2012 Olympics Article Analyses Essay

Picture, title and sub-title The headline is reversed-out of a colour picture of villagers apparently transporting straw bales in education for the eccentric Olimpick games celebrated in the Cotswold village of Chipping Campden. The physical exercise of the term Olimpicks would appear to be a deliberate archaisms as it seems highly unlikely the Cotswold games were really ever thus known. The strap byline attributes the story to a Mail staff reporter John Carter visits the village with its own eccentric games.Fact & Opinion It is a fact that the second paragraph points to the origins of the Cotswold games in the early 17th Century thus anticipating Baron de Coubertins Olympic revival by 284 years. Allegedly, the Cotswold games were started as a Whitsun celebration in 1612 by Robert capital of Delaware. The games consisted of way-out rustic pursuits like cock-fighting, coursing and shin-kickingSee moreCapital budgeting essayThese two-day games ran annually for 250 years forwards they were abandoned owing to the disorderly mobs which used to attend. The Cotswold games were revived in 1951 for the Festival of Britain and continue to this day. The Cotswold Olimpicks are stage at Dovers Hill in the parish of Weston Sub Edge close to Chipping Campden. Dovers Hill is described as a natural amphitheatre. Analysing words and phrases The writer makes deliberate use of the phrase on tenterhooks to evoke the anxiety of the London bid team, headed by Lord Sebastian Coe suggesting the term actually originated in the same Cotswold area.The idiom on tenterhooks is thus taken to mean anxious, uneasy like the framework stretched taut. Presumably, the reader is supposed to contrast the rustic, charming simplicity and eccentricity of the Cotswold games with the immensely slick corporate Olympic statement venture. The description of the shin-kicking competition is described as taking place on the first Friday after Whitsuntide where a participant wearing hobnailed boots kicks the straw-padded shins of his opposition in a demonstration sport.The writer makes a closing contrast in the final paragraph suggesting hat unlike the modern international Games the Cotswold Olimpicks have never been subject to bribery and corruption. This possibly hints at the Daily Mails editorial stance which was therefore sniffily agnostic towards the London bid on the grounds that the choice of host city was believed to be a corrupt, nepotistic and hugely expensive process. Nevertheless, the writer then concludes with a humorous aside that a farmer erstwhile had to be bribed with a bottle of whisky to remove his sheep from the Cotswold arenaOverall, this feature article shows an affectionate want for the quirky, amateuristic eccentricity of English rural life and gently contrasts it with the glossy, expensive corporate play that comprises the modern Olympic bidding process. The language is largely complex, anachronistic and sprinkled with archaic terms and historic al reference. The writer assumes a fair head of prior knowledge of Pierre de Coubertin, King James puritanical instincts etc. The sentences are flowery, long and spread out perhaps suggesting a Mail-like hankering for times past