TEXTUAL ANALYSIS "THE JOY OF STATS"

This text deals with the development of society and countries from 1810 up to now, regarding people's life expectancy and wealth. This is an argumentative text and therefore it's made up of a short introduction, where the speaker presents his work, the body of the text, where he describes his thesis and deductions, and the counclusion, where he sums up the results of his study.

The first sentence of the text has the aim of describing the topic of the speaker's work and focusing the reader's attention on the way he will go on showing his study. The following sentences provide a justification to the previous statement and add explanations; this because of the presence of the conjunction "and". Later on he explains how he will work, justifying his possible default by the sentence "I'm going to try something I've never done before". This idea is also conveied by the use of the intentional future tense.

The first paragraph of the body of the text gives the reader all the istructions he will need to understand the graphic he is going to see. The first sentence decribes the information given in the graphic, the following ones say how to interpreter these data, they explain a consequence, also conveied by the conjunction "so". Then the speaker provides additional explanations of the graphic, linked by the conjunction "and".

The following paragraph explains the changes that happened from 1810 to the First World War. Each statement is reinforced by the images of the graphic, which show the effects described by the speaker, and is explained by an example.

Later on the speaker's attention focuses on the years from 1920 to 1948. Here his observations are supported by the images, but the following sentence, "1948 was a great year" is justified by examples. This happens also in the following statement "the difference between countries was wider than ever". He justifies this idea describing the position of each country in the graphic and interpreting the data.

The next paragraph deals with the countries' progresses from 1948 up to now. Here he likens the data with historical events, connecting causes to conseguences.

The last paragraph analyzes the situation nowadays. He expresses his idea at the beginning and then he provides explanations using the data of the graphic interpreting them.

In the conclusion the speaker expresses his idea about what he has explained, reinforcing it with references to the graphic and to the data he has explained.