1. Introduction “Through the personal, we are each time making a portrait of Britain today” (BBC One) the director of the BBC1 documentary 7 Up 2000, Farino, stated when writing about the cycle of series starting in the year 2000 that followed the lives of a range of children from all over the UK, filming them every seven years, and that thereby “provided an amazing insight [...] into Britain” (BBC One). By portraying children with diverse social, cultural and economic backgrounds and from different regions throughout Britain, the documentary offers an overview not only of British society but also of its linguistic landscape as it features children with a range of regional dialects and accents. Taking the documentary as a basis, this essay aims at examining the portrait of one child, Oliver, and at analysing his language and how it is …show more content…
Furthermore, he employs many relative pronouns in his speech, which contribute to the precision of his statements as he is able to explain himself and give reasons for his answers, as in “[...] if you climb up there, which is not a good idea, you get killed with that” (l 25-26). Oliver’s use of demonstratives, as in the above quotation, further adds to the clarity of his language and of the meanings he is able to convey. So does his use of eloquent and also of specialized vocabulary, such as the terms “scalextric” (l 21) or “trebuchet” (l 37) that he employs to refer to his toys, or the adjective “dreadful” (l