Sarah Miller

Professor Pastore

FIQWS Composition

13 December 2022

The author of the piece is David Papineau. He is a British philosopher and professor of philosophy of science at Kings College London and City University graduate center. He also previously taught and attended Cambridge University. He wrote many books such as Thinking about consciousness and Roots for Reason.

            The authors audience would be directed at liberal Americans who are interested in sports, more specifically, the World Cup. The reasoning for this is because this article was written in the New York Times which is a mostly liberal news source, and the people that would be most interested in it would be people watching the World Cup.

            The author’s tone changes throughout the article, at first being mostly mockery, next sympathy, and ends with seriousness. His point changes through the article, as does his tone.

            The purpose is to be informative and entertaining. The reasoning for this is what he writes and how he writes it. For example, He starts off by mocking the soccer/football players for being overly dramatic, but then goes on to write about cultural differences. The detail he got into mocking is a form of entertainment, he then, however, got into cultural differences, including the fact that not all cultural differences should be acceptable, simply for being different. For example, he wrote about Qatar and how them not allowing the pride flag should not be something we accept as just “different”.

            The genre is a newspaper article, specifically a New York Times newspaper article. Some features of the article are photos of the online article.

            The medium used was the online New York Times article, other forms this may be available in is a physical newspaper.

            What was currently going on was the World Cup, jokes about players excessively falling, and Qatar not allowing the pride flag. The World Cup has been the most talked about thing lately. This article was published when many people may be interested in reading it.

            Cultural expectations of the piece would likely be to be liberal and to Americans because it was published in the New York Times. The New York Times is a liberal newspaper. An example proving this is the mention of Qatar and being in favor of having the pride flag.

            The author’s stance is both critiquing and understanding various aspects of the World Cup. He is understanding in cultures being different but criticizes allowing anything to slide due to culture, like discriminating against LGBTQ members.