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Language variation

6 dot points across 6 inquiry questions. Click any dot point for a focused answer with worked past exam questions where available.

How has English spread to become a global language, and how do you evaluate the rise of World Englishes against a single standard?

Global English and World Englishes: Kachru's three circles, English as a lingua franca, nativised varieties, linguistic imperialism, and attitudes to global English as opportunity or threat.
An Edexcel A-Level English Language (9EN0) answer on global English and World Englishes: Kachru's three circles, English as a lingua franca (Jenkins), Crystal on global spread, nativised New Englishes such as Indian English and Singlish, Phillipson's linguistic imperialism, and attitudes to English as opportunity or threat.
14 min answer →

How does language construct and reflect gender, power and occupational identity, and how do you evaluate the competing models?

Language and gender, power and occupation: deficit, dominance and difference models, instrumental and influential power, and occupational register, with Lakoff, Tannen, Zimmerman and West, Fairclough and Drew and Heritage.
An Edexcel A-Level English Language (9EN0) answer on language, gender, power and occupation: the deficit, dominance and difference models, instrumental and influential power, occupational register and discourse communities, with Lakoff, Tannen, Zimmerman and West, Fishman, Fairclough, Drew and Heritage and Swales, and how to evaluate them.
14 min answer →

How does the language of journalism represent people, places and events, and how do you expose the ideology behind apparently neutral reporting?

Language and journalism: representation and bias, journalistic register and headlines, tabloid versus broadsheet style, and critical discourse analysis of transitivity, nominalisation and synthetic personalisation.
An Edexcel A-Level English Language (9EN0) answer on language and journalism: representation and bias, journalistic register, headline grammar, tabloid versus broadsheet style, and critical discourse analysis using Fairclough (synthetic personalisation, CDA) and Halliday (transitivity, agency, nominalisation), with the metalanguage Edexcel rewards.
14 min answer →

How does an individual speaker's language both signal and actively construct identity?

Language and the individual: idiolect, sociolect, accent and dialect, code-switching and the construction of identity through language choices.
An Edexcel A-Level English Language (9EN0) answer on language and the individual: idiolect, sociolect, accent and dialect, code-switching and accommodation (Giles), and how speakers perform and construct identity through language choices, with the metalanguage Edexcel rewards.
13 min answer →

How does language vary by region and social class, and what do the classic sociolinguistic studies show?

Social and regional variation: regional dialects, sociolinguistic studies of class, social networks and the named research of Labov, Trudgill and Milroy.
An Edexcel A-Level English Language (9EN0) answer on social and regional variation: regional dialect, class-based variation, overt and covert prestige, and the sociolinguistic studies of Labov (Martha's Vineyard, New York), Trudgill (Norwich) and the Milroys (Belfast social networks), with their methods evaluated.
13 min answer →

What is Standard English, and how do attitudes to non-standard varieties reveal judgements about their speakers?

Standard and non-standard English: the nature and status of Standard English, prescriptivism and descriptivism, and attitudes to non-standard varieties.
An Edexcel A-Level English Language (9EN0) answer on standard and non-standard English: the nature and prestige of Standard English as a dialect, the Standard English versus RP distinction, prescriptivism and descriptivism, the systematic nature of non-standard varieties, and the social basis of attitudes (Giles's matched-guise work).
13 min answer →