Resources from Chris Warren, Teachit (UK) Ltd
TRANSFORMATION 5: CHANGE PURPOSE
Examples:
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Serious writing transformed into satire or parody. Try a poem by Wordsworth.
Description of a house designed to sell it, rewritten as the buyer’s surveyor’s report.
Impartial information about HIV and AIDs rewritten as moral sermon against promiscuity.
Bald statistical statements rewritten to form an argument.
Satire or parody transformed into serious writing. Try Swift.
Here the attention falls on the audience and the inner workings of the text, its mode and tenor.
Students examine the text given them on the screen and work on the key elements that determine
its impact and purpose, changing the way it works for the reader. The outcome is a greatly
enhanced understanding of how text work, what words in particular steer the text. Sometimes
simply changing one or two words profoundly alters the purpose of the text.
Setting about changing the purpose of a text is perhaps the most overtly subversive of the 13
transformations – there's a strong temptation for mischief, a wicked realisation of the power of the
pen. It's equivalent to Duchamp's moustachioed Mona Lisa – a few strokes of a felt-tip and the
picture is transformed from total seriousness to humour and iconoclasm! Personally, I would allow
students to give vent to this verbal naughtiness – without permitting extremes of course. It gives
writers a renewed sense of their own ability to shape the world of words. Besides, the practice is
time-honoured and profoundly enjoyable. So perhaps start with parody. The word processor
facilitates verbal tinkering and makes it easy to send up a sedate original.
Google will happily supply you with plenty of classical poems ripe for plunder. Go for famous,
everybody-knows-this-poem examples. Classic Wordsworth, Kipling, even a Shakespeare sonnet.
Save the texts in a shared area of the network so that students can gain access to them.
A good way to launch the parody lesson is to project the image of a beautiful face with a toothy grin
(a smiling model or film star?). Using the black interactive whiteboard pen, ask the class the
following question: if they were required to transform the entire picture with one dot, where would
they place it? Debate and experiment. (Placing a black dot on one white tooth is probably the most
radical change of image). Explain that this is how parody can work; a subtle change in wording
transforms the reading of the text.
© Teachit (UK) Ltd
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Resources from Chris Warren, Teachit (UK) Ltd
Original
Parody
Daffodils
Lunch Duty
I wandered lonely as a cloud
I wandered slowly, as a crowd
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
Of pupils thronged the window sills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
When all at once I yelled out loud
A host, of golden daffodils;
'Get lost you silly daffodils!'
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
On their hands and on their knees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
They sprawled as from a foul disease.
Continuous as the stars that shine
Continuous as the girls, Year Nine,
And twinkle on the milky way,
Who gossip in the dinner queue,
They stretched in never-ending line
They stretched in never ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Along the margin of the school.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Ten thousand saw I at one glare
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Tossing their heads and combing hair.
The waves beside them danced; but they
The boys beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
Ignored that extroverted glee -
A poet could not but be gay,
A teacher should not walk away
In such a jocund company:
From such unruly company.
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
I gazed and as I gazed I thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
How much I've learnt since first I taught!
For oft, when on my couch I lie
For oft when on my desk I lean,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
They loom like some nightmarish dream -
Which is the bliss of solitude;
Which is the curse of solitude -
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And then my heart with terror fills
And dances with the daffodils
In panic-dread of 'daffodils'.
William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
Chris Warren
This example illustrates the strong appeal of parody; calling up the subversive in oneself is always
very fun! The exercise focuses attention on verbal structures and cues that signal the author’s
purposes (humour, interest, persuasion, information, instruction and all their myriad combinations).
My little parody of ‘Daffodils’ maintains the structure of the original – including form and rhyme
scheme – and simply changes the context and purpose by altering key words.
The other examples listed at the beginning of this article are also worth exploring; they vary in
difficulty and in the amount of 'fresh' writing required. Forming an argument out of a list of statistics,
for instance, will require the writer to supply structure, order, and much of the substance. The
estate agent exercise may require a much lighter touch.
Set aside some time to find and save your own choice of target texts; they will be useful again and
again and again over the years!
© Teachit (UK) Ltd
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