Benjamin

Zephaniah
Young and Dyslexic? You’ve got it going on
 Background and Context
• Benjamin Zephaniah has earned widespread respect for his ability to
overcome spite, prejudice and ridicule.
• Because of his difficulties with reading, his teachers dismissed him as
unintelligent and not worthy of their attention.
• Rejected by a number of schools, he was unable to read when he left
education at the age of 13.
• Unusually and bravely, he refused to give in to despair, acknowledged
his difficulties and joined an adult reading class.
• Since then, he has taken an imaginative and constructive approach to
life’s challenges. In the article, Zephaniah explains how this happened,
from his early difficulties in school to his determination to write.
GAP
• GENRE
• Memoir; Newspaper Article
• AUDIENCE
• Two audiences:
• The young and marginalised
• The establishment that he is now part of
• PURPOSE
• To educate and explain
 • Lack of compassion, kindness and humanity
• Racial prejudice and Ignorance
• Marginalisation, stereotyping and
Themes discrimination
• Empowerment through language and
creativity
• Identity and independence
 • This text appears very simple – the language
is often colloquial
• However, the issues and ideas are complex
What’s his and very human
• It addresses itself to those who feel
overall marginalised, through
• Race
method? • Education
• Social background
• Dyslexia
• Etc…
Exam Style Questions
 12 points about
Language & Structure

(It might not look like there’s

much here, but there is!
 A Checklist of Techniques
1. Strong first person voice and intimate,
confiding tone
2. Repeated use of personal pronouns to
delineate self and other (us versus them)
3. Clear, simple diction and vocabulary
4. Very direct & straight to the point: little
ambiguity / inference
5. Informal register often using idiomatic,
colloquial language and the vernacular
6. Mix of past & present tense; temporal
markers take us back and forward in time
7. Relatively simple punctuation: no semi-colons!
8. Mostly simple or compound sentences (where
multiple clauses used, there’s not much hierarchy
/ subordination)
9. Most common conjunctions: "and", "but" & "so“
10. Short, roughly equal paragraphs (bite-size chunks;
easy on the eye)
11. Frequent subtle use of rhetorical devices(tricolon,
repetition, direct address, parallel syntax,
imperatives, figurative language, direct speech)
12. Infrequent use of imagery / figurative language
1. Strong first person
voice
• Clear from outset that voice is first person
• -> a personal account; a sense of intimacy; his experiences are shared with
us
• Talks about his childhood and formative memories
• -> reinforces sense of intimacy; revealing and personal account of growing
up and facing hardship / discrimination

• Mostly singular pronouns (I, my) but also a collective noun for wider group
• -> sense of strong individual identity but also pride in belonging to a
marginalised group -> Line 51

• Moves swiftly on to using plural first person pronouns (we, our)

• -> sense of inclusion and shared identity with the reader; bridging
generation gap
• -> reinforced by repetition and parallel syntax
 2. Repeated use of personal pronouns
• By way of contrast, the second person voice is used occasionally to address
his target audience via direct address (e.g. in title and line 73)
• -> develops a greater sense of urgency and immediacy; hard to ignore

• This effect is intensified by use of commands / imperative voice

• -> Note that his audience is divided into two groups (old versus young?)
Sense of conflict (us versus them)

• Juxtaposition of competing pronouns (third and first person)

• = someone/they/their vs me/I/my
• creates and reinforces sense of conflict / two opposing sides in a fight
• tone of hostility / defiance
• dyslexia and race have both led to oppression and conflict in his life
• use of negative direct speech & absurdity = how not to react; what not to
think/say
• reinforced by short, simple, positive statements (“it’s their problem”) and
imperative tense (“they…have to come to terms with it”)
• Overall message: don’t compromise who you are for someone else
3. Clear, simple diction and vocabulary
(largely)
• On the whole, the complexity of Zephaniah’s message comes, not from the
words he uses, but the ideas he conveys
-> Language can be used in a way that is accessible and clear: it doesn’t have to
be intimidating to make a clever point
Line 55 - section focussing on his adult development, after learning to read

-> pinpointing tone is difficult:… Humble? Apologetic? Defiant? Proud

 Simple vs complex words: exploration
• However, he does also use complex words – so don’t overlook these!
• Ironically, one of the longest and most complex words he uses is “dyslexia”; another is
“phonetically” (line 50)
• Zephaniah didn’t know these words as a child, but once he learned them, he felt liberated

• Being dyslexic wasn’t the problem(he could still write powerful poetry), it was the fact that he
and those around him lacked any understanding of it
• There is a sense here that knowledge is empowering and liberating
• So Zephaniah isn’t saying we should dumb down: learning the meaning of
these terms has been immensely empowering for him
• In paragraphs 3-4 he also uses artificially simplified language to
emphasize a point about the way language can be used to stifle thought

(Note the link to Lines 2 and 86, “we are the designers,” and to
Line 81: “Having dyslexia can make you creative”)
Complex, abstract ideas
• Where Zephaniah does use more complex language, he does it for a reason: to convey
an important idea or value (not to intimidate or show off)
• For example, in his second paragraph he uses, three powerful abstract nouns:

-> note that he also uses negation here, emphasized by threefold repetition (tricolon) –
and don’t overlook the heavy irony
-> the point being emphasized is that, through their own ignorance, his teachers were
only able to think in simple, binary terms (good / bad; black / white; stupid / clever)
-> his message is that life is more subtle and complex…
-> link to Line 64 (same technique)
• There is a recognition here that the article isn’t just about being
marginalized on grounds of dyslexia (or other learning difficulties)
• It’s also about overcoming racism, and other forms of prejudice,
discrimination, inequality and oppression… Juxtaposition
…and about believing in yourself, as a unique, capable individual emphasizes
inequality
 4. Direct and straight to the point (and
inclusive)
• There’s little need for inference; reading this text is not about uncovering hidden
gems or decoding implicit meaning. However, we could read dyslexic as code for
any number of other characteristics that might lead to a person being
marginalised.
Nor is it about following long, complex trains of thought,testing your ability to
concentrate and hold several subordinate points in your head at one time.
• Given the subject matter, Zephaniah is careful not to exclude his target audience
• Look at sentence structure and syntax:
He generally builds up one idea, using one main clause per sentence:
Where a sentence contains multiple ideas/clauses, they tend to be
coordinated (not subordinated) with simple conjunctions.

• The most complex conjunction used is “because” (“and” is much more frequent).
• The most common punctuation marks are commas, full-stops and speech marks (he
makes frequent use of direct speech to convey his own and others’ thoughts/ideas).
• The most complex punctuation marks are colon and dashes. No semi-colons used.
• His paragraphs are short and easy to digest, covering one idea at a time, taking us
through his juvenile years and adult development mostly chronologically (Lines 10-
35: childhood; Lines 45-54: early adulthood; Lines 55-72: his life now).
1. Strong first person voice and
intimate, confiding tone
2. Repeated use of personal
pronouns to delineate self and
other (us versus them)
3. Clear, simple diction and
vocabulary
4. Very direct and straight to the
point: no ambiguity /
inference
5. Informal register often using
idiomatic language, the
vernacular & slang
6. Mix of past & present tense;
temporal markers take us back
and forward in time
7. Relatively simple punctuation: no semi-
colons!
8. Mostly simple or compound sentences
(where multiple clauses used, there’s
not much hierarchy / subordination)
9. Most common conjunctions: "and",
"but" & "so“
10. Short, roughly equal paragraphs (bite-
size chunks; easy on the eye)
11. Frequent subtle use of rhetorical
devices(tricolon, repetition, direct
address, parallel syntax, imperatives,
figurative language, direct speech)
12. Infrequent use of imagery / figurative
language
5. Informal register Lines 27 and 84

• Colloquial words indicative of target audience: young people:

• Informal register creates relaxed, conversational tone -> puts reader at ease
• The language used is the vernacular:
Lines not
29, 51the
and language
79: of essays, formal
speeches… or Victorian novels

Note the clever juxtaposition: he can

use long words when he wants to
-> everything is for a reason
 Appealing to both audiences
• Remember the earlier quotation, addressing the older generation:
• “if you are a parent of someone with dyslexia” (Line 80).
• Establishes intellectual credibility with this half of his audience :
• refers to his appointment as “professor of poetry and creative writing” at Brunel
University (Line 62).
• this creates an ironic link with his earlier, negative experiences of the education
system (has he now become part of the establishment?)
• He also establishes his literary credentials by literary allusion to a famous
first line in paragraph 2: “the past is a different kind of country.”
• This is a reference to The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley, which begins:
“The past is a foreign country”.
• Effect of informal register: blurs boundary between him as an adult and
him as a child / teenager
• He hasn’t changed that much
• He wants his audience to find him approachable and easy to relate to
• A way to bridge the “generation” gap, and to generate sympathy?
 6. Mix of past and present tense; use of
temporal markers to shift back and forth
Structure is mostly chronological:
12. Occasional abstract imagery / figurative
language
• Line 8: “the past is a different kind of country. “

• Line 40: “staying out of prison is about conquering your fears and finding your path
in life”

• Line 44: “opportunities opened for me and they missed theirs, didn’t notice them
or didn’t take them.”

• Line 82: “If you… can’t find the word you are searching for, you have to think of a
way to write round it. This requires being creative and so your ‘creativity muscle’
gets bigger. “
 I waz whitemailed
By a white witch,
Wid white magic
An white lies,
Branded by a white sheep
White I slaved as a whitesmith
Near a white spot
Comedy Where I suffered whitewater
fever.
Whitelisted as a whiteleg
I waz in de white book
As a master of white art,
It waz like white death.
People called me white jack
Some hailed me as a white wog,
So I joined de white watch
Trained as a white guard
Lived off the white economy.
Caught and beaten by de
whiteshirts
I waz condemned to a white
mass,
Don't worry,
I shall be writing to de Black
House.
Benjamin Zephaniah