The genre of the text is a leaflet. It is formal and its
audience are local residents. The text is written and has a primary purpose of
persuading but also has a purpose of informing. It is a leaflet asking
residents to write a letter to the council protesting against a Sainsbury being
built in the town as it would destroy the medieval history of the town.

The text contains influential power in the discourse as it
says ‘please write’ this puts the power in the hands of the local residence. This
may have also been used to save face this is discussed in brown and Levinson’s politeness
principles and face theory. The use of ‘please’ is positive politeness and
eliminates any assertiveness that may come across in the leaflet. The power
behind the discourse is corporate power as Sainsbury’s is the reason the letter
is being sent. However group power belongs to the residents as they can
collectively protest. The leaflet is an attempt to summon the group power of
the residents to counter the corporate power of Sainsbury’s. The council hold
legal power that’s why the leaflet asks residents to write to the council.

The author of the leaflet uses personal pronouns like ‘our’
this is described as synthetic personalisation in Norman Fairclough’s book ‘language
and power’. The writer uses these pronouns to create a sense of community among
the local residents, this is necessary, because for group power to be present
there needs to be a group or community. Synthetic personalisation can be used
to give the local residents a sense of belonging and make them think they need
to get involved as it is their community. The lexis used in the leaflet has
connotations and a lexical field of fighting such as ‘battle’ and ‘fight’ this
may be used to make is clear that there is an opposition just like in a battle

The uses author of the leaflet uses field specific lexis such
a ‘corporation’ this may be to assert intellectual power. Norman Fairclough
mentions unequal encounter in his book and it may be present behind the
discourse as Sainsbury’s is the powerful participant. In Howard Giles’s accommodation
theory he talks about upward convergence. The author may be using upward
convergence to assert intellectual power.

The use of the clock as a Graphological feature matches the
writing ‘time is running out’ also the use of the colour red represents urgency
and also matches the image of the heart at the corner of the page. The heart
may have been used to represent the unity and love of the community. Having alogo like this can be important as it will always be associated with the text
and primarily the reason the leaflet was created was to bring the community
together against the corporation so the community has to be represented in a
nice way.