Response to an article

 

Teacher ‘told to sound less Northern’ after southern Ofsted inspection - How can you possibly think it’s acceptable to tell someone to tone down their Northern accent to improve their performance? As if it’s not problematic and stressful enough just teaching a class of students, but now she relentlessly has to remember to try to speak clearer and in an abnormal way. The criticism will be on a continuous cycle filling her mind with this ‘target’. Somebody’s accent doesn’t affect their dialect in any way, the union shouldn’t have the right to tell this woman to change as she will be able to make the students prosper despite having a strong Northern accent. The eccentric and bizarre thing about this is the fact that the school is situated in in the North therefore she is teaching in a Northern school, so why is she being requested to change and dim down her accent? How can you rationalise that they should speak ‘less Northern’? It really doesn’t make any sense!

It gives the impression that people have overlooked that there is a difference between accent and dialect, it’s not as if she is using taboo language in the classroom which is undoubtedly unacceptable. Ofsted is basically promoting that it’s more important that people speak with a clear accent rather than being insolent and swearing around students. This is completely senseless and imprudent.

Think about this – imagine an English school with all the teachers speaking in a clear English accent, suddenly a new teacher arrives who has an Indian accent, if they told this person to speak ‘more British’, surely this would be deemed as racism? How come we have always been told to be ourselves and be who we want to be in life, certainly not have others tell us what to do, we should have independence. Therefore why do Ofsted feel it’s acceptable to give orders for people to change their accent?

Are some schools out of their mind? Why give more pressures and create more stress for the pupils? As if students don’t have enough on their mind when entering their school, but now they have to constantly recount the ten banned phrases which adds to the information in their over filling brains. I am unable to comprehend how certain regional phrases could damage their prospects. Much worse is said by pupils. Stereotypically you would expect to hear slang, taboo and colloquial language filling the school corridors when friendship groups share gossip. Therefore if regional phrases are banned then so should slang.

Schools should be focusing on teaching their students interview skills oppose to drumming into their brain the regional phrases they are not allowed to use. Anyway, if you went into an interview you wouldn’t be using regional phrases anyway as it’s a formal situation.

If everyone was the same then no one would be unique, no one would be different, and there would be no variety in this world. In my eyes I believe that everyone should be different and embrace their individuality, why should people change the way they speak? If everyone spoke the same then the world have no diversity, which is vital in this day and age.

Eckert and Cheshire

 

In every school you will find distinct groups, Penelope Eckert identified two diverse groups in an American high school – the jocks and the burnouts. The jock were very stimulated through school activities and very eager to participate. The burnouts refused to take part in school activities and were stubborn and rebellious. In the UK, you don’t really find specific social groups like Eckert has stated in America, they are mainly just ‘friendship groups’. However, people tend to become friends through sports for example, if they’re on the same team they will tend to form a friendship, due to the team spending time together training they will develop the same language choices, this may be how they choose to speak later on in life all because of spending time with these interest groups. In Cheshire’s study she carried out an experiment involving two groups of girls, one having a positive attitude to crime and weapons however group 2 didn’t agree with any of these features and activities. She conducted a long term participant observation with these groups trying to distinguish their different language variations. These girls who had a negative attitude towards school and participated in criminal activities didn’t put any effort in how they spoke and their grammar. Yet the other group of girls were well spoken and they always had a positive attitude. This could link with friendship groups and their attitudes towards school life, you would typically see the groups who don’t really care about school to not put much effort into grammar and not to focus on language. Oppose to the students who are willing to work would concentrate on the way they spoke and would want to have good grammar and language. Overall, in general students will tend to use more colloquial and taboo language when in their friendship groups as these are the people they feel most comfortable around against being around family as would have to be more polite and formal.

 

 

 

 

 

Research task

Accents

• Accents relate only to pronunciation and intonation rather than grammar or vocabulary.
• Listeners, naturally pick up these cues about people’s ethnic, socioeconomic and geographical background.
• Research has shown that listeners can also make judgements on others’ intelligence, warmth and even height just by listening to recorded accented speech.
• Foreign accented speech is negatively evaluated by native speakers of a language.
• People who view their own group or culture as the centre of everything, and who scale and rate all other groups with reference to it, can be said to be ethnocentric.

 

 

Accents and Dialect

Accents and dialect

 

A dialect: is a specific variety of English that differs from other varieties in three specific ways: lexis, grammar and phonology. English dialects may be different from each other, but all speakers within the English-speaking world can still generally understand them.

Accent: refers only to differences in the sound patterns of a specific dialect.

 

  Examples – Geordie vs English

Geordie	English
How man mutha man.	Please mother don't embarrass me.
Ye knaa what ah mean leik.	Do you know what I mean?
Eeeh man, ahm gannin te the booza.	OK, I have had enough, I am going to the bar.
Whees i' the netty?	Who's in the lavatory?
Gan canny or we'll dunsh summick.	Be careful or we will crash into something.

                                                                                                                                    

 

Examples of scouse terms

• Skint - To have no money
• Togger - A football match
• Offey - Off licence
• Mogger (ride on a bike)
• Meff - Trampish looking fellow
• Gowed instead of "Go ahead"
• Kecks – Trousers
• Kidda/Kidder - Good friend
• Divvy - A stupid or silly person
• Baltic - Extremely cold weather

conversation analysis 

Millie: (laughs)
Daisy: (laughs)
Millie: its just gonna be laughs laughs (laughs) (.) hello daisy how are you today
Daisy: (laughs)
Millie: ermm (.) you had a fine day today
Daisy: it was mighty fine (.) mighty fine (laughs) who says that
Millie: (laughs)
Daisy: hows yours
Millie: great (.) just waitin to get a lift (.) but so are you so (.)
Daisy: (laughs) you idiot
























This conversation consists of two people - Millie and Daisy. We can clearly see that Millie is dominating because she started the conversation in the first place by engaging with Daisy, also Millie tends to be the one attempting to begin conversation by using interrogatives to interact with Daisy. The place which this conversation occurred was in a calm and comfortable environment so the speakers were able to relax and not care due to the strong relationship they hold. The speakers use informal Lexis to communicate with each other, showing they have a relaxed relationship towards the other speaker, demonstrating they would most likely be close friends as they tend to laugh a lot which highlights how they're comfortable with each other. The informality exhibits the type of environment they are situated in, due to the casual atmosphere we know they are not in a job setting for example, more a gossip between friends. To add, the hefty amount of - (laughs) used throughout the conversation indicates the low register of the conversation. Throughout the chat we see two utterances between different speakers which have a natural link which complete the idea together - this is called: adjacency pair, we also see - turn-taking in the conversation so they share the speaking roles. The conversation also contains two elision sentences, involving the words: 'gonna', and 'waitin'. Elisions are the slurring together of sounds or syllables to save time, this is also less formal which also helps demonstrate the informality perceived through the informal Lexis used. Another example of showing informality is that the conversation uses hiatus and non-fluency features as well which are devices that interrupt the flow of talk, we see this through the use of 'ermmm' used in the conversation. This would have been used so the speaker was able to think about what she was going to say before blurting out anything random also because the speakers were not prepared so they didn't know what to say, The use of the symbol - (.), to demonstrate a brief pause also helps to show the thought process Millie went through to decide on a question to ask.

Conversational analysis

The form of the piece of writing is – a conversation between a policeman and an eye witness. The main purpose of the conversation is based upon: transactional language which was driven by the needs and wants of the authoritative speaker, as the policeman needed information about the accident. The tone of the conversation has a high register as it’s a dominant figure asking questions about the event; however the high register juxtaposes the low register from person – B.

Throughout, the conversation it is clear that person: A is a figure of authority, for instance – a policeman. We see this through the use of interrogatives used within the conversation, ‘did you see what happened?’ this signifies that this person has power, the use of formal lexis gives the impression that the speaker is of a higher class, oppose to the second speaker. Whereas speaker – B, uses everyday lexis showing they don’t have much authority or may not have been well educated when younger, they also use taboo/colloquial language: ‘bloody’, which shows their informal persona. It seems like speaker – B, was an eye witness as he acts like he is in shock due to all the pauses taken when speaking, therefore could still be scared of what he just encountered.

 The conversation occurred because an accident arose, therefore speaker – A, needed to discover as much information as possible as to what had happened at the scene of the accident. The non-fluency features used from speaker – B, also help to show he was still in shock as he couldn’t really get his words out to answer speaker – A, who appears to be the dominant as he dictates the conversation the entire time. The use of the words: ‘umm’, ‘err’, - the non-fluency words, interrupt the flow of the conversation, whereas the figure of authority is straight to the point and knows exactly what he is going to say. Person – A and person – B, are demonstrating: turn-taking, as person – A, is purposely pausing so person – B is able to join in with the conversation, however most of the time we see a domineering person throughout the conversation, in this case, person – A, is dominating the conversation.  

Person – B also uses the technique: hedging, ‘he must have’, this technique is used to show uncertainty, it is used to weaken the force of what is being said, and this could have been used because the eye witness may not have been certain and confident about what he saw and he doesn’t want to give false evidence. One of Grice’s maxims is used within the conversation: relevance, which means – the conversation is kept relevant to the topic being discussed. Therefore the policeman is only asking the eye witness relevant and significant questions about the accident, there is no straying off topic, only appropriate information. Also, there is a huge use of – deixis within the conversation, focusing on: distal, these deictic expressions include: that, there and then. These are mainly used by: person – B, ‘then then this car comes racing down the hill’, and ‘I turned around there was a bloody body’. The repetition of ‘then’, shows he is still in astonishment from the event, as he can’t seem to tell the series of events fluently.

text for question 3 analysis

Text for question 3 analysis

 

The primary audience for this leaflet would be the people in the area of Bishops Waltham who will be affected by the Sainsbury’s being built, therefore the secondary audience is:  Winchester City council because if the campaign gets enough attention and publicity, and the people receiving the leaflet do write a letter to the City Council then the Council will have to take action and stop this superstore being built. . The purpose of this text is to raise awareness of the possible problems of the Sainsbury’s being built whilst also persuading people to write a letter to the City Council to make sure Sainsbury’s isn’t built. The tone of this text is high register, which means that it's formal; this is due to the serious context the piece of writing attains. The form of this piece of writing is a leaflet, although within the leaflet it is displayed in the form of a letter, this is called the discourse structure.

Graphology is used in large amounts within this leaflet, it help draw the reader in and makes it stand out. An iconic logo is used at the top of the page, this provides the leaflet with a professional status, and it shows authority as it’s their official logo. Further down the leaflet there's a logo image of a heart surrounding the words 'Love Bishops Waltham'. The heart image has been chosen because a heart connotes passion and love, this therefore shows the readers that these people are passionate about Bishops Waltham and want the outright best for the community. Another type of graphology used in the text is: text boxes, this is vital because it holds the most important information, therefore it will draw their eye to this segment and if they do not read the rest of the text they will know the significant information. Finally, the clock portrayed within the banner at the top of the page shows that time is running out as it’s almost at 12 o’clock. This demonstrates that people need to act urgently as there is not much time before the superstore will be built, therefore the graphology will urge the people to act fast.

The lexis chosen within the text have a semantic field of – war, for example: ‘juggernaut’, ‘battle’, ‘destroys’, ‘vitality’ and ‘viability’. The word 'juggernaut' for example means to destroy everything in its way, lexically this has been chosen to dehumanize Sainsbury’s and express the damage it will do to the community if it's built. All these lexis chosen are extremely emotive to imply to the reader that if a letter isn’t written then their community will be destroyed due to this superstore being built. Through using this type of lexis they're implying to the reader that if they don’t write a letter then there will be desolation in Bishops Waltham, just like there would be if there was a war.

The text uses a wide variety of grammar to help persuade the people to get involved, the use of personal pronouns such as, 'we' and 'our' allows the reader to be part of the community from the leaflet, which may therefore inspire them to write a letter to the city council. Also, the personal plural pronouns demonstrate dominance, the ‘we’ shows that the community is more powerful together than alone. The text also includes a compound sentence, ‘is this a chance worth taking?’ this demonstrates a large amount of damage that will occur if the community doesn’t put in the effort, as they may feel that other people will do it so they won’t have to. It’s a case of people being lazy; the compound sentence is trying to make people write the letter to the council to make sure the superstore isn’t built. Also, the imperative sentence: ‘write a letter today stating your objection’, is also showing urgency, that the letter must be written as soon as possible to have the biggest impact on the council.

 

Connotations 

Connotation - the emotional associations or links attached to a word.

Denotation – the dictionary definition of the word.

The connotations with their denotation:

·         Girl - a female child, from birth to full growth.

·         Woman - the female human being, as distinguished from a girl or a man.

·         Lady - a woman who is refined, polite, and well-spoken.

·         Female - denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs.

Girl:

•          Youth
•          Female
•         Innocence

Woman:

•          More mature
•          Slightly older ‘girl’
•          Generalised term

Female:

•          Extremely generalised term
•          Seen as the same as ‘woman’

Lady:

•          Posh
•          Sophisticated
•          High class

Laddette:

•          Informal term
•          Disorderly behaviour
•          Seen as ‘cool’
• 
  

1.          House
2.          Home
3.          Property
4.          Place
5.          Abode

House:

•          Place you live
•          Think of families

Home:

•          Cosiness
•          Family
•          Permanent – home is yours

Property:

•          Belongs to you – it is yours
•          Possessions

Place:

•          Very broad term
•          Can bring back good and bad memories

Abode:

•          Place you stay
•          Basically where someone is living

Euphemisms  

1.       To powder one’s nose – has two meanings, either:

•          taking drugs
•           It used to mean a while ago for women to go to the toilet.

The second example is an old fashioned term yet still seen as good-mannered way of telling people you’re going to the toilet. Seen as acceptable.

2.        To spend a penny – means: to go to the toilet.

This refers to the (former) use of coin operated locks on public toilets. This euphemism would be used as it sounds more formal and ladylike.

3.    Gone to meet his maker – means: someone has died.

This euphemism would have been used because it softens the reality of death. It is not as harsh as saying someone has died. The euphemism says that he has ‘gone to meet his maker’ which is saying that he has gone to heaven where God (the maker) is. 

Poem analysis 

Far far beyond…

There was a frog called Dave, he knew how to misbehave.

His mum told him not to leave the pond, but he went far far beyond.

He made it to the tree, he felt free.

He could jump really high and he didn't even have to try.

Along came a cricket, oh he did ribbit.

The crickets name is jack, he was jet black.

They bumped into a fox, he with his mate the ox.

But they were very mean, oh they made them scream.

They chased them back to the pond, his mother told him – he shouldn't go far far beyond.

Analysis:

Sound symbolism – lexical onomatopoeia: ‘ribbit’, the chosen word reflects the sound of a frog also creates a vivid image in the readers mind; it helps to draw the similarities between the sounds of the word and the real word actions. It also creates a further understanding for children who are reading the book as they will be able to associate the noise with the action.

Foregrounding sounds – alliteration (consonance): ‘felt free’, the use of plosive fricatives focus the reader and creates a rhythm, making the passage flow when being read.

Discourse structure – is a narrative account as is a short story.

I also used short sentences with a rhythmic pattern to keep the children’s attention and for them to focus on the words within the story.

The use of animal’s link in to the target audience of – kids, as it is more childlike and you wouldn't see this type of text in an adult’s book as it’s not complex. 

introduction to grammar

Introduction to grammar

A noun is a word used to identify any class of people, place or things. A noun is a naming word.

However…

Different types of nouns

• Common – concrete and abstract nouns
• Proper
• Collective

Common noun – preceded by the word ‘the’.

Proper noun – names for unique individuals e.g. London, Laura…

Concrete noun – something that has any of the 5 senses.

Abstract noun – a noun that names an idea or a concept, e.g. love, hate etc.

Collective noun – refers to a group of things or people e.g. swarm of bees, a crowd of people etc.

Noun phrase – made up of a noun and any words that modify that noun (determiners, prepositions).

Noun phrases

Whenever you modify a noun this becomes a noun phrase. Essentially, you have changed the meaning of the noun in the same way:

1. Plane crash!
2. A horrific plane crash!
3. The most horrific plane crash ever!

Nouns add lexical cohesion (glue.)

How do nouns make a difference to a piece of writing?

• Lexical cohesion
• Paint a picture/describe
• Create an emotional response

Adjectives

The weary painter took off his blue, green and white overalls and ate a day-old Chinese meal because he felt ravenous.

Adjectives modify nouns or pronouns.

Three functions:

• Attribute, predicative (describing words).
• Evaluate, emotive and descriptive.
• Superlative – to exaggerate, comparative – comparing between the two.

Jack – adjectives in a book.

• Black sheep (someone who has been shunned).
• Supremely successful billionaire (shows he is the best)
• Pleasurable solution – selfish man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Verbs

 

                                          Main verbs (tell you the action taking place, sing and jump)

 

                                                                                                         Primary auxiliaries (do, have, be)

Base form: infinitives (to sing, to think)

       

                                         Auxiliary verbs (give extra info about main verb, can effect meaning)

 

Modal auxiliaries (can, could, will, would, might, must, may, shall, should)

 

Types of auxiliaries:

Deontic – (certainty) – must, will, can.

Epistemic – (not certain/more choice) – may, might.

An imperative is a command.

Verb phrases – is built around a head word, the main word.

Modal auxiliaries can be placed along a continuum to show degrees of strength towards commitment.

Liverpool will beat man city.                       Strongest

Liverpool must beat man city.

Liverpool should beat man city.

Liverpool might beat man city.

 

 

Verbs can tell you when something happens:

Present tense	Base form + S inflection (sings)
Past tense	Base form + ed inflection (jumped) yet sing – sang
Future tense	Modal auxiliary – will or shall + base form – will sing

Active and passive voice

Active – Ahmed kicked the ball (focus is on Ahmed, the subject of the sentence).

Passive – the ball was kicked by Ahmed (focus of sentence changes). Makes the sentence seems more formal.

 

Clauses and voice

If you modify a verb, you create a verb, you create a verb phrase.

Adverb defines the verb (she ran quickly).

Two types of auxiliary –

1. Primary auxiliary: be, do, have, was, has etc. often help distinguish text.
2. Modal auxiliary:   may, could, might, will, can, should.

In the same way that words form phrases, phrases form larger structures called clauses. Groups of words centered around a verb phrase.

Clauses will include:

• Subject
• Verb
• Object

Coordinated clause

Two clauses are joined together by using a conjunction (and, but, furthermore etc.)

However …

Coordinated clauses must make sense on their own if you remove the conjunction.

For example:

I went to town and met my friends.

1. I went to town.
2. I met my friends.

Subordinate clause

There will be a main clause (a unit that can stand on its own and make complete sense) and by phrases that only make sense when linked to the main clause.

Although I went into town, I didn’t meet my friends.

Active voice

The actor/agency responsible for carrying out the verb is placed in the subject position (usually at the start)

Beastly fox seriously injures baby!

 

Passive voice

Use it because…

• We don’t know the subject
• We don’t want to talk about the subject
• Subject is not the focus of the story

Example:

Passive – taxes rise after riots.

Active – local council raises tax after riots.

 

Passive – 500 killed by storm.

Active – storm killed 500 people.