A Level Essay Answers

 At the beginning of the extract, Orwell starts off with an introduction of both the scene and the protagonist. The pathetic fallacy of 'a bright cold day in April' creates a fragmented and uncomfortable tone that continues through the extract. This discomfort is further supported with a broadened version of 'the clocks were striking thirteen'. This is a paradox, as a clock cannot strike thirteen, but, by using a number considered unlucky creates a foreshadow of misfortune that may come further in the story, creating enigma, making the reader curious and want to read on. As well as the setting, the character of Winston Smith is immediately introduced as he 'slipped quickly'. The dynamic verb 'slipped' paired with the adverb of manner 'quickly' suggests something illegal about his actions, as though he is avoiding detection, creating curiosity around the character which convinces the reader to continue reading. Further in the extract, a large post...

 The writer uses language in the 'How Americanisms are killing the English Language newspaper article to create meanings and representations in a range of ways including writing in a conversational manner and representing Americans in a negative light. The winter presents the newspaper article as more of a conversation, shown by a use of varying sentence lengths to make the article more casual. This informality represents the writer as trying to relate to his target audience with the conversational language such as 'so it turns out' and the use of speaking in first person. The writer incles sophisticated language to appeal to his target audience with 'cantankerous' and 'polemic' that people interested in the article are likely to use in their day to day vocabulary. Also, by beginning their sentences with 'So' and 'Because', the writer is generating even more of a conventional and casual tone to their article and it creates an impression of ta...

 An occupational group, which are categories of people's jobs, has impacts on language used, especially in and around the workplace. There are a variety of things that socially impact the language used within occupation such as that used between colleagues or between working and client. As well as this, occupational groups have helped evolve the language as a whole too. Dependant on the occupational group one is in workers use more informal language and conversation topics which allow them to form stronger relationships and to work better together. Within the medical field, a certain jargon is used between the doctors, of which the majority is dark humour such as 'code red', meaning blood and 'ash-cash'. These terns are used to keep conversations light and to avoid the more morbid reality of working in a hospital. Fox found that using this kind of language allowed doctors to communicate better with each other as well as creating humour and found it helped with moral...

 In the English Language, there is an idea of bias against women which against and that the English Language doesn't work I their favour. It presents the idea that men have a better standing in Language and many theorists agree and challenge this statement.  The Deficit model suggests that women speak a 'lesser' version of the English Language suggested by Robin Lakoff (1975). Lakoff believed that women's language was weaker and she discovered this through her research of conversations where women used certain speech devices whilst speaking such as fillers (e.g. 'like'), backchannelling (e.g. 'yeah', 'hmm') and empty adjectives. This softer language and hesitance whilst speaking suggests that in the English Language women are found to be passive and not to speak outwardly or too confidently which may have led to less confidence whilst speaking and in general. This presents the bias in the language as it represents women as lesser and now able to ...

  Many theorists have debated the characterisation that miscommunication, the failure to communicate adequately, has on language interactions between men and women. In society, miscommunication occurs through speech where certain characteristics men and women use in their language can be interpreted differently by the opposite gender .  Due to socialisation, men and women  want to speak about contrasting topics and this can cause accidental miscommunication leading to many theories evolving surrounding it.   Robin Lakoff (1975) developed the deficit model and believed women spoke a 'lesser' version of the English Language and that men's language is more desirable. Her list of women's language features, including tag questions  (isn't it?), hedging (perhaps) and intensifiers (so), create confusion that makes men feel as though a woman is attempting to manipulate him by delaying her request when in fact, according to Lakoff, she is simply looking for support and t...

  In the transcription, there are a large group of females talking about a range of topics, the focus being on one girl’s house. The speakers frequently speak over each other, both interrupting and overlapping in order to get their points heard, suggesting that there are multiple dominant personalities in the group.  It could also suggest that  the speakers don’t have a very good co-operative relationship and cannot clearly converse without overlapping each other. This doesn’t conform to many theorists that suggest that women speak less and do not contribute as much to conversations, deciding instead to simply use back channelling  (e.g. Speaker 2 – line 32, Speaker 9 – line 65)   and paralinguistic features. Robin Lakoff  (1973) , a professor of linguistics, argues that women do not speak as often as men due to a lack of confidence and being less certain of themselves. This isn’t represented in the transcript because the c onversation is completely dominat...