Feedback
comments on the analyses and comparsions of the political texts
People missed out on commenting on the ‘comments’ that
flashed up on the map – these are ideal for looking at contrasting
representations to those found in the main body of the text –
self-representations would have been key here as users gave their opinions etc.
The rest of these comments are copied directly off
people’s blogs so refer to specific points they made and skills they showed:
Q1 - YouGov
Watch out for specifics - you call the YouGov page an
article, which will cause you to drop automatically out of top band. Your
second sentence needs to be much more specific - the declarative includes the
adjective "welcome" which creates a kind of synthetic personalisation
(Fairclough) where visitors feel known and trusted, and individually addressed
by the second person pronoun "you", in the interrogative... rather
than just saying 'this...' Good discussion in the second part of the paragraph
but try and hit the ground running to ensure that the marker is looking to
award top-band marks. I particularly liked the contrast of the techniques you
had explored with the audience's expectations. Subtle. Don't forget
'affordances' and 'representations'.
Don't forget that the website needs users to get the data
it uses, so look more closely at how visitors are encouraged at first to
interact and then to "join" - the verb again acting like both an
imperative to exert influential power and also as an affordance which users can
take advantage of.
Don't forget to talk explicitly about representations.
You didn't mention ‘persuade’ in your intro as a
significant purpose of the YouGov text producer's language - ensure you have
explored the key aspects of the GRAPE properly.
Is the design "simplistic" (a derogatory term)
or 'uncluttered'? Think about the representations you are making.
When looking at the imperatives, spend longer exploring
the use of them - although they are grammatical imperatives and the orthography
of them is presented in capital letters, and this might have some force in
exerting influential power because it seems almost like instrumental power,
they are really options, which is suggested by the interrogative that
introduces them, so they offer the user the affordance of going deeper into any
of those areas of the website or scrolling down if those options don't meet
their needs. If you can offer that level of discussion rather than making
assumptions then it will really lift your grade.
Apply more terminology to the quote - you could look at
the use of 2nd person direct address in the pronoun "you" and the
synthetic personalisation created by the adjective "welcome" which
implies you are known and trusted, which will make individuals feel as if the
web page is greeting them personally even though it is a mass-media text. This
also clusters quotes (and techniques) that work together to achieve something,
which is a top-two-bands skill.
Check Goffman and Brown and Levinson - face needs are
Goffman and the politeness strategies you use when dealing with an FTA are
B&L - you would need to do close analysis to show how the text is using a
negative politeness strategy to mitigate the threat to users' negative face
needs (not to be imposed on) by looking at mitigation, proposals etc. I feel
you might be better off investigating the positive politeness displayed in the
use of synthetic personalisation so that the imperatives seem less imposing on
users' negative face needs.
You might want to address the idea that YouGov has a
wider audience but the people it most needs to attract are those who might
stereotypically by less motivated to participate, so it appears to be aimed at
them but is just as clear and useful for older users.
You are developing a concise style that will help you in
the exam.
Great start - just a tweak to the phrasing: use the
active voice to show how the producer has taken the GRAPE into account, not the
passive voice e.g. Because ‘YouGov’ is a website which enables people to have
an opinion on political issues, the producer has used influential power techniques
to engage the public in a potentially dry topic so that they will add their
data to the site.
Don't fall into the same trap I occasionally do of
referring to ourselves as if we are the audience. So often in these texts, we
wouldn't be the target, so talk in the third person about the producer and the
receiver e.g. 'the audience is able to take surveys' rather than "You are
able to take surveys, and most of the parts on the page move along with
you".
Biased (adjective) not bias (noun). Do you think YouGov
may be biased towards the ruling party? Either way, support your assertions
with PEE proof - you get no credit for unsupported ideas.
I'm not sure what you mean about transferring it into an
article but it's a good depth of discussion and there is some very good linking
between techniques and GRAPE. Get even more AO1 marks by linking the use of the
pronoun “you” to second person direct address to create a conversational tone
which adds to the synthetic personalisation of the adjective
"welcome" perhaps making the audience feel personally invited and
trusted regarding the validity of their views, which adds to the influential
power to encourage users to contribute their data.
You are starting to organise ideas and link them
effectively. In your first sentence, you need to add 'is used by the producer
to directly address the reciever, clearly indicating that a range of pertinent
options will be offered below.' after 'Because the editor of the YouGov website
wants to make online readers feel engaged with the topics surrounding the
website, the polite interrogative "what would you like to do?"' - x
uses y to z structure for topic sentences.
Check the use of the term 'cloaked imperative' because it
has to essentially be a command cloaked in another sentence mood: "take
part" is an actual grammatical imperative (although it is an option, not a
command so in a way it is the interrogative 'would you like to take part?' or
the declarative 'you can take part', cloaked AS an imperative, which is the
opposite to usual politeness strategy of cloaking a command in a different
sentence mod - you could look at why the producer seems to value brevity over
politeness.
Really, YouGov just want to know your opinions so that
groups can find out what 'people' think and target them more effectively.
A discourse marker needs to be an adverbial of some kind
or a connective, so verbs like "discover" can't really be discourse
markers. Great close analysis of the transitive dynamic verb and the
superlative - these terms, when used well, are high-band indicators.
If you are going to talk about more than one imperative,
do it in a single paragraph to cluster the quotes, otherwise it looks unplanned
and clustering is a top-band technique - show you can see what a significant
technique imperatives are and explore the different ways text A's producer uses
them in context. Other than that, you need to show range of frameworks, so
ensure your plan covers diffent foci in each para - lexis, discourse, grammar
etc - although you can bring in terminology from any framework in each para
when you do the close analysis.
Q2
BBC news
Don't forget possessive apostrophes e.g. Labour's win - a
couple of grammar slips can really damage your AO1 mark.
Ensure you put in proper paragraph breaks as not doing so
can harm your AO1 mark. If you plan several separate but linked points, you can
use discourse markers at the start of each topic sentence to lead the examiner
through your exploration of the text.
Good discussion of how the graphology links to the text.
Rather than the general term 'positive lexical field', see if you can find a
suitable hypernym for the words e.g. "won" and "achieved"
could have the hypernym 'success'.
Super, top-level paragraph on the hypercorrect grammar
linked to audience and meaning. One niggle - use adverbs 'well or badly' to
modify the verb "done" rather than the adjectives "good or
bad".
Bristol is a proper noun (names of people, places,
companies, titles etc.). Bristol is also a major city and how Labour is faring
in the run up to the next election is a topic of national interest, so consider
secondary audiences too.
The headline might indeed be enough for some readers e.g.
on the BBC news home page, some people would find out the overview from that
headline and not need to click on the link to read more, but those who have
will want to read on for specifics - look at how those are delivered in a way
that suits the target audience.
You are really improving your cohesion with clear
discourse markers.
George Ferguson is an independent, not a member of the
Labour party but I can see how you misread it as it wasn't clear that he had
been leading the council and not the Labour party from the syntax - you needed
pragmatic awareness.
Link the GRAPE to specific linguistic techniques used -
always combine the graphology comments (remember to link to mixed mode) with
how it links to the language used but close analysis requires terminology and
also remember to cluster quotes, noticing patterns.
Fewer points in more depth is better although you do want
to try and get all that GRAPE in, so look at how points can be combined at the
planning stage. The 'Because...' structure really helps so use it!
More on representation here, so that's good. You must paragraph
- what you will see once you do that is whether you have developed points well
enough and clustered quotes, both of which you need to do to raise the grade.
When you are talking about hypercorrectness, you need a
clear explanation - I think what you are trying to get at is that when the BBC
article is discussing descending numbers, they get down below 10 and switch to
words instead of numerals, so you get "11" contrasted with
"eight", which is standard grammar but looks odd and confusing for those
who don't know those rules... So I would label that as hypercorrect, which
might seem an odd choice for an accessible text, however it is well suited for
the more conservative (small c) audience who expect high grammatical standards
of the BBC and may trust the institution to provide them with their news only
while those standards are maintained. I would argue, in contrast, that the
splitting of aspects of the story into one-sentence paragraphs is not standard
as you should only change paragraph for changes of time, topic, place or
speaker and so there is no need to split paragraphs 7&8. This seems to be
done to try and make the text easier to access for the BBC's wide audience -
they are meant to serve the widest audience-base possible and they must need to
compete with easily-read tabloids who employ the same strategy of
single-sentence paragraphs, so this convention is significant in terms of the
text's appeal.
Try and dig into the subtler aspects e.g. look at the
hypercorrectness of the BBC using descending numbers of seats in an early
paragraph and, when they get under ten, switching from numerals to words -
explore how that might suit the audience. That is far better than generalising
about what techniques do: "By using statistics the articles can make their
arguments more c convincing and educate the readers" is dangerous because
it suggests what the technique does generally but isn't supported by close
analysis and the specific GRAPEs using close analysis of techniques within the
quotes.
Q3 comparison
Compare the texts to each other in the topic sentence and
make it clear what the point of comparablity is and you can then explore it PEE,
clustering quotes. Don't forget, you can repeat content from Q1&2 because
you are only being marked on how you contrast them. GRAPE is your best friend
but terminology is important too to identify the language being contrasted. You
can use one of Hudson's dimensions of mode for one of your points of
comparability as it makes a nice focus.
Use a topic sentence that indicates the point of
comparablity e.g. In terms of dominant sentence moods, text A... whereas text
B... Good clustered quotes - plan to do this at least once in every essay.
I think the limited length of paragraphs in both texts
with a single sentence being the norm (examine exceptions and how they suit the
GRAPE) is a really valid discourse point and not everyone would notice it, so
well done. Good range of frameworks. Some very good comments and understanding.
Some effective, accurate use of terminology - try and squeeze even more in e.g.
do the dynamic verbs appear in imperatives? Are they commands, options or
instructions - how are face needs protected? There is a lexical field of
business in "products" and "services" - these nouns relate
to the business of retail and/or the service industry which represents the
website as offering to meet your needs but the ones you have chosen sound more
like they are from the lexical field of politics.
You are developing a good academic voice. Check the homophones
summery/summary.
Be careful to use a range of frameworks as the vast
majority at the moment is grammatical terms. Don't take any of those out, just
add discourse, lexis etc.
Good. You are able to make a range of connections and you
are clustering quotes well. Work on structure at the planning stage so each
paragraph develops a single point of comparison with multiple quotes.
Make connections and contrasts much more explicit with
discourse markers e.g. In terms of purpose, both A and B... Because they are
both... Where they contrast is...
When you are talking about hypercorrectness, you need a
clear explanation - I think what you are trying to get at is that when the BBC
article is discussing descending numbers, they get down below 10 and switch to words
instead of numerals, so you get "11" contrasted with
"eight", which is standard grammar but looks odd and confusing for
those who don't know those rules, so I would label that as hypercorrect, which
might seem an odd choice, however it is well suited for the more conservative
(small c) audience who expect high grammatical standards of the BBC and may
trust the institution to provide them with their news only while those
standards are maintained. I would argue, in contrast, that the splitting of
aspects of the story into one-sentence paragraphs is not standard as you should
only change paragraph for changes of time, topic, place or speaker and so there
is no need to split paragraphs 7&8. This seems to be done to try and make
the text easier to access for the BBC's wide audience - they are meant to serve
the widest audience-base possible and they must need to compete with
easily-read tabloids who employ the same strategy of single-sentence
paragraphs, so this convention is significant in terms of the text's appeal.
Prove PEE that A has more synthetic personalisation
whereas seemingly unbiased facts are presnted rather than relationship-building
in text B. Always support your points with close PEE or they don't get credit.
Don't forget to use the term 'represent' as often as
possible - practise the skill of summing up how something in the text is
represented.
Check affect (verb) and effect (noun).
Very promising. Compare/contrast the texts in the topic
sentence then explore the degrees of similarity and difference on that point of
comparablilty, considering the complexities and using PEE (with terminology) to
support your points.
If you have quick differences you want to deal with,
consider using the 'although' structure e.g. Although the content of text A
relates to what is going to happen in the future in terms of political policy
and text B refers to the recent past in current affairs, both texts...
A real danger is using the same area of comparablity more
than once. You have already compared on imperatives/declaratives so you mustn't
do another grammatical focus, let alone another sentence mood one! Try Hudson's
dimensions of mode or a lexis or discourse point. Or a GRAPE point - pick one
aspect e.g. audience expectations.
Once you have a well-planned range of points of
comparison and you have supported points well with subtle and developed
discussion of how techniques link to the GRAPE, you will really improve.
This is very good and the more you practise, the quicker
ideas will come and the better you will express them. Choose your own text to
compare for extra practice - all you need to do is pick an idea like trains,
politics, police (which we've done all of - what else could you pick?) and
choose two contrasting genres/forms.
Better not to rush to fit more in and end up making
unsupported points. Consistent development and supporting of points is better
than covering more. Make sure you use proofreading and editing time effectively
to improve the quality throughout rather than spend that time writing more.
In the comparison, use a topic sentence that indicates
the point of comparability e.g. In terms of dominant sentence moods, text A...
whereas text B...
Really work on shaping your ideas at the planning stage
to ensure you hit the upper band.
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