Well, It Is Aaron Rodgers

We take great pride in our sports teams in Wisconsin, especially football. On Sundays, when I walk around in my Donald Driver jersey, people representing Rodgers, Raji, and Clay smile at me like we’re actual teammates. I worked during the Packers versus Rams game, so I wanted to read up on what I’d missed that Sunday. First reading the article, I thought, “Damn, the Packers are looking good,” but after analyzing it for class and thinking about the context in which it was written I realized the author couldn’t have possibly portrayed the green and gold in a bad light. The article is written at a 7.3 grade level, it uses more simple language, is very accessible, and includes quotes from players, but the most obvious thing about this writing making it Plain Style is its blatant biased.

Anybody can read this article. I was able to access the website easily. The language is not difficult to read.  The author, Tom Oates, writes with a very conversational tone to get readers to invest in his writing.  The opening sentence of the article is “It didn’t take guts for Aaron Rodgers to throw the punch that knocked out the St. Louis Rams.”  Oates intends for his writing to be fun to read and easy for anybody to understand.  I think most people could read it and understand the just, but people who don’t watch football or do but not the Packers, might not get some of the references being made. “He got the free snap and he got out of the pocket fairly quick to give himself some time and he delivered a strike...” The terms “snap” and “pocket” make this sentence difficult for non-football fans to decipher.  Also, “strike” adds to the confusion, because it is usually a term used in baseball, calling for readers to have an understanding of both sports. A more simple translation for people that don’t follow football would be, “Rodgers got the ball, moved back to avoid being attacked by the other team, and threw a good pass to his teammate.” 

All of the quotes in the article are very informal. Because conversation is so instant, people talking don’t have time to edit what they are saying, so the reader gets a better picture of what the players and coach are really like. James Jones says little phrases such as “oh yeah” and “man” that written text doesn’t include. Instead of saying “I missed a couple throws,” Rodgers simplifies it to “Missed a couple throws..” When people are being interviewed they aren’t able to take the time to clean up their language like Tom Oates can clean up and remove unnecessary things from his writing. Plain Style can include these quotes because it is a less formal style of writing.

The text shows a great biased for the Green Bay Packers. Although the Rams are brought up in the article, this article is entirely written by a Packer fan for Packer fans about the Packers. Without the context of this newspaper and the author, it’s easy to believe that the Packers are on their way to clinching the Super Bowl this year. I love the Packers and Aaron Rodgers but this article is very overdone. It’s almost as if the author is trying hard to believe his words, using them as a comfort. The Packers are not performing as well as they should, and they are dealing with a lot of injuries. That’s the truth. I would never consider them out of the running for post season games, but they are not as Oates seems to be saying, the golden team run by the God Aaron Rodgers. As much as I want to believe that as I’m writing it, watching them proves that this is not entirely the case…though it’s probably fairly close. What? I may know how to critically analyze an article written in Plain Text, but I’m still from Wisconsin.
Melissa Koch