Introduction

Introduction -

 

 

What is the difference between the language of women’s magazines and girl’s magazines?

 The communication accommodation theory by Howard Giles shows that when people speak, they adjust what is said or how it is said depending on who they are addressing and what context and situation they are addressing them in. I am aware that this undeniably happens with adults and very young children, but I would be interested to see if this applies with a much smaller age gap and if the difference is so distinct. This is why I have chosen to investigate difference that magazine editors use in their letters to the audience in the top 3 women’s magazines and the top 3 girls magazines to see if that theory applies in this area. Along with the communication accommodation theory, I will be looking at some particular frameworks – discourse structure, lexis and grammar. My hypothesis, based on the theory, is that the two editors letters will be very divergent, especially the grammar and even though essentially they are both aiming to do the same job of addressing the reader, it will be done in two very different ways simply because of the age of their audience. This investigation interests me because when I was younger I used to really enjoy reading the types of magazines I am using which are aimed at younger girls, and now I really enjoy the magazines aimed at young women, so seeing how distinct the differences are will be interesting. The theory, which states that we tend to imitate not only speech but also behaviour habits of those who we are interacting with, appeals to me because I think that it will be correct in the case of my investigation, so it was easy to come up with an interesting hypothesis.  Although this theory is related to speech, it will be interesting to see if the same applies for written texts too.

Media Text - Synthesising Skills

Media Text – Synthesising Skills

An extract from a magazine

Unfortunately and annoyingly for some, there is no set timeframe for a child to develop speech. You may be feeling frustrated thinking your child can’t talk straight or walk straight, whilst all the other mums are enjoying constantly bragging about how developed and clever their little bundles of joy are. Your child may now be able to point to pictures in a book when you name them or can point to a few body parts when asked, but speaking just is not their strong point. You’ve tried and tried repeating words countless times and being as encouraging as humanly possible, but it’s just not happening! But, it could be that these irritating, bragging parents are simply overestimating what their son or daughter is trying to say whilst you are trying to be more realistic, Andrew Wilkinson says, ‘When parents detect the baby’s first words they claim that he is beginning to talk… But to the linguist single words do not constitute language, which depends on the relationship of one word to another. These single words are now known as ‘holophrases’. So, who’s to say that your child is underdeveloped? Who’s to say that these parents aren’t over exaggerating their child’s milestones? Who’s to say that it even matters?

Media Text Investigation

Choose an aspect of theory in your chosen area and write a paragraph or two about it in three different versions for the following APFs: A men's or women's magazine e.g. Elle A scientific magazine for well-educated non-English-specialists over 20 e.g. New Scientist Another format of your choice 1. Another format of your choice Article for Elle magazine - How to get ahead at work Sick of making coffee? getting the boss' lunch and photocopying for hours on end? Sick of the same tedious day-to-day chores for minimal wage and recognition? Here are some hints and tricks that you can use to get out of this depressing rut and make your way up the career ladder.

Data Evaluation

Data Evaluation

I feel that my data is representive of the whole data pool because i have three of each type of  magazine, to make it fairer and less biased than just looking at one of each type. Also, by taking the top three girls, and the top three womens magazines, they will really represent women and girls of today. I have bought them all from reputable supermarkets in the same month, to give them a better chance of being fair.

I am looking at editors letters in magazines which will make it fairer as all editors letters have the same goal to address the reader. I can look at
I think that the data i have chosen will give me enough to write about because i have started to annotate and found a lot that i can mention and elaborate on. Also, there is not too much data for me to write about and i think 1500 words will be about right.
I am intending to quantify the different words used by the magazines, as i have noticed that some are very similar where they have a similar target audience.