Language can also be used to represent events, places and issues. Events can be represented using words and phrases that influence our feelings and attitudes towards it. Think back to the 2012 London Olympics and the opening ceremony .
Can you make up any suitable headlines to represent this event?

The following headlines appeared after the opening ceremony in July 2012:
The Telegraph: GOING FOR GOLD
The Daily Express: BRITAIN AT ITS BEST
The Daily Mail: BLAST-OFF
The Daily Mirror: MAJ-ICAL
The Daily Star: Greatest show on earth
The Guardian: Night of Wonder
The Scotsman: Light Fantastic
The Belfast Telegraph: Glowing with pride

Each headline uses language to represent the opening ceremony in different ways. In what ways are they representing the ceremony?
The Telegraph: GOING FOR GOLD (competitive)
The Daily Express: BRITAIN AT ITS BEST (patriotic)
The Daily Mail: BLAST-OFF (fireworks; space rocket metaphor)
The Daily Mirror: MAJ-ICAL (Queen)
The Daily Star: Greatest show on earth (entertainment)
The Guardian: Night of Wonder (spectator reaction)
The Scotsman: Light Fantastic (fireworks; ‘trip the light fantastic’)
The Belfast Telegraph: Glowing with pride (fireworks; feelings)

Language can also be used to represent places in ways that can influence people’s responses and feelings about them.
The city Stoke-on-Trent has a number of factories, museums and shops relating to ceramics which it represents positively in promotional literature:
1. the world’s best kept secret
2. the oldest surviving family business in the ceramic tableware industry.
3. ...offers something for everyone.
4. the only complete Victorian pottery factory from the days when coal burning ovens made the world’s finest bone china.

Match the representations with the aspect being emphasised below.
1. the world’s best kept secret
2. the oldest surviving family business in the ceramic tableware industry.
3. ...offers something for everyone.
4. the only complete Victorian pottery factory from the days when coal burning ovens made the world’s finest bone china.
5. the world’s greatest collection of Staffordshire ceramics.
6. the birthplace of bone china.
7. the atmospheric Middleport Pottery.
8. a perfect one-stop shop to find special Stoke-on-Trent one-offs, trials and quality gifts.
9. our atmospheric Victorian factory.
heritage mood quality prestige consumer/practical

Text 13W is an edited version of an article written by the novelist Joanna Trollope about the 2014 Stoke-on-Trent
Literary Festival which appeared on the ‘First Person’ page of The Observer newspaper.
How is language used to represent the places, events and issues mentioned in this text?

How is language used to represent the places, events and issues mentioned in this text?
Spot, comment and find examples of the following:
1. The newspaper’s readership demographic –
Who reads it? What values do they have?
2. What things are referred to explicitly?
3. What issues can you infer from the lexis?
4. The representation of the city.
5. The representation of the festival.
6. The genre.
7. The mode.
8. The tone.
9. The purpose.

Issues
1. ‘warmth’, ‘comradeship’, ‘skill’ and ‘pride’ appealing to sense of community (values).
2. Literacy: ‘reading and writing’
3. Economic deprivation/social alienation (lexis) ‘blighted loss of traditional industries’; ‘inhabitants no longer knew why they lived there’.
Place
City (people, factory, courtyard, past/present) provides context for the literary festival ‘Hot Air’ allusion to city’s industrial past.

Event
Festival presented as ‘different’, ‘experimental’ and ‘no ordinary…festival’ as it is ‘actually about reading and writing’ rather than curiosity about writers. This aligns the reader as siding with writer in valuing ‘the books’ rather than ‘celebrity gossip’.
Genre
‘First Person’ suggests a personal account; similar text type as diary entries, blogs and autobiographies.

Genre
‘First Person’ suggests a personal account; similar text type as diary entries, blogs and autobiographies. Joanna Trollope presents her point of view :
• Her background knowledge (Matthews, Bennett, Wedgewood china, coalmines and industrial Midlands).
• Her intentions ‘I wanted…’
• Shares personal responses to the city/its people: ‘warmth’,
‘cosy’, ‘tea comes properly stewed in a metal pot’
• Her own psychological reaction ‘I got mildly addicted to…’
• Shares personal opinions about Bridgewater factory/festival
• Predictions: ‘not doomed forever’
• Ends with speculation: Matthews would have approved.

Mode
Writing, with some grammatical constructions only found in written mode:
• ‘I…alighted, as my research victim, on pottery and the
Emma Bridgewater factory’
• ‘…perpetually purposeful and tractable workers’
• ‘…as befits Stoke’s uniquely busy past and pitifully idle present
Tone
Mainly formal, with occasional casual language; discourse marker ‘well’; use of contracted forms ‘I’ve had enough’.
What does the appearance of informal elements suggest?

Purpose
To explain how literary festival ‘could change a city’ and that it is a worthwhile enterprise (optimistic descriptions of people, their courageous spirit prevailing; high hopes for a festival).
Secondary purpose to share her personal experiences.
Factual article that seeks to keep audience engaged:
• Concrete details used to bring account alive ‘buffer stones’
• Onomatopoeia ‘clatter’
• Surprising adjective ‘muscular’ (business)
• Classical reference ‘Elysium’
• Short sentence ‘It is called Hot Air’
• Parallel constructions that use grammatical patterning/ellipsis.

Conjunction and
Subject
One
Stative verb was the other was
Subject complement
Stanley Matthews
Arnold Bennett.
Conjunction Preposition Determiner Modifier
But on the shopping
[on] in the the station
[in] the museum
Conjunction Modifier Adverb Adjective
Stoke’s uniquely busy and [Stoke’s] pitifully idle
Head noun streets platform taxicabs cafes
Head noun past present

Conjunction and
Subject
One
Stative verb was the other was
Subject complement
Stanley Matthews
Arnold Bennett.
Conjunction Preposition Determiner Modifier
But on the shopping
[on] in the the station
[in] the museum
Head noun streets platform taxicabs cafes

Discourse structure
Based on opposites:
• Economic deprivation vs. ‘warmth’ and ‘pride’ of people
• Factory is a ‘workplace’ vs. idealised ‘sentimental Elysium’.
• Factory’s ‘headaches’ vs. worker’s ‘comradeship’
• Stoke’s ‘uniquely busy past’ vs. ‘pitifully idle present’
• ‘bold’ literary festival vs. less authentic festivals about
‘celebrity gossip’
• Stoke’s past vs. Stoke’s present; represented symbolically in the factory courtyard where the festival will take place; past = noun phrases ‘the dray horses’, ‘the cobbles’, ‘buffer stones’ (legacy) and verb phrase ‘use to clatter in’. Other reminders of past = Matthews and Wedgewood which have linking contemporary equivalents in Trollope and
Bridgewater.

Text 13B is an article that was published on the National
Geographic magazine website. They are a ‘non-profit
•
• scientific and educational instruction’ whose mission is ‘To inspire people to care about the planet’.
• Audience
• Purposes
Genre
• Mode
Context
• Register
Text 13J is taken from a discussion about gossip among a group of 1-18 ear old female students.
• Tone (or level of formality)