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ENGA3 - Accent & Dialect revision

Accent and Dialect is one of the topics that could appear in Section A for Language Variation but also in Section B for Language Discourses. Over the last few months, I've added lots of links for this topic for the students taking the new A-level (where the topic appears in the 1st year of the course) but all of these are relevant (and some are really excellent) for your work on ENGA3. Here's a selection of useful posts and links: What's happening to regional accents and dialects? Some interesting articles based on the work of David Britain and others involved in the English Dialect app. Here's one from the i about the findings of the survey , one from the Telegraph on the same and another from The Guardian offering an opinion piece on dialect levelling (for that's what it is). Attitudes to accents - if you listen to this Thinking Allowed episode from about 14 minutes in, you get a good discussion between Paul Kerswill and Alex Berrata about attitudes to regional...
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Old goths never die: they just fade to grey.

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Punks in 1983: probably teaching you English in 2014 Youth culture, and the various sub-cultures that it spawns, has been a hugely productive area of new language for several decades. We've had teddy boys, mods, rockers, hippies, grungers, emos, ravers, nu-ravers (and cheesy quavers), shoegazers, indie kids, grebos, psychobillies, punks, skinheads, redskins, post-punks and goths, among many others. And that's before you start factoring in those which have come from the USA and Jamaica (gangstas, rude boys, natty dreads and even backpack hiphoppers). Each movement has had its own associated look, musical style and even language terminology - as you'd probably expect from any community of practice - and an article by the excellent Alexis Petridis in today's Guardian * tells us all about relatively recent subcultures and some of the language associated with them. Sisters of Mercy: none more goth If you're looking for material to help you with ENGA3 (or ENGB3) Language ...
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Depeche mode

Good luck to everyone doing tomorrow's ENGA1 exam*. Just a couple of quick things to remind you of for Language and Mode. Mode can be both big and small : a tiny detail like a non-fluency feature (umm...errr) or a non-standard spelling are worth looking at and relating to mode, but don't forget the bigger picture of what each mode can offer (affordances) and how it can hold you back (constraints) . E.g. think about why a particular mode (and technology?) might have been used: what does it offer that another mode doesn't? And how does it restrict what you can say or write? Mode is for life, not just for Christmas : don't just talk about mode in your intro and then forget about it like that unwanted Christmas puppy. Weave mode into the rest of your answer. Channel your thoughts : don't forget the concept of channel. You've got texts using the visual channel and/or the auditory channel.  Even fairly basic points about (say) graphology (in the visual channel) or emp...
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