June 2010 Exemplar script from AQA (word processed)

My first grouping is of texts D and E as these texts are aimed at a very specific audience. This is evident in the language used in each text. Text D, the opening of a children’s book is ideally suited to its audience of young boys. Children are made to identify with the characters as the graphology depicts them as pirates, something which many young boys aspire to be. This is reinforced with colloquials such as ‘pong’, and ‘aar’, as these terms are both associated with pirates and merit some form of covert prestige among young schoolboys, as at young school age most boys consider the use of non-standard English to be ‘cool’. Another aspect which appeals appeals to young boys would be the sustained use of alliteration throughout the passage, examples of which are ‘rough and rascally’, ‘Dangerous Dan’ and ‘The Ragscallions Return’. Children would find this phonetically pleasing and this would maintain interest, as would the deictic reference in ‘she made me take a bath’- the child may associate this ‘she’ with their mother due to the implied directness to ‘take a bath’ and ‘eat healthy foods’, and feel compelled to continue reading to discover whether it is the pirates’ mother that make them do these things, or merely through sympathy and identification with their plight. The inclusion of idiomatic phrase ‘down your sorrows’ would also appeal to the audience as they may have heard older role models-such as their father- say this, and the encounter of the expression being used by a character with whom they identify would make them relate to the text. Text E has a rather different but equally specific target audience, which appears to be adults with a keen interest in bird watching, not least because someone without this interest would seldom come across this text, an extract from a birdwatcher’s pocket guide. An example of language suited to this audience is the employment of ellipsis in passages such as ‘ebullient, restless, noisy bird’ and ‘jerky…woodpecker-like flight’, presumably because the pronoun of the passage is obvious to the reader (nuthatch) and so there is as little as possible to read when the birdwatcher is trying to decipher whether the bird is a nuthatch before it flies away. Also, specialist lexis is included in the use of ‘underparts’ and ‘deciduous’ to further engage an audience with knowledge of the subject.

My second grouping is of texts C and A, as these texts employ linguistic methods to effectively sustain the interest of those reading. Both texts are advertisements. Text A primarily sustains interest by relying heavily on graphology. Superficially, the unusual font and bold colour initially attracts attention. Once this is associated with the writing of children, the attention of parents will be held, which is effective as these would appear to be the target audience.  The assiduousness with which the message appears to have been copied by children further sustains attention as the parent imagines a child copying and adult talking on the phone whilst crossing the road with the same meticulous nature. Text C uses idiomatic language and sophisticated adjectives to maintain attention. Adults especially take note of the advert as it uses phrases and idioms with which they are familiar in order to sell them a product, such as ‘sit’, ‘lay dowm’ and ‘roll over’,’pining’ and ‘’make tracks’. In contrast to Text A’s heavy use of graphology, text C uses small images to draw the attention of homeowners interested in a new floor, and then uses sophisticated, specialist lexis such as ‘stylish’, ‘gleaming’ and ’15 year guarantee’ to further persuade the audience to visit Ikea.

My final grouping is of texts B and F, which have many features to compare as they are both transcripts. Text B , an excerpt from the television comedy ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’ is aimed at a non-specific audience, and so emplys comedy features to be understood by a general adult audience. Perhaps the most notable of these is in the pragmatics behind the misunderstanding of the idiom ‘there’s a bullet with your name on it’ by Baldrick. Coupled with this is Blackadder’s utterance of ‘shame’ after Baldrick’s declaration ‘…I won’t ever shoot myself’. The general audience would identify with this as they most probably would want a colleague as dense as Baldrick to shoot themselves too. This creates empathy. Also, the lack of non-fluency features indicates the extract to be planned whereas Text F is spontaneous. The continual use of discourse markers such as ‘right’ and ‘ok’ by both participants of the conversation in Text F suggests that both ‘Mum’ and ‘Jamie’ have equal control and influence over the discourse. Many more features of the speech are included in Text F than Text B, such as the empty adjectives used by Mum like ‘glorious’ and ‘beautiful’ and subject specific lexis like ‘complications’ and ‘compost’ by Jamie which support among others Lakoff’s theory in language study. Also, it is shown by the overlap of ‘change’ and ‘we get’ the laughter, and conversation members being unconcerned about filling pauses that these two people are relaxed in each other’s company, and this is a personal text. Deictic references like ‘those’ also demonstrate that it is context-bound.

 

AO1: very articulate exploration with salient features identified, very systematic

A02: interesting data led groups with clear aware of complexities some originally of interpretation and tentativeness

A03: very perceptive exploration of context