'Miss Piggy Would Have Sent the Wrong Message,'

'Miss Piggy Would Have Sent the Wrong Message'

Dana Milbank

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

For my response to Lanham's chapter on "Noun and Verb Styles," I'm using an article from the Washington Post which covers the Elmo's official appointment as the spokesman for the prevention of H1N1 flu. An ironic tone persists throughout the entire article, written by Dana Milbank, whose voice resonates with a sense of contrast. As she details the serious subject of swine flu with a static syntax, she transitions into a verbal vocabulary with a  inclusion of quotations from Elmo.

Noun 

"After months of preparation and umpteen billions of dollars, the federal government came out Tuesday with its swine flu response."  

A static quality characterizes the article's introductory sentence. Nouns dominate structure of this sentence. If not for the title of the article and the cute, furry photo along its border, a reader might presume the ensuing paragraph will maintain a bureaucratic tone. However the next paragraph, which immediately opens with an exclamatory remark from Elmo, introduces a new tone entirely. Milbank adopts a dominantly verbal style to integrate these quotations with the article. This transition expresses the writer's consciousness of the article's ironic tone. 

"Come on! Wash your hands with Elmo! Wash, wash, wash!" the Muppet from Sesame Street sings in a public service announcement released Tuesday by the Obama administration. "Sneeze into your arm with Elmo," the character adds. "Ah-choo!"