One Fine Day Language Techniques

In radio plays, script writers include a variety of audio codes, narrative conventions and language techniques to inform and entertain the listeners. A perfect example of such a radio play is Phil Spencer’s “One Fine Day”. The play is narrated by Phil Spencer, who gives a biographical insight into an incident in his father’s life. The father, Alan is the main character in this radio play and in the family is at an outing on Christmas day at Sunny Bay in Sydney.
Alan is an ex-military man who served in the Royal Air Force and is married to Sue. He is described as a strong, “handsome man with thin greying hair” who always has a “default glum expression” with permanent eye bags. Though he can be friendly he is very argumentative, uncompromising and has a domineering …show more content…
In this radio play, Phil Spencer uses irony, sarcasm, colloquialisms, figurative language, repetition and sensory words to help the viewers to visualise. The mother is heard repeatedly asking Alan “Are you fine?” in an ironical and sarcastic manner to annoy Alan when it is obvious that he is not fine. The word “fine” is also reflected in the title. Colloquialism is used a lot in this play especially by Alan when he speaks so that the listener can distinguish the voices of Alan and the narrator and to remind the listeners where Alan is from. Expletive words like “piss off, “bugger off” and “bloody” gives us an idea of Alan’s aggressive personality and gives us the competing ideology against his meek, gentle and stereotypical wife. Figurative and sensory language is used to make this play interesting. The mention of the smell of cigarettes and mints giving us an offensive smell and Alan’s feet with the “colour of a bruised beetroot” helps us to visualise his sun burnt feet. Repetition builds up suspense and leads to the climax of the play where the listeners understand that something is going to go