Anyone doing AQA A2 English language specification A ???

Also just thought Can someone explain What anti-language is? AQA endorsed book is quite confusing on it!

I THINK its like a cryptolect as in a "secret" language devised for use by a particular group and is used to exclude others.

I think thats what it is anyway!

Guys! Im so confused on clauses and sentence types! Can anyone help me out?

Thanks soooooooo much!! thats makes loads more sense!! So theoritically its down to PC and Language Change? So for a discourses answer you would need to analyse it linguistically (get the point of each texts, and how it conveys its message) then outline your response to it, supporting your view with theories and research. Is that right? So if its "texting" in the discourses, would that suggest that in Section A it could be likely that its Old vs new? What do you think?

Hello
Just been reading through this thread, and i've seen that people think 'Language Change' and 'Political Correctness' are both hot to come up.
For Language Change, is that studies such as Bernstein, Jenny Cheshire, Labov's department store study etc etc? Or have i got it completely and utterly wrong?
And is it to do with like how new words enter our lang? Such as compounding/blends/amelioration and the like? :/
Ooh, and how does the Sapir Whorf theory fit in with Political Correctness?
Please help! Getting pretty desperate now!

You could talk about recent studies at the University of Coventry (by Clare Wood) , that texting actually requires the same phonological awareness as writing or reading in standard english. You can talk about how texting can be seen as inclusive device to certain social groups (e.g youth) and it is engrained within youth culture today . You can speak about how it is functionally necessary to have a type of shorthand english due to technological advance (i.e mobile phones) < this could lead to a wider debate about globalisation - you could mention the fact that communities are a lot more interconnected through technology such as texting etc. Then you could bring in prescriptivist attitudes (just basically saying how texting is bad) , i personally would bring in Jean Aitchison's model of 'the damp spoon' and 'crumbling castle' here and maybe bring in the fact that text language could be seen as a cryptolect/anti-language by excluding some of access to it. With the two items to refer to , there should be quite a bit to write about

What are you confused about? The differences between simple, compound and complex?

The way I think about it is that a simple sentence is just one action being said sort of like "i went to bed at 8pm last night."

Compound is when you have two simple sentences jammed together with a conjunction: I went to the shops and bought some vanilla ice-cream"

In a complex sentence one or more of the clauses is of lesser importance than others i.e subordinate clauses. "I'm really annoyed with that fly, as it keeps buzzing by my ears, and i want to squash it." 'as it keeps buzzing by ears' makes no sense on it own so its subordinate.

Clause types:
Adverbial - usually explain when where or why something happened "she left before i arrived
Relative - include relative pronouns (who whose which or that) "I love cakesespcially that one"(i think this is right, I am making these examples up!!)
Make any more sense?

As for a plan for discourses, I'm going on the lines of:

1. Linguistic evaluation (AS material, like the noun 'blah' could suggest blah blah...) the way in which the authors have used language to get their view points across. Identify: Topic, Concepts (e.g. PC language is a waste of time..) How they convey it (evaluation stuff, Grammar, Semantics.. any framework you can think of) Factors, why are they so mad? Are they some English Geek who hates any change? (sorry for the silly analogies...lol)
2.Sum up their views and compare with other text, is the same? is different?
3. Research/theories to support their views (e.g. Gender, Man vs Women - bang on about Tannen, Lakoff, Cameron etc)
4. Your opinion - are they talking ********? Theories, research to suggest other wise to support your views
Hope this helps

Dan Clayton's predictions (a senior examiner) are that it'll be attitudes towards texting, so if it's this you'll need to bring in the standard prescriptive/descriptive arguments, along with your own opinions too.

I would of thought that Labov and Cheshire were more variation as they're on about social pressures and prestige..

Compounding etc.. is all processes of change, sort of if you look at an old text and see the word gay, meaning happy, it now means bad - perjoration

SW hypothesis dicates that Language controls our thoughts, so racist words are deemed bad so we think bad of race we're talking about. So It links to PC because PC aims to change our thoughts of the word "retard to Special" for example. Pc changes our thoughts by basically banning bad words i.e. changing our words.
make anymore sense?

Thank you!
Ah right ok, so what are the theories for change?
and thanks for clearing up that on Sapir Whorf, makes sense when ya put it like that

This website is fantastic!! Thank you so much!! I'm gonna sneak some good revision in from this site before tomorrow! I am soo scared about this exam, I've done next to no preparation, and my teacher wasn't the best, she didn't really go into much detail... and my teacher last year... well don't even go there.. Lol, I learnt nothing!!

How is everyone else feeling about tomorrow? Does anyone know the grade boundaries for tomorrows exam?

Thanks!
Sophie!

I am so in the same boat as you! I dont think i'll sleep well tonight! I'm that nervous!!

Well the marks are out 90 in the paper so i'm guessing that 72/90 is an A grade (=80%) 63/90 is a B 54/90 is a C

So to get an A you need to get 36/45 in each question at the least (to be on the safe side!)
I'm completely guessing based on the percentages!
Hope that helps

also, what is this 'damp spoon' and 'crumbling castle' thing?

You could talk about recent studies at the University of Coventry (by Clare Wood) , that texting actually requires the same phonological awareness as writing or reading in standard english. You can talk about how texting can be seen as inclusive device to certain social groups (e.g youth) and it is engrained within youth culture today . You can speak about how it is functionally necessary to have a type of shorthand english due to technological advance (i.e mobile phones) < this could lead to a wider debate about globalisation - you could mention the fact that communities are a lot more interconnected through technology such as texting etc. Then you could bring in prescriptivist attitudes (just basically saying how texting is bad) , i personally would bring in Jean Aitchison's model of 'the damp spoon' and 'crumbling castle' here and maybe bring in the fact that text language could be seen as a cryptolect/anti-language by excluding some of access to it. With the two items to refer to , there should be quite a bit to write about

also, what is this 'damp spoon' and 'crumbling castle' thing?