Please spend the remainder of this lesson, and Wednesday's lesson, trying out a prospective investigation by choosing a hypothesis and collecting sample data to test it with. Do a quick analysis to see if your hypothesis is supported or contradicted and to what extent (a successful investigation could either support or contradict theory or a bit of both!). Post your findings and any issues you encountered to your blog. What would make this a valid investigation?
Sample data is a bit like the data you might really collect - you'll need to make headway in collecting your real data over the summer so this is good practice. The sample data will give you an indication now as to the problems you might encounter, what you might find, how much data you might need etc.
Here are some examples of what you could do today and Wednesday.
Think back to last year's EU Referendum (or even this year's election). You could collect Vote Leave/ party political propaganda from the internet (your real data might be leaflets). You could test a power hypothesis (e.g. instrumental/influential power) or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis by looking at how controversial subjects are referred to e.g. lexical fields, use of synonyms, euphemisms/desphemisms, adjectives etc.
If you want to look at mixed-sex discussions to test the deficit theory you could find something on YouTube to transcribe in order to test the hypothesis that women will use Lakoff's uncertainty features, to see if that was the case and suggest reasons why/why not, bringing in other theory when you discuss it. You could then decide what you actually record.
You could look at how occupation affects language by testing the hypothesis by Swales that members of a discourse community share a pragmatic understanding by looking at comments on a particular business magazine or reviews of a product for a particular business and see the kind of abbreviations, coined terms, shared references that were used.
Please post some analysis and reference to how far your hypothesis was supported/contradicted and what you learned about possible investigations.
Additionally, please read this
example investigation on the AQA website. This will show you the kind of language you need to use when writing the investigation.
If you're struggling with ideas, here is a list from Dan Clayton's English language blog of some potential investigation hypotheses.
1. A study of the language techniques used by Great British Bake-Off judges when commenting on the cakes produced in the final rounds of the competition, focusing on politeness, directness and possible gender differences.
2. An investigation into the language of female boxers during interviews to see if stereotypes about female communication are true for these women.
3. A comparison of the language used by three children of different ages when responding to the same task, focusing particularly on the stages of development they are at and their ability to use vocabulary and grammar.
4. An investigation into the ways in which different political parties and pressure groups represented the EU during the 2016 referendum across their campaign literature.
5. A study of ways in which local newspapers in 3 different areas represent their local dialect and accent in reports about varieties of English.
6. A comparison of how Maybelline adverts change over a 75-year period in their representation of female beauty.
7. An investigation into the messaging styles of 3 different age groups when using WhatsApp.
8. An investigation into the ways that the language of Twitter arguments differs from those carried out face to face.
9. An exploration of the different language techniques used by three supermarkets to represent their values to the general public on their official websites.
10. A study of the linguistic techniques used by rugby commentators in a radio commentary compared to an online commentary from the BBC website.
