English Lang paper 2

it is key to remember that essays do not solely have to be about occupation. say the question was 'evaluate the idea that spoken interaction is dictated by a person's occupation', you should highlight the key words (as with every question). 'evaluate' is key as you can see it is asking for an argument, such as alternative views. the verb 'dictated' is strong and implies that occupation is the only thing that contributes to someones speech but this is clearly false. so the drew and heritage study is a good way to stress the importance that occupation has on language such as the bosses holding more power e.g. a doctor will have specialist knowledge and hold the floor more - I recommend looking into this study more as it is very helpful. however after this paragraph, you could then stress the importance that gender and class has on spoken interactions and conclude that there are many aspects that contribute to someones speech. hope this is helpful

for occupation the drew and heritage study is a great thing to bring up and all the features that go along with it such as bosses holding the power. but also remember that if a question is asking you something like 'spoken interaction is dictated by occupation' you could argue an alternative and say that gender and social class tie in as well, as long as you have a paragraph on occupation in particular, then you can have a discussion about the rest and conclude that nothing entirely 'dictates' a persons spoken interaction as there are many aspects. they key thing is to look at the words in the question, after all it tells you to evaluate the statement so that requires an argument.

That’s perfect! So if the question is based off of occupation I can then bring in other factors. Could i then mention age and ethnicity as well as social class and gender? What would you recommend?

Hey, does anyone know how to do question 3. Im so confused on how you link analysis to theories and context. Like how am i supposed to structure it and analyse and include theories. If anyone could help that would be so great. Thanks

Yes sorry thats what i mean

well if it is to do with language change I like to see if there is a prescriptivist/descriptivist distinction between the 2 texts and include that in the introduction as it sets out a clear difference between the two. then from this I can pick out some features that may link with their attitude. so for example if a text is describing the English language as 'pure' or has adjectives related to royalty or something, then you can pick out these adjectives and say it presents like a semantic field of proudness for the language showing the writer is passionate about maintaining the 'amazing' English language. then you can contrast this with the other text (if it is descriptivist) depending on what they say. say the text was on spelling reform and they purposely spelt things wrong you can argue the colloquial stand point and that the misspelling of words proves that we still know what is meant. it is hard to explain without an example text to show anything. im pretty sure that individual theories are not needed as it is based on your ability to analyse texts. so for an accent and dialect question you may not need to mention kerswill as such, just the aspect of dialect levelling and the writers attitude (if that it is what it is about). basically treat it as a regular compare and contrast question but instead of meanings and representations, its the view of the writer and HOW they present this view (i.e. features). sorry very long and confusing I may have confused you more haha.

Hey, does anyone know how to do question 3. Im so confused on how you link analysis to theories and context. Like how am i supposed to structure it and analyse and include theories. If anyone could help that would be so great. Thanks