Blog 2: Interpreting a text

In this text, Grayson shows the influence that media and governments have over social issues. in this case, they took over the issue of a young schoolgirl (Malala) fighting for the right to education and used it to their advantage since it had become a very marketable story.

Grayson seems furious and rebellious in her text. it is shown through her sarcasms: "Why not fly every child harmed by US drones…" (P.02-L.3-4), "What the press usually fail to mention however is how Britain and its allies are failing miserably on "gender justice" back home"(P04-L6-7), and "Yet one young lady is flown to the UK and provided with the best possible care"(P.07-L6-7). She sets an angry and sarcastic tone to the text.

 As to how the text is written and the techniques used by the author, this test is argumentative written in an impersonal way. With objectivity, Grayson employs many writing techniques like parallelism: "There is Malala the book, Malala the film, Malala the award nominee, Malala the portrait" to denote how fast this Malala story grew. Also, the rhetorical questions that follow are used to incite the readers curiosity: "I wonder, how many people can name the other girls injured when Malala was shot? What quality of care and support did they receive? are they represented by PR companies?"(P14-L5-6-7). these rhetorical questions put the spotlight on a very important subject: the special treatment Malala is getting.

In this text, Grayson is debating whether the image of Malala is in fact helping to resolve gender inequality issues or is it only used by the media to mask the failure of the governments in assuring gender equality all over the world.

Greyson does not really focus on the ethical perspective. She points out that even the UK hasn't reached gender equality and that stories like Malala’s happen all over the world and all the time but the media doesn't cover them as much as they covered Malala’s story. Her point of view regarding the ethical perspective is that we still haven’t reached a state of gender equality.