Hello, I'd really appreciate it if someone could please look through my analytical commentary on Metro Trains Customer Service Charter and give me some feedback as to how and where I can improve. Thanks in advance!
Analytical Commentary- Metro Trains
Metro Trains Customer Service Chatter is a written brochure outlining Metro’s services and responsibilities to customers, and also informing customers of their responsibilities whilst travelling on Metro. The brochure maintains a formal register throughout, in order to maintain power and display their authority. The audience is the customers, however, also the employees of Metro, and the wider public. The semantic field of the brochure is travel, in particular train travel, however, it also incorporates lexemes from the corporate field.
The lexical and semantic features in the text play a significant role in the development of the formal register, in particular in eliminating any possible lexical ambiguity, and achieving the overall function which is to inform. The use of subject specific lexis, particularly in the form of adjectives, such as ‘travel experience’ L24, ‘Transport operators’ L54, ‘warning bells’ L69 and ‘platform attendants’ L71, help to clarify the meanings of the following nouns. These adjectives make the nouns used specific to the semantic field of travel, and removes any possible ambiguity of the meanings of the nouns by clarifying the context in which they are being used. This contributes to the formal register by ensuring the text can only be understood in the one way which Metro are trying to communicate. The use of auxiliary modal verbs throughout the text assist in the achievement of the overall function of the text which is to inform of the responsibilities of Metro and travellers. The use of these auxiliary modal verbs, such as, ‘will’ in ‘will do all we can’ L13 and ‘Metro will take its place’ L21, express to the audience what it is that Metro itself will do, showing their responsibilities. However, modal auxiliary verbs are also used to show what Metro expects travellers to do, such as, ‘must’ in ‘entitlement must be carried’ L57 , ‘entitlement must be produced by the customer’ L59-60 and ‘tickets must not be transferred.’
There are also many syntactical features which assist in the achievement of the function, and maintain the formal register including nominalisation, parallelism and the sentence types. The use of nominalisation increases the efficiency of the text, and also increases the formality, as it is not concerned with building rapport with the audience. From the beginning of the text until the end, nominalisation is used as a way of reducing the amount of lexemes required to present the information. On line 7, ‘our commitment’ is used, where it would have otherwise have read, ‘we are committed to,’ meaning that less lexemes are used, to convey the same meaning. Nominalisation is seen throughout the text on lines 13, 22, 55, 67 and 71, and these examples all have the same function; to increase the efficiency of the text. Parallelism is also used throughout the text, most notably in line 27, 31, 33, 35, 36 and 37, where the sentences all begin with, ‘We will…’ This creates a rhythm within the text, allowing the audience to have a clear expectation of the responsibilities of Metro. This parallelism also contributes to the logical ordering within the text, as the responsibilities are listed together, and also contributes to the achievement of the function.
The coherence and cohesion within the text is achieved through a number of features. Coherence is achieved through the logical ordering, of an introduction, followed by a description of the responsibilities of Metro and then the responsibilities of customers which ensures that the text is easily to follow, interpret and to understand. The formatting of the text involves bold sub headings which ensures that the different sections can be easily identified, also contributing to the coherence. Cohesion is achieved through the lexical choices, of lexemes from the appropriate semantic field of travel, as well as the repetition of key elements, such as Metro’s responsibilities listed individually beginning with ‘We will…’ through the text.