Language discourses — AQA A-Level English Language
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Language discourses explained
This guidance explains how to study public discussion about language diversity and change.
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You need to read a range of texts that express attitudes, not just describe linguistic facts. The texts must include material written for non-specialist audiences, such as newspaper articles, blogs, radio phone-in transcripts or campaign leaflets. As you read, identify the attitude being conveyed, the language choices that create it, and the audience the text addresses. For example, a tabloid article may use emotive metaphors to present dialect change as decline, while a blog may celebrate new varieties. Compare how different texts frame the same issue. Note the mode, purpose and context of each text. Keep a record of quotations and examples so you can analyse how attitudes are constructed. This reading prepares you to discuss language discourses in your own writing.
Students will explore how texts are produced to convey views and opinions about language issues. They will explore how texts: represent language; construct an identity for the producer; position the reader and seek to influence them; are connected to discourses about language.
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.
Your focus
- Identify the attitude to language diversity or change conveyed in a range of texts.
- Analyse how language choices construct attitudes for different audiences.
- Compare texts written for non-specialist audiences with other material on the same issue.
Show all 7 objectives
- Use evidence from texts to discuss language discourses accurately.
- Analyse how specific linguistic choices represent language and language issues in a text.
- Explain how a text constructs an identity for its producer and positions its reader.
- Connect a text's viewpoints to wider discourses about language using accurate evidence and terminology.
Language discourses exam tips
Marking Points
- 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.
Examiner Tips
- 💡Build a comparison grid for each text: audience, purpose, attitude, key linguistic features and representative examples.
- 💡Practise writing a short analysis of one non-specialist text, focusing on how word choice and metaphor convey an attitude.
- 💡When revising, group texts by attitude, such as celebratory, anxious or prescriptive, so you can compare discourses quickly.
- 💡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.
Common Mistakes
- Studying only academic linguistics texts and ignoring non-specialist material. Correction: deliberately collect newspaper articles, blogs, broadcasts and other texts aimed at general readers or listeners.
- Describing what a text says about language without identifying the attitude it conveys. Correction: for each text, state the attitude in a sentence and then point to the specific language choices that create it.
- Treating all non-specialist texts as equally reliable or neutral. Correction: analyse the purpose, audience and stance of each text, and consider how the writer positions the reader.
- Assuming 'language discourses' means only debates about correctness. Correction: include texts about diversity, such as attitudes to regional accents, multilingualism or new varieties of English.
- Describing what the text says about language without analysing how language choices construct that view; correct this 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; correct this 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; correct this by linking a quoted choice to a specific belief or debate within that discourse.