The Style Conventions of Little White Lies - (Ella)

Little White Lies has particular language conventions, paragraph content and a standard language form for each of their reviews. The only variation is due to of course the film being reviewed and the authors own interpretation of it.

• The opening paragraph of the article typically would comment on the contexts for the film, directors previous films or perhaps social/historical.
• A brief explanation of the protagonist or other key focuses of the film, possibly commenting on their representation, main aspects and the actors performance.
• The key themes/issues and a basic summary of the plot.
• Use and adaptation of genre conventions (e.g. Steve Neale's theory of repetition and variation)
• The authors opinion on the film.
• Summary sentence which comments on the film as a whole.

Little White Lies is targeted specifically at people who are interested in film and are most likely knowledgeable about it. This is reflected in its language conventions as they consist of complex vocabulary and many restricted film codes. References to directors previous works, or characters also plays to their target audience presuming they would understand such references. For example in a review they wrote about 'The Fighter' (David O Russel) they discuss Christian Bales performance "The Machinist, say, as opposed to The Dark Knight" referencing two previous Bale films. They use common language devices such as nouns, metaphors, adverbs, complex nouns, and adjectives to catch the readers attention. As well as puns to create a slick humour in the article and rhetorical questions to bring the audience in.