LANGUAGE ANALYSIS By releasing the national health report and It's findings to everyday Australians. The immense extent of our obesity issue. From the moment of it's release awareness has been on the rise. Gary Jennings’ and Simon Stewart’s opinion piece, ‘When it comes to being fatties, we’re winners’ reiterates the findings of the report emphasising the problem is a result of social issues rather than a freak accident. The writers stress the need to act now to avoid dire consequences if we are to overcome the nation’s ‘biggest’ crisis. The writer’s opening statement, ‘reports of our obesity epidemic are far from exaggerated’, while justifying this with, ‘new figures collated by Baker BDI Heart and Diabetes Institute’, sets a controlled and reasonable tone for the duration of the piece. This use of tone allows the audience to visualise the writers as sensible characters increasing the believability of what they have to say. This also helps to provide a foundation for the findings of their own report titled ‘Fat Bomb: The long term consequences of middle age Australia’s expanding waist line.’ This puts the audience under the impression that they are being told all the facts by leading health professionals, despite this being clearly not the case. Anyhow the audience begin to accept the so called facts presented before them, agreeing with the writer’s contention that obesity is a major issue. In addition to the writer’s manipulation of tone, their frequent use of exaggerated and colloquial language such as, ‘inexorable’, ‘prevalence’ and ‘forefront’, emphasise the writer’s argument that the issue is ‘the nation’s “biggest” health concern’. This language creates a sense of great urgency to act upon, alluding readers to compare the issue of obesity to that of war. Consider the use of these words in an extract of a possible speech which world leaders may utilise to rally its people into war, ‘there is an ‘inexorable’ rise in the enemy… Our ‘forefront’ must ‘prevail’ against this new found enemy’. From this extract it is evident how these words emphasise a great need for action in both cases. Clearly nearing the end the writer uses a number of puns, by naming their practical solution, ‘Healthy Towns’. This alludes the audience to the neighbourhood initiative ‘Tidy Towns’, a strategy involving rewards for communities to keep the environment clean, the only difference with their strategy is to provide financial incentive to keep fit. Another pun used is the writers suggestion that we may be ‘pushing for the gold medal if there were such a thing as the Fat Olympics.’ This plays on the fact that the Olympics is a place we strive to achieve gold, but in this case we would prefer anything but gold. The use of both these puns convince readers the points in the piece are legitimate as they are logical enhancing the readers understanding, inclining them to agree with the writer