Genre, audience and purpose: identifying genre conventions, intended audience and purpose, analysing register and mode, and detecting viewpoint, stance and bias in unseen texts.

What this dot point is asking

The unseen texts are drawn from many genres, types and periods, and reading them well starts with identifying genre, audience and purpose, then analysing the register, mode, viewpoint and bias that follow. This is the foundation of the comparison: you cannot compare three texts until you can read each one's purpose and stance. It draws on AO1 (method and terminology) and AO3 (how purpose and context shape meaning).

The answer

Genre, audience and purpose

• Identify the genre from its conventions (layout, structure, register), then the likely audience and the purpose.
• Read the language that serves them: lexical field, formality, mode features (written, spoken, multimodal), structure and rhetorical devices.

Register and mode

A tabloid feature and a broadsheet editorial may share a topic but differ in register; a scripted speech blends written planning with spoken delivery. Reading these calibrations explains the text's choices.

Viewpoint, stance and bias

Texts position readers. Detect the viewpoint from the language:

• Evaluative and connotative lexis - loaded word choices that carry approval or disapproval.
• Modality - how certain, obligatory or tentative claims are made, signalling the writer's confidence and stance.
• Selection and ordering of detail - what is foregrounded, what is omitted, which shapes the angle.
• Pronouns and address - how the reader is included, aligned or challenged.

Ground every claim about bias in a specific feature: stance must be analysed, not assumed.

Examples in context

Reading purpose and stance from language. Imagine an unseen opinion column on a new housing development. Identifying the genre (a persuasive newspaper column) and purpose (to argue against the scheme) immediately frames the analysis. The register is accessible but assertive, calibrated for a general readership it wants to mobilise. Now read the stance from the language: the evaluative lexis "concrete monstrosity" and "soulless" carries clear disapproval through connotation; the high-certainty modality "this will destroy" presents an opinion as inevitable fact; the selection of detail foregrounds lost green space while omitting any housing benefit, framing the issue one-sidedly; and the inclusive pronoun "our community" aligns the reader with the writer's side before any argument is made. Each observation is tied to a specific feature, so the bias is analysed rather than asserted, and each is explained in terms of the column's persuasive purpose and audience. That is the integrated AO1 and AO3 reading the comparison then builds on, because you can now compare this text's overt persuasion with, say, a transcript's spontaneous stance or a literary extract's subtler framing.

Try this

Q1. What three things, read together, predict a text's language choices? [3 marks]

• Cue. Genre and its conventions, intended audience, and purpose (inform, persuade, entertain, instruct).

Q2. Name two linguistic features that reveal a text's viewpoint. [2 marks]

• Cue. Any two of: evaluative or connotative lexis, modality, selection and ordering of detail, pronoun use and address.

Q3. Analyse how genre, audience and purpose shape the language and viewpoint of an unseen text. [20 marks]

• What the marker wants. Genre, audience and purpose identified, register and mode analysed, and stance or bias read precisely from specific language choices rather than asserted or described.