Meanings and Representations - Women's football

Question:
https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/english/AQA-77011-77021-A-TEXT.PDF

Answer:

Section A – Question 1

Text A is an online fan blog written for ‘shekicks.net’, a website presumably aimed at young, female footballers. This particular blog is about a women’s football game between England and Germany in 2014, and so the purpose of the text is to inform and entertain.

The headline of the blogpost is in big, blue font which is most likely a repertoire of the website, this highlights how the post is a ‘Fan’s Blog’. Using the noun ‘Fan’ with a capital letter suggests that the fact the writer is a fan is more important than who the writer actually is. This suggests that the writer themselves is not significant, implying that their first-person account of the game is unbiased and therefore trustworthy for the reader. The writer’s name is then revealed in the subline in capital letters that are bolder than the rest of the text, this means that it stands out but not so much as to divert attention away from the headline. This is interesting as the text may be aiming to highlight the fact that the writer is female, therefore making the text appeal more to the target audience, but also wants to highlight more that the writer is a fan, suggesting they are trying to divert from the gender differences in football so as not to present any negative ideas about the fact that the game they are reviewing was played be females. This represents how the writer aims to represent female football as engaging and interesting.

The text is also made up of informal low-frequency lexis that creates a semantic field of football. For example, the field-specific concrete nouns ‘opposition, ball, midfielder’ and the verbs ‘pass, attack.’ This means the text is relatable and understandable for the specific target audience, as the reader assumedly has an interest in football. This then contributes to a relaxed and informal tone that includes the use of exclamatives with punctuation like exclamation marks – ‘I thought it would be humungous!’ – and conversation fillers like ‘ha ha ha’ used to express the writer’s humour. This makes the text seem more friendly and interactive and adds a level of emotion to it, making the writer represent themselves in a way that is approachable and appealing. This makes the football appear as more exciting, which is interesting in relation to women’s football as it is often viewed as boring or inferior to men’s football, and so presenting it on an equal-level would appeal to the reader.

Due to the text being a first-person account of an event that has already taken place, it is written entirely in past tense. This innocently makes it seem like the writer is merely telling a story about what they watched, but also means that any opinion they offer on the event is presented like a fact, as it makes it seem like something that has already happened and so cannot be changed. For example, ‘Too many times England were getting pushed off the ball’. The quantitative, opinion phrase ‘too many times’ is actually just the writer’s interpretation of the event, considering they had no evidence for it, but is read to be a fact. This is due to the use of ‘were’ which is the past-tense version of the verb ‘to be’ and so make the writer’s opinion appear correct. This represents the text as more reliable and factual and so makes it more interesting for the target audience who wish to read about the outcome of a football game.

The blog also mostly consists of compound, multi-clausal, declarative sentences. This forms five similar-length paragraphs. This is typical of a blogpost as it allows the writer to be informative and engaging, but also present it in an almost story-telling format as the writer is describing an event. This makes it seem more exciting for the reader. The writer helps this flow through conjunctions like ‘also’ and ‘in which’ and through typical conversation-fillers like ‘of course’. This adds to the story-telling atmosphere and almost makes the reader feel like they are there watching the football game themselves, which therefore presents football as more active and enjoyable and so appeals to the target audience. The paragraphs are separated by two images from the game of females playing football and so offers a visual aid and adds to it almost being like a story. It also promotes the idea of females playing football and advertises the idea of people watching more games or using more sites like ‘shekicks.net’ to bring more benefits to the site. This represents how the blog intends to do more than just review a game.

Throughout the text, the writer consistently uses the first-person pronoun ‘I’. This makes the text seem more personal and friendly as the writer is speaking directly from their own experience. This use of synthetic personalisation makes both football and the text appeal to the reader as something approachable and enjoyable for them. This represents how the writer wishes to present themselves as informal so as to be on the same level as the target audience, making the reader feel closer and more connected to them and consequently more inclined to listen to them.

Section A – Question 2

Text B is a Scottish newspaper article written by in 1881 and published in ‘the Glasgow Herald’. It can be assumed to be aimed at Scottish, middle class male readers and was most likely written by a male due to the existing patriarchy at the time. It aims to inform and entertain readers about a women’s football game that recently took place.

The headline of the article is written in bigger font that the rest of the article which is a typical generic convention of most articles. The headline is ‘Ladies’ international match, Scotland Vs. England’. The use of the plural noun ‘ladies’ is significant as, if it was a men’s football match, it is likely that the gender would not have been specified as readers would just automatically assume it to be a men’s game. This shows how the writer immediately creates a disparity between women and men’s football, this is not surprising considering the sexist attitudes towards women in sport that existed in 1881. This would have then further normalised the attitudes for readers in 1881 and would not have created any controversy by implying that women’s and men’s sports could be equal. This is later seen when the writer uses the pre-modified noun ‘lady players’ over just using the noun ‘players’ and then again uses the adjective phrase ‘young ladies.’ This implies something like age is considered important when looking at female footballers, and it can be argued that should it have been a male game, age would not have been considered as it would have been normalised for all men to be in sport. This represents how apprehensive the writer is towards females in football.

The overall tone of the text is very formal with lots of low-frequency lexis that would not often be seen in a modern society. This can be seen by the adverb ‘rather novel’ and verbs like ‘evinced, hailing.’ This is the writer’s way of representing themselves as formal and respectful so as to put them on the same level as their middle class readers to further appeal to them. The adverb ‘rather’ has connotations of not wanting to fully label something, suggesting that the writer is cautious about declaring a women’s game as fully ‘novel’ and used ‘rather’ as a middle ground so as not to outright insult the game, but to not praise it either. This further represents how the writer formally does not want to offend female footballers, but also does not support them either and so describes the game in a way that can be interpreted multiple ways so as to appeal to a wider range of readers.

The formal tone is highlighted by frequent use of declarative, compound sentences that mean the text is read at a reasonably slow pace so as to be informative rather than exciting. Several discourse markers, e.g. ‘during, while’ and the conjunction ‘but’, are used to make sure the text flows and the game is described in a way that makes sense. This makes it easier for an everyday, middle class reader to understand. However, this is only the first paragraph. The second paragraph is merely a list of the players’ names, which is presumably a repertoire from the time that writers used in articles about football games. This is interesting as two of the females’ names have the address term ‘misses’ in front of them, suggesting their marriage status is important. This is most likely a result of the patriarchal society that existed in 1881 that meant a woman’s life was very much determined by whether she was married. This implies that the writer is not only concerned about females playing football, but also about reinforcing what they believe to be a woman’s place in society.

The text also includes a semantic field of the hyponym clothes. This can be seen when the writer describes the females to be wearing ‘jerseys, stockings, belts, and high-heeled boots’. The noun ‘high-heeled boots’ is very surprising to a modern audience as it has connotations of being hard to walk in, implying that they would be even harder to play football in. This suggests that female football in 1881 was just as much about appearance as it was sport, to the point that females had to play in uncomfortable clothing. However, this would have been normal in 1881 so would have appealed to the writer’s target audience at the time. This is all referred to in past tense as the writer is giving their account of the events, the fact that one of the only parts of the game they notice is the women’s clothing represents the society’s disinterest towards females in sport.

Section A – Question 3

One similarity between the texts is semantic fields on the hyponym of sport, specifically football. This is due to both articles being reviews of female football games. This means they both include field-specific lexis like the nouns ‘ball, player, goal’ and the verbs ‘pass, play, score’. In the games they are describing, both writers present the teams as not playing very well. This can be seen in the writer of Text B describing the players to ‘score nothing’ and the writer of Text A stating ‘England’s passes were not good enough’. The similarities between the connotations of the noun ‘nothing’ and the negative quantifier ‘not enough’ suggest the texts are similar in the way that they both present the negative sides to the games they are describing.

However, Text A is able to still give the text an overall positive tone, by presenting losing as something exciting that one can learn from. This is evident in the exclamative ‘hopefully success at the World Cup in Canada!’. The adverb ‘hopefully’ has connotations of high expectations and anticipation and so the writer is not disappointed that their team lost as they still had fun and so can have hope. This is completely different to Text B where the writer brands the game as a ‘failure’. This would suggest they are being insulting of the game, however they do not want to state this outright, so they say it was a ‘failure from the players’ point of view’. Pragmatically, this is a subtle way of blaming the players for the writer’s negative opinion. This shows the texts are different in the way they have interpreted the game and how willing they are to express this. This is most likely a result of the different contexts the texts come from. Text B is from time society was sexist and so writers would have been much more critical towards females playing sport, whilst Text A is modern and written at a time ‘female football is on the rise’ and so would be much more willing to praise it. Text A is also aimed specifically at females and so would want to encourage them to play football, even if they may lose, which is not the aim of Text B.

The texts are similar in the way that they are both past tense accounts/reviews of football games. This means they both consistently use compound declarative sentences with multiple clauses shaped by discourse markers like ‘also, during, while, but’. This allows them to be detailed and informative about the game in a way that is easily understandable for the reader. This demonstrates how both texts are similar in the way they want to convey information. However, Text A is a lot longer than Text B with a lot more paragraphs. This could be a result of how, in a modern society, people would want to read more about women’s football, or because Text B could not have been an online article and so would have to be printed, making it easier for it to be shorter. This shows how the structures of the texts are differently influenced by the times that they were written in, even if they wish to convey similar information.

Another difference between the texts is the pronouns they use and the lexical choices they make to accompany them. Text is written in first person and is mostly informal to make the text appear more chatty and friendly, almost like the writer is using synthetic personalisation to stage a fake conversation with the reader. This can be seen through the personal pronoun ‘I’ and the use of spoken conversational fillers like ‘of course’ or ‘ha ha ha’. This is completely different to Text B which uses completely standard English to create a formal and less personal tone. This is evident in low-frequency lexis like ‘curiosity, envinced, hailing’. This could be a result of how society in the time Text B was written was more formal and respectful, particularly for the target audience of middle classes, and so the writer would want the text to sound as official as possible. However, Text A was written in today’s less formal society and is also a blogpost, so the reader is more likely to be expecting a lighter article due to the connotations of blogging vs. the connotations of an online newspaper. This shows the texts are different in the tones and formalities they use.

Overall, both texts are similar in terms of theme and format, however both were written in different times for different types of audiences and so the writers make very different lexical choices. This leads to Text A presenting women’s football as desirable, and Text B presenting it as inferior.