Eric Wang
Eng 121 AC1
12/11/12
Word count: 618
Language Analysis Report
Written language is a lot of complicated rules in English. Every word in English means
different things. Although some words may share same definition, many are still different from
another. Also, if you add two different words together, you may end up having a totally different
definition than before. Due to the fact English is such a complicated language; there are also
multiple academic disciplines and different structural patterns for English speakers to convey and
to understand the discipline-specific meanings. A close analysis of the language of two sample
paragraphs from Adam Blake‘s Tourism and Income Distribution in East Africa published in
Wiley InterScience suggests that writing in business emphasizes the importance of details such
as different examples and the use of various writing language, sentence types, and clause phrases
as well as the use verbs.
In Blake’ article, there are some differences in sentence complexity: four simple
sentences, two compound sentences, four complex sentences, and five compound-complex
sentences. Although there are many different types of sentences in this article, some are fairly
easy to tell because there are multiple key words to identify the type of that sentence.
While the overall structure of the three SAMs used is broadly similar, they include data
for a different classification of industries and products, types of labor and household
classifications (Blake, 2008, 515)
Above is a complex sentence because this first phrase “While the overall structure of the three
SAMs used is broadly similar” is a dependent clause. Although “is” is the verb for this phrase,
this sentence can’t stand on its own because the word “while” in the beginning. The word
“while” may function as noun in English, but in the sentence above is considering as a
subordinating conjunction. The word “while” in English has another proposed, to indicate two
separate clauses, just like the example above would be just two different clauses without a
subordinating conjunction. With a subordinating conjunction in this sentence, it gives the reader
more details. Not only the overall structure of the three SAMs used is broadly similar, they also
include data for a different classification of industries and products, types of labor and household
classifications.
With correctly done introductory phrases, it may remind the readers what was going on in
the previous sentence or paragraph and introduce them to new sub-points. But in Blake’s article
he didn’t really use introductory phrases in the article, such as “showed that value added was
40%” and “show that the value added share has remained fairly constant from 1976 (40%) to
2001 (44%)” (Blake, 2008, 516), he didn’t put the word “because” in front of “showed”.
Introductory phrases may also be in a serious, educated tone because it like conversation
between the author and the readers and may also make connections while reading. Maybe
because this is academic, educational article instead of a persuasive-like article, Blake didn’t
really have to use introductory phrases to make his article serious.
Another example of the author’s tone is that he uses some verb words in other part of
speech. Although it looked really complicated at first, after reading the article several times it
became easier. For instance, the part of the article I provided has a phrase which includes a verbnoun. “While the overall structure of the three SAMs used is broadly similar” The word “used”
is normally known as a verb but in this situation it is function like an adjective because “is” is the
verb in this phrase and you can’t have two verbs in one phrase or a sentence. By changing the
word “use” to adjective will make the first half of the phrase (While-used) the subject and the
last part being the one describing the subject.
Works Cited
Blake, Adam. (2008, November 10). Wiley InterScience: Tourism and Income Distribution in
East Africa. International Journal of Tourism Research, 511-524. Retrieved from
www.interscience.wiley.com