The text describes the writers opinion on seafood, and why his opinion is so. The writer has a strong dislike for seafood, because of the tastes and smells of the seafood. The writer uses profanity, listing and hyperbole to convey this idea.
The writer uses profanity to convey his thought on the look of a shellfish. It says: the whatever the hell that muck is that comes out of shells”. The profanity ‘whatever the hell’ is used to emphasize his strong feelings for seafood, and particularly his disgust at shellfish. The profanity creates a connection with the reader, as it makes the text more casual and similar to a verbal conversation, which makes it easier to connect ideas. The writer makes the text similar to a conversation with this profanity to create a casual connection with the reader.
The writer uses listing when recounting his experience of the Scallop Festival. The writer says: “I was jostled by fish-crazed punters slurping kina, chugging scallops and feasting on all manner of slimy kaimoana.” The listing is used here to show all the things the writer hated about the people at the festival. The listing is used in this case to convey specific actions that the people at the festival did. This helps us to understand the writers hate for seafood as the listing makes us believe that he believed the festival was chaos because of how the writer listed off the things he hated very quickly and not in very much detail, giving us the idea that the festival was very fast-paced and too much was going around to focus in on things.
The writer also adds to his idea on seafood with the use of hyperbole. It says: “After a half-dozen showers with a pot scaler and several sessions of psychotherapy, I can almost watch Finding Nemo again.” This hyperbole dramatizes how bad the festival was, giving us the idea that is was so bad that he had to take many showers and sessions of psychotherapy. The hyperbole helps the reader get the idea of how much he hates seafood, as it makes us believe that they think that seafood is so bad that the writer may have to do these things. This adds to the overall meaning of the text as it reinforces and strengthens the idea of his hatred for seafood.
The writer uses these three language features to better convey the main idea of the text, that the writer has a hatred for seafood.