SECTION A
Question 1
01
Read the three texts printed on the following pages. These texts are linked by the fact that they are all to do with names.
Text A
is a part of a conversation.
Text B
is an article from the BBC website.
Text C
is a poem written by Philip Larkin.
Compare Texts A, B and C, showing how the writers or speakers convey their ideas and feelings about the subject matter.
Your analysis should include consideration of the following:
• the writers’ or speakers’ choices of vocabulary, grammar and style
• the relationship between texts and the significance of context on language use.
(60 marks)Assessment Objectives tested on this question: AO2 (45 marks), AO3 (15 marks).
Some possible content/stylistic points students may refer to:
• difference in attitudes of speakers and writers, eg information gathering, entertaining, satirising might be a good starting point for the purpose of each text
• use of various linguistic choices to reflect the details and underpin the different purposes of each text of the situation: eg proper noun usage in Text A (John, William) and Text B (Doug Hole, Terry Bull), whereas no proper nouns used in Text C, possibly deliberately in order to anonymise
• focus on specific differences of context and variation of content: names of people in different situations; also the difference between public and private ideas and different traditions
• lexical issues: different frequency words with low frequency mainly in Text C, higher frequency words in Texts A and B to reflect purpose and audience; speech content and loose choice of words as opposed to carefully chosen words of published texts
• focus on information gathering in Text A and being part of a larger text; sharing humour of names in Text B; Text C’s more serious purpose
• structural differences in the texts: Text A uses adjacency pairs; Text B uses paragraphs to convey the information; Text C uses carefully rhyming stanzas
• genre differences to reflect purpose: possibly more "serious" message of Text C, journalistic humour in Text B, genuine information seeking in Text A
• the notion of speaker "talking" to an audience in Texts B and C compared with turn taking in Text A.
