Q1 Analyse how text A uses language to create meanings and representations.

Text A is an interactive website about the government, politics and current affairs in the world. It is used to inform, educate and also entertain to an extent. The purpose of the website is to create an interesting way to learn about politics etc. It also uses quiz's to gain statistics on current affairs. An affordance of the website is that it is anonymous so people can give their honest opinions and this may maximize the amount of people using the website and giving honest opinions. However, a constraint is that as the questionnaire and website in general is not face to face, questions can be misinterpreted and therefore answers are not reliable. This is due to lack of paralinguistics features and being unable to explain meanings.

The website appeals to young people as it has a modern design and layout. It has been made as interactive as possible to make the topics seem more interesting. As politics is not a topic young people usually have a strong interest in, the website makes it more engaging. Some of the time teenagers under the age of 18 may feel that they can not get involved in politics but YouGov contradicts this by the first option on the page being 'Take Part'. Although this grammatically is an  imperative it is not a command as there are other options to choose from and it has no instrumental power. By giving three main options on  the main page, 'Take part, 'see results' and 'solutions' represents YouGov as a place for interacting an getting involved.

The interrogative on the home page, 'what would you like to do?' makes it seem as though you have the power although they are using constraints by only giving you three options. However they use the interrogative to meet Goffman's face needs, they have to mitigate their language as they can not talk to the audience face to face.


Q3 Compare and contrast Text A and Text B , showing ways in which they are similar and different in their language use.

The two texts have different purposes, text A is to educate and involve the audience where as text B is to inform. Text A discusses events happening in the near future e.g the Presidential elections in the USA. Text B is informing on the events that have already happened in the Bristol City Council election.

Text A uses many imperatives such as 'Take Part', 'Find Solutions' and 'login' although these are options they are grammatically commands. This is because the website is for interacting therefore they want the audience to take part and by using imperatives it encourages this. Text B however, uses mainly declaratives such as 'Labour has won a majority on Bristol City Council after gaining seven seats'. These are used to inform readers. The verb 'has' in this is used to show the event has already happened therefore they do not want the audience to do anything, they're only letting us know past events.

A similarity between the two texts is they both use statistics. In text A an example of this is 'Boris Johnson's trust on the issue of the EU has fallen by six percentage points, from 36% to 30%.'. In text B an example of statistics being used is 'Turnout was 44.76%, with 141,790 people casting a vote.' By using quantitative data it can make the information given more reliable. This is often necessary in an article like text B and I found the text A statistics on an article within the website. By using statistics the articles can make their arguments more c convincing and educate the readers.

A difference between the two texts is Text A uses interrogatives such as 'What would you like to do?' and the questionnaires. This is because text A tries to create a two way conversation by getting the reader involved in actually answering questions on the topics which adds entertainment aspects because it keeps he audience interested. Text B however does not use interrogatives as it is not trying to create a conversation, there is not even a comment section.

Overall Text A is much more interactive then Text B. It is trying to get its audience involved. YouGov uses synthetic personalisation and interesting its audience in 'boring' topics. The BBC article is more about facts and statistics.

Opinionated article about the use of work language in other contexts (hairdresser perspective)

Target Audience-The Guardian

Is work taking over your life?

Do you use your work language in other situations?

Each occupation have different Lexis.

It is common knowledge that the average worker can not go a day without talking about work but can they go without talking like they are at work? It is wrong for workers to spend their lives feeling as though they are constantly worrying about work and not being able to come out of work mode when they are in other situations.

Being a hairdresser I have a large lexical field that I use at work and I often find myself using the jargon at home. Whenever I am told to relax by family it does not help, because my mind goes to a method of straightening hair called relaxing. Is this normal?

Whilst hairdressing has improved my small talk skills, it often means that the conversation often goes to the topic of hair. I also tend to converge (make my speech similar to theirs) with my customers as it makes them feel more comfortable whilst having their hair cut. Therefore when I talk to friends or people I meet I tend to converge with them too.

I can not speak for everyone and maybe I am the only person who does this but if not then I think it is wrong that we spend our lives talking as if we are at work. Workers should be able to use their jargon at work and then cut off as soon as they leave.