Here's the second in a short (and predictably-titled) series of posts preparing you for next week's first sitting of the new AQA A level Paper 2. The last post was on Language Discourses and what they are. This one is on some of the discourses and debates you could explore. These are just a few suggestions; there are lots of other areas you could look at and I know nothing about what might appear so don't take any of these as predictions. My advice is always to revise all the possible areas and be ready for anything.
Gender debates - remember, as with the AS paper this summer, debates about gender can be about how language is used but also how gender is represented in language.
American English and World Englishes - have a look at some of the arguments here and here about the supposed Americanisation of English.
Attitudes to accents and dialects - this cropped up on the AS paper this summer and is worth thinking about from an A level perspective.
New words and arguments about lexical change - have a look here and here for some debates about how people feel about new words and their place in the dictionary.
Political Correctness and language reform - always a heated debate on this one and this link might help.
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