Original post by HeatherLaffNot trying to be face threatening (lightening the mood with an AS pun), but this really is not how you structure a language change essay. BUT, don't worry, it's actually really easy to structure it. So...
Introduction:
For my introduction I literally just refer to the genre, audience, purpose, anything specific about dates, context of production (what was it made in response of), context of reception (how is it being received by the text receiver), and then I would either state if it's diachronic language change (comparing two texts together) or synchronic language change (comparing one text with modern day). Finally, I'll quickly list what I'm going to talk about '...there seems to be very dramatic language change in terms of register, lexis, grammar, discourse, power, gender...' and this will form the paragraphs of my essay.
So my first paragraph would probably start off with register (nice and easy.)
Paragraph One (Register)...
-I would state the register that seems to be mainly adopted by the text e.g. formal.
-I would then talk about what makes it formal: passive voice? low frequency lexis?
-I would then contrast it with modern language by simply saying 'this would not be expected in modern texts because of increasing informalisation that is perhaps effected by...'
-I would then say something like 'BUT, it does seem to show some aspects of modern language as much of the lexis adopted in the text is still in high-frequency today e.g..., which could be because standardisation is a slow process.'
Then I'd move onto lexis cos I feel like this helps you move on nicely...
Paragraph Two (Lexis)...
-I would talk about archaisms, hyperbole, perjorative or ameliorised lexis, coinage, hyphenated words, and then even like things that may look sexist or something.
-I'd talk about verb choices so like auxiliary verbs? deontic modality? epistemic modality? what effect does this have on the overarching text?
-Tbh lexis should be easy its just words so I cba going on about this and I'll get onto the more difficult stuff.
Paragraph Three (Grammar)...
-So, usually in older texts you will either see proclitic elliptical contracts like 'tis', 'work'd', and so on, through the omission of the 'e' vowel, and talk about the reasons for this. Is it just simply the way people wrote at the time? Is it to convey spoken language?
-In modern texts you will usually see enclitic contractions which is stuff like 'there's', 'where's', 'it's' and 'he's', which may usually create informality.
-Then I'd talk about syntax. Do you ever see a sentence and think that sounds weird? If you do and you don't know why, just say what it would be written like in the modern day so there's a past paper which says 'having never been a woman-hater', but in the modern day this would be formulated to say 'I have never been a woman hater.'
-THEN (the easy part of grammar), just ramble about interrogatives, imperatives, declaratives and exclamatives.
-I'd then talk about punctuation, random use of capitialisation, etc.
-Also talk about ligatures and the long s/curved c
Paragraph Four (Discourse)...
-This is just blatantly the easy part. Just talk about a lack of paragraphs
-Talk about the lack of subheading or use of it
-Just talk ahah
Paragraph Five (Graphology *if applicable*)...
-Logo's? Emboldening? Italics? Images? Colour? etc.
Right, and then it depends what you are more comfortable with, but I'd either do a paragraph completely separate from the rest on power and gender, or if you could just weave it in that would probably look more sophisticated.
In terms of power there is always loads in language change such as...
-Face Theory
-Accomodation
-Synthetic Personalisation
-Power behind Discourse/Power in Discourse
-Instrumental/influential/knowledge/social power
-There's loads more so just have a flick through your AS book.
I'm a bit sh*t at gender because I never done it for my AS but...
-I would talk about dominance cos that's easy to apply
-And then I'd talk about Lakoff's view of womens language and that
Hope this helps. If you would like me to send you an exemplar script I could do that if it would help you see what to do more clearly cos mine are all typed.