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.

Methodology

The data I have collected is 6 editor’s letters in magazines, 3 from girls magazines and 3 from women’s magazines. I made sure of this by searching the best selling magazines on the internet.
I have purchased all of the magazines from supermarkets so I know that the extracts that I take come from very reliable and reputable sources.
I chose to select three of each because it will make a much fairer investigation rather than just picking out one or two.
I decided not to choose magazines based on what I would like, because they could be biased and unfair, so I chose to select the top three women’s and the top three girls magazines.
They are comparable because they are aimed at the same gender. The girls magazines are comparable because they are aimed at the exact same age and the woman’s magazines are too.
The reason i chose editors letters was because they all serve the same purpose and will be the bets to compare as i will have more to write about.

Hypothesis

My hypothesis is that there will be a vast difference in the chosen language that is used within the publications. I think that the magazines aimed at younger girls will use much more selective so that it cannot offend young readers or their parents.
I have selected 3 of the top women’s magazines and 3 of the top magazines for young girls, I am yet to decided how I will narrow down what texts in these magazines to use.
The communication accomodation theory says that people adjust what they say to accomodate others, it has links with language, context and identity. There are two main accommodation processes described by this theory. Convergence refers to the strategies through which individuals adapt to each other’s communicative behaviors, in order to reduce these social differences. Meanwhile, Divergence refers to the instances in which individuals accentuate the speech and non-verbal differences between themselves and their interlocutors. This theory fits my investagation well.