June 2020

How does the writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie use language and structure in text two to convey her thoughts and
opinions?

In “the danger of a single story”, the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses language techniques and structural features
to effectively convey her thoughts and feelings to the audience. The text is a speech filled with anecdotes from her
personal life. Adichie’s intended audience is quite general with no specific targets. The purpose of the text is to inform
readers about the dangers behind single sided stories, ones which lack diversity and how they affect young readers. The
language used is informal and engaging towards her audience.

Firstly, Adichie opens the text with a short, powerful sentence “I am a storyteller” in order to announce to the audience
her intentions and also tells then a little bit about herself. The second sentence introduces the purpose of her speech
including second person pronoun “you” to help readers feel as if they are being directly addressed by Adichie. She
provides readers with a series of anecdotes: “I grew up on a university campus….i started reading at the age of two…what
I read were British and American children’s books”, she does this to show readers that she is in a storyteller and gives her
reading background to further emphasize her ideas to follow. She uses a humorous tone at times “my poor mother” to
keep her audience interested and also to keep the tone informal.

Secondly, Adichie addresses the one-dimensional repetitive culture behind the books she read during her childhood and
asyndetic listing “all my characters were white and blue-eyed...how lovely it was the sun had come out”. The listing
highlights the analogy of a white person’s life. She contrasts this with her upbringing in Nigeria; “We didn’t have
snow...we never talked about the weather”. Her characters were different from her as a child she did not understand the
difference. Adichie uses parallel structuring in both sentences to further contrast this idea. Further, Adichie is careful not
to criticize Western writers “I loved those American and British books I read”, showing that these writers not only opened
her eyes to the differences in culture but also exposed her and made her love her own culture. Emotive word “loved” to
show her gratefulness to them.

Furthermore, Adichie uses emotive language “disappointed” when she exposes the tainted and stereotypical ideas her
roommate had about her. The single short sentence paragraph ‘She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove’
draws attention to the ignorance and judgemental behaviour of those who believe in stereotypes. Towards the end of the
speech, the tone becomes more and more positive using repletion of the phrase ‘Stories matter. Many stories matter’
which shows us how keen Adichie is to expose other readers to different cultures.

Lastly, the final paragraph offers the audience advice to ‘reject the single story’, and use of the first-person plural pronoun
provides a link between Adichie and the audience to show readers that she is a part of the learning process. By giving her
thoughts and feelings she inspires readers to change their mindset

In conclusion, Adichie effectively uses language and structure to convey her thoughts and feelings to the audience.
Adichie supports and emphasizes her idea “the danger of a single story”