An opinion article discussing the idea that women should change their language

Intended audience: women of all ages
Guardian post

Should women change their language? 

It has always been suggested that women are lower than men and the only way to get on top is to change, change the way you talk, change the way you dress, to be/act more masculine.

There are many people who believe that the only way women will ever be able to gain power is by changing their language, an example of this would be Margaret Thatcher. The former Prime Minister had lessons to deepen her voice, a key reason for this may have been because a deeper tone may have more connotations towards power and dominance (which is needed when you are running a country) whereas if she had a feminine voice she may not have been respected or taken seriously. Being a woman I think it is absurd that people believe we should change and that without changes, in things such as language, we are being held back from our full potential. A well know linguist called Robin Lakoff made a very strong assumption on the trends in the spoken language of a female. These were things such as polite forms, hedges (eg. maybe, could and feel) and use question intonation in declarative statements. These all could suggest that a woman's language is weaker than a male's because they are polite and can sometimes come across unsure or though they need reassurance. This idea is supported by a linguist expert Dr Judith Baxter, who found that found that in board rooms women were adjusting their language so impact their colleagues in a good way, they were second guessing their language. This lead to them using phrases such as "I am probably speaking out of tum, but...", this comes across as them lowering their social power which could seem weak or as suggested by Dr Baxter it could be a way of manipulating those around them.

On the other hand changing your language, in an effective way, may not be too bad if it allows you to reach your full potential instead of letting the use of tag questions be the reason you do not get the manager job. So although I don't agree that you should have to change to get where you want to go it does work. If you were more straightforward in your speech you may have the ability to be more respected that if you were turning commands into questions.

In this generation, it may take a woman changing her language to allow her to climb social ladders but I do hope that one day a woman will be able to reach her best without changing her language.

Analysing and comparing

Part A) Text A is a website, YouGov is to inform the public about the government affairs and seek the public's opinions on such topics. The purpose of the website could be to engage people who are part of the younger generation with the use of affordances such as the line that goes down the whole page and links all the information together. This 'tech savvy' website may attract those who are interested in finding out a range of information within one website. However, there are slight constraints with the fact that those under 18 may not feel like they can take part in the website due to voting age being 18. This may mean that the websites ultimate aim to get clicks on their website may not be achieved due to it not appealing to those of all ages.

The website starts off with an interrogative asking the audience 'what would you like to do?', this could suggest that they are trying to mitigate their language due to the fact that the person has had to come to a website to find out the information they need. This could be seen as face threatening as they cannot do it face to face, so they have mitigated their language to show the audience that  they are respect and important. It is an interrogative that offers you options and allows you to make your own decisions.

Part B) Text B  is on the BBC online news page informing people about the recent mayor elections.

Compare) Text A is from the YouGov website and it talks about what is available within the website and gives you lots of options to search around and find what might interest you. The purpose is to not only inform but to educate both the reader and the creators of the website. Text B is from the BBC online news page and it is being very concise about the results of the mayor elections and focusing on the Labor party. The purpose of the article is to inform people about the election results in a way that is going to get them more clicks as it is an online article.

As text B is the BBC people would expect it to be to be very formal yet they use hypercorrect grammar, such as saying 70 instead of seventy. However, this may just be to help make the text much easier to read and it goes with the almost summary style that it is written in. Text A is written quite formally despite it being short sentaces that are straight to the point. The formality would be almost expected as it is a political website however they put it in a way that may appeal to young people. This being that they split the paragraph so it is much shorter and does not seem like it would be as much effort to read as a whole paragraph.

The first text focuses more on the synthetic personalisation whereas the second text is all about the statistics. The first text uses the repetition of 'you' and focuses on getting you interactive with the website which could show that they are looking for more than clicks, they are there to help and the most interesting way they can and this is through things such as questionnaires.

Opinionated article about the use of work language in other contexts

Target audience- The Guardian

All Day, Everyday

Has the language you use at work started to follow you home? Have you been talking in a professional manner to your friends?

It is very often that people use the same language from work in their social life, this should stop. It is really not a healthy thing to use the language from your occupation outside of that area due to it may reduce the love you have for your career and confuse others that are not within that discourse community. This could happen as if you talk as though you are at work it will probably start to feel as though you are always at work and you can't relax. Nobody likes to feel they are working all the time.

Associating work with home can make life stressful.

As a lawyer, I very frequently use language from my profession in my social life. Cases are always going around in my head and this very frequently makes me tired of the job. Recently I have been noticing it more and how it is affecting my life. In work, I mostly use bald on-record as this fits the type of work I do however when I leave and use it in other contexts, such as the supermarket, I just come across rude.

Having occupational power does not mean that you will have social power and you may not notice that you are not in the same position of one hierarchy as the other. This could lead to awkward situations or people feeling that their face needs are being threatened. There are politeness strategies laid out by Goffman to protect the face needs from being threatened. So if at work you are a boss and at the top of your occupational hierarchy then you may use bald on record however outside of work you could be very low on the social hierarchy and so using a more direct way of talk may be seen as rude.

Bringing your work language to other aspects of your life could be a good thing as you may influence those around you do broaden their vocabulary and knowledge. However, they may not enjoy this, it could make people feel trapped. I definitely would not enjoy if my brother continuously used language from the lexical field of lift engineering it would make everything so much harder. The worst thing about taking your work language into other contexts is the effect it could have on the children that are around it. I believe the use of occupational language could have a bad effect on children as the use could make them feel as though they are in a place of work at home. For example, in care homes having words such as office and staffroom. They are cold and impersonal which is not good for the development of the child they may always feel as though their home is not their home.

Work should stay in work. Don't negatively affect yourself and those around you because you cannot separate occupational language from social language.

Does you accent and dialect really matter?

It is very often that people will change their accent or dialect when they talk, whether it be to fit in or to stand out.

Travelling has become a more frequent thing to do, this increase has meant that people with different dialects mix. The mix of different dialects allows people to pick up words which they would not normally use. The more people the more language is swapping and people are using dialect from other regions, this is causing dialect levelling, the swapping of dialects could create dialects to become more similar. We are influenced in many different ways to use other regional dialects and accents. These influences come from books, TV, music, films, etc... This creates a wider range of accents and dialects mixing because these different media's do not require you to leave your region or even house. You get the experience of hearing multiple dialects within TV shows or music. 

How people would like to be perceived has a big effect on how they talk. People are more likely to converge their language to those around them so they are not different, they would like to fit in. Although this may not seem true, it is actually a very frequent thing. People may also diverge their language to make as different from others as they can, like in Martha's Vineyard study (by Labov), this showed that the locals strengthened their pronunciations to make themselves an independent social group that are superior to the tourists. This suggests that people in Martha's Vineyard see that them changing their language is making their status higher than the tourists, so they are seen as more superior. Talking in the same way as those close to you could allow you to feel closer to them and them to accept you more.  There was a study done in 1987 in Belfast, it found that men lived in a much more close-knit friendship than women which showed that they spoke the same way within the group (linguistically homogenous) and due to peer pressure used more non-standard English when talking.  

It is common for people to judge a person on their accent or dialect. Should your accent matter? Should the words you use contribute to how someone sees you? People are still discriminated against for how they speak, but does that really mean they should change? 

Accents should not matter or affect how people see you, but they do. There have been multiple studies that show how accent effect what people think. 

Giles 1970's matched guise technique: People evaluated their personal qualities base on their voices. However what they didn't know that it was the same person doing different accents, this found that people were most impressed with received pronunciation and least impressed with the Birmingham accent. 

Giles capital punishment study: found that people preferred accents which are like their own.

People also judge how smart someone is due to their accent, received pronunciation is the most common to hear when watching the news as people perceive it as sounding smart. Berstein and Labov disproved this idea though as they did a study which found that there was not a clear link between intelligence and spoken language. This study shows that even though people may be prejudice towards certain accents, how they speak actually has nothing to do with how smart they are or how well they will do compared to those who have an accent that is associated with being smart.

Gender speech

Taylor Swift was asked a question in an interview "But you only ever write songs about your ex-boyfriends" and she smartly replied "I think, frankly that's a very sexist angle to take. No one says that about Ed Sheeran. No one says that about Bruno Mars. They're all writing songs about their exes, their current girlfriend, their love life. And no one raises a red flag there".

Is sexism still alive? 

Assumptions are always being made about the differences between and men and women, how they speak differently, how they are treated or should be treated, etc... Even being addressed has sexism in it, most people may not know or acknowledge it but being called Mrs creates the idea that you are unavailable yet Miss suggest they are young, inexperienced. When speaking to people there should be more care with how you address them as assuming a gender or calling a woman Mrs when they prefer Ms is such a simple thing but it may mean more to someone else. Language shows an old attitude to gender, most forms show men to be superior to women. 
Children are given titles when they are born, whether it be Miss for a girl and Master for a boy, these titles then change. For a boy Master will change to Mr when they turn 16, on the other hand, girls get the title Miss until they are married, at that point they become Mrs. Why is it that a man's title will change when they become old enough for Mister but a woman has to wait till she is married for a change in title? The negative connotations that are related to Miss maybe due to the word being a contraction of mistress, most people associate the word mistress to be someone who is a girlfriend of a man that is married. The use of Ms means that people may be less prejudice as it does not indicate their marital status before their name. The use of Ms almost removes the idea that a man is getting power over the women when they marry, her title will not change neither will his.
These titles may suggest that men are more dominant and have more power whereas women are lower than men. A linguist called Deborah Tannen represented her ideas of men and women's language in what each gender looks for in a conversation. The six contrasts are status vs support, independence vs intimacy, advice vs understanding, information vs feelings, orders vs proposals and conflict vs compromise. According to these contracts men want the upper hand to stop others from dominating them,they are concerned with their status and want to be independent, they look for solutions to problems and use or want direct imperatives. Whereas women want confirmation and support of their ideas, seek understanding or sympathy, elaborate and talk more about feelings and don't use imperatives, they are more likely to suggest something rather than say a command.
It may matter you, it may not, but it could matter to someone else. 

Does gender play a part in our language changing?

Political correctness has improved over time as people have started to use gender neutral terms where there are gender pairs; for example, policeman is police officer and fireman is firefighters. This allows jobs to be seen more gender neutral rather than it just being a male occupation or a female occupation. Despite language changing in gender pairs it is not the same when it comes to the connotations of certain titles or marked words. Words such as 'spinster' and 'Mistress' have strong semantic derogation. The need for things to become gender neutral seem to be very strong in this generation, people tend to get offended easily and that may be a reason why language is changing.

The search for a gender neutral pronoun started in the 18th century. There have been many attempts to create the perfect gender neutral pronouns but none have agreed on. It would be a massive change to language if one if found that people agree on.

A gender neutral pronoun is a pronoun that is not associated with a particular gender, an exapmle would be 'they'. The probably with 'they' is that it is a plural pronoun, so, when it is used as a singular pronoun it is not grammatically correct. The need for a gender neutral pronoun shows how people are trying to change/improve language so that everyone is comfortable with using the language. Creating a gender neutral pronoun would allow those who do no not like to assume gender, and so write 'he/she', to have a word that doesnt look as untidy.

Zimmerman and West did a study with mixed-sex conversation and they found that men interrupted more than women, this is supportive of the stereotype that men are more dominant which suggests that there was still gender inequality.

There have been many questions on whether men and women speak diffrently, multiple linguists have tried to show the diffrences. For example, Lakoff published assumptions of womens and mens language. 

How are meanings and representations communicated in the two texts?

A) Action aid website
The information from action aid is shown through a website, the charity is showing Fairtrade resources. It shows games, stories and presentations that teachers could use to help inform their classes on what is happening. It has a simple lay out which is easy to navigate that allows the audience to easily look around the website and learn more. The teacher would probably already know about the subject and so would know where to look to find what they need. However, they would need it to be simple and have good explanations to be able to hook those they are teaching it too. It is a engaging website with its multiple links and different types of resources that allow them to teach in multiple different ways. The websites whole purpose would be to inform people about what is happening (problems) and what is being done; it is explaining how people are living, giving those who don't understand an incite into what it is like to live like they do.


B)Mail online website
The second text is produced through an online news paper, the article uses multiple quotes from a report that had been produced about Fair trade. To come across this post the audience (those who support charities and are looking for news on them)  would probably be having to look for the subject or they could have been just a frequent online mail reader which means the header does not necessarily need to hook the reader as they are already interested in the subject. The very factual news article is exposing the truth about a very big charity that most people know; it is informing and discussing the problems that have been truly happening with the charity, Fair trade. When reading the article the audience is going to be shocked as this is a very well known charity and to find out that they are not actually helping is going to be surprising. With out reading the header they could be assuming they are going to be reading about how great the charity is doing. There is a summary of the text at the start in bullet points which may be to help people understand what is going to be spoken about to help make sure they stay on the page and read the article, it is allowing them to get a feeling of what the article is putting across.

C) compare
The Mail Online website says 'fails to help poor farmers' in its headline. The actionaid teaching resources says 'Uncover to your class how Fairtrade is helping break the cycle' in their sub-heading, so immediately the websites are showing two diffrent sides of the same subject. The verb 'helping' used by Actionaid is suggesting that what they are doing is for the best, to help those in need, it is spredding postitivity. Whereas the Mail Online uses the noun 'fails' this is implying that the charity is a falure, they have not done what they set to do.They are almost exposing the charity in a way that is not saying they are not helping anyone but suggesting that they are not doing the best in some areas (Uganda and Ethiopia) and have let people down.

The two text are presented in two completely diffrent ways due to one being a teaching resource and the other being a article. However, both the website touch on the topic about age. In the Mail Online article it talks about child labour and how the majority of children said 'they had been working since the age of 10, or even younger' when asked; the topic follows an image of bad working conditions above it. On the Actionaid website it says 'Meet 9-year-old Thais from Brazil, and find out what she and her grand mother do for a living', this is meeting exactly what the Mail Online said about children working before they are ten years old. This quote is matched with a picture of a young girl smiling while handling potatos this could be implying that although she is very young she is enjoying her work and it is not a horrible thing to do, unlike the picture on the Mail Online website.