Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Look We Have Coming To Dover - Daljit Nagra (Language Techniques…
Look We Have Coming To Dover - Daljit Nagra
Structure
Each stanza is packed with a dizzying array of sound effects – rhyme, half-rhyme, alliteration and assonance
Half rhyme – shows how the speaker is trying to speak the language, which is something that often people accuse immigrants of not doing
Alternative Rhyme – “Invade/Waves” – Rhyme scheme is very varied showing that the speaker does not have a good knowledge of how the English language works
this allows us to see how they must be therefore an immigrant.
Loose structure – at first seems immature but it does add something to the poem
Language Techniques
Lexical field of immigration as a threat to national identity – “invade”, “teemed” and “swarms”
subverts it by putting it in the mouth of an immigrant, in this case a Punjabi Indian
Colloquialisms – “gobfuls”, “scramming”, “hoick” and “lingoes” to form a lively hybrid which mirrors the mixing of cultures that immigration entails.
he effect is fun and funny – both at the expense of the English but also, to an extent, the narrator whose dreams of a new life are a parody of aspiration
Neologisms (the language is a mixture of lots of sounds and lexical fields – The phonology “gobful of surf phlegmed by cushy come-and-go”
colloquialisms and neologisms allows us to see how the foreign speaker and taken influences from all different places in the country.
‘phlegmed’ shows how she hs turned a noun into a verb which although incorrect, provides a more vivid image of what the reader is experiencing
a negative connotion for the immigrants and that their experiences is not always positive when they come to a new place
something which is not always understood by the people that live there
The mixture of sounds echoes the evident mixings of culture when there re immigrants in a country.
The colloquialism shows how they have picked up slang from the places they have been and they use it as if it is a formal word
whereas actually there are many words which are made in order for people to understand.
Imagery
immigration – “invade” “teemed” “swarmed” – these words seem to have a negative connotations
very applicable in context at the moment because there are lots of talks about how many immigrants we should allow through our borders.
Themes
The beauty of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach scene is contrasted with Nagra’s poem
Modern Britain is scarred by hostility to immigrants and even the thunder ‘unbladders/yobbish rain’, like the yobs who will attack them.