Medal that man

The changing function of some words in English gives certain people an attack of the shakes. Nouns like medal and podium have been used as verbs in reports on the Olympics in Beijing (for example ,"Chris Hoy has medalled" and "the athlete podiumed three times").

David Marsh, the style guide editor for The Guardian has written an article here about these uses and found that "to medal" as a verb has actually been knocking around since at least 1822.

The process is called conversion and we've seen it before with nouns like fax and text becoming to fax and to text, and with a verb like to ask becoming a noun an ask (as in football commentators describing a difficult challenge as "a big ask").

As David Marsh explains, some people find these shifts in function very upsetting and see them as Americanising the language. Others make the point that English is amazingly flexible, so why not just use it to its full extent?

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change
ENGA3 - Language Explorations

Serious pwnage

The internet has speeded up the pace of language change and led to new varieties of English which are often limited to relatively small communities of practice (groups of language users linked by a shared interest or practice, such as online gaming, hacking, phishing, 419 scams etc) but which often leak out into wider society and affect the mainstream.

Many of the words associated with online gaming in particular are interesting from a language change point of view, often consisting of the usual blends, acronyms and initialisms, but also a weird range of semantic changes and random fluctuations and errors which become "real" words in their own right.

One word, the blend playbourer - a person employed to "farm" gold in a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) and then sell it on to other gamers - is reported on in today's BBC News. It's a form of sweatshop labour that fuels a black economy of gold-spammers (people who send you endless spam messages about buying virtual gold with real money) but I can't see a World of Warcraft fairtrade movement springing up any time soon.

Elsewhere terms like owned and pwned have grown in popularity. Owned has a similar meaning to the London slang boyed: defeated, beaten or humiliated. So, to get owned (the passive form of the verb) is is to be beaten. In gaming this seems to refer to any dramatic defeat at the hands of NPC (non-player character) enemies or other players. The obvious link to the traditional sense of to own - to possess or have - suggests that this usage might be seen as a broadening, a form of semantic shift where a word changes its meaning while leaving the original word with its original meaning. And rather like to boy, or even to merk/murk (generally meaning to beat up, destroy or kill, possibly* derived from a shortened version of mercenary, a paid soldier), slang terms with connotations of victory, violence and competitive prowess often move into use in areas of sexual behaviour. Take the recent Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris track Dance Wiv Me, which features the romantic chat-up line "You've got a body to die for: let me merk it"...

Pwned is a weirder and maybe more interesting example of how keyboard technology can lead to variations in language use. According to this definition and this one, pwned was probably a typo (with 0 and p being adjacent keys on a QWERTY keyboard) but has now become a word in its own right. A similar example is book to mean cool, created by the predictive text on mobile phones selecting book as the first option. Again, despite originating in a mistake, this has taken off as a slang term (or at least did for a while).

And what do linguists make of this? This week's Word of Mouth on Radio 4 (listen again here) includes an interview with renowned linguist David Crystal who makes the point that the internet is spreading language change so quickly that the days of prescriptivism (the movement to regulate and "fix" spelling, grammar and meaning) are numbered as we let our fingers do the talking.

Useful for:
ENA5/ENGA3 - Language Change
ENGA1 - Language and Mode

*I say possibly as there are loads of different ideas about where this word comes from

Chambers dictionary new word entries

The latest edition of the Chambers Dictionary includes a number of new words and phrases that you might have come across. The editor-in-chief claims that these words present "a vivid picture of current interests and concerns", while others bemoan the inclusion of business jargon and ephemeral expressions.

Take a look at some of the media coverage of the new dictionary inclusions for a taste of how people feel about some of these new words and phrases, and find out more about where the words come from and how they're formed.

Guardian - WAGS and War on Terror
Guardian - Electrosmog and wardrobe malfunction
Telegraph - WAGs, HIPs and credit crunch
BBC - Electrosmog enters the dictionary
Chambers Dictionary Word of the Week

2008 exam results

Congratulations on a really excellent set of exam results this year - we're very chuffed and hope you are too!

Obviously, not everyone gets the grade they want, so if you are unhappy with your result and want to talk it through, email me on the college address and I'll see what I can do to help.

Word of the week

Just a quicky to recommend this link to Kerry Maxwell's Word of the week on the MacMillan Dictionaries site.

Each week she looks at a new word that has emerged and explores its meaning, etymology and use. Very handy for A2 Language Change.

Chavs and chav nots

Turn away now if you sat (or marked) an ENA6 paper last month, as Zoe Williams is about to reappear. In her Guardian online column she responds to yesterday's call by the Fabian Society to stop using the word chav. Yes, it's a nasty word, redolent of prejudice and snobbery, but banning words is not a great plan, she reckons.

Meanwhile, one of many responses to the article in yesterday's Guardian about what to do about offensive language in a post-PC world makes the point that Zia Sardur missed out women from his lists of groups susceptible to bigotry. The correspondent says "Although not strictly a "minority", women have been verbally abused since time began. Sadly, vicious insults such as bitch, tart, chick and even whore are increasingly used against us now, after a couple of decades when such words were rarely used. The idea that these references are "ironic" is merely a smoke screen".

Axe the chav and more tales of PC

Two articles in today's Guardian feature discussions about language and how it represents different groups and individuals in society. In the first piece by Ziauddin Sardar, the idea of language in a post-PC world is discussed. The argument goes something like this: if the term PC (Political Correctness) is discredited and the ideas that go with it are suffering splashback as a result, then what should we do to make sure that people are sensitive and careful about the potential impact of their words on others? As Sardar says:

We shape our language, but language also shapes us. Giving a currency to demeaning language can blind us to the fact we have embraced demeaning perceptions about other people.

And he expands on this:

Derogatory words make way for degrading treatment. Language is more than our basic tool of communication; it shapes perceptions and so influences behaviour. Referring to "faggots" or "wrinklies" strips people of respect, and it's just a short step to thinking them less equal. Terms such as "cripples", "spastics", "thick" and "retarded" stigmatise disabled people as less human. A recent increase in attacks has its roots in such language. If "terrorism" is constantly linked to the "Muslim community", as though it is one monolithic entity, it is not surprising if 69% of Britons see all Muslims as terrorists and feel fear and loathing towards them.

It's an argument that should be familiar to most A Level students who've looked at Language & Representation or done the recent Language Debates ENA6 paper (which I'm still marking...). Basically, what Sardar is proposing is an argument inspired by linguistic determinism: that the language we use is a framework through which much of our perception of the world is dictated, or at least influenced.

Elsewhere in the same edition of the paper, Tom Hampton of the Fabian Society, a left-leaning think tank and pressure group, argues that the word chav should not be used as it is "deeply offensive to a largely voiceless group and – especially when used in normal middle-class conversation or on national TV – it betrays a deep and revealing level of class hatred".

This time what's being proposed seems to be a reflectionist argument: that the language we use reflects our social values and attittudes, and that if these values stink (racism, snobbery, sexism etc.) then we should try to moderate our language. The article goes on to talk about the use of racist, homophobic and generally abusive language, so it's a good read for anyone studying ENGA2 (new spec) next year or ENA6 (old spec) from September.

Txtl Analysis

David Crystal is renowned as one of the country's top linguists and in an extract from his new book on language, in The Guardian today, he looks at the rise of texting and the arguments about its effect on our wider communication skills.

Some of the background to texting is covered - the number of messages sent each year & the typical abbreviations used - but maybe more interesting from an English Language A Level point of view is the debate over what texting does (or doesn't) do to our language. Some views are particularly strong...

Crystal quotes a 2002 John Sutherland article (which actually featured on an ENA6 paper a few years ago) in which texting is described as "penmanship for illiterates", and a more recent article by John Humphrys which tell us that the "SMS vandals" "are destroying it (English): pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped."

But as Crystal points out, "Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into people's minds - people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language. Scares accompanied the introduction of the telegraph, telephone, and broadcasting". He makes the point that texting is just another example of language change in action.

People think that the written language seen on mobile phone screens is new and alien, but all the popular beliefs about texting are wrong. Its graphic distinctiveness is not a new phenomenon, nor is its use restricted to the young. There is increasing evidence that it helps rather than hinders literacy. And only a very tiny part of it uses a distinctive orthography. A trillion text messages might seem a lot, but when we set these alongside the multi-trillion instances of standard orthography in everyday life, they appear as no more than a few ripples on the surface of the sea of language. Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. It is not a disaster.

So is texting destroying our language, turning us into a nation of lazy illiterates? Or is it just a form of technology that helps us communicate quickly, a form with its own rules that we can switch into and out of when we choose? Sounds like a language debate to me, so fair game for assessment on ENA6 and the new ENGA3 spec.

Dictionary takes the biscuit

Custard cream is entering the Oxford English Dictionary for the first time, along with muffin top, leetspeak and fascinator. Today's Daily Mirror tells you more about these new additions, while the press release and guide to new entries from the Concise OED reproduced below might give you more of an idea about how dictionaries are put together, where idioms such as "freeze the balls off a brass monkey" and "take the biscuit" come from and what's happening to our language.

Your guide to some of the new entries in the latest edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary

lookbook
• n. a set of photographs displaying a fashion designer's new collection, assembled for
marketing purposes.

on-trend
• adj. very fashionable: her fitted jacket is bang on-trend.

fascinator
• n. a light, decorative woman's headpiece consisting typically of feathers, flowers, beads, etc. attached to a comb or hairclip.

muffin top
• n. informal a roll of fat visible above the top of a pair of women's tight-fitting low-waisted trousers.

body-con
• adj. denoting a style of clothing characterized by very tight-fitting garments: the body-con trend is big news at the moment.
— origin shortening of body-conscious.

vanity sizing
• n. the practice of assigning smaller sizes to articles of manufactured clothing than is really the case, in order to encourage sales.

custard cream
• n. Brit. a biscuit with a vanilla-flavoured cream filling.

sleb
• n. informal a celebrity.
— origin 1990s: representing a colloq. pronunc. of celeb.

channel
• v. emulate or seem to be inspired by: Meg Ryan plays Avery as if she's channelling Nicole Kidman.

cosplay
/"kzpleI/
• n. the practice of dressing up as a character from a film, book, etc., especially one from the Japanese genres of manga or anime.
• v. engage in cosplay.
— derivatives
cosplayer n.
— origin 1990s: blend of costume + play.


academy
• n. Brit. an inner-city school which is funded partly by the government and partly by a private individual or organization.

biosignature
• n. another term for biomarker. naturally occurring molecule, gene, or characteristic by which a particular medical condition, disease, etc. can be identified.

bootstrap
• v. start up (an Internet-based business or other enterprise) with minimal
financial resources.

boiler room
• n. a room or office in which many operators engage in high-pressure telephone sales, especially of risky or worthless investments.

botnet
• n. a network of private computers infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners' knowledge, e.g. to send spam messages.

bragging rights
• pl. n. a temporary position of ascendancy in a closely contested rivalry: it's
over 25 years since Burnley last had the bragging rights in East Lancashire.

busted flush
• n. (in poker) a hand containing four cards of the same suit and one of a different suit. informal a promising person or thing that turns out to be unsuccessful: her leadership is already a busted flush.

car crash
• n. informal a chaotic or disastrous event or situation that holds a ghoulish fascination for onlookers or observers: her life is turning into a car crash.

cc (also c.c.)
• v. (cc's, cc'ing, cc'd) send a copy of an email to (a third party).

crunch
• n. a severe shortage of money or credit: the beleaguered company has become the latest victim of the credit crunch.

demob-happy
• adj. feeling elated because one is about to leave a stressful or responsible job or situation.

drookit
/"drUkIt/ (also droukit)
• adj. Scottish extremely wet; drenched.
— origin
C16: origin uncertain; cf. ON drukna ‘to be drowned’.

fit
• adj. — phrases
fit for purpose (of an institution, facility, etc.) well equipped or well suited for its designated role or purpose.

go-bag
• n. chiefly N. Amer. a bag packed with essential items, kept ready for use in the event of an emergency evacuation of one's home.

goji berry /"g«UdZi/
• n. a bright red edible berry widely cultivated in China, supposed to contain high levels of certain vitamins. See also wolfberry. either of two shrubs (Lycium barbarum and Lycium chinense) on which goji berries grow.
— origin from Chin.
gouqi.

gorilla
• n. [with modifier] a dominant contender within a particular sphere of operation or activity: they'll be up against the 800-lb gorilla in this business, Sony.

leetspeak
• n. an informal language or code used in Internet chatrooms, email, etc., in which numerals or special characters are used to represent standard letters.
— origin from leet, representing a pronunc. of elite, and -speak.

locavore/"l«Uk«vOÉ/ (also localvore /"l«UkÒ«ÔlvOÉ/)
• n. N. Amer. a person whose diet consists only or principally of locally grown or
produced food. — origin C21: on the pattern of carnivore, herbivore, etc.

microgreens
• pl. n. the shoots of salad vegetables such as rocket, celery, beetroot, etc., picked just after the first leaves have developed.

mocktail
• n. chiefly N. Amer. a non-alcoholic drink consisting of a mixture of fruit juices or other soft drinks. — origin 1930s: blend of mock + cocktail.

NEET
• n. Brit. a young person who is not in education, employment, or training.
— origin acronym.

non dom

• n. Brit. a person who lives in a country but is not legally domiciled in it, thereby sometimes obtaining tax advantages in the country concerned.

plus-one
• n. informal a person's guest at a social function.

poke
• v. (on the social networking site Facebook) attract the attention of (another member of the site) by using the ‘poke’ facility.

pump and dump
• n. the fraudulent practice of encouraging investors to buy shares in a company in order to inflate the price artificially, and then selling one's own shares while the price is high.

relatable
• adj. enabling a person to feel that they can relate to someone or something: Mary-Kate's problems make her more relatable.

able to be related to something else.

sub-prime
• adj. referring to credit or loan arrangements for borrowers with a poor credit
history, typically having unfavourable conditions such as high interest rates.

train wreck
• n. informal a chaotic or disastrous situation that holds a ghoulish fascination for onlookers or observers: his train wreck of a private life guaranteed front-page treatment.

The universal language of hand gestures

Research at Chicago University and reported here in The Telegraph seems to suggest that a "universal language" of gesture might exist regardless of the grammar of spoken language used by people around the world.

To help settle a long-running dispute about whether language influences the way we think, psychologists tested 40 speakers of four different languages: 10 English, 10 Mandarin Chinese, 10 Spanish and 10 Turkish speakers, first asking them to describe an action in a video in speech, then only with gestures.

What was remarkable was that, when asked to describe the same scenes using only their hands, all of the adults, no matter what language they spoke, produced the same order - subject, object, verb (woman knob twists, for example). Meanwhile, when asked to describe the scenes in speech, the speakers used the word orders typical of their respective languages.

What the research seems to be pointing towards is that certain conceptual frameworks exist beyond speech and language and that it's these frameworks that we see the world through, rather than language. Linguistic determinists and relativists such as Sapir and Whorf argued that it is language that controls our perception of the world.

So why - if people use a universal gesture "language" regardless of their actual spoken language - do different world languages have varying surface structures? In other words, why do some languages have Subject - Verb - Object word order, while others have Subject - Object - Verb? Is there, as Noam Chomsky famously suggested, a deep structure underneath all human languages?

If you know the answers, please tell me...

Edited to add: Language Log runs this story with a degree more scepticism here and refers to the original article in New Scientist here.

And no one has mentioned the fact that I've got to the end of this post without guffawing childishly about the words woman , knob and twist being in the same sentence. Ha ha.

Blendtabulous tabloids

Apparently some Scottish bloke has won a game of "tennis" at "Wimbledon", so the tabloids are very excited. But more exciting than this victory for our great nation, is the range of glorious headlines in the tabloids (and some broadsheets):

Muscles Murray (Daily Mirror) - alliteration and possible pun on "Muscle Mary" (a slightly derogatory term for a muscular man)
Mighty Murray (The Sun) - alliteration
It's a Murracle (The Sun again) - blend of Murray + Miracle
Mooray! (I just made that one up) - blend of Murray and hooray!

So how about a mini-investigation into the devices used in newspaper headlines as a nice, gentle way into A2 coursework?

And some other blends have been appearing in the papers recently. Yesterday's Guardian had mumager (mum + manager) , or momager if you're American, a term relating to young celebrities whose careers are managed by their mums.

Stagflation (stagnation + inflation) has made a comeback. Originally coined in 1965, according to Wikipedia, it's now being used to describe the current economic downturn.

And then there's cashtrati which seems to be a blend of cash + castration + the suffix -i (as in literati or technorati) and means a group of men who have been affected by the credit crunch and financially castrated ( I think). Ouch.

Mis-speaking management

There's a great article on the BBC News Magazine website here about the horrors of business-speak and management jargon: words and phrases like blue sky thinking, giving it 110% (like the mighty Lee on The Apprentice), stepping up to the plate and herding the dinosaurs.

There's also an interesting point of view broadcast here from Radio 4 which offers an angle on this horrible phenomenon.

What does it all mean? Why do people use it? How can we stop it? All good questions, but now we must go forward.

New stuff...

Now that the AS and A2 exams are done and dusted for 2008, this blog will shift its focus to concentrate on the new AQA A specification which we start teaching in September this year.

There'll still be stuff relevant to next year's A2 students (we don't want to leave you out!) but we'll also need to make sure there's help and ideas available for new AS students.

If you're a current AS student, there'll be some posts soon on next year's Language Investigation coursework (EA4C) and the mini-projects we have planned for your delight and delectation when you return next week and later in the year.

A real live language debate

I've just stumbled across this debate on The Guardian's blog. Here's what ENA6 is all about, in a nutshell: a debate about language in which different positions and opinions are put forward. Have a read of the main article (it's quite short) and then take a sample of some of the more coherent responses to see if you can identify descriptive and prescriptive positions in the debate.

Last bit of ENA6 stuff

...and of course, don't forget to check Beth Kemp's website where she has lots of stuff on approaches to ENA6 question 2a (the one everyone keeps asking me about). Chas's website here is also very handy and you can follow links to resources and word docs.

And if you're banking on the topic being Political Correctness, you could do worse than check this site where there are some really good ideas about why PC is necessary.

And for MEYD and new accents try searching this blog under jafaican, jafaikan, Sue Fox and MEYD.

ENA5 and ENA6

With ENA5 out of the way, it's just ENA6 to go, so good luck for tomorrow.

There are plenty of tips on this blog for how to approach this paper, but remember that reading carefully, annotating well and thinking about the specific demands of each question are the keys to success.

Don't spend too long on parts 1a and 1b: you should be able to get 10 marks for these in about 10 minutes maximum, leaving you about 50 minutes to analyse and evaluate the text for 1c. Remember that you;'re not just feature spotting (although that is part of your job), but you're supposed to be evaluating how the writer of the text represents the issue he or she is talking about. In the texts we've looked at in class (the ones that haven't been past paper questions), think about how the rabidly anti-PC David Gelernter constructed his attack on the feminist "language rapists" as he termed them, or how Michael McCarthy in his "I'm Happy to Boldly Get it Wrong" argued against prescriptive views in grammar and language change. The title of the paper is Language Debates and you will get more marks if you write like you're contributing to , and care about, the debate.

With part 2a, selecting your relevant sources is important: use a range of texts from the paper (and your own ideas and other study) and don't rely too much on the one you've just analysed for 1c. If you feel confident, tie this debate into that of other language topics. PC and Language Change are closely linked. Accents and dialects are changing too - they could be linked into Language Change. It's a synoptic paper, so look for links with other areas. But, be careful not to confuse your reader. You will be writing for a non-specialist audience, so take care to explain technical ideas and don't assume they will know who particular linguists are.

As for my top tips for which topic it might be, I suspect (based on previous papers and topics, not any inside information obviously) it will be either Political Correctness/ Language and Representation or something about Accent and Dialect. For the latter, I'd say look at ideas like dialect levelling and the ways in which new varieties of English have grown - MEYD, Estuary English etc. I got it right last year (attitudes to Language Change) but hopelessly wrong the year before (the speech of chipmunks and cheerleaders) so don't bet everything you have on my predictions.

Good luck.

Pikeys and lesbos

Two words are currently in the news amid claims that they are problematic or offensive. Apparently, the islanders of Lesbos are up in arms about their island's name being used as a label for women who love other women, and are campaigning for the word to be returned to them. Read here for more on this Sapphic madness.

Elsewhere, ITV are being investigated for the use of the word pikey in a Grand Prix broadcast. So what is a pikey and why is it a bad word? The OED defines it as "a vagrant, a tramp, a traveller, a gypsy" and it's probably this last point that makes it more sensitive as a term of abuse as it could be used to label a specific ethnic group: Romany gypsies.

Like many other words, pikey probably isn't intentionally used by most people in such a way, but then I remember not so long ago "gyppo" was often used by people of my generation to describe anyone who looked remotely unkempt, scruffy or shifty-looking. I've heard it chanted at opposing football team players who have sported unfashionable haircuts, and a reliable source from West Ham (our very own Mr Rice) tells me that "anyone slightly east European looking" might find themselves at the harsh end of "pikey" or "gyppo" chants.

But is it just another harmless word, or should we be concerned about the potentially prejudiced social attitudes it might reflect? Linguist Tony Thorne is quoted in the BBC Magazine article as saying

This is the language of social discrimination and it's quite shocking that this
language is now being bandied about. It started with 'chav' and then the 'posh'
stuff about David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

I'm swayed by the social prejudice argument when it comes to groups who have traditionally had less power in society (gay people, travellers, ethnic minorities ), but I can't see what's wrong with attacking those who've got more power than most of us - privileged and arrogant public figures such as Bojo and Cameron - I mean if you can't have a go at the posh who can you have a go at? So, "political correctness gone mad" or due concern for dangerous language?

Useful for:
ENA6 - Language Debates
ENGA2 (new spec) - Investigating Representations

Language change gets owned

New words reflect new values, and language change often feels insidious rather than enabling.

So says Henry Hitchings in a review of a new book, The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English by Mark Abley in today's Telegraph. According to a quick check of Google definitions, it's a battle between language change "working or spreading in a hidden and usually injurious way" (insidious) and language change making things possible or allowing them to take place (enabling). So, it's basically down to the age old debate about prescriptive versus descriptive views.

According to Abley's book, "words seem unusually volatile" at the moment and change is taking place at an incredibly rapid pace, driven in part by the spread of electronic communication. He looks at the growth of virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft and the influence they have had on mainstream language, along with the ways in which "plastic words" are used by governments and business to obscure meaning.

The review makes the book sound like good reading for any A level Language student, and it would also be good preparation for next year's new A levels for any teachers looking at the growth of hybrid languages such as Hinglish and Spanglish, as English spreads around the world and is put to use by locals in combination with their own native languages.

If you're revising for ENA5 Contemporary Language Change, have a quick look at the review and see if you can identify the prescriptive vs. descriptive positions noted above. You might also find this link to language change and technology helpful.

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change
ENGA3 (new spec) - Language Explorations

ENA6 - Writing In a Particular Form

I had meant to cover this at some point before the exam, but a comment from a student on a different thread spurred me into action (thanks, Jack).

First of all, question 2a is one of the two big questions on ENA6: question 1c is a fairly straightforward textual analysis worth 20 marks, while this is a creative/ editorial piece that can yield 35 marks if you get it right.

You'll be asked to write in a particular form on a language issue. The idea is that you're expected to write about a linguistic idea - maybe new words, political correctness, how people feel about local dialects dying out, how women and men use language, whatever the topic of the paper is - for a mainstream, non-specialist audience. The question paper will give you 3-4 texts to use as source material but you don't have to limit yourself to these texts; you can use your own ideas too, but it's probably daft not to use what you're given.

The AQA A spec says this about the forms that you might be asked to write in:

This type of task requires candidates to write about language issues in some common forms where debate about language often occurs, e.g.
• letters to the editor
• articles
• editorials
• scripted radio talk

Candidates are being tested on their ability to communicate their knowledge and understanding of language to an audience beyond the examination.

The topics and forms set up until now are listed in this word document.

Some top tips for this question:

• Make sure you read and annotate the question paper fully before starting any of the questions, but think about using coloured highlighters to select crucial info and quotes for Qu 2a.
• Don't rely too heavily on the text you've just analysed for question 1c. If you make your 2a answer too similar to the 1c text you will not have much original to say.
• Try to use short quotations and paraphrased ideas from the source texts, rather than epic quotations.
• Try to explain linguistic concepts in a clear fashion for your audience: don't assume that they'll know what the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis postulated or who Steven Pinker is.
• If appropriate, write with a light touch and try to engage your reader with humour and style.
• Don't patronise. Did you hear me? Do. Not. Patronise. Did you see what I did there? Ha.
  
• Use information and ideas from the full range of texts: the mark scheme rewards candidates who make use of the trickier texts/data from the question paper.
• Write accurately: many of the 15 marks for style depend on clarity and accurate expression.
• Read lots of examples of different forms between now and the exam so you're familiar with forms like editorials and letters to the editor.

There are no doubt loads of other things to think about, so if you have extra tips, comments or questions please add them below.

ENA6 - Feature Spotting

You've had the chance to practise lots of 1b questions over the last few weeks, now it's time to practise the other 5 mark question in question 1. This is pretty simple: you're asked to "comment linguistically" on 3 different language features (the nature of which depends upon the topic of the paper). This basically means that you pick out 3 interesting language features and label them accurately (2 marks per feature up to a total of 5). It's that simple. You don't need to explain the features, or who has researched them: just label them. You can - if you feel a bit insecure - say a little more about them to clarify what you mean.

An example might be the one below:

Comment linguistically on 3 features of child language in the following extract.

Parent: Did you have a nice day at nursery?
Child: It was good. Some childrens from big school came and play guitars for us.
Parent: That sounds fun.
Child: My hurted my knee at nursery.
Parent: How did you do that?
Child: My falled over.
Parent: Where did you hurt it?
Child: On my knee, I telled you dat.
Parent: But where were you. Inside or outside?
Child: At nursery. I was riding bike.

So, for one feature you might say "The child has used overgeneralised past tense endings on the verbs hurted, telled and falled". And that would get you 2 marks out of the 5 you need.

What else could you pick out and label to get you the full 5 marks?