a modest proposal

Meanings and representations

The text shows a Sermon by the Clergyman John Swift. The purpose of the Sermon appears to be to shock his audience of parishioners into not having children. It is surprising that a priest would use such emotionally charged imagery to make his portray his point as he supposed to be in a position of care and support. However, Swift uses language to make his otherwise very absurd and shocking point seem more understandable and fair to his audience; Swift embeds clauses such as '...instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood...' and '...and frequently of their fathers...' to try and make the reader understand his point of view so they aren't so shocked by it. Similarly, Swift uses stative verbs such as 'want' and 'shame'. At this period in Ireland there was great poverty so the audience will be able to relate to Swift's use of these stative verbs causing the impact of them to be greater. This will further aid Swift in helping to proverbially cushion the blow of such a grotesque speech. This represents Swift as a giver of tough-love to his parish.

Swift uses the triadic structure ' the streets, the roads and cabin doors' to connote abundance. This is at a time when the people of Ireland had very little of anything so it is arguable that Swift is using his audience's poverty to help get what he wants from his audience. This represents Swift as manipulative which is, again, surprising from a priest figure. In addition, Swift uses the concrete noun 'dam' to describe the mother's womb. This represents these parents (i.e. the audience) as having animalistic traits. This use of zoomorphism will have a particularly big impact at a time when animals would have been likely to roam the streets, giving the parish a visual idea of what Swift is talking about. It is likely due to setting that Swift may be using paralinguistic features when giving the sermon to guide his Parish's attention towards the animals he compares them to.