Language and Technology

Language & Technology

The front page of The Guardian website uses a mix of formal and informal language to target it's audience; 20+ year old single, jobless people that live in London. 

It's target audience is shown through which advertisements and stories they have decided to put at the top of the first page. On the right hand sidebar, there are advertisements for jobs and the opportunity to find a soul mate, showing priority of these over actual news stories. 

A tactic employed by them to tempt you to read is by putting a potentially controversial headline 'being a mother is not the most important job in the world' in the centre at the top, the second story you see, after the one about a stadium looking vaguely like a vagina. As the top story on the page, apparently more important that murders, Miliband's new hair and whatnot, I'm glad that the Guardian seems to have it's priorities right.

Typically, the readers of this sight read language left to right. The Guardian has taken this into account when deciding which order the link at the top of the page go in, seemingly ordered by importance, left to right. This is so that you see what they think the best, most interesting stories that have first.

Concerning the links at the top, this website may have been sexist in their choice of ordering information. This is in having a section titled "Women" This could imply two things, either that, there are things in this tab that only women will enjoy and be interested in, excluding men. Or that this is the place for women on this site, and the only part that they will be interested in.

School Uniform should be ABOLISHED

School uniform. We've all experienced this unwelcome hassle at some point in our lives. Whether it be for 'a sense of solidarity' or to look 'smart' for some higher up who decided what looks good and what doesn’t for schools, most people have felt the half-covered oppression that is being forced to wear ugly clothes for no real reason at all. It's time we stood up for our kids and put an end to it. It may be too late for us but we can at least improve their school life.

Being used as a form of oppression for centuries now, the school uniform effectively crushes any and all sense of individuality for the students. Having to wear the same thing makes the students all blend into one large mass, no longer people themselves, they become reduced to numbers and statistics on reports that seem to be the only thing the schools care about. Self-expression is very important for the children at this time in their lives and clothing is one of the best ways to do that, completely denying them of it could have catastrophic consequences on their development into maturity.

A common excuse for it is the 'school trip scenario'. A class in on a trip to the zoo. One child gets lost. The child is found by somebody recognizing the uniform. Happy ending. I can see several flaws in this argument. First off why is a teacher so incompetent allowed to be caring for several children in a public place? When your entire job is teaching and controlling children every day, surely this should be the type of situation you’re prepared for? Secondly, the ‘buddy’ system is an excellent way to keep the group together. If a child has someone they must stick with they are much less likely to wander off. Anyway, this argument isn’t even applicable to anyone over the age of 11.

Recently there has been a rising number of overly-territorial secondary school students attacking people affiliated with rival schools. While the best course of action would be to stop these with help from the school and police, there will always be replacements for this on-going problem in the community. If students didn’t have a particular piece of obligatory clothing associating them with a school, they would be much less likely to be targeted.

We need to band together and fight for our childrens right to wear whatever they want. We need to make our voice heard by the schools. We need to save our kids!

  Anaphora

Screenplay - Intimate to colloquial. Diary Entry - colloquial to formal

Screenplay - Intimate to colloquial

(original)

DARLENE: Hello?
TROY: Honey, it's me.
DARLENE: TROY?
TROY: It's me, honey.
DARLENE: My God, the baby's crying.
TROY: I can hear her.
DARLENE: That's our little Krystal.
TROY: How's she doing?
DARLENE: She hasn't been sleeping good, and Mamma had to go back to work, so I'm real, real tired, baby.
TROY: I wish I was there to help, gooney-bird.
DARLENE: Oh, gooney-bird, when are you coming home?
TROY: I'm working on that now, baby.

DARLENE: yo
TROY: sup its me
DARLENE: what troy??
TROY: yeah
DARLENE: frickin hell the babys cryin
TROY: lol ikr
DARLENE: lil baby krystal
TROY: she ok?
DARLENE: shes sleepin rly badly and ma's gone back 2 work, so im hella tired
TROY: damn. wishin i was there
DARLENE: me 2. when u comin home?
TROY: asap

Analysis

Lots of the intimate language has been removed or replaced with colloquialisms, for example: 'Our little Krystal' is intimate because it suggests that the baby is theirs which links them together as people. This has been changed to a casual comment about the baby, severing the link between the characters. It is changed to 'cute lil baby' using abbreviations to make it colloquial. The use of homophonic representation adds to the colloquial effect as it is often used in casual conversations over text and the internet. Though still conveying the same information, the scene loses its effectiveness because of the lack of connection between the characters.

Diary entry - Colloquial to formal

Steven and I walked for a while with Nat - an old friend of mine - until she had to retire for the day. Upon this happenstance it was decided that the two of us should return to my house. Shortly after, Steven had to leave. I did the socially expected (though irritatingly draining) task of walking him to the nearest bus stop. While waiting for the bus I kissed Steven. Alas, I felt nothing but a sharp pang of guilt as he is such a nice boy and I have no feelings toward him whatsoever. Last night I told him how I felt. He was so understanding and this only increased my guilt, I didn't quite know what to say. He assured me it was fine and we made plans to go to the cinema next Saturday. I also received the results for my French General exam today. I scored 31 out of 32, an achievement I am extremely proud of. However, while french was going so well for me, English was not something Claire could focus on. She spent the whole lesson upset. I attempted to console her but it was obvious that only one capable of doing that is Tony.

Analysis

The colloquialisms in the original entry made the text seem vaguely illegible to the casual reader. However, using that register gave the text the feel that it was written without anyone else in mind and that as long as the writer could understand it then that was fine, which fits because that is usually what personal diaries are written for. An example of these colloquialisms is '