you to buy
something.
To work out what the purpose of the text is, it’s useful to think
about what the writer’s attitude
was at the time of writing.
Looking at any contextual information
like where is it from ?