Critical Analysis Of Colleen Davis's 'Australia Day'

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Australia Day Analysis:

Recently the highly controversial date of Australia Day has been garnering much media attention after the decision by the Fremantle council to cease its celebrations on January 26th due to it being culturally insensitive. Supporters of having Australia Day on the 26th of January argue that it is merely a patriotic declaration of pride, whilst others condemn the date as a celebration of the massacre of a culture and its people.

In response to this issue, an opinion piece entitled ‘Australia Day - Celebration of the birth of a nation or a day of mourning for genocide?’ by Colleen Davis was published in The Fremantle Foghorn on the 26th of September. Using an proud and aggrieved tone, Davis compelled the residents of …show more content…

This can be seen when she opens her second paragraph, with her tone changing from pride to a more somber and regretful tone, which adds impact when she discusses how Australia Day ‘won’t be the same for my family’. This causes the statement to be emphatic, and the negative connotations that are implied by the tone shift enable the reader to see that Davis views the cancellation of the events as something to be lamented. Davis’s true stance on the issue is further reiterated when she discusses the ‘even lower blow’ of cancelling ‘our’ annual fire works, with the use of inclusive language encouraging the Fremantle residents to see that they personally are being affected, which makes the overall issue of the Australia Day date much more close to home. It further identifies how the residents are meant to have reacted to the cancellation of the fireworks, and positions them to feel that as they have been negatively affected by this one event, that they should oppose the changing of the date of Australia day completely. At this point in her piece, Davis counterbalances article by providing an expert opinion from the Mayor that supports changing the date of Australia Day. In this way, Davis builds up a cumulative effect of manipulating the opinions of her readers without expressly

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