AS lesson Friday 28th Feb

Wonderfulls! read all the instructions before you start, as always!

0.5) Please log in to Moodle and upload a single file with your pieces, commentaries and bibliographies into the Turnitin assignment 'Halla's class final submissions'. If you can't do that today, could you please do that by next Tuesday.

0.75)  Please fill in the questionnaire (an evaluation of your coursework module) in the top box on our Moodle page. This link might work:
http://moodle.stbrn.ac.uk/mod/feedback/view.php?id=12194

1) Please finish the highlighting of the sample A-grade essay and then highlight your own.

2) Look at the balance of power concepts, terminology/quotes and context comments and see how equal it was in your essay - which area(s) do you need to develop?

3) Set yourself a target and set yourself a task to help you achieve that target. Post the explanation of what you are going to do and why on your blog. Do this for homework and then post the results and a self-evaluation as a comment - either the text you wrote or a description of what you did and how effective it was in improving your work. Do this by next Friday.

4) Pick two of your grouping texts that you have brought in that you can see a link between. The link could be A/P/F or technique or mode (spoken or written or a combination) or anything you can notice that is significant or interesting in both texts. And investigate how the connecting factor is different because of the different contexts/contents/styles or any other reasons you can come up with.

e.g. a comic strip of Garfield published in the Daily Mail newspaper and a script of a short scene in the TV programe Supernatural are linked through the mode of speech (both are imaginary texts as an example - I would include quotes in the notes if they weren't!). The following notes explore the differences between speech aspects in each text and how the speech features give insight into key aspects of the texts (including APF).

• the comic strip includes Jon talking in a one-sided dialogue to Garfield and uses speech bubbles to convey the represented speech which is meant to be humorous to readers of the popular newspaper (or to a wider audience through reprints e.g. on day-by-day calendars or collections books for fans) - the humour probably emerging because of the obvious answer to Jon's interrogative, given the graphological representation of what has happened; it is meant to be briefly enjoyed and maybe discussed or shared in a 'did you see the Garfield strip today...' context to create a social moment and also functions as a feature to sell the paper because it is famous/popular - although the graphology is the key element, it is possible catchphrases might enter the pragmatic awareness of regular readers or that they may come to know how Jon typically speaks and Garfield thinks (speaks to the audience)
• the script is also direct speech and also to entertain through represented speech, though not primarily through humour in this scene (although humour could be derived from the cruelty of the nouns used in referring to one another); the dialogue is scripted and it is a dualogue instead of being one-sided like the Garfield text and, because it is a vital constituent of drama, conflict is created through the 'snarky' jibes that the characters challenge each other with, trading accusatory declaratives using dynamic verbs to indicate actions taken in haste, without due consideration, that resulted in negative consequences - knowing the show, the metaphor may be close to literal when Dean says "everything's gone to Hell"; the connotations of the proper noun for anyone watching even one episode would be the fire and brimstone typical of this drama.

5) Write a long, detailed PEE paragraph about the connection and contrasts and post to your blog. Remember to use terminology, quotes and APF/context. I will be available to answer any questions you have. The notes above are close to what you are trying to achieve, but the explanation needs to be clearer through the use of quotes. Please note the tentative language in the modal verbs "may" and "could" in my notes - try and take this further by offering more than one possible reason for why a technique could have been used or more than one possible affect it might have considering different primary/secondary audiences.


Extension: find another text that links to those in the same way. See if there are more similarities to one or to the other and/or how the aspect you have connected them through is different in other ways.

e.g. a natural speech transcript might be more similar to the script because it is a dualogue, although it is natural speech with natural, casual non-fluency features despite the close relationship echoing that of the brothers in Supernatural (which is fluent because it is represented speech and the pace and sharply cutting insults are key to the success of the scene as entertainment, while the purpose of the first speaker in the transcript seems to be a request for vital information and then informing the other participant of their reaction). The transcript might also share a technique in common with the Garfield strip in the opening utterance being an interrogative, the answer to which is significant to the speaker.

6) This will probably be in your independent study time but you may get to it... Read other blogs to appreciate other people's work and leave an encouraging comment about what seems perceptive or well-expressed. If you have any suggestions, add them tactfully. I expect to see comments from everyone somewhere on my travels around your blogs by next Friday.

A2 lesson Tues 25th Feb

Georgeousnesses!

I will be doing some whole-class work, briefly, and then going on to 1:1s. You have some tasks to do:

1) please visit the A2 Moodle page, which now has some resources on. Could you please locate (in the top box) the link to a questionnaire on feedback for the A2 coursework module and do that.
2) If you can do the following today, great, if you can't please do it by next Tuesday: please upload your investigation and media text to Turnitin. You have to paste them together into one file before you can upload them as it will only accept one file.
3) Browse through the resources on Moodle to see what's there and also see what I have uploaded to my blog (finish this in your private study time - allow time today for the last task).
4) From the terminology for how language changes that you researched for homework over the holiday, pick one term and choose an interesting word that has undergone that kind of change (and maybe other kinds e.g. 'gay' has undergone pejoration, broadening, amelioration etc.). Reasearch all the different uses of that word (e.g. in idioms, collocations, slang uses, famous quotes, product names etc.) and write an entry on your blog exploring the uses of the word and how uses change meanings (using terminology that describes how language changes). Basically, write an explanation of the different uses of the word in different contexts (changes over time and changes of meaning in different phrases/places).

We will be using the terminology on Friday, so revise/learn it as well as you can, along with the other targets you have set yourself.

You are bril!

Fun LC words

Learn a couple of potential borrowings!

http://mentalfloss.com/article/50698/38-wonderful-foreign-words-we-could-use-english

CLA stages table written for non-specialists

Try applying the terminology and theories you know to these descriptions.

http://www.talkingpoint.org.uk/sites/talkingpoint.org.uk/files/stages-speech-language-development-chart001.pdf

Gender article - read this and struggle with it until you understand what she is saying

This article isn't that easy to read but the concepts, once you understand them, are the gateway to some of the key issues in Language and Gender and are really important for you to bear in mind as you take your part in society. Noticing things gives you the power to change them.

Read my comments before or after the article. Or, better, before you read it a second time.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/14/mary-beard-vocal-women-treated-freakish-androgynes

I think her point is very interesting about women's voices, when discussing serious topics, being perceived as "whiny" or "strident", which both have negative connotations, whereas men's deep voices have come to be associated with "profundity"/wisdom. To say this is culturally "hardwired" though seems a misleading term, I think, because she is saying it is about perception and how we have been trained to associate particular vocal pitches with these qualities, rather than it being a natural/"neurological" response, so 'hardwired' suggests something we can't change, to me, and I prefer 'ingrained' which suggests a dirty attitude that we can scrub away at.

I think it is really hard to notice those prejudices which are culturally ingrained over so long but it is our duty to do so,whenever possible, and to be part of the shift away from this.

How you say something affects how it is perceived - we all know that! Tone of voice, pacing, politeness strategies etc. are something each person can adapt. But should all women, like former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, have to train to lower the pitch of their voices to be taken seriously?

You could link his to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and suggest that by labelling biological aspects of women's speech with negative terms when they try to speak up agains resistance, we are buying into this cultural prejudice against women speaking on topics outside those which women are perceived to have some expertise in - Beard cites the ministries of Health, Education etc. but you can link it to the gender theories that attempt to define what women speak about.

It is frightening to see the attitudes prevalent in Britain (and the backlash against Mary Beard specifically is horrifying, hearing what the trolls said) being compared to countries where women's rights are so far behind (Beard refers to Afghanistan) but you can really see other countries slipping backward (Russia on gay rights, USA on women's rights concerning their own bodies etc.) so maybe we at just too close to see it happening here. Are we just not moving forward with gender equality or could we actually be moving back? Be afraid. Be very afraid. And be part of the change you want to see.

A follow-up to the last Language Change article I posted

Phillip Durkin again, this time talking about the path that a borrowed word takes to get into English; he also notes some interesting groups of words that it would be worth learning three of to give as multiple examples, rather than just giving one. If you see a borrowed word on  the exam paper, you can link it to other borrowings you know and speculate about the similarities or differences, perhaps about how those words have arrived in English or how they have been modified to integrate well - I thought how the germanic bollwerk became bouelvard because it sounded more French with a classic French noun suffix (-ard) and how the orthography of the central phoneme was altered because w in German produces the sound we associate (as do the French) with v was really interesting. Try and fake interest if nothing could be further from the truth!!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26137419

Did you play with Lego? How marketing has changed - good for CLA and Gender

Read the whole thing and really think about what it means to have gender roles communicated to children so insidiously, so early on - how can we have gone backwards as a society on this?

http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/little-girl-1981-lego-ad-grown-shes-got-something-say/

A brilliant Language Change article

Some sparkly facts and examples to learn and some key ideas to refer to in the exam. Essential reading:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26014925

AS read this for Power, A2 read it for CLA

The brillant Michael Rosen on the terrifying Michael Gove (do you detect some influential power being used by me here, at all?). This is actually from March last year but all the concerns are still current and it provides the basis for understanding some of the recent letters in the series, which you could check out:

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/mar/05/michael-rosen-questions-education-secretary

Back from the wilderness: what's been going on?

Hello wonderfulls!

I am recovering and feel strong enough to put out a call and find out what you have been up to. I very much hope to be back on Friday and need to consider what we will do. 

AS - I have seen some scrumptious Power texts on your blogs. What have you been doing with those? Have you done a half term assessment yet? How are your text message investigations going? I was thinking we could do some more input on those or sit a Power assessment on Friday? Read the A2 info below if you fancy getting ahead on some stuff for next year. Otherwise, visit the Andrew Moore website I recommended in another post, revise and do further research on the theory we have done. Practise applying those ideas to any text you can lay your hands on, from formal letters to transcribed real or dramatic conversations to charity appeal adverts, to whatever has authority over the audience and/or seeks to influence them.

A2 - I know you haven't been getting much input but I hope you have been pointed in the right direction to do some Language Change work. Have you been using the textbooks? What else have you been doing? Some extension work would be to watch some period dramas set after 1700 and get some familiarity with how people behaved and taked (but beware that popular dramas are updated with modern morals, sensibilities and political correctness) so perhaps better would be to read some literature written after 1700 but both would be useful. For Language students, a really good choice is Wuthering Heights which is one of my fave books and also has some interesting dialect written phonetically. Also the play Pygmalion (which My Fair Lady was based on) would be very useful for ideas about prescriptivism. Visit The British Library website - I will be giving you some questions if you haven't had them already but it doesn't hurt to explore for yourself what they have in terms of educational resources. Don't forget to revise Power, Gender and CLA.

Comment or email me please - you guys know better than anyone else what you have actually accomplished and what you need. 

Thinking about you all and I really want to be back and teaching.