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Wednesday 23 May 2018

Gender essay plan

Evaluate the notion that male language is superior and more authoritative when compared to female language. (30 marks)

Introduction:
Agree that male language is more authorative, supported by Lakoff, Tannen, Fishman. On the other hand, Janet Hyde and O'barr and atkins believe that gender isnt the main factor that determines our language, instead contextual factors such as age and social class.

  Para 1:
Zimmerman and West
·         Dominance theory. They were investigating the presence of uncooperative interactive features, such as interruptions, in conversation. They wanted to find out whether the gender of conversation participants affected the use of these features. they found male language dominated female language. Hilton

Para 2:
Pamela Fishman
·         She believes that women use hedges, polite forums and question tags to help continue a conversation and get everyone involved. She calls this “conversational shitwork” to hold the conversation together and keep it flowing.


Para 3:
Robin Lakoff
·         Her research (1975) is known as the `deficit approach`, this explains that male language is stronger, prestigious and more desirable than a woman’s. It also informs you that men speak more than women.

Para 4:
O'Barr and Atkin's 
Disputed Lakoff, said that it was males and females low of social status who used these linguistic features.

Para 5:
Janet Hyde: 
Believed that there was more similarties between male and female language. differences may come down to contextual factors such as age, social group, or occupation etc.


Conclusion:
Many theorists would support the view that male language is supierior and more authorative. however it is also clear that the most modern theorist Janet Hyde does suggest it isnt no longer the case and perhaps it is changing. Yet no one can ignore the fact that when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister in the 1980s, she took lessons in language to sound less "like a female".





Thursday 19 April 2018

Types of nouns

There are several different types of noun, as follows:

Common noun

A common noun is a noun that refers to people or things in general, e.g. boy, country, bridge, city, birth, day, happiness.

Proper noun

A proper noun is a name that identifies a particular person, place, or thing, e.g. Steven, Africa, London, Monday. In written English, proper nouns begin with capital letters.

Concrete noun

A concrete noun is a noun which refers to people and to things that exist physically and can be seen, touched, smelled, heard, or tasted. Examples include dog, building, coffee, tree, rain, beach, tune.

Abstract noun

An abstract noun is a noun which refers to ideas, qualities, and conditions - things that cannot be seen or touched and things which have no physical reality, e.g. truth, danger, happiness, time, friendship, humour.

Collective nouns

Collective nouns refer to groups of people or things, e.g. audience, family, government, team, jury. In American English, most collective nouns are treated as singular, with a singular verb:
The whole family was at the table.
In British English, the preceding sentence would be correct, but it would also be correct to treat the collective noun as a plural, with a plural verb:
The whole family were at the table.
 For more information about this, see matching verbs to collective nouns.
 A noun may belong to more than one category. For example, happiness is both a common noun and an abstract noun, while Mount Everest is both a concrete noun and a proper noun.

Count and mass nouns

Nouns can be either countable or uncountableCountable nouns (or count nouns) are those that refer to something that can be counted. Uncountable nouns (or mass nouns) do not typically refer to things that can be counted and so they do not regularly have a plural form

Thursday 12 April 2018

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/09/investing-jobs-women-gender-pay-gap

Her name is as big as the title, shes just as important, shes a public figure.
Links to over sites, features of online articles
n opinion piece with the sub heading gender, probably more aimed at middle class women, as sandi is fanour for being on middle class shows such as the great briting bake off, her fans might be reading.

The gender pay gap isn't the half of it: our economy runs on women's unpaid work

The title is a compound sentence, two mains causes with a colon. Colloquial use of the phrase ‘isnt the half of it’. Adds to an informal register. Humour. Shes an enntertainer, First clause demonstrates this. Second clause, present simple tense, serious seems more factual. 


I call it our ‘grossly undervalued domestic product’: the caring, support and childcare women do without seeing a penny. It’s time we recognised it

First person pronoun ‘i call it’ which distances herself from the audience. Establishes it as an opinion pievce. Field specific lexis “grossly undervalued fomestic product” her own phrase. Shes representing the unpayed childcare done by women in a negative light. 



Mention graphological features such as the photo graph, clearlry talking about britain as the currency of the money is sterling

Irecently delivered the annual Adam Smith lecture in Kirkcaldy, Fife. It was the first time a woman had been trusted to give this economics lecture all by herself. As a marvellous bagpiper led the way, it struck me that this might be my glass cliff moment. Because, let’s face it, I’m not an obvious choice for such a task. But with men now making up two-thirds of economics students, all but one of the Nobel prizewinners for economics having been a man and every single British chancellor of the exchequer somehow having been required to be a boy, then finding a woman might have been tricky.

Use of the first person “I” in large writing myane to show how her opinion is important. Mentions her “Adam Smith lecture” giving herself instrumental power, link to the lecture if you dont know what it is. The verb “trusted” is to show how women arent trusted and maybe is looking back to previous experiences. “All by herself” patronising tone, similar to when a child manages to do somthimg by itself. “Glass cliff moment” extended metaphor. Mix of opinion and fact, no female chamcellor of the exchequer is a fact. Uses features of spoken language “lets face it”. Mixes a formal and informal register as well as high frequency and low frequency lexis and fact and opinion without it being too obvious. 


By happy coincidence, I chose as the subject of my lecture women’s exclusion from the formal economy. Or as I like to call it, our grossly undervalued domestic product (GUDP). Never, as it happens, has this been more relevant than now, as the full horror of the gender pay gap is revealed. I have so enjoyed watching the debate unfold. Highlights include accusing women of conflating pay discrimination with the gender pay gap – silly women! – though nobody benefits more from this apparent “confusion” than the companies evading legal action.

Uses the acronym “GUDP” as she already used this phrase. Pre modified Noun “horror” gives a clear representation that its serious and her opinion of it is highly negative. Adobts the voice of the patreorical society, exclamative syntax  “silly women! For humour and irony. The phrase “apparent “confusion””, meaning its not confusing atall all and she believes the answer is obvious. 

Better still are those bemoaning the lack of explanatory data, while dogmatically concluding that the gender pay gap has nothing to do with discrimination in hiring or promotion decisions. And my absolute favourite – let’s not forget the pro-choicers. These are the three women on this planet whose privilege and adoration of unfettered capitalism leads them to infer that women simply choose to work for less, and guarantees them a slot on every talkshow “in the interest of balance”.

Uses the adverb “dogmatically” to state how the counter arguments ideologically driven. present simple “women simply choose to work for less” is an opinion disguised as a fact. No opinion about gender inequality, she states how its true. 

But the pay gap isn’t the choice of women. It is both a cause and consequence of gender inequality. In many respects it is more important than pay discrimination because it shines a light on the deep structural inequalities in every part of our society and economy.

Metaphor “shines a light” to show how it needs to be heard and everyone needs to be aware.

On my way to the lecture, I stopped in at the Cottage Family Centre in Kirkcaldy. This wonderful community service was set up by a group of local parents in 1987 and provides a lifeline to poor families in the area. In 2016 its Christmas appeal provided food and presents to 300 children. By last year as many as 800 children and families needed its help. When they recently learned that they had lost one of their funding streams, the extraordinary women who work there offered to take a pay cut so that their community wouldn’t suffer.

Uses the adjective “wonderful” to describe the community service. Sandi states how the women are extradinary as they take a pay cut to help better people, represents these women as heros. 

The Cottage is a stark reminder that poverty is gendered. Most of the people it serves are women and children who have been first in the line of fire for austerity. Because, as Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality party, has repeatedly pointed out, “while tax cuts are benefiting men, benefit cuts are harming women”. Research carried out by the House of Commons library in 2017 revealed that it is women who have borne 86% of the burden of austerity since 2010. The brilliant staff who work at the Cottage are overwhelmingly female, no doubt encouraged by an education system that says caring jobs are for women, and the scarcity of flexible working in other sectors.

Instrumental power, shes sophie is the leader of the womens equality party. Adverb “repeatedly” , informal verb phrase “pointed out” shows how no one listens and they have to keep saying it. House of commons library 2017, very relevent and powerful. Semantic field of instrumental power. Opinion pieces uses evidence to add authoroity with stats.












Wednesday 11 April 2018

Articles to summarise

Summarise

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/09/young-people-cheated-skills-jobs-brexit-education

 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/09/about-the-boys-tim-winton-on-how-toxic-masculinity-is-shackling-men-to-misogyny

Word of mouth to listen to

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09yddxh

Wednesday 24 January 2018

The 3 Different Degrees of Adjectives:


The three degrees of an adjective are positive, comparative and superlative. When you use them depends on how many things you’re talking about:
  • A positive adjective is a normal adjective that’s used to describe, not compare. For example: “This is good soup” and “I am funny.”
  • A comparative adjective is an adjective that’s used to compare two things (and is often followed by the word than). For example: “This soup is better than that salad” or “I am funnier than her.”
  • A superlative adjective is an adjective that’s used to compare three or more things, or to state that something is the most. For example: “This is the best soup in the whole world” or “I am the funniest out of all the other bloggers.”
7 Types of English Adjectives That Every English Language Student Must Know:

  1. A descriptive adjective is probably what you think of when you hear the word “adjective.” Descriptive adjectives are used to describe nouns and pronouns.


e.g. beautiful, silly, tall, annoying, loud and nice


https://www.fluentu.com/blog/english/english-adjectives/











definite/indefinite articles

Articles
There are only three articles in the English language: a, an and the. Articles can be difficult for English learners to use correctly because many languages don’t have them (or don’t use them in the same way).
Although articles are their own part of speech, they’re technically also adjectives! Articles are used to describe which noun you’re referring to. Maybe thinking of them as adjectives will help you learn which one to use:
  • A — A singular, general item.
  • An — A singular, general item. Use this before words that start with a vowel.
  • The — A singular or plural, specific item.
Simply put, when you’re talking about something general, use a and an. When you’re speaking about something specific, use the. “A cat” can be used to refer to any cat in the world. “The cat” is used to refer to the cat that just walked by.