Paper 2 - Language and Social Groups Example Question

Discuss the idea that language can affect people’s views of social groups

Social groups:
• Gender
• Class
• Occupation (e.g. women in business)
• Education
• Ethnicity
• Age (teenagers – negative connotations)
• Nationality (e.g. refugees)
• Power/status
• Urban (slang)
• Accent (e.g. Martha’s Vineyard – the fisherman)

Analysis:
• ‘You’- direct address
• ‘AWESOME’ – capital letters, different colours for emphasis
• ‘YOU’ in capitals, ‘we’ is not – putting the reader over the writer
• ‘Speak out’ – not write, interesting considering it is magazine, formal in an informal text
• Picture of girl – target audience
• ‘Believe’ – verb
• Repetition – ‘you’, possessive
• Online presence – ‘#’ and different colours
• We’ll – contraption, informal
• ‘We’ll be inspiring you’ – bold claim
• ‘Girls’ –not women or ladies or mothers – age group (young, possibly teenagers)
• ‘Stories’ – connotation of fiction
• ‘Incredible, awesome, exciting’ – exclamation marks – target audience, trying to use language of reader
• ‘Girl talk promise’ - graphology – looks like a certificate or pledge
• ‘Live your life’ – imperative
• ‘GT promise’ – acronym – suggests you will use Girl talk a lot because you need to shorten it and you are now part of the ‘club’
• ‘I will’ – it is going to happen, certainty – definite outcome
• ‘Love myself just the way I am’ – suggests they are not perfect but that is okay – who says they are not perfect? – suggest society doesn’t love them just the way they are but they can
• ‘Myself’ – ambiguous – could mean looks, intelligence, interests etc.
• Whole text is made up of pre-conceived ideas that girls do not love themselves and that they require encouragement – why do they assume girls under 14 don’t love themselves?
• Feeds off the idea that the media tries to influence you from a very young age and give you this image of what you should be
• ‘I know I can achieve great things’ – sense of responsibility – girl talk are not doing it for the girls, they are facilitating it
• ‘Girls are equal to boys’ - probably should be the top point

http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2016/june/AQA-77012-W-MS-JUN16.PDF

Language being used to represent young (under 14) girls:
• Semantic field of empowerment
• Open to different interpretations – ‘love myself the way I am’ can mean looks, intelligence etc.
• ‘Awesome’ – stereotypical feature of young girls’ language – negative connotations but used as powerful in this text – ‘movers and shakers’
• Declaratives, interrogatives, exclamatives to keep younger readers interests
• Online features – younger girls use social media and the internet more

Theories:
• Young girls are innovators of slang and new language – ‘movers and shakers’
• Howard Giles – accommodation, divergence and convergence
• Deborah Tannen – difference theory (e.g. status vs. support)
• Robin Lakoff – deficit theory
• Pamela Fishman – dominance theory
• Overt and covert prestige
• Young,  teenage boys use more non-standard English
• Stative verbs – verbs you can’t see – peter Trudgill – Norwich study – men are more likely to drop the ‘g’
• Unmarked, politically correct terms (e.g. firefight not fireman, police officer not policeman)
• Janet Holmes – women referred to more negatively then men (e.g. ‘honey, chick, bird, sweetie’)
• Acronyms in CMC are often seen as lazy (e.g. ‘omg’ or ‘cba’) – ‘texting is killing language’
• Young people can’t speak properly -  parents can’t understand their children
• Labov – fishermen (Martha’s Vineyard)

Mark scheme:
• Explore ideas of performing identity
• Social groups – always read the question
• More than one theory
• Terminology/linguistic terms
• Back up theories – explain why you are using this theory and how it is relevant
• Namedrop theorists – shows knowledge (but only if relevant)