Written Task Intro Paragraphs

1. If the text had been written in a different time or place or language or for a different audience, how and why might it differ?

In the article, "For Women Under 30, Most Occur Outside of Marriage", the authors portray their conservative ideology by the use negative connotations and derogatory diction to portray children outside of marriage or single-mothers as an activity for minorities and those in poverty. The article was written in a time where this is openly discussed. If the article were to have been written before first-wave feminism, it would be very carefully articulated. When giving this article a feminist reading, it can be considered to be anti-feminist as it is using bold and negative diction combined with source control bias to discourage women to be single-mothers. Before, first wave feminism this article would have been much more conservative than it already is. It would not include the ideas of women and be mainly male-dominated and their opinions of this phenomenon. This means that it would contain more bias by source control and bias by selection.

2. Which social groups are marginalized, excluded, or silences within the text?

In the article, "For Women Under 30, Most Occur Outside of Marriage", the authors portray their conservative ideology by the use negative connotations and derogatory diction to portray children outside of marriage or single-mothers as an activity for minorities and those in poverty. The article uses source control throughout as the authors only choose to represent single mothers whose story of raising a child out of wedlock was not successful. This introduces bias to the article and renders the readers a non-holistic view of the issue. This raises the concern of the perspective of different groups that were not represented and were quite important to the discussion. For example, single-fathers. This could really influence the way the text was written as it would create a more balanced discussion.