Computer room lesson - Stephen Fry 'Planet Word' write up

Morning all,

There's a few tasks I'd like you all to be getting on with today, so there should be no one with nothing to do.

Before you start I am missing homework from the following people and this needs to be handed in immediately:

Megan
Mahad
Cameron
Lucy

Storm and Alice, you were absent when the work was set so please come and see me and I can talk you through the task.

Could everyone also leave a comment underneath this post with your blog URL, and I'd like you all to add each other to your reading lists. This way you can follow each other!

On Monday as a follow up to the Stephen Fry documentary on swearing, I asked you to gather some data from the conversations you have had over the past few days, and record down any instances of swearing. The data I asked for was as follows:

• What was the conversation about?
• Who swore? Was it a friend or family member?
• What swear word did they use?
• How many times did they swear
• What emotion were they trying to convey?

With this info in mind, complete the following tasks:

1. Create a titled 'Why do we Swear?' Summarise in your own words what you learned from the documentary, and discuss your own swearing habits and your views on swearing as a linguistic construct. A few hundred words will be fine.  
2. Then you should record what you found by listening more attentively to your conversations, for example did you notice that your friends or family swear often or infrequently? Essentially you need to answer the five questions in the bullet points.
3. Write up a paragraph or two on the subject of swearing - does it offend you? On Monday I asked you this: is there any word that offends you more than others? Why?

This all ties in to the topics we are exploring on, Language, the Individual and Society and Language Diversity.

Tomorrow we will be starting to look at linguistic terminology - this is absolutely essential to your study of language, so spend some time this evening reading the booklet and familiarising yourself with some of the terms.