Meanings And Reprentations: Audience, Purpose, Genre, Mode

Question 1

What is a discourse community?

Answer 1

• Discourse communities are a group of people with the same shared interests and belief systems who are likely to respond to a text in the same way.
• they can be large, e.g. one direction fans, teachers.
• they can be small, village book small.

Question 2

What are the 2 types of mode?

Answer 2

• writing

- speech

Question 3

What are the key features of writing?

Answer 3

Writing is:

• objective
• a monologue
• planned
• highly structured
• formal
• grammatically complex
• concerned with the past and the future
• decontextualised

Question 4

What are the key features of speech?

Answer 4

Speech is:

• interpersonal
• a dialogue
• spontaneous
• loosely structured
• grammatically simple
• concerned with the present
• usually informal
• contextualised

Question 5

What is the implied reader?

Answer 5

• Who the text is for, who would agree with the values of the text and would be interested.

Question 6

What is the actual reader?

Answer 6

• Anyone who happens to have received and will read the text.

Question 7

What is the difference between a broadsheet and a tabloid?

Answer 7

• Uneducated people generally read tabloids, whilst educated people read broadsheets.
• People in unskilled employment generally read tabloids, e.g. the Sun.
• Readers of broadsheets generally in skilled employment (generally middle class).

Question 8

List some examples of broadsheets:

Answer 8

• The telegraph: Right wing
• Daily mail: right wing
• the independent: left of centre
• the observer: left of centre
• the guardian: left wing

Question 9

List some examples of tabloids:

Answer 9

• the Sun: right wing
• the mirror: left wing
• daily express: right wing

Question 10

What is register?

Answer 10

• A variety of language that is associated with a particular situation of use.
• E.g. between students and teachers, between patients and doctors, between sports commentators etc.

Question 11

What are situational characteristics?

Answer 11

• A key characteristic of the time, place and contexts in which communication takes place:
  
  • who are the people communicating?
  • What is their relationship?
  • Where is the setting?
  • Are they communicating face-to-face or are they separated in time and place? (E.g. communicating by email, telephone, letter etc?)
  • What is the purpose of the communication?

Question 12

What is intertextuality?

Answer 12

• a process by which texts borrow from or refer to conventions of other texts for a specific purpose or effect.
• All works of literature have been influenced by a previous work of literature.
  
  • E.g. Harry Potter makes use of The Lord of The Rings along with other books
  • His Dark Materials is a retelling of Paradise Lost.