Writing an Introduction

Morning all,

Today you will be writing a draft version of your introduction to your investigation. This needs to be about 300 words and needs to be finished by the end of the lesson and emailed to me. So essentially, you have 90 mins to write 300 words - should be easy!

This is an essential part of your investigation; a good introduction will orientate the marker and show off what you know in a concise, academic way.

Planning:

• Why you chose the theory area and data - what makes this an interesting and useful investigation? (remember to be academic and not overly enthusiastic)

• A summary of what you know about that theory area including a range of theories and how they connect/contrast

• What you have focused in on from all of those and why

• Therefore what your hypothesis is

• How you will test it (which features of language will you quantify/explore) and why

There is a clear flow here that is essential for getting good marks on AO1 (the structure and flow of your investigation and the clarity and precision). Really think about the reader's needs - what do I need to know to understand your thinking and your process?


To exemplify this and to give you an idea, below is an introduction taken from a previous investigation. You can use this initially to give you ideas about the structure and content, but I don't want 20 slightly edited versions of this coming back to me at the end of the lesson:

Gender was the main focus throughout my investigation. Gender is stereotyped

by many people, therefore I have undertaken an investigation to gather and

analyse my own data. I wanted to investigate whether men and women speak

differently, using Robin Lakoff’s theory ‘The Deficit Model’ . Lakoff’s theory looks

specifically at gendered speech, in particular, women using deficient language

such as ‘hedges, tag questions and false starts’.

The data I have gathered is from ‘The Only Way is Essex’. Reality TV is a hot topic,

Towie has a main purpose to entertain, and its audience’s are teenagers, also the

cast within the show. In 2011 the show had 1.7million viewers. 6 I am using TOWIE

because it is an informal show where spontaneous conversations take place.

Danni and James are one of the main couples from the show. They are very

popular with fans which have led to them being shown more frequently on the

later series of the show. There are Fan Pages on Instagram which show that they

are a well-known couple.

The Deficit Model is a theory that suggests that ‘male language is the norm and female language is deficient.’  Robin Lakoff has a book ‘Language and Woman’s place’ which is based on female language being weaker than males. 8 She created a list of language

frequently used by women such as ‘hedges, polite forms, tag questions and

empty adjectives’. She also states that they apologise more and lack a sense of

humour. The Dominance model can be used in my investigation, which is a theory by

Zimmerman and West. This model states that ‘men dominate the conversation due to their superior status’. In mixed sex conversations, men are more likely to interrupt. The Difference Model may be useful for my investigation, looking at how men and women are brought up differently; meaning ‘communication between the sexes is similar to communication between two different cultures’.

Therefore my hypothesis is ‘Danni will use more deficit features than James whilst in conversation’.