Commentary
of ‘Table Talk’
The text ‘Table Talk’ is a very sophisticated piece of
writing, intended to be a critic restaurant review for a much more elder,
intelligent and cultural audience who enjoy searching for fine cuisine. In the
beginning the writer uses alliteration to express how the city is something
wild and unsettling with life through the words ‘flirty, flighty, fluttering’
to bring this lively atmosphere and scarlet woman attitude to the city Soho.
The reviewer also does a similar technique like again, expect with the rule of
three instead, ‘competitive, joshing, boyish’ this allows the writer to
describe in a more captivating way by giving further detail that is quick and
snappy. The author also uses personification to create further liveliness of
the city, by referring to it as ‘she’ and giving it human emotions to convey
this energetic city. The writer then uses semantic fields related to childhood
rather negatively throughout the review to exaggerate the size of his courses.
The fact that they use the lexis ‘lego’ and ‘doll’s house tea’ relates to the
petite size of their meals for effect and gives their opinion on the immature
and stumbling idea of the restaurant itself. They use this semantic field more
to create some disgusting imagery, the use of ‘snot smear’ really shows this as
it makes this horrible view on the food and shows the reviewers disgust which
is mimicked to the audience through their lexis choice. Also despite the being
mainly formal through its large vocabulary and complex sentence structures,
there are hints of the writer becoming more causal as there is phonology within
the review through the word ‘fiver’ as it is more of a slang word which could
relate to their view of the restaurant which is clearly unimpressed. This is
more elaborated through the taboo lexis ‘piss’, this is very vulgar and not a
word you would commonly find in a restaurant review, and creates an unpleasant thought
for the audience as it is not a word to associate with food but successfully
continues expressing the repulsion the writer feels towards this establishment.
