Travelling the world and experiencing new places can render one’s mind a melting pot of emotions and new impressions of multi-faceted nature. This blog entry represents a journalist’s account of her journey from Tran to Harmanli in Bulgaria, which depicts her impressions of the voyage. Through the use of the eternal present tense, a hint of humour and varied syntax, the first-person narrative voice in this text is employed to contrive a sense of immediacy whilst also attempting to involve the reader.

Firstly, the author utilises light and at times tongue-in-cheek humour to depict her inner reflection process and hence allow the audience to engage with her impressions. Through the juxtaposition of the diction ‘intriguingly’ and the phrase ‘an experience I still have flashbacks about today’ epitomises the use of contrasting tones to contradict the audience’s expectations and hence create humour. The diction ‘intriguingly’ entails a slightly positive undertone and a sense of curiosity, which is disrupted by the negative connotation of the diction ‘troubling’. In the context of this blog entry, the slightly dramatic use of the word ‘troubling’ is hence employed to establish humour, thus attempting to involve the reader in the experience on a sensual level. The author’s use of humour is furthermore evident in the question, ‘Are they some kind of cycle-obsessed sadomasochists?’ The use of ‘sadomasochists’ creates a hyperbolic effect in the context of a young family with a ‘newborn baby’, which not only characterises the mayhem of the setting in a vivid manner, but also provides the audience with a clear differentiation between descriptions and the inner impressions of the first-person narrator. This provides the audience with an understanding of both literal occurrences as well as associated emotions to immerse them in the situation in an attempt to achieve personal involvement.

Furthermore, the writer consistently utilises the eternal present tense in their first-person narration of the occurrence to create a sense of immediacy and hence prevent a disconnect between the audience and the account of their journey through the element of time. The author asserts that their first day in Bulgaria ‘doesn’t bode well’ and that ‘the sky is black and buckets of rain thump down outside my window’, which creates a sense of continuity and consistency. Rather than depicting the situation through the use of a flashback, the audience is directly immersed in the moment, and the account of the author appears unaffected by time. The frequent repetition of the first-person singular pronoun emphasises the fact that the writer’s account is a present state of being. For example, ‘I spend an exhilarating 20 minutes wrapping all my electrical equipment’ juxtaposed with ‘I venture back in’ again supports the sense of time passing, which involves the audience in the direct process of the occurrence. The use of the present tense moreover underlines the writer’s central synthesis at the very end of the extract, namely that ‘the country exists in an almost state of unresolved ambiguity’.

Moreover, the author juxtaposes contrasting lexical fields of positivity and negativity to strengthen the first-person narrative voice within vivid imagery, thus enhancing the depiction of their personal perspective. The semantic field of misery, including diction such as ‘miserable’, ‘sluggishly’ and ‘oily’ is contrasted with the lexical field of positivity in the second part of the extract, which includes diction such as ‘sweet’ and ‘gentle’. This conveys the writer’s multi-faceted impressions of her journey, showing that the account reflects her raw reflections of the moment, thus creating a sense of immediacy. The fact that her impressions entail a range of emotions show that time hasn’t yet altered them into a singular opinion, thus buttressing this sense of immediacy.

In conclusion, this text uses a first-person narrative voice combined with the use of the eternal present tense, humour and contrasting lexical fields to convey their raw impressions of the journey in a vivid and unaltered manner. This immerses the reader in the moment, in an attempt to engage it and create a sense of immediacy.

A: 5

B: 4

C: 4

D: 5