Class Work for 01/03/2016 - Fairtrade Fortnight Text Analysis

a) ActionAid Teaching Resource

• Identify the GRAPE and select some key conventions/techniques that relate to the GRAPE

G - The genre of this text is webpage. It is for a charity, and has downloadable educational resources for use by teachers.

R - This text would be received through use of the ActionAid website.

A - The audience of this text would be teachers or other people who would wish to educate others about fairtrade.

P - The purpose of this webpage is to advertise the educational resources available, as well as to inform, in a way, any visitor to the website about the work that they do for Fairtrade and other charitable causes

E - The expectations of this text would be to be professional, easy to navigate, yet informative.

b) Daily Mail Article

G - The genre of this text is an online article

R - This article would be received through the Daily Mail website

A - The main audience for this text would be Daily Mail readers, but it could also attract attention from any people who are interested in the effectiveness of the Fairtrade scheme.

P - The purpose of the article is to inform people, particularly of the alleged ineffectiveness of the Fairtrade scheme

E - As a Daily Mail article, there is a certain expectation that people have as to the content of the article. Qualities often attributed to Daily Mail articles include: Controversial, Inflammatory, Polarising and Sensational.

Analysis of a)

This text, an ActionAid webpage, showcases various educational resources available for download to be used as a learning tool. This text would be received by any reader through the ActionAid website. The intended audience for this text would likely be teachers or other educational professional, who would wish to educate their students about the work that this charity does. The purpose of this text is to allow any interested party to download the educational resources displayed on the site.
Most people who encounter this text would expect it to be in a very formal address, and to impart all the necessary information about the cause being advertised.


Analysis of b)


The second text is an online article from the Daily Mail, covering an investigation that claims to show how Fairtrade farms are perhaps not as ethical as you might think. This would be received through the Daily Mail website, and the main audience to which it would be targeted is Daily Mail readers. However, it definitely has a secondary audience of people who are interested in the Fairtrade movement and the ethics behind it. This article serves to inform people of the alleged ineffectiveness of the Fairtrade movement, and as it comes from the Daily Mail, there is a certain expectation held by anyone who reads it, as there are certain qualities that are often attributed to content produced by the Daily Mail.


Comparison of the Two Texts


The two texts are different from the outset, while both of them are online texts, the ActionAid text is a webpage, with downloadable content, whereas the Daily Mail text is an online article. The fact that they are both online does offer them some sense of similarity, but the genres of the texts themselves are too different to be likened in most ways. That said, due to that fact, the way that they could be received is almost identical, as you'd either have to receive a link to the page/article, or go through the respective website yourself to encounter either text. There are similarities too, in the potential audiences for these texts: the ActionAid page is geared towards people who wish to educate others on the cause supported by the charity, and the Daily Mail article is explicitly intended for Daily Mail readers. Despite these two very different main audiences, they both share a minor audience; those interested in the Fairtrade scheme. Both texts could be encountered by someone interested in the workings of the scheme, as they are both covering the topic. The purposes do not share much similarity on the surface; with the ActionAid page serving as more of a portal to obtaining other downloadable resources, and the Daily Mail article being used to inform the reader as to the alleged unethical nature of the Fairtrade scheme. However, as with their audiences, they share a sub-purpose, which is to educate. Both texts, either directly or indirectly, seek to teach the reader something new about the Fairtrade movement, and while these might be two different sides of the story, they are still related at the core of the matter.
To close, the expectations of the texts are very different in most ways. The ActionAid page would be expected to support the Fairtrade cause, and to present its information in a professional, easy to navigate, yet informative manner, and the Daily Mail article has attached to it the stigma and characteristics classically attached to any content produced by the newspaper (including attributes such as: sensationalist, controversial, inflammatory and polarising. Both texts seem to fulfil at least some of these expectations.

Transcription Analysis

Transcription Analysis


This conversation involved us discussing either our own jobs, or the jobs of our parents, and the responsibilities entailed within the jobs.


At the opening of my first turn speaking, I present myself as a form of agenda-setter:
"I'll talk about my parents(.)"
I said this in response to being asked what I wished to talk about.
This shows that I am comfortable enough in my speech to choose a topic and talk about it independently.




Junior: "What else am I supposed to say?"
Callum: "What would you like/"
Fin (Me): "/What responsibilities do you have?"


The most prominent point to make on that passage would be the interruption performed by myself. This interruption was not done with the intention of deliberately silencing or overriding the previous speaker. It is merely a result of the two of us attempting to answer the same question at the same time. This is a prime example of latched conversation and how it can effect the environment of a particular conversation.




Junior: "I have to sell stuff to customers and work on the tills(.)/"
Fin (Me): "/What about your parents?"
Junior: "My parents?"


This exchange again shows my tendency to interrupt, especially to push forward new ideas or ask questions. This is a good example of 'Bald Face' and its straightforward tendencies, often appearing to show little regard for niceties to get to the point quicker, however I had no intention to do so in a negative or rude way.


Fin (Me): "Who's next?"
I said this after a short pause in conversation created by the previous speaker finishing. This again shows my tendency to spur the conversation on and set agendas, even if I'm not doing so directly or explicitly.


(After a short exchange)
Fin (Me): "Alright, Fin (.) you go next"
Fin C: "Uhm (.) Okay"
After my previous attempts at getting the conversation back on track fail, I tried again. This time, to greater effect, this time getting a response by using a more 'bald-face' direct way of addressing the issue, directly referencing the person who I thought should continue the conversation

Holiday Homework Task - Gender Representation

Mccoy's 'Man Crisps' Advertisement

In this advert, the Mccoy's band of crisps are billed as being 'man crisps'. This seems to have been a decision made in an attempt to up their sales among those who consider themselves 'manly' men, as the accompanying television adverts all took place in stereotypically 'manly' situations (at a pub, etc). Another way this advertisement supports a set ideal of 'male' characteristics is through the 'masculine' graphology. The darker colours and large, bold font putting forward the popular idea of masculine strength and dominance.

Schliff Beer Advertisement - 1952

This 1950's beer advertisement is sadly not atypical of the time. It represents the woman as unintelligent, or unpractical, as she appears to have burned the food. Her husband then 'reassures' her by telling her not to worry as she 'didn't burn the beer'. This, interestingly, could be seen as a parallel to another popular female stereotype; that women 'belong in the kitchen'. While this advert was probably intended to be taken with a pinch of salt, and a sense of humour in mind, it still raises interesting points in the way of gender representation.

Bic 'for Her' Pens

Recently, Bic put out a line of pens designed specifically for women. This seems like a particularly prominent example of exploitation of gender in marketing. In terms of something as menial as a pen, there had, up until the release of these, never really been anything in the way of pens 'for her', which would indicate that such a thing is unnecessary and doesn't really need to exist. This line of pens is 'geared' towards woman based on it's ergonomic structure supposedly being better fitted to women's hands. It also furthers the idea of stereotypically 'female' colours such as pink and purple.

Class Work for 18/01/16 - Research Points on Language & Gender

Deborah Cameron's discursive approach to gender
I was unable to find any articles that focused primarily on anything called the 'discursive' approach, let alone any associated with Cameron's work and research.
What I do already know about the discursive approach is that it covers the idea that we are able to 'do' gender, in terms of how we use and perceive language. To paraphrase: 'Your genes don't determine your jeans'. Unlike the other three models (Dominance, Deficit & Difference) this model doesn't bring much new information to the table, it instead serves as a sort of counter, or compliment, to some of the other theories, in that it says that while there are inherent differences between the language of men and women, this does not mean that each gender is strictly bound to using only characteristics that apply inherently to them. Which is to say, that women are not exempt from using the theoretically 'male' language technique of interruptions.


John Gray's popular book: 'Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus'
John Gray is an American relationship counselor, lecturer and author. In 1992, his book: 'Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus' was published. This bestselling book, which sold over 50 million copies, became a slight cultural phenomenon after its release, with the author going on to release subsequent: 'books, recordings, seminars, theme vacations, a one man Broadway show, TV sitcom, workout videos, podcast, men's and ladies' apparel lines, fragrances, travel guides and even his-and-hers salad dressings.'
The book follows the idea that the most common relationship problems between men and women are a result of 'fundamental psychological differences between the sexes'
The main points covered in the concept of this book include:

• Language and communication matters more to women than it does to men.
• The goals using language of men tend to form around completing objectives or other tasks. However women's goals in language are more inter-personally focused.
• Women are more verbally skilled than men.
• Men have a competitive use of language and women have a cooperative use of language.
• Women talk about feelings, people and relationships, whereas men talk about concrete facts and material things.
• There tends to be miscommunication between women and men as a result of these parallels.  

Beattie's challenge to Zimmerman and West

The main piece of supporting research for the Dominance theory is Zimmerman and West's Interruption study, the evidence gleaned from which suggests that in mixed-sex conversations, men interrupt more frequently than women. The research states that in 11 recorded conversations between men and women, men interrupted 46 times, and women only twice.

Geoffrey Beattie, of Sheffield University disputed this research. Recreating the experiment, Beattie claims to have recorded 10 hours of conversation, and 557 interruptions. Beattie found that women and men interrupted with about equal frequency (men 34.1 / women 33.8). This seems to directly disprove the research and conclusion of Zimmerman and West.

Mary Beard's ideas about women's voices not being valued

Classic scholar Mary Beard puts forward how women aren't perceived to be as powerful as men. She believes this to have become the case as a result of the prioritization of male voices and opinions over the ages, leading to the deeply ingrained patriarchal attitude held today. She says that, as a society, when we hear a female voice "we don't hear a voice that connotes authority; or rather we haven't learned how to hear authority in it". 

The effect of written and computer-mediated forms on gendered language

Studies have indicated that gender related stereotypical patterns have been shown to exist within virtual environments, just as they exist in the real world. 

In support of Lakoff's theories, males appeared to use more authoritative statements while online, whereas females appeared to use more collaborative language.

Bibliography

http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/gender.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Are_from_Mars,_Women_Are_from_Venus

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/14/mary-beard-vocal-women-treated-freakish-androgynes

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED490640.pdf

Language Representation Analysis Task

For the task set by Halla, I chose to analyse a poem written by my Grandfather, Geoff Sutton. (which, along with some of his other poetry, can be found here: https://leopardpoetry.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/featured-poet-geoff-sutton/)
------------------------------------------------------------
ALWAYS ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN
Geoff Sutton (circa 2012)


I was looking through the window
To see what I could see
But all I saw were my two eyes
Staring back at me
Always on the outside looking in


I wandered through the wild wood
I was looking for my home
I saw you walk together
You saw me walk alone
Darkly on the outside looking in


When I saw the lighted windows
Of any homely place
They pulled the blind down as I passed
They wanted to hide the face
Of someone on the outside looking in


I went on to the sea’s side
I was searching for you there
But all I found were mermaids
Plaiting bladderwrack in their hair
Sadly on the outside looking in


I met a former lover
She said I’ve lost your name
But I know exactly where you are
You’re really just the same
You’re always on the outside looking in


I’ve been strolling through the spaces
Where people used to be
And soon I balanced the me in you
Against the you in me
So inside mirrored outside outside in


The dead live on inside us
I hear them every day
We echo each other word for word
But they haven’t much to say
They’re only on the outside looking in
----------------------------------------------------


As I see it, this poem is a reflection of the poet on several aspects of his life, ultimately determining that the feels detached, or separate from the reality that everyone else around him experiences. It also has romantic themes, or rather, themes concerning the loss of romance, reflection on old relationships, or the loss of loved ones by other means.
The first indication of the themes of this poem come in the title; 'Always on the Outside Looking In'.
The phrase itself shows how the writer feels, that he is not a part of the world that everyone else is, as if he is stood outside a window, looking in on it, unable to attain what he sees. The fact that this line, or a variation of it, is repeated at the end of each stanza shows that the writer is well aware of this, and that it haunts him in practically everything he does.

In the first stanza, the reflective nature of the poem is directly established using a literal reflection that the write sees upon looking through the window. 'But all I saw were my two eyes // Staring back at me'.
The word 'Always' used at the head of the last line shows the infinite nature of the writer's loneliness.

The second stanza has the speaker wandering through a 'wild wood' looking for his home. This may be more symbolic than literal in that the speaker may be searching for somewhere he can be considered 'inside', as opposed to being perpetually 'outside' as he is shown to be throughout.
The 'you' mentioned by the speaker seems, in the wider context of the poem, to be in reference to a past lover. This is furthered by the line 'I saw you walk together // You saw me walk alone'. The term 'together' could be seen as being a reference to a new romantic relationship. Another interpretation of this 'you', could be that of a 'lost' or deceased loved one, or perhaps even multiple people, I personally favour this interpretation.

The third stanza shows that the speaker is an outcast, and is shunned by those around him. 'They wanted to hide the face // Of someone on the outside looking in'.

In the fourth stanza, the speaker 'went to the sea's side // I was searching for you there'. This shows the lengths the speaker is willing to go to to find the unspecified 'you' mentioned throughout the poem.

The next stanza covers the speaker's encounter with a 'former lover', who say's that they have 'lost' the speaker's name. This shows that the speaker's separation reaches such an extent that even a former lover has forgotten his name.

The penultimate stanza has the speaker say: 'I've been strolling through the spaces // Where people used to be'. I see these 'spaces' as the emptiness left when a person moves on, or passes on. The following two lines: 'And soon I balanced the me in you // Against the you in me' could be interpreted as dealing with feelings and memories towards someone you've lost.

The final stanza is, for me, what clarifies the theme of the poem, as well as the state of the 'you' mentioned throughout. The line 'The dead live on inside us' when coupled with the second and third lines of the previous stanza lead me to believe that the 'you' the speaker refers to throughout the poem is a deceased loved one. The second line; 'I hear them everyday' shows that the loss of this person has severely affected the speaker to the point where it is something he thinks about everyday. The next two lines are very profound: 'We echo each other word for word // But they don't have much to say'. This, to me, seems to say that when we think of people we have lost, they are only really echoes of what we are thinking about them, and that because they are gone, they can never again truly speak independently for themselves again. The closing line comparing the dead to the way he has described himself throughout the poem makes me think that the speaker sees himself as 'dead' to the world. I get this impression because, in using this phrase in reference to the dead, he makes it seem as he too is 'on the outside looking in' and has no influence or presence in the reality most people experience.

Attitudes to Accents - Article

My article will be targeted towards Mail readers.

"Disguise Your Accent" Says Darth Vader Actor
Could your accent be preventing you from getting a job?

Judging people based on their accent is nothing new. We've all made silly, unfounded judgement about others based on the way they speak, even if we know it's wrong. In an age where it is so stigmatised to judge or treat anyone differently based on their race, sex, or appearance, especially in the employment process, then why is it that the same stigma isn't attached to accents?
According to an ITV/Comres study 28% of Britons feel 'discriminated against' due to their accents.
To complement this worrying statistic, a report by the legal firm Peninsular has revealed that a staggering 80% admit to making discriminatory decisions based on accent. With such a wealth of statistics backing up this claim, which accents are most affected?
With accents such as RP (Received Pronunciation) and Estuary English being most favourable, classically 'rougher' accents such as the Birmingham and Liverpool accents, which are widely received as hostile, unfriendly or even unintelligent.
When put on paper, in black & white, like this, the idea that it's so widely accepted that it is not a problem to discriminate based on accent seems abhorrent, yet it is still considered fine.
There is currently no legislation in place to prevent discrimination based on accent, as there is with factors such as race and gender.
While discrimination based on these characteristics may seem much worse, surely accent is just as influential. After all, everyone has one!

Nowadays it is not uncommon to see (or rather, hear) people actively attempting to soften, or altogether change, their accents in order to seem more appealing. This doesn't just go for the job market, but in general social situations. We would surely see a problem if we lived in an age where people were overtly ashamed of their race, so why should we allow it with accent, which is just as much a part of our identity as anything else?

This problem spreads throughout all industries, even high-profile jobs such as acting. When auditions were being held for the new Star Wars film in Bristol we spoke to David Prowse, the local legend best known for playing Darth Vader in the original trilogy. Shockingly, his advice to any aspiring cast member was to "disguise" their accents if they wanted any chance at a role.
So, with even the famous required to change their accents to make it, it may seem as though there is little hope for accents in the future, but that remains to be seen. In an almost subconscious response to the dilution of accents in modern times, many regional accents are making a serious resurgence, in what seems like an act of defiance against this discrimination.
Although it is still unclear, it should be interesting to see where this train of thought as a society takes us.
More importantly, what do you, the people with the accents think?

Accent & Dialect Research Task - 'Trudgill's 1974 Norwich study of the effect of class on accent'

What is it?
This study was carried out by sociolinguist academic Peter Trudgill in 1974.
The study involved Trudgill studying speech in Norwich in order to find out how and why people's way of speaking varied. He based his study on the independent variables of the gender and class of the subjects.

Who was studied?
Trudgill used zone sampling when conducting this study. He took ten speakers from the five electoral wards of Norwich, as well as ten children from two different schools. He focused on age and class sampling, with sixty subjects in total.

Results
The most commonly cited result of Trudgill's study is in probably his findings in relation to the usage of the suffix -ng.
In standard English, words ending in the consonant '-ng' such as: walking and talking, end with a 'Velar nasal' (the common -ng sound) However, Trudgill found that in Norwich these words are often pronounced as if there was just an '-n' on the end. For example: "walkin' and talkin'"

Trudgill notes that this feature is by no means exclusive to Norwich:
"Nearly everywhere in the Eng-speaking world we find this alternation between higher-class/formal ng and lower class/informal n. It goes back to the fact that in Old English (and later) there were two forms, a gerund ending in -ing (walking is good for you) and a present participle ending in -end (he was walking). The -end form was the ancestor of -n' and -ing(obviously) of -ing."

Trudgill then goes on to talk about how the two variations merged, 'fairly recently' he says, within the last 300 years.

Trudgill made several notable conclusions from his research. These include:

1. In all social classes, people were more likely to say walking when they were speaking carefully.
2. Walkin' type forms had a higher proportion in the lower classes.
3. the non-standard -in forms appeared much more often in men than in women, a trend that stayed true through all of the social classes.
4. When asked, women tended to say that they thought they had been using the standard -ing more often than they actually did.
5. Conversely, when asked, men said the opposite.

 

Trudgill's figures for social class and sex differences in the use of the standard -ing form in Norwich when people used a formal style of speaking are as follows:

Bibliography
Peter Trudgill's 1974 The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich
http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/research/norwich.html
https://prezi.com/qfd-eiu5zf51/peter-trudgill-and-the-norwich-study-1974/
https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/4-4-%E2%80%93-the-basic-variation-theorists-%E2%80%93-labov-trudgill-cheshire-millroy-bernstein/