ENG2602 Assignment 2 (SOCIAL PERSUASION & FICTION ANSWERS) 2025 - DUE 1 July 2025

ENG2602 Assignment 2 (SOCIAL PERSUASION & FICTION ANSWERS) 2025 - DUE 1 July 2025..................QUESTION 1: SOCIAL PERSUASION Read the following social persuasive text closely and answer the question that follows. Answer the following question in full. Write a carefully-worded essay of 1000 – 1200 words (approximately 2 to 3 typed pages) in length, in which you critically analyse the content of the persuasive text below. Begin your essay by BRIEFLY establishing what the text is about, who the target audience is, and what the persuasive purpose is. For each of these, your response should not be more than two sentences. Ensure that the majority of your essay body is an extensive critical analysis of the persuasive strategies (persuasive appeals and linguistic devices) used in the text. This means you do not only need to identify the persuasive strategies (including the linguistic devices used for this purpose), but you also need to explain how they have been used. Ignore the ellipses […] and do not comment on them! ENG2602/103/0/2025 7 One step forward two steps backward…LGBTQI Rights in Africa Sonke Gender Justice, 02 August, 2023. So, this happened… in May 2023, Namibia’s Supreme Court passed a progressive ruling that its government must recognise the unions of same-sex couples concluded in foreign countries where it was legal to do so. Though this step is recognised as somewhat progressive, for Namibia it is a bit of a conundrum due to the fact that same-sex marriage remains illegal in Namibia itself. Sexual relations between men are still considered a criminal offence in Namibia, however the law is seldom enforced in this respect. This ruling is in contrast with the developments in Uganda, in the same month of May 2023, the legislature promulgated one of the harshest anti-LGBTIQ laws to date. The new law punishes what it calls “aggravated homosexuality” with the death penalty, criminalises transmission of HIV/AIDS through gay sex and prescribes a 20-year sentence for “promoting” homosexuality. Same-sex relations were already illegal, not only in Uganda and Namibia alone, but in more than 30 African countries altogether. In other countries like Mauritania, Somalia, and some Nigerian states that practice Sharia law, lengthy prison terms and capital punishments are commonplace. The illustration below indicates about 32 nations in Africa that have outlawed same-sex relationships: ENG2602/103/0/2025 8 According to ILGA’s database, same sex relationships are considered legal in 22 African countries. Out of these 22 only 12 have never adopted laws criminalising same-sex relationships. Historically, people with diverse gender identities have always existed in African societies, however their visibility was always on the margins and tolerance in society has always varied. There are several factors that have influenced the current and existing narratives around same-sex relations, mainly the influence of Christian and Islamic faiths under European and British colonial rule and modern African electoral politics. Much of Africa’s anti-same-sex legislation originated during colonial rule. Several studies show that Europeans viewed Africans’ traditional sexualities as examples of their supposed racial inferiority, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation served as one of the means of subjugation. In addition, Christian fundamentalists and seemingly all major schools of Islamic law condemn homosexuality, and both religions have millions of believers in Africa.[1] [….] (Accessed on 08 May 2024) ENG2602/103/0/2025 9 Assignment Preparation Guide Reading and Pre-writing Prompts The study material prescribed for this question is Unit 3: Political Persuasive Texts in Tutorial 501. Carefully work through the unit, paying particular attention to the activities and sample responses provided—especially the final activity and model essay. Before starting your essay, read the through the excerpt several times and write down your thoughts in response to each of the five aspects mentioned above. As you do so, keep in mind what the assignment question requires you to do: critically analyse the excerpt as a persuasive text. ‘Critically analyse’ does not mean you should criticise or respond argumentatively to the text; rather, it means you need to probe the persuasive techniques (i.e. persuasive appeal/s and linguistic devices) used in the text to help the producer (i.e. speaker) to direct the text at his target audience and achieve his persuasive purpose. Once you have worked through Unit 3, you should have a thorough understanding of each of the aforementioned aspects that you are required to address in your analysis. Let us review these: Type of Text: What kind of text is this? How were you able to recognise the type of text? The set question has helped you to address this aspect; you simply need to state the type of text clearly and specifically. Do not merely identify it as a ‘persuasive text’ though—it certainly is a persuasive text but be more specific (Hint: Consider the context and medium of the text; as explained in Unit 2). Persuasive Purpose: What does the text attempt to convince the audience to do or believe? Remember that persuasive texts comprise a hierarchy of persuasive aims; it is not sufficient to only identify a generalised persuasive purpose such as, for example, ‘To get votes for the speaker’s political party.’ Support your identification of the text’s persuasive purpose with close reference to the text. Producer: Who is the speaker? What organisation does he or she represent? Remember that the persuasive purpose of a text is related to its producer. ENG2602/103/0/2025 10 Target Audience: Who is the intended target audience of the text? What informs your answer? Can you provide (an) example/s from the text to support your answer? Persuasive Techniques: Unit 3 covers persuasive techniques in detail. What persuasive techniques does the text use? How are these techniques used? Are these persuasive techniques effective or not? Remember that ‘persuasive techniques’ refers to strategies employed in the text to convey the persuasive purpose to the target audience. Identifying the persuasive techniques (i.e. persuasive appeal/s and linguistic devices) used in the text is only the first required step of your analysis. You need to support your identification of these techniques and critically comment on the speaker’s use of these techniques. What do we mean by this? Firstly, you need to quote (an) example/s of the persuasive techniques you have identified. Secondly, you need to analyse the persuasive effect of each technique identified—keeping in mind the persuasive aim/s of the text. Again, refer to the examples provided in Unit 3 to see how to do this. Self-Assessment: • Present your analysis in a properly-structured academic essay consisting of an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Avoid using headings and sub-headings in your essay. • Revise your draft and ensure that you have fully addressed the set question. • Before submitting your essay, you must proof-read it to eliminate errors and poorly expressed ideas. It is often helpful to read your work out loud to yourself. If it does not make sense to you, it will not make sense to the marker: so, correct it. • If you struggle to identify your grammar errors, upload your essay to: to receive assistance that will help you correct your mistakes. MARKS 100 OR ENG2602/103/0/2025 11 QUESTION 2: FICTION Answer the following question in full and remember to include the plagiarism declaration when you submit your assignment. To do this assignment, please carefully read the Assignment guidance that follows the question. Below is an extract from The Shadow Follows (2006) by David Medalie. Write a carefully-worded essay of approximately 1000 to 1200 words (approximately 2 to 3 typed pages) in which you critically analyse the extract, showing how literary devices are used to develop the character’s fear of blood. As part of your analysis, you must consider how the text uses depictions of the character’s fear of other things in order to build up to her fear of blood. Please note: • You must quote from the text to substantiate your argument. Explain how each quotation supports your statements. • Do not discuss anything in your essay that you cannot relate to the depiction of fear and blood. • Do not provide definitions of literary devices; only explain how they are used to convey meaning in the extract relating to the essay topic. • Ignore the ellipses […] and do not comment on them! Misanthropy was a curious impulse, especially for one in her profession. She was supposed to heal people and alleviate their suffering, but she felt now that she could quite blithely consign them all to medieval agony. Beneath her antipathy she felt the tug of fear. Why were people so frightened of ghosts and vampires and corpses that refused to lie still? There was no reason to be afraid of any of these ghouls, so timid – docile, even- beneath their extravagant menace. The truly fearful object was the unremarkable person who sat next to you at the movies and annoyed you by scratching noisily in a box as he excavated his popcorn. For even if you glared at him or shrank away from him and surrendered to him the elbow rest, there was no escaping him. He breathed over you. He coughed over you. He sneezed over you. He had been to the toilet and not washed his hands (very few men did; not even one in five, according to studies). He was not innocent of drops of urine and faecal particles. There were bacteria under his fingernails, which were too long. He was shedding bits of skin, which meant that he would be with you for quite some time. There was more than a faint possibility that you would even ingest some of him before you went to bed that night. ENG2602/103/0/2025 12 He seemed innocuous enough…But he was a threat, a grave threat. For there was no getting away from him—from his imperviousness, his proximity, his droppings, his sheddings, his germs, his power to infect you, his blood. More than anything, it was his blood. (Medalie, David. The Shadow Follows, p. 1-2.) Assignment Guidance Reading for Pre-writing You have been asked to analyse how literary devices are used to develop the character’s fear of blood in this extract. Read the section on themes in your study guide and think about the different ways in which fear can be depicted in fiction. Do not include any general information about fear or about themes in your essay; your task is to analyse the way the fear of blood is specifically depicted in the extract. Consider these questions: - What, in the passage, tells you that the character is afraid of blood? - How does the fear of blood manifest/ affect them? - How intense is the character’s fear and how is this evident in the way it is conveyed? Before you begin, it is useful to consider the different ways in which a character may feel about blood in order to understand what is being said about the fear of blood in this text. Consider the following things that blood signifies. • Blood may signify violence, danger and/or fear. • Blood may signify ancestry and the influence of genetics on the way we behave, the choices we make and the kind of people we are. • Just as blood in one depiction may signify injury or even death, in another depiction, it may signify life. In the passage above, you need to determine what blood signifies to the character being portrayed. It is your task to analyse the way literary features have been used to shape these ENG2602/103/0/2025 13 meanings around the theme of blood. Specifically, you should look at how the fear of blood is described. To answer this question, you may want to consider how you yourself may write a descriptive passage in which you reflect on how you feel about blood. Think about what you are saying about blood when you do so, and how your writing conveys this to another person. Think about what language or literary devices you would use to reflect how you feel about blood and how you would use these in a paragraph. Paragraph describing feelings about blood: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Here is an example: I donated blood as often as I could. It was not just my lack of fear that enabled me to do so; a distinct sense of exhilaration derived from the experience motivated me to actively seek out such opportunities. I watched with tense excitement as the strap tightened around my arm, and felt awe as the invisible currents of my life appeared in flowing blue lines like the rivers of the earth. The intense beauty of red was the beauty of life, the only life I had been given. I cherished the vivid reminder of its presence in me, and gratitude for life gushed through in an utter joy in being able to share it with others. Analysis: You can see that the feelings about blood I have explored in the paragraph relate to blood as a signification of life. The message I have shaped around the blood is that it is a reminder of the preciousness of life. I began by evoking a more conventional attitude to blood with the phrase “lack of fear” (suggesting that fear is the feeling most often associated with blood) and used this to highlight the more joyous perspective on blood through contrast. I used imagery from nature in a simile to evoke meanings related to life and abundance to describe the vessels that carry blood and culminated in how the joy in ones’ own life may translate into an eagerness to share life with others. ENG2602/103/0/2025 14 [Please note that the analysis above is not exhaustive. It is only meant as an example of a passage that explores a similar theme.] Now it is time to turn your attention to the extract. Read the text carefully and annotate the text as you read. Jot down the following: • What is the substance of the extract? In other words, what information are you given? What does it reveal about the character’s experience and feelings? • How does the way the information is given develop the theme of fear? • How is the character’s profession used to emphasise her fear? • Explore the comparison with the imagery related to fear? Where is this imagery drawn from and how is the use of this effective in highlighting the fear of blood? • What is the perspective used in the text? What kind of narrator is this and how does this affect the way information is given to you? • What do you think is specifically being conveyed about the experience of fear in this context? What is the context? • Identify any words or phrases that relate to the fear of blood. (You should justify each word or phrase that you relate to this: explain how they relate to it.) e.g. The word/phrase “…” suggests fear of blood because … • How does the depiction of fear relate to the theme of blood and how does the text comment on this? • Look at the sentence structure and explore how this conveys how the character feels. • Please attend the livestream session on preparing for this assignment topic for more information on how to approach the elements referred to above. Preparing your essay In your consideration of the assignment question, focus on the following keywords: • “Essay” Your response to this question should be formulated in a well-structured essay as outlined in Tutorial Letter 301. In this module, you are not allowed to use subheadings for your essay. The different subsections of your essay (introduction, body, conclusion), should be clearly distinguishable through your phrasing and the content of your essay. Do not use point form or ENG2602/103/0/2025 15 dashes in your essay; your essay should be made up of paragraphs alone. Do not simply place your answers to the questions in the assignment guidance section in paragraph form as an answer. The assignment guidance section does not show you how to write your essay; it only guides you through the thinking you must do before your essay-writing begins. It is up to you to convert your notes into the form of an essay. • “Carefully worded” This indicates that you are not going to be assessed on content and structure alone; you will also be marked on the cohesion of your thought and on your use of language. (Please refer to the Assessment Criteria and the Module Outcomes in Tutorial Letter 101 for further information.) • “Analyse” You have been instructed to analyse, not to explain the plot or to give us your opinion on the story. You must not simply list techniques and devices found in the text, but give an in-depth discussion that shows your understanding of the text. Do not include definitions of literary devices in your essay either; explaining the function of literary devices means you must explain how they function to depict the setting, not how they function in general.