Colloquialism In Anh Do's The Happiest Refugee

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In Anh Do’s autobiography, ‘The Happiest Refugee,’ includes a prologue at the beginning of the text in order to capture the reader’s attention and hook them into reading further. It focuses on Anh’s emotional meeting with his estranged father whom he hasn’t met since his childhood. This event serves as a central point for the story. Subsequently, the rest of the story explains his early life with his father, why he became estranged and also the events following his reunion with his father. At the end of the prologue Anh asks what his fathers new son is called and his father replies, ‘his name is Anh. I named him after you’ (page VII) This makes the reader want to know if Anh meant so much to him why did he leave. After that sentence the story goes back into the past to before Anh’s birth and his childhood and the story is focused on building up to the event in the prologue, explaining all the background and troubles that caused his father to leave.

Anh Do’s story tells us a lot about the importance of sacrifice and persistence. Anh. Sacrifice and persistence are important for success and happiness, as it was for Anh. Anh …show more content…

Colloquialism is when informal language is used. This has a big effect on the way the story is read because it seems more personal, raw and emotional compared to formal language. An example of colloquialism is “but the brrrr of those white guide things keep me on track,” (page V) this makes the story seem much more relatable and realistic as it is the language that a person would casually use. Another technique used is emotive language. Emotive language makes the reader have emotional responses to the text. An example of this is “I could headbutt the little Vietnamese prick,” (page V) this language is shocking and conveys a strong emotions of anger and violence. Emotive language is important for an autobiography because the author needs to convey the emotions that he or she was feeling at the

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