E Magazine Article

 World Englishes refers to the variety of English in different communities.



 Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes:

Phase 1: foundation, in which Englishis brought to a territory by a colonising power.

Phase 2: exonormative stabilisation, where ‘exonormative’ means that the variety is outward-looking, in that it

is dependent on the model of English spoken by someone from the colonising power, i.e. the UK or the US, depending on who colonised the region, and is viewed as a second language (L2).

Phase 3: nativisation, in which the variety starts to have native speakers for whom it is no longer an L2.

Phase 4: endonormative stabilisation,where ‘endonormative’ means the variety has developed its own standards which are not based on the original variety of the colonisers.

Phase 5: differentiation, in which varieties form within the new variety, much as

they have in the UK.

Phonological Development

•Uses sentence-like intonations. This means they are starting to vary their pitch when they speak. They ask questions by raising intonations at the end of a phrase.

•Some echolalia- repetition of speech by a child learning to speak. They repeat it, but they don’t understand what it means so they don’t retain it.

•Can use some words in the correct context, but you cannot understand the majority of what they say.

•Omits final consonants and some initial consonants- clips the beginning or end off of a word eg. Playin’ or ‘tory. They are simplifying constant clusters. Adults also do this.

•They want to pair vowels with consonants eg. Bubble not splash.

•Accurately imitate some words

•65% of what they say is understood by the time they are two.

•By the age of two, they are starting to structure things like consonant, vowel constant instead of consonant, vowel. For example, saying ‘hot’ instead of ‘ho’

Media Text – Synthesising Skills

A guide to teach your toddler to speak- NHS resource pack

The ability to talk is a crucial skill in order to learn, socialise and develop in the world. You have the crucial role of helping your child understand the world around it before they can participate within it themselves.

There are several things you can do to encourage your child to start talking:

• Firstly, it’s important to understand that just because your baby may have uttered its first word, this does not constitute as the ability to have acquired language. Although it is progress, there are still vital developmental stages your child has to go through until they become confident with speaking.

•  Talking to your baby as if they can already understand you is a good way to help your child become aware of speech and how it works as before they can learn it, they must understand it.

•    Between the ages of one and two, your child, even though they cannot reply, will start to understand simple commands such as “put that down”. It is important to continue with these simple sentences with your baby as they are still developing their understanding and awareness of language. 

• Don't expect perfection straight away! It will be a long time down their developmental road before their pronunciation becomes clear, so there's no reason to worry if you feel that your child is struggling to talk at this stage.

• It's important to motivate your child at any given opportunity to encourage them to continue to talk. This is critical as your child will not only learn by imitation but by the feedback they receive from you as well.

Media text idea

Media text idea

Are you becoming victim of yours or other people’s language?

Do you want to stop people walking all over you?

Is the way people phrase things making you self-consciously do things you would otherwise not?

Are you being manipulated into doing things with the way people use language, do you want to get out of it?

Looking at the way deontic modal verbs and imperatives are used to try and get people to do something you want them to.

The breakdown of my analysis

1) Under theorists

2) Under particular groupings

3) Under frameworks

Things to consider

Under theorists

·         Is the imposition of instrumental power lessened depending on the power gap between the sender and receiver based on Fairclough’s ideas on power?

·          Based on Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies, what is the different context in which it is appropriate to use either positive or negative politeness?

Under particular groupings

·         How many times are either epistemic or deontic modal verbs used in the letter and what is the reasoning behind the particular grammatical choice?

·         What is the frequency of imperative commands and do they successfully do their desired action to the reader?

Under frameworks

·         What pragmatics can we infer from the letter that suggests there is a power difference between the sender and receiver?

The actual breakdown

Under theorists: politeness strategies; positive politeness; negative politeness; off the record/bald commands; instrumental power; power gaps

Under particular groupings: imperatives; modal auxiliary verbs; quantified findings

Under frameworks: pragmatics; grammar choices

Sample analysis

 “Dear __________

Thank you for contacting us about your Nestle Aero Chocolate Mousse. I am sorry to heat it was mouldy. I would not be happy if this happened to me. Please accept my apologies.

I’m sorry to say that, as it’s not one of our own-label products, I can’t deal with it myself. However, I’ve told the supplier and asked them to investigate for you. ”

Looking at my data, you can see the sender of the letter has used negative politeness to lessen the impact of the upcoming statement. “I’m sorry to hear that” disempowers the sender which is a necessary action as they are about to tell the receiver they cannot help, so by disempowering themselves it creates a smaller power gap which makes their statement seem less of a face threatening act compared to if they bluntly stated ‘I cannot help.’. Another example of how the sender disempowers themselves is by their use of contractions. By shortening ‘I am’ to ‘I’m’, it lowers the formality of the letter which suggests a more person tone. In addition, the use of the verb ‘hear’ connotes a more personal level of acknowledging this issue, as it suggest the sender cares rather than just reading it which would require the verb ‘see’.  The fact the letter also contains a typo (“heat” when meaning “hear”) suggests proper measures of checking were not enforced. From this we can infer that the sender was not taking this completely formally and that they were trying to make it more of a personal apologetic letter. This lessons the power gap between the sender and receiver. This supports my hypothesis based on Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory as the sender has considered the degrees of imposition before using the necessary politeness theories to address them.

 

Data analysis

I feel like my data is representative of my data pool as I collected it over a 12 month period which enabled me to collect a wide range of letters. However there was a slight limitation as I had to eliminate certain letters from the data pool. This was due to confidentiality reasons, so I had to remove them so that my investigation remained ethical. In spite of this, I so still feel like I was able to collect enough data to analyse. There are several examples of things I will be able to quantify from my data. For example, I could observe the frequency of when imperatives are used to assert power of a command to the reader. Furthermore, I could also look at the number of times deontic modal verbs are used to imply an obligation to do what the letter is requesting. One aspect of my data that I had not originally considered that could lead to me slightly changing the focus of my investigation is to make sure I consider certain variables that will lead to different amount of power techniques/strategies used between individual letters. These variables are the ones suggested by Brown and Levinson, how social distance, power distance and the degree of imposition has an effect on the appropriate use of linguistic strategies used to assert power. This could have an effect on my investigation as the letters I collected over a 12 month period are from different senders, or if they are from the same one they are addressed to different individuals and therefore the weight of face threats may have beeen compensated to adjust for this. The theory I have researched so far is concordant with what I predicted I would be able quantify from my data.