The Guardian - The conversation

Article

'The conversation' is a collection of descriptions of conversations, from 'The conversation that changed my life' to 'The conversation i didn't expect'. There are eight different conversation sin this article, each as moving and emotive as the last. I believe that the article was made to show people the real power of face-to-face conversation, since we are beginning to lose it to texts. The article includes conversations that have stuck with the writer's for many years, and show something that is not possible through texting. I think the aim of this was to show people that they need to put down their phone once in a while in order for things such as these to happen - you need to be in the real world to have such moving and memorable conversations. It shows the true power of conversation.

The Guardian - How to talk to anyone: The experts guide.

Article

This article is a collection of interviews by Rosie Ifould, in which they discuss the 'How to's' of creating conversation which several different kinds of people (from parents to doctors). In the interviews, the interviewees give tips on how to create a good and positive conversation with a certain kind of person - and how to create a good relationship with them. It seems to me that this article is put together to also highlight the affect technology has had on our ability to communicate with others - the fact that they have highlighted very basic and straight forward things shows me this, and it could also be seen as being quite humorous. The 'secrets' this panel shares seem to have become secrets because of the uprising of technology, almost saying that nobody knows how to communicate anymore.

The Guardian - Step away from your phone: The new rules of conversation

Article

In this article, Oliver Burkeman discusses texting in today's society - and how it has become the most used way of communication. Burkeman mentions the fact that people are beginning to text each other even when they are fact-to-face. He suggests that we are even beginning to lose our sense of empathy and feeling when we are having a face-to-face conversation and that today's society don't even know how to communicate in ways other than texting. To sum up Burkeman's ideas, 'why speak face-to-face when you can put it all in a text?'. Burkeman says that he finds it rude when people are texting when in the company of others, and mentions the games some people play when they're out for dinner to ensure that there is real time conversation. People who enjoy and take part in face-to-face conversation are becoming the minority, according to Oliver Burkeman, and he suggests that we are going to lose our real time communication completely if texting to this degree continues.

The Guardian - What Language Barrier?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/01/gender.books

The 3Ds

Dominance

• 'The dominance approach sees women as an oppressed group, and interprets differences in men and women's speech in terms of men's dominance and women's subordination.
• The dominance theory states we live in a patriarchal society.
• We live in a male dominated world - men dominate positions of power.
• Men dominate even though the population is 49% male and 51% female. 

Theorists who have studies into the dominance theory: (Note: These studies may be outdated as they were not conducted recently and society has changed in the last 20-30 years)

• Dale Spencer (1980)
• Zimmerman and West (1975)
• Jennifer Coates (1993)
• Pamela Fishman (1983)

Pamela Fishman argues in Interaction: the Work Women Do (1983) that conversation between the sexes sometimes fails, not because of anything inherent in the way women talk, but because of how men respond, or don't respond. In Conversational Insecurity (1990) Fishman questions Robin Lakoff's theories. Lakoff suggests that asking questions shows women's insecurity and hesitancy in communication, whereas Fishman looks at questions as an attribute of interactions: Women ask questions because of the power of these, not because of their personality weaknesses. Fishman also claims that in mixed-sex language interactions, men speak on average for twice as long as women.

The dominance theory uses a fairly old study of a small sample of conversations, recorded by Don Zimmerman and Candace West at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California in 1975. The subjects of the recording were white, middle class and under 35. Zimmerman and West produce in evidence 31 segments of conversation. They report that in 11 conversations between men and women, men used 46 interruptions, but women only two.

Difference

• 'The difference approach sees women as belonging to 'different sub-cultures', who are differently socialized from childhood on wards, and who may therefore have different problems in communication as adults.' 
• Deborah Tannen (1989) talks about Verbal Hygiene (1995). She argues that language is not politically correct.
• Politically correct language: Getting rid of feminine suffixes, marked forms of words are not politically incorrect e.g. 'manageress' and 'actress'.
• Tannen's views also identify differences in terms of competitiveness and cooperativeness. 

Theorists who have studies into the difference theory: (Note: These studies may be outdated as they were not conducted recently and society has changed in the last 20-30 years)

• Deborah Tannen (1989)

A big advocate of this approach is Deborah Tannen. She believes the difference starts in childhood, where parents use more words about feelings to girls and use more verbs to boys. Males and females belong to difference sub-cultures and therefore speak differently. 

Ann Weatherall found that:

• Women's talk is co-operative.
• Men's talk is competitive.
• Women are more likely to use hedging, "sort of" "kind of"...
• Women speak for less time and are less likely to interrupt.
• Females use more tag questions:
  
  F: We're seeing Mum later, aren't we?
  M: We're going to see Mum today.

Deficit

• 'Deborah Cameron challenges the whole idea that there are two different and contrasting languages for men and women, arguing that this is the deficit model approach (one language is inferior to the other).'
• She asks whether gender alone is at the core of individual identity - is the term genderlect more or less precise that idiolect?
• The way men and women talk in different situations may reveal the effects of dis-empowerment, or may signal the effects of other variables, including socio-economic status, education, context, peer group and even personality.  

Theorists who have studies into the deficit theory: (Note: These studies may be outdated as they were not conducted recently and society has changed in the last 20-30 years)

• Deborah Cameron
• Robin Lakoff (1975)

Deborah Cameron says that wherever and whenever the matter has been investigated, men and women face normative expectations about the appropriate mode of speech for their gender. Women's verbal conduct is important in many cultures; women have been instructed in the proper ways of talking just as they have been instructed in the proper ways of dressing, in the use of cosmetics, and in other “feminine” kinds of behaviour. This acceptance of a “proper” speech style, Cameron describes (in her 1995 book of the same name) as “verbal hygiene”.

Reference 1

Reference 2

University of Bristol - Improve your writing

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/index.htm

A)     Handy for revision.

B)     Structure – form, audience, purpose, graphology, discourse, syntax (compound, complex, simple - utterance, imperative, interrogative, exclamative, declarative).

C)     Lexis, semantics and pragmatics.

D)     Exam responses.

E)      Grammar and lexis.

F)      Style – form, purpose, audience.

G)     Handy for revision.

AQA exam preparation

Practice exam questions

Examiner commentary

Model response with examiner comments