'Explorers or Boys Messing About? Either Way, the Taxpayer Gets the Rescue Bill'

Russians threatened to send in military planes to intercept them

military language → emphasise serious and high-risk nature of activity → contrasts the boys' carefree attitude → adds irony and critique

The men were plucked from the icy water

creates an image of something delicate being lifted carefully → suggests that men are fragile and insubstantial, rather than strong, invincible adventurers

Royal Navy, the RAF and British coastguards

tricolon → highlights great magnitude of national resources involved in the rescue → foreshadows the significant financial burden to the taxpayer

men’s adventure had cost the taxpayers of Britain and Chile

repetition → becomes pejorative by framing their dangerous, expensive expedition as an unserious, childish exploration → emphasises the explorers’ recklessness and foolishness

“trusty helicopter”

inverted commas → creates a sarcastic tone → reinforces portrayal of the adventurers as irresponsible, foolish and overly optimistic

“boys messing about with a helicopter”

direct speech → makes the statement of the grown adult-men being dimished to reckless children appear factual and authoritative

The drama began at around 1am British time when Mr Brooks, 42, and 40-year-old Mr Smith, also known as Q, ditched into the sea 100miles off Antarctica, about 36miles north of Smith Island

factual, objective tone of reportage through evidence of specific details (age, nicknames, times, distances, locations) → makes narrator seem credible and trustworthy, makes critique of recklessness, irresponsibility and negative public perception persuasive

“He said they were 20 both in the liferaft but were okay and could I call the emergy people?”

modal verb → tentative, passive voice of the explorer → request, instead of demand → undermines men’s competence and authority → paradox to heroic image of confident adventurers → makes reader perceive them as vulnerable

Both men are experienced adventurers.

short sentence describing the explorers positively → brevity gives emphatic force, making it appear factual, and undeniable → structural positing is signficant as such descriptoins becomes questionable when informed of their mistakes and the consequences of them → sharpens the critique of their irresonsibility

claims to have been flying since the age of five

‘claims’ signals uncertainty → acts as a narrative distancing device → signals narrator’s skeptcism towards Mr Smith’s statement that denotes his vast experience → tone of doubt, encouraging reader to also question credibilty of explorers’ expertise

hit the headlines for the wrong reasons

dramatic idiom of ‘hit the headlines’ → associated with fame, success or notable achievement → subverted with ‘for the wrong reasons’, exposing the gap between the explorers’ self-image as heroic adventurers and the reality that they only became famous for their failures → undercuts explorers’ expertise

bottoms kicked and be sent home

imagery of explorersbeing physically reprimanded → exaggerates consequences in a humourous way → redirects attention from serious, critical public reactions towards the explorers’ folly → leaves the reader with a final image of their foolishness and immaturity