Language and entitlement

There's a really interesting point in this (among many!) where he talks about not assuming someone's gender pronoun. It takes practice. I saw a toddler dressed in non-gender-specific clothes that I thought was a boy but I didn't want to make a mistake and I had to dance around pronouns talking to his caregiver - it was very tricky. I still think we need a gender-neutral pronoun. Let's challenge the grammatical idea of a 'closed' word class! Mary Gentle in 'Golden Witchbreed' used 'ke' instead of he or she for children. What do you think? Back to the article, I also liked the careful use of adjectives and the prioritising of "gentle" to apply to men.

Jamie Utt | Change From Within

changefromwithin.org/author/jamieutt/

Using the conventions of other forms (witty video)

Look at how this video uses the conventions of the infomercial to get its point across:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6971993/genetics-the-secret-to-a-perfect-body

Useful article highlighting the effect of technology on LC

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/omg-dont-lol-but-the-fbi-has-decoded-digital-slang-20140619-zsf7a.html

Coursework advice from A2 students

Here are the comments from the coursework feedback questionnaire advising AS students about their approach to A2 coursework (comments are unedited):

Commit a lot of time and you will see the better results.

Do coursework parts little and often in order to keep on top of it

make sure you keep it up to date and constantly re-draft, it makes the job a lot easier and you don’t panic as much last minute. Little and often is key

do it

Start early

All information that your teacher puts down is essential to getting a good grade. Slight improvements here and there can make the differences between a D grade and a C grade.

Dont leave it to the last minute

Make sure you don’t leave it too late to start and get data that has enough good things to talk about to get a high grade

spend lots of time on coursework early so it isnt rushed towards the end

Do lots of research in the summer holidays so that you know exactly what to do.

Stick to deadlines and keep up to date.

Get it done early

Don’t leave it till the last minute and ask for help as soon as it’s needed

keep to the deadlines.

Get a clear idea of what you want your investigation to be able early so that you can start to prepare and map out what you want to find and gather evidence to analyse ASAP

Make sure you have enough style models before you start the course so you have a clear understanding of the coursework

use your time effectively, research well

start early and really get as many draft as possible and give them in

start collecting data as early as you can.

To try and ask more questions other than just using the blog

do more drafting on the media text and explore what can be included or edited within it

Know what you want do for your investigation before you come back from the summer holiday, it will put you at a stronger advantage.

Keep on top of it Don’t loose track Ask if you need help Don’t just use the internet – it’s not 100% trustworthy

make sure you meet the first draft deadline to get feedback

Be prepared to work hard and make sure you are organised and give in a draft on time.

Timing is key and to use teachers when they are at their least busy eg. before coursework drafts HAVE to be in

Redraft as much as possible, always use the feedback given by your teacher and make time for your coursework - Never leave it until the last minute.

Think hard about what you’re going to do your investigation on, as you don’t have the time to start again

Make sure you have enough data to evaluate qualitatively and start work early to make sure you are on top

Vocal creak/fry - accessible gender video

This woman's great on a number of topics and this is a really accessible, language-y video about the use of 'vocal fry' by females. Do you use it?

http://shows.howstuffworks.com/stuff-mom-never-told-you/smnty-why-do-girls-have-creaky-voices-video.htm

Some handy Language Change examples to learn

See if you can get ahead on the technical terms for the ways in which these words have changed meaning by googling. Use 'pejoration' to get you started (and you could link some of these to semantic derogation too). Try and learn some examples over the summer.

http://ideas.ted.com/2014/06/18/20-words-that-once-meant-something-very-different/

Gender constructions in Clarks shoes for kids adverts

An interesting piece of everyday sexism reported by The Daily Mail. Even more interesting was the whole page of comments I read with everyone agreeing that it was ridiculous to complain about something that was blatantly a wise marketing decision that reflected what boys and girls were actually like. I was shocked. Boys and girls are taught to be like that - adverts purport to reflect us but they shape us subconsciously, building the consumer (you will remember that phrase from Fairclough). I would have thought modern marketing companies would know better than to be so blatant about it. But then again the news story wasn't big enough for me to find any Guardian articles about it, so maybe not many people made an issue of it...



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2661975/Parents-attack-sexist-Clarks-shoe-ads-Posters-use-blue-tree-climbing-boys-pink-girls-love-comfort-style.html

Look at the lexical choices in the adverts. And in the comments. Why do you thnk gendered products and gendered marketing are done?

AS Lang homework for Mon 23rd

Invincibles!

Don't forget to bring in texts to analyse for Monday and Tuesday.

Also, before Monday's lesson, please visit the following link and post to your blogs some answers to the questions below (and anything else you notice or can link it to - spend at least an hour reading, thinking and exploring links):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2658589/OED-launches-100-words-commemorate-centenary-First-World-War-including-demob-cushy-tooter-sweeter.html

1. What do you learn about the reasons that new words come into the English language and how?
2. Which words did you look up and what did they mean? How did they enter the language?
3. What do you notice about how the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) editors have organised the list (look at the sub-headings, amount/range of included words etc.)?
4. What could you use this corpus (collection of words/texts) to investigate?
5. What could you link this to or what did it inspire you to go off and read?

Also urgent: studying English at uni?

Personal statement workshops to help you tune your personal statement for English applications:

Wed 18th June 14:30 in C105
Fri 20th June 10:40 in C105
Wednesday 25th June 14:30 in C105

Interested in journalism or mentoring? URGENT!

Two things I forgot to mention to you last week (hope it's not too late!).

1) There is a great opportunity for would-be journalists to go to a launch party of  "a new online youth magazine that offers paid six month internships and unpaid voluntary work for those still in full time education. [You can queue up] for their launch party which will be a chance to meet the young journalists who are currently working on the magazine and an opportunity to make contacts and start working on a voluntary basis for them initially, but which could lead to a paid internship." (Quote from an email from Katie Thoburn). Go to their website to find out more about their launch party on Wednesday or on getting work experience:

http://www.rifemagazine.co.uk/

2) There may be other opportunities to mentor if you are interested, so mention it to me, but the current one is that St Bernadette's school needs 20 male mentors for a group of Y10 boys. Here are some of the bullet points I was sent:
 > Two meetings per term up until Easter between the students, starting with one in JULY 14
>    - To help focus the meetings St Bernadette would prepare a mentoring Google form to help guide discussions.
>    - Subject to guidance on e-safety there will be a social media connection between students.
>    - The students will be divided into two broad groups those that need extra support in Literacy based subjects and those that need support in Numeracy based subjects.
>    - Wednesday at 2.30 is the most likely time slot to be used
>    - Meetings would take place at St. Brendan's.

Let me know ASAP via email if you are interested in either of these.

Transcription conventions

Transcription conventions

Transcribe (write down!) exactly what you hear. Include all pauses, however brief. Spell it as it sounds if the accent seems important or the word is non-standard e.g. awright?

Pauses

Can be of various lengths from the equivalent of a comma (called a micropause) to a timed pause of half a second to several seconds. 

e.g. I (.) well (.) I (0.5) like (3) love you

Utterances

Utterances in spoken language are like sentences but are not started with a capital letter. A full stop does not indicate the end of a sentence but does indicate a falling intonation giving a sense of finality. A rising intonation would be indicated with a question mark. Sometimes an up arrow or down arrow is used to represent rising or falling intonation.

I asked you a question. (2) well?

or

I asked you a question ↓ (2) well ↑

Names

Names are often replaced with letters to preserve the confidentiality of the participants. Like a script, the layout should start with the identifying code followed by a colon:

A: hold on

B: I’ve got it

A: thanks

Interruptions and overlaps

If someone else begins talking while someone is already speaking, a slash shows where the second speaker begins. The first person may continue speaking, causing an overlap:

A: hold/ on

B: /I’ve got/ it

A: /thanks

Or an interruption looks like this:

A: I(.) well (.) I/

B: /what is it?

A: (.)love you

Paralinguistics

Body language, actions and tone of voice can be indicated in square brackets.

A: hold/ on [helps B who is struggling with a stack of papers]

B: /I’ve/ got it (.) thanks [gets the stack balanced]

A: /got it? [smiles] (.) that’s it

AS lesson 16/6/14 and homeworks

Intelligents!

*** DON'T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR ENRICHMENT SESSIONS ***

Today we are going to do some transcribing and analysing to give you some practice in case you need to do some spoken data collection for your coursework or for mini investigations.

We will be doing some phonetic transcription tomorrow and Friday (some students from St Bernadettes Year 10 are joining us for tomorrow's lesson) so you can come back and improve the transcription you have done today with some phonetic symbols to represent non-standard pronunciations (performance errors, accents, non-lexical sounds etc.) after we've studied that closely. Use the link below as one of the ways to create the symbols but investigate other ways and if you find a good one, please comment below:

http://upodn.com/phon.php

But, for today, use the standard transcription techniques and put a key for the ones you use above your transcription. Do your analysis on it today and then post to your blog and then post the improved one later after the phonetics lesson(s), explaining the changes and why the phonetic symbols are important for analysing the transcript (what could you look at in detail with the phonetics information provided?). Finish this for Tuesday next week (24th).

Here are the links. Do an extract from one of these and one of your own choice from elsewhere (they could be connected or unconnected). Write an analysis of one or both (identify the APF, and use theories and terminology to do close PEE analysis) and post to your blog today. If you finish this work, first make a comment on someone else's blog and then use the time to read articles from my blog - try and get up to date with these over the summer and keep a bibliography/make notes.

Why women shouldn't vote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_8PPc6FPL4
The Apprentice boardroom http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkcPahgnChM
Star Wars according to a three year old http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBM854BTGL0
6 year old 999 call http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX0beLwjhJM
Bill Bailey 'unisex chip shop' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo_9UgaxeJE


Tips: search for a connecting/contrasting clip, keep the time short by choosing an extract (2 mins is plenty), go back and add the pauses, micropauses and interruption marks at the end. Work fast and hard to get each one done in under half an hour.

Summary of homeworks: 1) improve one of your transcripts with phonetic transcription in some places and repost with an explanation of what the symbols allow someone studying the transcript to analyse and why it is interesting 2) get up to date with the articles I have posted this year during your summer reading - post comments wherever possible on my blog and your peers' blogs

British Council phonemic chart to hear pronunciations of phonetic symbols

A handy link to pronunciations of symbols if you need to check:

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/phonemic-chart

Have you got a 'girly' name!?!

My score is 2, putting it on the 'girly' side - what's yours? Do you think this has an effect on our expectation of someone's personality? It might be interesting to look at the female names in songs and see how high their score is. And look at the first names of managing directors of companies. But do beware of the fallible nature of the scoring system. Does it take into account names that are not traditionally British? How old are the songs/people? Are more 'feminine' names more accepted now in all contexts? Any other aspects of this you can think of (please comment)?

http://mentalfloss.com/article/57175/why-have-baby-names-become-increasingly-female-sounding

Letters of the alphabet you probably don't recognise (useful for LC and next week's phonetic's lesson)

This is a great article as a taster for Language Change (LC) and one that introduces a feature that was still being used in 1700 (the long s) so you should definitely read it and find out a little more. Post your thoughts as a comment on this article or on your own blog.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/31904/12-letters-didnt-make-alphabet

Gorgeous and useful enrichment workshops

Please sign up for the Poetry, Short Story and Language Psychology workshops. There are sign up sheets on the notice board outside the office (C102). The Language Psychology workshop is particularly useful for Language (and was very good indeed last year!) but this is enrichment, so feel free to sign up for what interests you most... but grab those places quick quick!

Article on Twitter @everyword

This article could cause some argument...

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jun/04/everyword-twitter-ends-adam-parrish-english-language

Feel free to comment with your attitude.

AS Language post-exams work (homework support)

Magnificents,

welcome back and I am sure you did brilliantly in the exams!

As I said in the lesson, you need to collect texts that you find lingusitically interesting/stimulating. Keep a folder of these to use in lessons - you need at least one for Friday's lesson (they can be brief or you can bring an extract).

The additional homework I have set you is to write up the discussion from Tuesday's lesson - here's some help but you can structure it any way you choose and only include what is relevant to the particular discussion you had:

Write briefly (in note form where it is clear) using headings
Which text did you choose and why/how?
What struck the group about the text (what was interesting/significant)?
What did you find that linked to theories (go through each aspect in as much detail as possible)?
What did you find most interesting about the text and/or about the discussion?



In terms of what you can do to prepare yourself for A2, here are some tips:

• read pre-1900 (post-1700) literature
• read non-fiction or watch documentaries on history (particularly social history) 1700 - modern day
• spend time with children if possible (under-fives) - get parental permission to record some of their speech if possible and find out about what they are reading and watching (or what older children (under 11s) are writing, although we don't teach children's writing you can teach it to yourself) or talk to parents about their children's language development (first words, non-standard uses etc.) or watch some Youtube clips on children's language development
• browse through the British Library's educational section online
• look up low-frequency lexis you come across to expand your vocabulary
• read emagazine articles and watch TED talks on language - AS and A2 topics - and keep notes
• look back through my blog posts for interesting articles
• search online newspapers for language articles
• find out some key quotes for attitudes to language changing
• keep your notes on your blog to force you to organise your thoughts and give you opportunities to share your work and get comments from me or your peers - they will be very useful for revision - you can easily link to sources you have found interesting

There will be more posts over the course of the break, so check in occassionally and please comment on what you engage with - this is vital for stimulating discussion!