English Language Investigation AQA A-LEVEL Coursework help!!

emgeesify

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I'm doing an English language investigation for my A-Level, it's AQA Unit 4 if anyone else is doing it. Basically, I'm comparing and contrasting the difference in two magazine articles, one written by a male, the other by a female. I'm comparing the different in language due to their gender.

We have to analyse data and do bar charts and stuff. I've found that the female writer uses more verbs and adjectives than the male writer. I just need help as to what to say about it. What does the difference in the amount of verbs and adjectives show about the difference between genders??

I know that usually women are more descriptive and stuff but I don't really know how and what to say about it!

Please help!

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Anna.Karenina

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Have a look at some of the theorists you learnt in AS

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Nerol

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You're going to have to be much more specific for this investigation. Saying that female writers use more verbs and adjectives than male writers won't get you anywhere!

Do you have a set hypothesis or question you want to investigate? You should choose a specific area of language to look at. If you want to look at descriptive language, ie adjectives, you should compare the different ways each magazine uses language to describe the same thing. For example, "How do male and female writers differ in the way they use language to describe.....". And then you will need to look at some of the many language and gender theories you learned in the AS units.

Also, go into detail about the types of verbs and adjectives used. What are they describing? Are they 'empty' adjectives? Are the verbs passive or active? Past or present?

You could also look at figuritive language used, and also the use of nouns, as these will vary greatly between mens' and women's magazines.

I'm working on my A2 investigation now too, but mine has to be based on spoken language. Loving it though!

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emgeesify

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Thanks this helped

Yeh the adjectives and verbs thing is just part of my Lexis framework! I've got other things I just didn't really know how to explain the difference between the way the men and women use them!

But thanks for the input and good luck with your investigation!

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emgeesify

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(Original post by Anna.Karenina)
Have a look at some of the theorists you learnt in AS

I will do! Thanks

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Jade10128

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Can anyone help me?? I'm analysing 4 different reports on Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal. Two are tabloid and two are broadsheet, I can see clear differences regarding their political affiliations (The Sun and The Times have the blame more on the BBC than Savile - obviously none back up his behavior). But I'm struggling on what PARTICULAR linguistic features I can pick up on, analyse and comment on at the moment I am describing and generalizing too much! Someone please help me out

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Hal.E.Lujah

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(Original post by Jade10128)
Can anyone help me?? I'm analysing 4 different reports on Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal. Two are tabloid and two are broadsheet, I can see clear differences regarding their political affiliations (The Sun and The Times have the blame more on the BBC than Savile - obviously none back up his behavior). But I'm struggling on what PARTICULAR linguistic features I can pick up on, analyse and comment on at the moment I am describing and generalizing too much! Someone please help me out

If you click here and make a thread, someone will get round to helping you out

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emgeesify

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(Original post by Jade10128)
Can anyone help me?? I'm analysing 4 different reports on Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal. Two are tabloid and two are broadsheet, I can see clear differences regarding their political affiliations (The Sun and The Times have the blame more on the BBC than Savile - obviously none back up his behavior). But I'm struggling on what PARTICULAR linguistic features I can pick up on, analyse and comment on at the moment I am describing and generalizing too much! Someone please help me out

You could write about the types of lexis used (nouns, verbs, adjectives)
Formality
Imperatives, Interrogatives, Exclamatives
Rhetorical features

Just a few ideas

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alexlandrum

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PLEASE someone tell me what on earth to write in a methodology?! My teacher told me to change my entire project last week - our deadline is in a couple of days time - I am not too happy! I am now doing the differences in language choices between males and females when leaving voicemails. What can I say in my methodology?! I'm finding it so difficult. Please help

Thankyou x

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sjyam

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I'm doing a similar thing for mine but tabloid v broadsheet regarding Margaret Thatcher's death. I'm pretty much good to go but i have no idea what theorists to use? does anyone have any ideas please? i'm panicking!!!

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merkatron

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(Original post by alexlandrum)
PLEASE someone tell me what on earth to write in a methodology?! My teacher told me to change my entire project last week - our deadline is in a couple of days time - I am not too happy! I am now doing the differences in language choices between males and females when leaving voicemails. What can I say in my methodology?! I'm finding it so difficult. Please help

Thankyou x

Methodology is an account of how you collected your data, selected the data to analyse from that, the variables you had to consider (in your case, age, sexuality, occupation, class, ethnicity perhaps, given that your key variable is gender), the frameworks you chose to apply (lexis/semantics, grammar, pragmatics, interactive features etc.) and the wider factors you had to consider while doing this (observer's paradox/Hawthorne effect, ethics, etc etc).

Haver you looked at work by other linguists on male/female differences/similarities in language use? If so (and you probably have done this) mention what approaches they used in their studies and how you were influenced by what they found.

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merkatron

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(Original post by sjyam)
I'm doing a similar thing for mine but tabloid v broadsheet regarding Margaret Thatcher's death. I'm pretty much good to go but i have no idea what theorists to use? does anyone have any ideas please? i'm panicking!!!

I don't really get the obsession with theories, but then maybe you mean something different to what I understand from the term.

AO2 is wider conceptual knowledge - so it can be theories - but it's often more useful in a representation coursework piece like yours (presumably, you're looking at Thatcher's representation through the accounts of her funeral) to think about approaches such as Fairclough's critical discourse analysis and how an approach like this can shed light on where texst are coming from and how they are produced. You could bring in ideas around ideology and how those ideologies are encoded in language (e.g. Daily Fail's love-fest for her and her wretched work and dismissal of all forms of protest as unpatriotic and/or twisted versus The Mirror's more hostile take and left-wing/anarchist publications' celebration of her death).

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appleduck

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I'm doing my investigation on the representation of gender in Wuthering Heights, I have no idea how to get theorists in, or how to even talk about dialogue!! Can anybody help?

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merkatron

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(Original post by appleduck)
I'm doing my investigation on the representation of gender in Wuthering Heights, I have no idea how to get theorists in, or how to even talk about dialogue!! Can anybody help?

You could look at Jane Sunderland's Language and Gender, Lia Litosseliti's Gender and Language: Theory and Practice. They've both got good things in them about how gender is constructed through language, especially through agency (who does what to whom). There's always Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis approach too, which looks at how gender is constructed through references to wider discourses and in manipulating "common sense" assumptions about gendered practice .

You might find some of this in your AQA B AS textbook, but here's also a sizeable chunk of it in the AQA A AS book. If your school/college has a subscription to emagazine, you'll also find lots of stuff on literary representations of gender in their online archive. Password and user ID should be available form your teachers if they have a sub (and they should).

For dialogue, the AS book for B spec and A2 book for A spec have a lot on ideas around gendered practice in conversation (difference, dominance, diversity models etc.).

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