Breathless: An American Girl in Paris

Context

Miller draws on differences between New York and Paris to explain her experiences, which would suggest that perhaps her readers already have some experience of New York. Miller talks about: the greater freedom from her parents excitement with being like Jean Seberg in Breathless getting to live how she wants without her parents talking her out of it wearing Monique's clothes, instead of her mother's creations escape from the American cliche of being a housewife and having children in the suburbs - Paris offers a choice to do something else More broadly, Miller discusses the following in relation to New York and Paris: fashion way of life freedom

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Mode, Genre, Audience and Purpose

The mode of this text is multimodal. It consists of largely written language, but it includes dialogue, which is an aspect of spoken language. The genre of this text is an autobiographical novel, as it is organised in chapters, and the teller of the narrative is the protagonist of all experiences. The audience of this text is likely to be readers who are interested in reading about Miller's life and Paris itself. Her audience is definitely adults, as it features complex language, popular culture references from the 1960's and mentions of sex.  This text was written for the purpose of entertaining the reader and informing them about Paris, with a small persuasive value of convincing the reader that it is desirable to visit/study in Paris. 

Genre conventions: Arranged in chapters, paragraphs and chronological order - Perhaps it is helpful to the reader to display the information chronologically and structure it into paragraphs as the reader may be on holiday or reading this text for leisure purposes, and so need something that is easy to read.  Few pictures Resolution in plot - protagonist (Miller) gets to go to Paris after her parents convince her to study locally

Features of Written Language

complex vocabulary e.g) 'quintessential gamine', 'template for the intellectual life' and 'nourished', lines 11-15 crafted (edited over a long period) - see structure slide  headings - titles of chapters and page breaks have no spoken equivalent e.g) page break, lines 72-73 explains film and its plot  - speakers may have just mentioned the title and relied on shared knowledge with their audience

Structure

Opening: 'I had left New York for Paris still under the spell of Breathless.' - raises questions, what is Breathless? Title of chapter, 'Waiting for Godard' creates intrigue - who is Godard? Clear structured paragraphs, explaining; why she wanted to move to Paris descriptions of herself before she moved relationship with her parents and what happened after they died how it felt to re-read her own letters