COMMENTARY ON A TEXT BY PALOMA PEDRERO

(Option B of the PAU of Madrid from September 2012)

TEXT
Perhaps it has always been like this, a world full of people who believe that their own
opinions and interests are more important than those of others, but nowadays in these places
our, egocentrism is one of the most evident and dangerous traits of what we have become.
building, from a humanly incorrect development. An egocentric person, they say the
psychologists, it is one that cannot "put oneself in others' shoes (first taking off one's own
of himself)”. And he believes that everyone should seek what he seeks, because what he sees, in some way
way, exceeds what others see. What a disaster! It's disastrous because it's stupid and generates a world
of idiots. No one's or anything from anyone is more important than that of others. Everyone has the right to
fighting for our desires, but if we trample on the desires of others, it will be of no value
We can achieve them. In this life, we are in the same boat; we would hardly survive a few days without the
others. We would die of hunger, of material and emotional starvation. However, we do not realize it.
The hypertrophic ego makes us act like cardboard heroes. Mine is the best, the only, the most
important; everyone has to realize that. So if the ego dictates that sentence
we will treat others as slaves. But, friends, slaves end up rebelling and the ego
he is left wounded and more alone than ever. No one is more than anyone. Sometimes, some have to carry the
greater responsibility in an activity, in a circumstance, and then the others must step up
at the disposal of that, other times it will be someone else's turn. Just assuming that life works like this, that each
one is important at a moment or different thing, we will be able to put the ego aside and work for a
better world for everyone. Little children are egocentric because they do not yet have the
sufficient mental ability to understand that other people may have different opinions and
beliefs. An egocentric adult is a social scourge, an idiot.
(Paloma Pedrero, in La Razón, 5/XI/2011)

QUESTIONS:
1. Make a text comment on the proposed fragment by answering the following questions:
a) State the theme of the text (0.5 points); b) detail its linguistic and stylistic characteristics
most outstanding (1.25 points); c) indicate what type of text it is (0.25 points).
2. Write a summary of the content of the text. (1 point)
3. Develop an argumentative text in favor of or against the opinion that childhood is the best.
time of life. (1.5 points)

1. c) We are faced with an argumentative text (reasoned defense of an idea) on the subject
humanistic that, due to its relative informality and its origin, is probably a fragment
of journalistic article.
a) Its theme is (using words from the text itself) egocentrism as a scourge of the
current society.
b) The author seems to address an audience that feels close, as she employs a 'we'.
inclusive and uses a vocative that reveals this ('friends'). And, since it aims to express
fundamentally your feeling and impact on the recipient's opinion, we can say that in the
The text performs both the expressive and the referential functions. In addition to them, and since it attempts
to communicate how reality is, would also serve the representative function
Regarding the content, although presented in a single paragraph, one can appreciate the
next structure: the thesis is formulated in the first sentence (“egocentrism is one of the
most evident and dangerous traits [...] "humanly wrong"), and following it is a precision
about the employed concept ('egocentrism'), a reformulation of the thesis ('it is disastrous [...]
 "idiots"), a series of arguments, almost all of a logical nature, and, as a finishing touch, a second
A self-centered adult is [...] an idiot.
Regarding the cohesion procedures, recurrence is observed in almost all aspects.
Words related to the theme and thesis, with their derived logics are repeated: 'egocentrism',
“egocéntrico”, “persona”, “ego”, “vida”, “mundo”, “sobrevivir”, “moriríamos”, “idiota”...También
pronouns that suggest the general scope given to assertions are repeated: 'all' and
"nobody". Although not very abundant, anaphoric substitution with pronouns is appreciated ("he", in the
line 6) and the ellipsis of the subject (“And believes...”, “is disastrous...”).
Returning to the recurrence (now morphological), the use of prevails in the verb forms
the first person plural ("we have been building", "we have", "we are going", "we would achieve")
also visible in pronouns and determiners (“us”, “our”), which encompasses both the speaker and
receptors under the property of being 'human'. It alternates with the third person, singular and plural
("believe", the frequent "is", "must search"), to refer to more specific cases, such as the
“egocentric,” the “ego” or the “children.” Ultimately, it talks about the “world,” but a world that
"us" includes everyone.
The verb tense is almost constantly the present indicative, as is logical when
formulate general statements of a timeless nature ("we all have the right...", "it makes us...
act...”, “no one is more...”), as very few limit their temporal reference (“as of today [...] the
egocentrism is...". At present, some past tense is added (the perfect subjunctive initial, for
express conjecture about the past), or future ("it will be worth", "we will try") and conditional ("we would achieve"
"we would die"), both in conditional constructions, as part of the argumentative game of
hypothesis formulation.
Sentences, generally composite, are so by various procedures: coordination.
copulative, the substantive subordination 'they believe that their opinions...', 'he believes that everyone should...' and the
adjectives (“people who believe...”, “who cannot...”), but, above all, logically, constructions
which express reasoning, such as the adversatives with 'but', the causal subordination ('because it')
that he sees...
el ego nos dicta...”, “sólo asumiendo...”
Cohesion has just been achieved and manifested through the use of textual connectors, with
predominance, as one might expect in an argument, of those that express logical relationships. Thus,
we found, besides the merely additive 'and', a 'however' and a 'but' to express
opposition or contrast, or the consecutive 'so that'.
Finally, the subjectivity of the text is manifested in the abundance of evaluative vocabulary, which
gets to the improper: the adjectives 'dangerous', 'wrong', 'disastrous', 'idiot', 'hypertrophic'
(which contrast with "important" as the only positive adjective). The passion in the denunciation.
is also reinforced by the use of the exclamation with a noun from that range ('What')
disaster!"), with the incorporation of colloquial expressions ("lonelier than one," in addition to
"idiot") or the alternation of long, complex sentences with other short and firm ones, like the last or
no one is more than anyone.

2.- Egocentrism, a truly harmful way of being, spreads dangerously in our

3.- Like any absolute statement about personal experiences, this one turns out not to be false,
but simply absurd. More than saying that one is against it, the relevant thing may be to say
that makes no sense.
First of all, because talking about 'life' (of the human being, of course) is nothing but a
abstraction that, in reference to the matter at hand, detaches from reality and makes it impossible
any statement that is nothing but pure fantasy. For, regarding him, there is no such 'life' of which
nothing can be preached in a general way, but countless 'lives', different from beginning to end, in
those that reality acts in a radically different way. The same could be said about any
fragment of that "life": there would be no "childhood", but "childhoods", which can be as distant as
the orphan of war tormented by hunger and the pampered son of a wealthy family.
On the other hand, it would be difficult to determine what is 'good' (and, therefore, what is 'better')
absolutely for people. Thus, for example, if looking for something that characterizes the
first years of humans, we consider that it is the lack of precise awareness about the
reality, we will understand this as a blessing only based on the idea that, in front of a world that is
source of pain and dissatisfaction, ignorance acts as relief. Yes, like Unamuno, by the
on the contrary, we believe that living fully means doing so with awareness of one's own
limitations, however painful it may be, there would be no era farther from the human (“bad” era, because
so much) that childhood.
It could also be argued, and in fact it is a common belief, that the lack of responsibilities
makes childhood a time of happiness, as it would lack anxieties, doubts, and unrest
linked to responsibility and the need to decide. But to think that all of that can compensate,
for example, the disaffection, poverty, mistreatment and other sufferings that so many children endure, is
to think frivolously, even if we restrict that thought to our "advanced"
first world society.
To finish with something a little more concrete: in a 'world' so full of images as the
ours, it is enough to mentally confront the communion photo of a boy from our upper class with
that of any child in a refugee camp, taken from some Sunday supplement, to
to feel, ultimately, that the assertion that 'childhood is the best time of life' is
truly obscene and immoral.