A2 coursework lesson 10/11/14

Clevernesses,

today we will be working on your introduction. Briefly, the introduction should (in an engaging but formal way) lay out why you have chosen the topic/data, what some of the key conceptual/theoretical issues are (and what you have chosen to focus on), and what your hypotheses are and how you will test them (techniques/frameworks).

Use the bullet points on the support sheet I gave you a few weeks ago (the one that breaks down all the sections) to help you. Some of the aspects you wrote about in your methodology could move into this section.

Here is a sample first draft of an introduction - what does it do well and what is still needed? Is there anything that belongs in another section?  It is probably a little long at 491 words!

Introduction

 The myriad theories regarding possible differences between male and female speech is a daunting but fascinating area of Language theory. Over time, it appears that the shift has been from distinctive differences percieved during the Dominance/Difference/Deficit research of the 1970s/80s (Zimmerman and West, Tannen, Lakoff) to a focus on the biological aspects [citation needed] and, more crucially, on the context that language is used in rather than by which gender (Cameron: "your genes don't determine your jeans"*1). Although Cameron's point is convincing, while our physical gender may not determine our language, particularly in a college where many feel the need to fit in and/or find their niche, society does appear to have some expectations of what is masculine or feminine speech; we may (even subconsciously) choose to conform to this. I am interested to see if this is the case.

I chose to examine the language of my peers but not those who shared my friendship group so that I could remain objective. I wanted to record people participating in a task and, when not asking friends who might give their time generously, I decided on students who regularly participate in group tasks to gain a better chance of them agreeing. I could have chosen Sports students, but since I wanted verbal responses rather than predominantly physical participation in my tasks, I decided that Drama students would give wholehearted participation and (I predicted) be confident enough to retain their individuality in a group task. I know that accommodation would be something worth looking at, but in the time frame of this investigation, I decided that differences would be more practical to explore within a limited data sample.

I needed to set tasks that would provide the participants with opportunities to use a range of language, so I decided on one discussion task, one problem-solving task and one solo interview (with the same questions and delivery for each participant - I practised this in advance).

Each of the six participants (three female and three male) would take part in each activity and, using the Dominance/Difference/Deficit theories, I could determine how far the language they used was in line with those gender expectations.

Hypotheses:

• According to Zimmerman and West, males will interrupt more in mixed-sex conversations (the discussion, the problem-solving and potentially in their interview with me).
• Males and females will predominantly correspond to the traits described in Tannen's Difference theory pairings (I will focus on status versus support in the discussion, competition vesus co-operation in the problem-solving task and report verus rapport in the interview).
• The language of females will be deficient in comparison to that of the males (I will look for Lakoff's 'deficient' techniques in both males and females and evaluate their use in context).

Rather than key frameworks, I will use theory headings, however the exploration will necessarily focus on discourse (for interruptions, back-channel agreement, length of turn etc.) and grammar for sentence moods, syntax analysis, word-classes etc.