Students will explore how texts are produced to convey views and opinions…

The idea

This topic asks you to analyse how writers and speakers convey views about language, such as whether texting harms literacy or whether regional accents face prejudice. Take a newspaper opinion piece arguing that slang damages Standard English. You would examine how it represents language (perhaps as a threat or as creative change), how the producer constructs an identity (as an authority, a concerned parent, a linguist), how it positions the reader (assuming agreement, using inclusive pronouns, appealing to fear or pride), and how it connects to wider discourses, such as prescriptivism versus descriptivism or debates about social mobility. The skill is close linguistic analysis of representation, identity, audience positioning and discourse, supported by precise quotation and terminology.

What earns the marks

• Identify and illustrate how a text represents language, for example as a resource, a threat, a skill or a marker of identity, using specific lexical choices and metaphors.
• Analyse how the producer constructs an identity through tone, register, claimed expertise, personal anecdote or institutional voice, and how that identity supports the argument.
• Explain how the text positions the reader, for example through direct address, shared assumptions, rhetorical questions, emotive lexis or appeals to common sense, and how this seeks to influence opinion.
• Link the text to named discourses about language, such as prescriptivism, descriptivism, standard language ideology, language and power, or language change, showing how the text takes a stance within them.
• Support analysis with accurate quotation and appropriate terminology, and comment on how linguistic and structural choices work together to convey a viewpoint.

Common mistakes and how to put them right

• Describing what the text says about language without analysing how language choices construct that view.

  Put it right by quoting a specific choice and explaining its effect on representation or positioning.

• Treating the producer's identity as simply the named author rather than as a constructed persona.

  Put it right by examining the voice, stance and assumed authority created by the language.

• Identifying a discourse by label only, such as 'prescriptivism', without showing how the text engages with it.

  Put it right by linking a quoted choice to a specific belief or debate within that discourse.

Exam tips

• Annotate texts for representation, producer identity, reader positioning and discourse before writing, so your analysis covers all four elements.
• Use short embedded quotations and name the linguistic feature, then explain its effect on the reader's view of the language issue.
• Refer to discourses precisely, for example standard language ideology or language and identity, and show how the text aligns with or challenges them.