A DANGER OF A SINGLE STORY

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1977. She grew up
on the campus of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where her father was a
Professor and her mother was the first female Registrar. She studied medicine
for a year at Nsukka and then left for the US at the age of 19 to continue her
education on a different path.

She graduated summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University
with a degree in Communication and Political Science.

s. Adichie’s work has been translated into over thirty languages.

Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize,
and her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), won the Orange Prize. Her
2013 novel Americanah won the US National Book Critics Circle Award, and was
named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013.

She has delivered two landmark TED talks: her 2009 TED Talk The Danger of A
Single Story and her 2012 TEDx Euston talk We Should All Be Feminists, which
started a worldwide conversation about feminism, and was published as a book
in 2014.
 STEREOTYPING
What is meant by Stereotyping?

A stereotype is a fixed, over generalized belief

about a particular group or class of people.
Thinking time

1. Think of an ethnic group which you have a few ideas

but about which you know very few actual facts.
2. Write down your honest view about them.
3. Do you think others se you in a stereotyped way?
4. Write down some of the stereotypes they might have.
PERSUASIVE TECHNIQUES
ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT
Short sentence / Anecdotal / Adds humour /
personal pronouns – lighthearte hyperbole – adds
engage the audience d tone
credibility
Contrast – caution

Humour

Listing / things which are not

familiar / alien to her culture
Contrast -
familiar things Emotive language – Collective pronoun
easily influenced – inclusiveness

alien to her culture

Turning point /realization
/ change of perspective
 Adding
Realization / change of credibility –
perspective ethos
Contrast with what
she was writing /
familiarity

Repetition – emphasizes
Colon – draws the the shocking revelation
Complimentary –
attention
engages the
audience
1st example of stereotyping
Logos –
highlights
shared Family
experience background Intellectual
background

Dialogues - Pathos
2nd example of stereotyping
Time expressions –
organize the speech
Short sentence – Logos – critiques
shocking nature herself

3rd example of
stereotyping – she
Single sentence paragraph became a victim for
– limited perspective the first time
 Parallel structure Anaphora –
- similarities emphasizes the
limited perspective

Draws parallels
between herself
Typical perspective
and her roommate
on Africa
 Language choice - Negative
Critiques herself
perspective of her

Ashamed of herself

Listing – endless listing shows the

variety of activities and proves how Repetition
wrong she was about Mexico
 Juxtaposition – shows how
important the stories are /
significance of educating
Repetition people against stereotyping

Anaphora / collective
Repetition / Contrast to
pronoun – significance of
danger in the title –
taking actions together
shows the outcome of a
against single stories
world without
stereotyping
THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS
 THEMES

• Ignorance
• Prejudice
• Self- knowledge
• Impotance of stories
 LINGUISTIC TECHNIQUES
1. Personal anecdote
2. Anaphora
3. Emotive Language
4. Use of short sentences
TYPE OF LANGUAGE USED
1. Anecdotal
2. Persuasive
 PAF
• PURPOSE:
• To warn, guide and advise us all on stereotyping

• To inform about Adichie’s childhood and her path the fame as a writer
• To describe events and feelings to assist the listener in assimilating
her ideas.

• AUDIENCE:
• Those who are interested in stereotyping

• FORMAT / GENRE:
• A text of a Speech delivered at Oxford in 2009
 STRUCTURE
• Chronologically through the key times in the writer’s life starts with
her recollection of her early reading.
• Then recalls her introduction to African Literature realization of “no
single story of what books are”
• There is a narrative and reflective approach as we are taken through
Adichie’s experiences in Nigeria, when she went to America as a
student, where she faced her roommate’s stereotypical expectations of
her, and then as a visitor to Mexico, where she herself was guilty of
stereotyping.
• Short sentences, one sentence paragraphing to emphasize the key
points
• Patterning and repetition in sentence are final structures
 ANALYSIS

EXAMPLE EXPLANATION

“I’m a storyteller.”

“My mother says that I started

reading at the age of two, although I
think four is …”
“…my poor mother was obligated to
read…”

“…all my characters were white and

blue-eyed, they played in snow…”

“… we didn’t have snow, we ate

mangoes…”
 ANALYSIS

EXAMPLE EXPLANATION

“…I think…impressionable and

vulnerable we are …particularly as
children.”

“…I could not personally identify.”

“I realized people like me… could

also exist in Literature.”
“The only thing my mother told us
about him was that his family was
very poor.”

“I was startled.”
 ANALYSIS

EXAMPLE EXPLANATION

“My American roommate was shocked by

me.”

“My roommate had a single story of

Africa: a single story of catastrophe.”

“…I too am just as guilty in the question of

the single story.”

“I realized that I had been so immersed in

the media coverage of Mexicans that they
had become one thing in my mind, the
abject immigrant.”
“Stories matter. Many stories matter.”