Jennifer Lawrence - Why Do I Make Less Than My Male Co-Stars?

What are the important contextual features of this text?
The context of this piece is Jennifer Lawrence talking about how after the sony incident she found out that she earned significantly less that her male co-star workers even though she had a leading role as well as them. She shows how she extremely disagrees with the situation and suggests how some things girls say can come across completely different to if a man said it. For example, asking to be payed more could come across as 'spoiled' or 'difficult' but a man would not have to worry about this. Showing aggression in her text as she explains that men and women should get payed the same and have equal job opportunities.

Comment on the 'male' and 'female' language features in this text. What is their effect on the reader?
Jennifer Lawrence uses both 'male' and 'female' language features frequently in her text. The first thing i noticed was she swears multiple times and according to Lakoff's ideas that support the deficit model it is more of a male thing to swear loads in stead of things like empty adjectives which she suggested is more likely for a woman. Even though she does use 'male' language features she also uses 'women' language feature too. Throughout the whole text she lack humour which Lakoff says is a tendency in women's language features. The lack of humour however could just be because of the subject as it is obvious that she is not happy and is trying to prove a point. She also goes towards the male suggestions by Tannen and the difference model, Jennifer Lawrence is showing more conflict within her writing that compromise which is suggested as what women usually do. This is shown as the text comes across as pretty aggressive rather than a calm suggestive tone which you would expect if you believed Tannen's pairs. The use of both 'male' and 'female' features could show that she is trying to reach out to both sexes, the use of both features could relate to the reader and so it could allow them too understand and relate more.

Do you agree with her conclusion? Justify your answer making reference to the language and gender theories we have looked at in class.
I do agree with Jennifer's points as they are very true and i like that she has spoken in a way that agrees with Deborah Cameron's point on how men and women speaking differently is a myth. It is obvious that Jennifer has used both 'male' and 'female' language features according to Lakoff and Tannen's theories. In this text it is going against most of the ideas said by Tannen and Lakoff, For example, Tannen put the way men and women talk into pairs and one of them is 'orders and proposals'. The text goes against this suggestion as it is obvious that Jennifer Lawrence isn't just suggesting that this is happen and proposing we should do something about it, no, she is stating that its happening and ordering that people think about it.

Dialects are changing

Dialect is language variety in regions, a certain vocabulary and grammar belonging to a particular area (not to be confused with accents). However, dialects are changing, peoples distinct dialects are taking features of other dialect/sociolects. The local variations becoming less distinct is called dialect levelling. There are multiple reasons for dialect levelling, for example geographical mobility, social mobility, economic change and the children/young people of today. 

How much do you use technology? Did you know technology is also a cause for dialect levelling? When doing daily things such as watching youtube or a TV show you are coming into contact with other types of dialect. Listening to podcasts or the radio and even playing music is increasing your interaction with other speech varieties. These social medias are allowing people from young ages to grow up hear other dialects which they could adapt to their own changing it without even fully knowing that they are doing it. 

Other reasons for the change could be that the young people/children of today are conforming to peer pressure. If one person in a group of five talks differently than the rest they are more likely to change how they talk, they'll want to fit in meaning they lose some of their original dialect thats been adopted from parents.

Geographical mobility is people moving around and this allow people to come in contact with other types of dialect. Its a very popular thing to do nowadays; this allows a greater contact of language communities, meaning that it is easier to pick up parts of others dialect. People moving from one end of Great Britain to the other is introducing two different dialect. An example of this would be a person moving from London to Liverpool. Another is social mobility, this is when people moving within social statuses. A study in 1964 by Trudgill found that working class people had the stronger dialects. Even though language has always changed over time the mass in movement between countries and regions within country has created a faster movement of this development.