attitudes to language essay

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Speaking, writing and reading are integral to everyday life, where language is the primary tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language – what words and phrases they unconsciously choose and combine – can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do.

Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired and the ways it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon.

“Understanding why and how languages differ tells about the range of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky , the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities and chair of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford . “Discovering what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.”

The stories below represent some of the ways linguists have investigated many aspects of language, including its semantics and syntax, phonetics and phonology, and its social, psychological and computational aspects.

Understanding stereotypes

Stanford linguists and psychologists study how language is interpreted by people. Even the slightest differences in language use can correspond with biased beliefs of the speakers, according to research.

One study showed that a relatively harmless sentence, such as “girls are as good as boys at math,” can subtly perpetuate sexist stereotypes. Because of the statement’s grammatical structure, it implies that being good at math is more common or natural for boys than girls, the researchers said.

Language can play a big role in how we and others perceive the world, and linguists work to discover what words and phrases can influence us, unknowingly.

How well-meaning statements can spread stereotypes unintentionally

New Stanford research shows that sentences that frame one gender as the standard for the other can unintentionally perpetuate biases.

Algorithms reveal changes in stereotypes

New Stanford research shows that, over the past century, linguistic changes in gender and ethnic stereotypes correlated with major social movements and demographic changes in the U.S. Census data.

Exploring what an interruption is in conversation

Stanford doctoral candidate Katherine Hilton found that people perceive interruptions in conversation differently, and those perceptions differ depending on the listener’s own conversational style as well as gender.

Cops speak less respectfully to black community members

Professors Jennifer Eberhardt and Dan Jurafsky, along with other Stanford researchers, detected racial disparities in police officers’ speech after analyzing more than 100 hours of body camera footage from Oakland Police.

How other languages inform our own

People speak roughly 7,000 languages worldwide. Although there is a lot in common among languages, each one is unique, both in its structure and in the way it reflects the culture of the people who speak it.

Jurafsky said it’s important to study languages other than our own and how they develop over time because it can help scholars understand what lies at the foundation of humans’ unique way of communicating with one another.

“All this research can help us discover what it means to be human,” Jurafsky said.

Stanford PhD student documents indigenous language of Papua New Guinea

Fifth-year PhD student Kate Lindsey recently returned to the United States after a year of documenting an obscure language indigenous to the South Pacific nation.

Students explore Esperanto across Europe

In a research project spanning eight countries, two Stanford students search for Esperanto, a constructed language, against the backdrop of European populism.

Chris Manning: How computers are learning to understand language​

A computer scientist discusses the evolution of computational linguistics and where it’s headed next.

Stanford research explores novel perspectives on the evolution of Spanish

Using digital tools and literature to explore the evolution of the Spanish language, Stanford researcher Cuauhtémoc García-García reveals a new historical perspective on linguistic changes in Latin America and Spain.

Language as a lens into behavior

Linguists analyze how certain speech patterns correspond to particular behaviors, including how language can impact people’s buying decisions or influence their social media use.

For example, in one research paper, a group of Stanford researchers examined the differences in how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online to better understand how a polarization of beliefs can occur on social media.

“We live in a very polarized time,” Jurafsky said. “Understanding what different groups of people say and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together.”

Analyzing the tweets of Republicans and Democrats

New research by Dora Demszky and colleagues examined how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online in an attempt to understand how polarization of beliefs occurs on social media.

Examining bilingual behavior of children at Texas preschool

A Stanford senior studied a group of bilingual children at a Spanish immersion preschool in Texas to understand how they distinguished between their two languages.

Predicting sales of online products from advertising language

Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky and colleagues have found that products in Japan sell better if their advertising includes polite language and words that invoke cultural traditions or authority.

Language can help the elderly cope with the challenges of aging, says Stanford professor

By examining conversations of elderly Japanese women, linguist Yoshiko Matsumoto uncovers language techniques that help people move past traumatic events and regain a sense of normalcy.

Essays About Language: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Language is the key to expressive communication; let our essay examples and writing prompts inspire you if you are writing essays about language.

When we communicate with one another, we use a system called language. It mainly consists of words, which, when combined, form phrases and sentences we use to talk to one another. However, some forms of language do not require written or verbal communication, such as sign language. 

Language can also refer to how we write or say things. For example, we can speak to friends using colloquial expressions and slang, while academic writing demands precise, formal language. Language is a complex concept with many meanings; discover the secrets of language in our informative guide.

5 Top Essay Examples

1. a global language: english language by dallas ryan , 2. language and its importance to society by shelly shah, 3. language: the essence of culture by kelsey holmes.

• 4.  Foreign Language Speech by Sophie Carson
• 5. ​​Attitudes to Language by Kurt Medina

1. My Native Language

2. the advantages of bilingualism, 3. language and technology, 4. why language matters, 5. slang and communication, 6. english is the official language of the u.s..

“Furthermore, using English, people can have more friends, widen peer relationships with foreigners and can not get lost. Overall, English becomes a global language; people may have more chances in communication. Another crucial advantage is improving business. If English was spoken widespread and everyone could use it, they would likely have more opportunities in business. Foreign investments from rich countries might be supported to the poorer countries.”

In this essay, Ryan enumerates both the advantages and disadvantages of using English; it seems that Ryan proposes uniting the world under the English language. English, a well-known and commonly-spoken language can help people to communicate better, which can foster better connections with one another. However, people would lose their native language and promote a specific culture rather than diversity. Ultimately, Ryan believes that English is a “global language,” and the advantages outweigh the disadvantages

“Language is a constituent element of civilization. It raised man from a savage state to the plane which he was capable of reaching. Man could not become man except by language. An essential point in which man differs from animals is that man alone is the sole possessor of language. No doubt animals also exhibit certain degree of power of communication but that is not only inferior in degree to human language, but also radically diverse in kind from it.”

Shah writes about the meaning of language, its role in society, and its place as an institution serving the purposes of the people using it. Most importantly, she writes about why it is necessary; the way we communicate through language separates us as humans from all other living things. It also carries individual culture and allows one to convey their thoughts. You might find our list of TOEFL writing topics helpful.

“Cultural identity is heavily dependent on a number of factors including ethnicity, gender, geographic location, religion, language, and so much more.  Culture is defined as a “historically transmitted system of symbols, meanings, and norms.”  Knowing a language automatically enables someone to identify with others who speak the same language.  This connection is such an important part of cultural exchange”

In this short essay, Homes discusses how language reflects a person’s cultural identity and the importance of communication in a civilized society. Different communities and cultures use specific sounds and understand their meanings to communicate. From this, writing was developed. Knowing a language makes connecting with others of the same culture easier. 

4.   Foreign Language Speech by Sophie Carson

“Ultimately, learning a foreign language will improve a child’s overall thinking and learning skills in general, making them smarter in many different unrelated areas. Their creativity is highly improved as they are more trained to look at problems from different angles and think outside of the box. This flexible thinking makes them better problem solvers since they can see problems from different perspectives. The better thinking skills developed from learning a foreign language have also been seen through testing scores.”

Carson writes about some of the benefits of learning a foreign language, especially during childhood. During childhood, the brain is more flexible, and it is easier for one to learn a new language in their younger years. Among many other benefits, bilingualism has been shown to improve memory and open up more parts of a child’s brain, helping them hone their critical thinking skills. Teaching children a foreign language makes them more aware of the world around them and can open up opportunities in the future.

5. ​​ Attitudes to Language by Kurt Medina

“Increasingly, educators are becoming aware that a person’s native language is an integral part of who that person is and marginalizing the language can have severe damaging effects on that person’s psyche. Many linguists consistently make a case for teaching native languages alongside the target languages so that children can clearly differentiate among the codes”

As its title suggests, Medina’s essay revolves around different attitudes towards types of language, whether it be vernacular language or dialects. He discusses this in the context of Caribbean cultures, where different dialects and languages are widespread, and people switch between languages quickly. Medina mentions how we tend to modify the language we use in different situations, depending on how formal or informal we need to be. 

6 Prompts for Essays About Language

In your essay, you can write about your native language. For example, explain how it originated and some of its characteristics. Write about why you are proud of it or persuade others to try learning it. To add depth to your essay, include a section with common phrases or idioms from your native language and explain their meaning.

Bilingualism has been said to enhance a whole range of cognitive skills, from a longer attention span to better memory. Look into the different advantages of speaking two or more languages, and use these to promote bilingualism. Cite scientific research papers and reference their findings in your essay for a compelling piece of writing.

In the 21st century, the development of new technology has blurred the lines between communication and isolation; it has undoubtedly changed how we interact and use language. For example, many words have been replaced in day-to-day communication by texting lingo and slang. In addition, technology has made us communicate more virtually and non-verbally. Research and discuss how the 21st century has changed how we interact and “do language” worldwide, whether it has improved or worsened. 

We often change how we speak depending on the situation; we use different words and expressions. Why do we do this? Based on a combination of personal experience and research, reflect on why it is essential to use appropriate language in different scenarios.

Different cultures use different forms of slang. Slang is a type of language consisting of informal words and expressions. Some hold negative views towards slang, saying that it degrades the language system, while others believe it allows people to express their culture. Write about whether you believe slang should be acceptable or not: defend your position by giving evidence either that slang is detrimental to language or that it poses no threat.

English is the most spoken language in the United States and is used in government documents; it is all but the country’s official language. Do you believe the government should finally declare English the country’s official language? Research the viewpoints of both sides and form a conclusion; support your argument with sufficient details and research. 

Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .If you’re stuck picking your next essay topic, check out our guide on how to write an essay about diversity .

To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.

HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK?

For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong. Research in my labs at Stanford University and at MIT has helped reopen this question. We have collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia. What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity.

HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK?  By Lera Boroditsky

LERA BORODITSKY is an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and symbolic systems at Stanford University, who looks at how the languages we speak shape the way we think.

Lera Boroditsky's Edge Bio Page

Humans communicate with one another using a dazzling array of languages, each differing from the next in innumerable ways. Do the languages we speak shape the way we see the world, the way we think, and the way we live our lives? Do people who speak different languages think differently simply because they speak different languages? Does learning new languages change the way you think? Do polyglots think differently when speaking different languages?

These questions touch on nearly all of the major controversies in the study of mind. They have engaged scores of philosophers, anthropologists, linguists, and psychologists, and they have important implications for politics, law, and religion. Yet despite nearly constant attention and debate, very little empirical work was done on these questions until recently. For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong. Research in my labs at Stanford University and at MIT has helped reopen this question. We have collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia. What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity.

I often start my undergraduate lectures by asking students the following question: which cognitive faculty would you most hate to lose? Most of them pick the sense of sight; a few pick hearing. Once in a while, a wisecracking student might pick her sense of humor or her fashion sense. Almost never do any of them spontaneously say that the faculty they'd most hate to lose is language. Yet if you lose (or are born without) your sight or hearing, you can still have a wonderfully rich social existence. You can have friends, you can get an education, you can hold a job, you can start a family. But what would your life be like if you had never learned a language? Could you still have friends, get an education, hold a job, start a family? Language is so fundamental to our experience, so deeply a part of being human, that it's hard to imagine life without it. But are languages merely tools for expressing our thoughts, or do they actually shape our thoughts?

Most questions of whether and how language shapes thought start with the simple observation that languages differ from one another. And a lot! Let's take a (very) hypothetical example. Suppose you want to say, "Bush read Chomsky's latest book." Let's focus on just the verb, "read." To say this sentence in English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we have to pronounce it like "red" and not like "reed." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) alter the verb to mark tense. In Russian you would have to alter the verb to indicate tense and gender. So if it was Laura Bush who did the reading, you'd use a different form of the verb than if it was George. In Russian you'd also have to include in the verb information about completion. If George read only part of the book, you'd use a different form of the verb than if he'd diligently plowed through the whole thing. In Turkish you'd have to include in the verb how you acquired this information: if you had witnessed this unlikely event with your own two eyes, you'd use one verb form, but if you had simply read or heard about it, or inferred it from something Bush said, you'd use a different verb form.

Clearly, languages require different things of their speakers. Does this mean that the speakers think differently about the world? Do English, Indonesian, Russian, and Turkish speakers end up attending to, partitioning, and remembering their experiences differently just because they speak different languages? For some scholars, the answer to these questions has been an obvious yes. Just look at the way people talk, they might say. Certainly, speakers of different languages must attend to and encode strikingly different aspects of the world just so they can use their language properly.

Scholars on the other side of the debate don't find the differences in how people talk convincing. All our linguistic utterances are sparse, encoding only a small part of the information we have available. Just because English speakers don't include the same information in their verbs that Russian and Turkish speakers do doesn't mean that English speakers aren't paying attention to the same things; all it means is that they're not talking about them. It's possible that everyone thinks the same way, notices the same things, but just talks differently.

Believers in cross-linguistic differences counter that everyone does not pay attention to the same things: if everyone did, one might think it would be easy to learn to speak other languages. Unfortunately, learning a new language (especially one not closely related to those you know) is never easy; it seems to require paying attention to a new set of distinctions. Whether it's distinguishing modes of being in Spanish, evidentiality in Turkish, or aspect in Russian, learning to speak these languages requires something more than just learning vocabulary: it requires paying attention to the right things in the world so that you have the correct information to include in what you say.

Such a priori arguments about whether or not language shapes thought have gone in circles for centuries, with some arguing that it's impossible for language to shape thought and others arguing that it's impossible for language not to shape thought. Recently my group and others have figured out ways to empirically test some of the key questions in this ancient debate, with fascinating results. So instead of arguing about what must be true or what can't be true, let's find out what is true.

Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here because of the way the locals, the Kuuk Thaayorre, talk about space. Instead of words like "right," "left," "forward," and "back," which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer, the Kuuk Thaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms — north, south, east, and west — to define space.1 This is done at all scales, which means you have to say things like "There's an ant on your southeast leg" or "Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit." One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is "Where are you going?" and the answer should be something like " Southsoutheast, in the middle distance." If you don't know which way you're facing, you can't even get past "Hello."

The result is a profound difference in navigational ability and spatial knowledge between speakers of languages that rely primarily on absolute reference frames (like Kuuk Thaayorre) and languages that rely on relative reference frames (like English).2 Simply put, speakers of languages like Kuuk Thaayorre are much better than English speakers at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes or inside unfamiliar buildings. What enables them — in fact, forces them — to do this is their language. Having their attention trained in this way equips them to perform navigational feats once thought beyond human capabilities. Because space is such a fundamental domain of thought, differences in how people think about space don't end there. People rely on their spatial knowledge to build other, more complex, more abstract representations. Representations of such things as time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality, and emotions have been shown to depend on how we think about space. So if the Kuuk Thaayorre think differently about space, do they also think differently about other things, like time? This is what my collaborator Alice Gaby and I came to Pormpuraaw to find out.

To test this idea, we gave people sets of pictures that showed some kind of temporal progression (e.g., pictures of a man aging, or a crocodile growing, or a banana being eaten). Their job was to arrange the shuffled photos on the ground to show the correct temporal order. We tested each person in two separate sittings, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. If you ask English speakers to do this, they'll arrange the cards so that time proceeds from left to right. Hebrew speakers will tend to lay out the cards from right to left, showing that writing direction in a language plays a role.3 So what about folks like the Kuuk Thaayorre, who don't use words like "left" and "right"? What will they do?

The Kuuk Thaayorre did not arrange the cards more often from left to right than from right to left, nor more toward or away from the body. But their arrangements were not random: there was a pattern, just a different one from that of English speakers. Instead of arranging time from left to right, they arranged it from east to west. That is, when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced north, the cards went from right to left. When they faced east, the cards came toward the body and so on. This was true even though we never told any of our subjects which direction they faced. The Kuuk Thaayorre not only knew that already (usually much better than I did), but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.

People's ideas of time differ across languages in other ways. For example, English speakers tend to talk about time using horizontal spatial metaphors (e.g., "The best is ahead of us," "The worst is behind us"), whereas Mandarin speakers have a vertical metaphor for time (e.g., the next month is the "down month" and the last month is the "up month"). Mandarin speakers talk about time vertically more often than English speakers do, so do Mandarin speakers think about time vertically more often than English speakers do? Imagine this simple experiment. I stand next to you, point to a spot in space directly in front of you, and tell you, "This spot, here, is today. Where would you put yesterday? And where would you put tomorrow?" When English speakers are asked to do this, they nearly always point horizontally. But Mandarin speakers often point vertically, about seven or eight times more often than do English speakers.4

Even basic aspects of time perception can be affected by language. For example, English speakers prefer to talk about duration in terms of length (e.g., "That was a short talk," "The meeting didn't take long"), while Spanish and Greek speakers prefer to talk about time in terms of amount, relying more on words like "much" "big", and "little" rather than "short" and "long" Our research into such basic cognitive abilities as estimating duration shows that speakers of different languages differ in ways predicted by the patterns of metaphors in their language. (For example, when asked to estimate duration, English speakers are more likely to be confused by distance information, estimating that a line of greater length remains on the test screen for a longer period of time, whereas Greek speakers are more likely to be confused by amount, estimating that a container that is fuller remains longer on the screen.)5

An important question at this point is: Are these differences caused by language per se or by some other aspect of culture? Of course, the lives of English, Mandarin, Greek, Spanish, and Kuuk Thaayorre speakers differ in a myriad of ways. How do we know that it is language itself that creates these differences in thought and not some other aspect of their respective cultures?

One way to answer this question is to teach people new ways of talking and see if that changes the way they think. In our lab, we've taught English speakers different ways of talking about time. In one such study, English speakers were taught to use size metaphors (as in Greek) to describe duration (e.g., a movie is larger than a sneeze), or vertical metaphors (as in Mandarin) to describe event order. Once the English speakers had learned to talk about time in these new ways, their cognitive performance began to resemble that of Greek or Mandarin speakers. This suggests that patterns in a language can indeed play a causal role in constructing how we think.6 In practical terms, it means that when you're learning a new language, you're not simply learning a new way of talking, you are also inadvertently learning a new way of thinking. Beyond abstract or complex domains of thought like space and time, languages also meddle in basic aspects of visual perception — our ability to distinguish colors, for example. Different languages divide up the color continuum differently: some make many more distinctions between colors than others, and the boundaries often don't line up across languages.

To test whether differences in color language lead to differences in color perception, we compared Russian and English speakers' ability to discriminate shades of blue. In Russian there is no single word that covers all the colors that English speakers call "blue." Russian makes an obligatory distinction between light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). Does this distinction mean that siniy blues look more different from goluboy blues to Russian speakers? Indeed, the data say yes. Russian speakers are quicker to distinguish two shades of blue that are called by the different names in Russian (i.e., one being siniy and the other being goluboy) than if the two fall into the same category.

For English speakers, all these shades are still designated by the same word, "blue," and there are no comparable differences in reaction time.

Further, the Russian advantage disappears when subjects are asked to perform a verbal interference task (reciting a string of digits) while making color judgments but not when they're asked to perform an equally difficult spatial interference task (keeping a novel visual pattern in memory). The disappearance of the advantage when performing a verbal task shows that language is normally involved in even surprisingly basic perceptual judgments — and that it is language per se that creates this difference in perception between Russian and English speakers.

When Russian speakers are blocked from their normal access to language by a verbal interference task, the differences between Russian and English speakers disappear.

Even what might be deemed frivolous aspects of language can have far-reaching subconscious effects on how we see the world. Take grammatical gender. In Spanish and other Romance languages, nouns are either masculine or feminine. In many other languages, nouns are divided into many more genders ("gender" in this context meaning class or kind). For example, some Australian Aboriginal languages have up to sixteen genders, including classes of hunting weapons, canines, things that are shiny, or, in the phrase made famous by cognitive linguist George Lakoff, "women, fire, and dangerous things."

What it means for a language to have grammatical gender is that words belonging to different genders get treated differently grammatically and words belonging to the same grammatical gender get treated the same grammatically. Languages can require speakers to change pronouns, adjective and verb endings, possessives, numerals, and so on, depending on the noun's gender. For example, to say something like "my chair was old" in Russian (moy stul bil' stariy), you'd need to make every word in the sentence agree in gender with "chair" (stul), which is masculine in Russian. So you'd use the masculine form of "my," "was," and "old." These are the same forms you'd use in speaking of a biological male, as in "my grandfather was old." If, instead of speaking of a chair, you were speaking of a bed (krovat'), which is feminine in Russian, or about your grandmother, you would use the feminine form of "my," "was," and "old."

Does treating chairs as masculine and beds as feminine in the grammar make Russian speakers think of chairs as being more like men and beds as more like women in some way? It turns out that it does. In one study, we asked German and Spanish speakers to describe objects having opposite gender assignment in those two languages. The descriptions they gave differed in a way predicted by grammatical gender. For example, when asked to describe a "key" — a word that is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish — the German speakers were more likely to use words like "hard," "heavy," "jagged," "metal," "serrated," and "useful," whereas Spanish speakers were more likely to say "golden," "intricate," "little," "lovely," "shiny," and "tiny." To describe a "bridge," which is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish, the German speakers said "beautiful," "elegant," "fragile," "peaceful," "pretty," and "slender," and the Spanish speakers said "big," "dangerous," "long," "strong," "sturdy," and "towering." This was true even though all testing was done in English, a language without grammatical gender. The same pattern of results also emerged in entirely nonlinguistic tasks (e.g., rating similarity between pictures). And we can also show that it is aspects of language per se that shape how people think: teaching English speakers new grammatical gender systems influences mental representations of objects in the same way it does with German and Spanish speakers. Apparently even small flukes of grammar, like the seemingly arbitrary assignment of gender to a noun, can have an effect on people's ideas of concrete objects in the world.7

In fact, you don't even need to go into the lab to see these effects of language; you can see them with your own eyes in an art gallery. Look at some famous examples of personification in art — the ways in which abstract entities such as death, sin, victory, or time are given human form. How does an artist decide whether death, say, or time should be painted as a man or a woman? It turns out that in 85 percent of such personifications, whether a male or female figure is chosen is predicted by the grammatical gender of the word in the artist's native language. So, for example, German painters are more likely to paint death as a man, whereas Russian painters are more likely to paint death as a woman.

The fact that even quirks of grammar, such as grammatical gender, can affect our thinking is profound. Such quirks are pervasive in language; gender, for example, applies to all nouns, which means that it is affecting how people think about anything that can be designated by a noun. That's a lot of stuff!

I have described how languages shape the way we think about space, time, colors, and objects. Other studies have found effects of language on how people construe events, reason about causality, keep track of number, understand material substance, perceive and experience emotion, reason about other people's minds, choose to take risks, and even in the way they choose professions and spouses.8 Taken together, these results show that linguistic processes are pervasive in most fundamental domains of thought, unconsciously shaping us from the nuts and bolts of cognition and perception to our loftiest abstract notions and major life decisions. Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.

1 S. C. Levinson and D. P. Wilkins, eds., Grammars of Space: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

2 Levinson, Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

3 B. Tversky et al., “ Cross-Cultural and Developmental Trends in Graphic Productions,” Cognitive Psychology 23(1991): 515–7; O. Fuhrman and L. Boroditsky, “Mental Time-Lines Follow Writing Direction: Comparing English and Hebrew Speakers.” Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (2007): 1007–10.

4 L. Boroditsky, "Do English and Mandarin Speakers Think Differently About Time?" Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society (2007): 34.

5 D. Casasanto et al., "How Deep Are Effects of Language on Thought? Time Estimation in Speakers of English, Indonesian Greek, and Spanish," Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (2004): 575–80.

6 Ibid., "How Deep Are Effects of Language on Thought? Time Estimation in Speakers of English and Greek" (in review); L. Boroditsky, "Does Language Shape Thought? English and Mandarin Speakers' Conceptions of Time." Cognitive Psychology 43, no. 1(2001): 1–22.

7 L. Boroditsky et al. "Sex, Syntax, and Semantics," in D. Gentner and S. Goldin-Meadow, eds., Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Cognition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 61–79.

8 L. Boroditsky, "Linguistic Relativity," in L. Nadel ed., Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (London: MacMillan, 2003), 917–21; B. W. Pelham et al., "Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore: Implicit Egotism and Major Life Decisions." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82, no. 4(2002): 469–86; A. Tversky & D. Kahneman, "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice." Science 211(1981): 453–58; P. Pica et al., "Exact and Approximate Arithmetic in an Amazonian Indigene Group." Science 306(2004): 499–503; J. G. de Villiers and P. A. de Villiers, "Linguistic Determinism and False Belief," in P. Mitchell and K. Riggs, eds., Children's Reasoning and the Mind (Hove, UK: Psychology Press, in press); J. A. Lucy and S. Gaskins, "Interaction of Language Type and Referent Type in the Development of Nonverbal Classification Preferences," in Gentner and Goldin-Meadow, 465–92; L. F. Barrett et al., "Language as a Context for Emotion Perception," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11(2007): 327–32.

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Article contents

Language attitudes.

• Marko Dragojevic Marko Dragojevic Department of Communication, University of Kentucky
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.437
• Published online: 27 February 2017

Language attitudes are evaluative reactions to different language varieties. They reflect, at least in part, two sequential cognitive processes: social categorization and stereotyping. First, listeners use linguistic cues (e.g., accent) to infer speakers’ social group membership(s). Second, based on that categorization, they attribute to speakers stereotypic traits associated with those inferred group membership(s). Language attitudes are organized along two evaluative dimensions: status (e.g., intelligent, educated) and solidarity (e.g., friendly, pleasant). Past research has primarily focused on documenting attitudes toward standard and nonstandard language varieties. Standard varieties are those that adhere to codified norms defining correct usage in terms of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, whereas nonstandard varieties are those that depart from such norms in some manner (e.g., pronunciation). Standard and nonstandard varieties elicit different evaluative reactions along the status and solidarity dimensions. Status attributions are based primarily on perceptions of socioeconomic status. Because standard varieties tend to be associated with dominant socioeconomic groups within a given society, standard speakers are typically attributed more status than nonstandard speakers. Solidarity attributions tend to be based on in-group loyalty. Language is an important symbol of social identity, and people tend to attribute more solidarity to members of their own linguistic community, especially when that community is characterized by high or increasing vitality (i.e., status, demographics, institutional support). As a result, nonstandard language varieties can sometimes possess covert prestige in the speech community in which they are the speech norms. Language attitudes are socialized early in life. At a very young age, children tend to prefer their own language variety. However, most (if not all) children gradually acquire the attitudes of the dominant group, showing a clear status preference for standard over nonstandard varieties around the first years of formal education and sometimes much earlier. Language attitudes can be socialized through various agents, including educators, peers, family, and the media. Because language attitudes are learned, they are inherently prone to change. Language attitudes may change in response to shifts in intergroup relations and government language policies, as well as more dynamically as a function of the social comparative context in which they are evoked. Once evoked, language attitudes can have myriad behavioral consequences, with negative attitudes typically promoting prejudice, discrimination, and problematic social interactions.

• language attitudes
• social categorization
• stereotypes
• standard language variety
• nonstandard language variety
• intergroup communication

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Language Ideologies and Language Attitudes

Introduction, some key texts and edited collections.

• Early Research on Language Attitudes
• Social Psychology and Applied Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Folk Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics and Language and Politics
• Ethnography of Communication
• Convergence of Language-Ideological Research in Other Fields
• Critical Discourse Analysis—a Convergent School from the Humanities
• More-Recent Developments on Language Ideologies within Linguistic Anthropology
• Language Attitudes and Ideologies in the Expression of Style and Identities
• Language Ideologies and Language Revitalization
• Linguistic Racism and Colonialism
• Standards and States, Dialects, Registers, and Speech Economies
• Enregisterment
• Language Attitudes and Ideologies in the Study of Verbal Art
• Language, Globalization, Hybridity, and Inequality

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Language Ideologies and Language Attitudes by Paul V. Kroskrity LAST REVIEWED: 28 April 2016 LAST MODIFIED: 28 April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0122

As conceptual tools, language ideologies and language attitudes were created by researchers in the second half of the 20th century to provide a means of treating speakers’ feelings and ideas about various languages and linguistic forms as a critical factor in understanding processes of language change, language and identity, and language in its socioeconomic context. But even though each of these concepts can be viewed as related to a common effort to bring linguistic subjectivity into research once exclusively dominated by objectivist frameworks that attempted to explain linguistic phenomena, without recourse to speakers’ apparent understandings, the two concepts have complementary histories of development. Definitions of both these concepts typically invoke speakers’ feelings and beliefs about language structure or language use. But a close analysis of their distinctive histories and patterned distribution reveals that they have not only very different origins but also significant differences in the way they encourage researchers to focus on distinctive aspects of similar phenomena. In addition to their different histories and arenas of focal concern, the two concepts are typically associated with very different kinds of methodologies. Language attitudes, as a concept, is generally associated with an objectivist concern with quantitative measurement of speakers’ reactions. This concern is surely related to its conceptual origins in social psychology, quantitative sociolinguistics, and educational linguistics. In contrast, the concept of language ideologies is associated with qualitative methods such as ethnography, conversational analysis, and discourse analysis, as will be exemplified in the various sections of this article. This methodological reliance on qualitative methods is certainly related to its association with linguistic anthropology, interpretive sociology, and systemic functional linguistics. Also in contrast to the history of application for the concept of language attitudes, language ideologies—in accord with its anthropological origins—has tended to emphasize how speakers’ beliefs and feelings about language are constructed from their experience as social actors in a political economic system, and how speakers’ often-partial awareness of the form and function of their semiotic resources is critically important. While students of language ideologies read them both from speakers’ articulate explications (e.g., in interviews or conversational interaction) and from comparatively unreflecting, habitual discursive practice, students of language attitudes tend to measure reactions through more standardized and objective forms of data collection (survey, extended interview, matched guise test, and the analysis of sociophonetic samples). Apart from the social sciences, research in the humanities has also taken up language as a cultural phenomenon and has added a historical as well as an ideological dimension to the study of the emergence of awareness regarding the use of urban dialects and other local linguistic forms, perhaps as symbolic pushback to sociolinguistic globalization.

Though both concepts are still very important to researchers interested in understanding sociolinguistic processes such as language change, language shift, or linguistic revitalization, there is no introductory text devoted to either. The listed works are some of the more widely used texts that attempt to convey significant concepts through case studies. Baker 1992 provides a resource both for specialists and nonspecialists alike that argues for a more central role of language attitudes in studies of multilingualism, language maintenance and loss, and language planning. Like Baker 1992 , Garrett 2010 also critically surveys research on language attitudes, with more of an emphasis on methods. For language ideologies, Schieffelin, et al. 1998 combines an influential collection of exemplary case studies with an insightful introduction that overviews the development of the field. Blommaert 1999 complements that collection with an anthology composed mostly of works by European scholars who treat explicit language ideologies. Focusing on the making of linguistic authority, Gal and Woolard 2001 illustrates how language ideologies enable the construction of various publics.

Baker, Colin. 1992. Attitudes and language . Multilingual Matters 83. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Important overview of the origins and concerns of research on language attitudes.

Blommaert, Jan, ed. 1999. Language ideological debates . Language, Power, and Social Process 2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

An early and highly significant edited collection featuring work on explicit language ideologies and their contestation.

Gal, Susan, and Kathryn A. Woolard, eds. 2001. Languages and publics: The making of authority . Encounters. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome.

An important and focused anthology on authoritative uses of language in the public sphere.

Garrett, Peter. 2010. Attitudes to language . Key Topics in Sociolinguistics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511844713

An outstanding textbook-type treatment of the history and proliferation of research on language attitudes, by one of its most prolific scholars.

Garrett, Peter, Nikolas Coupland, and Angie Williams. 2003. Investigating language attitudes: Social meanings of dialect, ethnicity, and performance . Cardiff, UK: Univ. of Wales Press.

An excellent study and overview of relevant research and research methods, with a special emphasis on Welsh and English.

Schieffelin, Bambi B., Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity, eds. 1998. Language ideologies: Practice and theory . Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics 16. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

This edited collection, revised from an earlier 1992 special issue of Pragmatics , is the most widely used book on the topic.

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Language and It’s Influence on Our Attitudes Opinion Essay

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Language encompasses the social life. It is the primary vehicle used for communication of knowledge, and the primary medium to get a glimpse of the other person’s thought process. Therefore, the importance of language as an imperative element of study in social psychology is irrefutable.

For this reason, one must understand that language has an irrevocable influence on attitude, perception, identity, and social interaction. Language in a way stands on both side of the rope, in other words, it is a stimulus that changes and alters behavior and a response or outcome to the alteration in behavior.

In this paper, we will discuss the way language can affect attitude. It must be made clear, that attitude too affects language, but the main aim of this essay is to understand the influence language has on the attitude.

Attitude holds a central position in linguistics as it demonstrates a common usage notion, terminology, being an explanatory variable. Hence, there arises an overlap in the terminology and definition of attitude in social psychology literature.

Attitude being an important concept of social behavior allows one to identify common and changing beliefs, preferences, and indicates the present thought of the society. In order to understand the influence of language on attitude, we must understand the meaning of attitude.

Attitude may be defined a manner in which one expresses one’s disposition, position, and the manner regarding something. From a psychological point of view, one can also state that attitude demonstrates the mental state of an individual.

Therefore, attitude by definition assumes a concrete position in the social behavioral set of individuals and command of its facets.

Language is an integral part of communication process. Language encompasses the social life that comprises the intrinsic parts of the language used. This essay demonstrates the influence language has on attitude of individuals.

Therefore, language has command over situation perception, belief, and identity of individuals speaking the language. Language is nothing but a set of conceptual doctrines that defines the relation between the sounds of spoken words and the meaning outcome.

Language is a system of complex and organized set of sounds that are organized to affect the perception of the listener.

Language may also entail actions that are shown in order to communicate a certain idea with possible verbal meaning. Language therefore, is a means of communicating various ideas through processed words, gestures, or actions.

Communication through language always aims to communicate an idea, a message. This message or idea may be used to deliver a notion, discourse, knowledge, belief, etc. These, therefore, would certainly have an effect on the attitude of the listener.

Aristotle once said that the aptness of the language of the story one tells would influence the credibility the listeners would hold of the tale. Therefore, language has an immense persuasive power over the listener. One, therefore, would not be mistaken, if it is assumed that language may affect the language outcome.

It is believed that the powerfulness or forcefulness of the language would affect the credibility of the speaker, and therefore, affect the attitude of the listener towards the speaker. In a way, language affects the perception of the listener greatly.

The effect of language on listener’s attitude arises from linguistic variations, cultural perceptions of the credibility of the speaker, and the fluency of the speech. It is believed that when communications are given out slowly they are perceived to be less credible by the listeners.

Further usage of inappropriate, crude language, reduces credibility of the speaker to a great extent and negatively affect the listener’s attitude. Therefore, the influence of language on attitude is immense and encompasses the perception of the listener to the speaker.

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Research Article

Language Variation, Language Attitudes and Linguistic Discrimination

In our daily lives, people instantly form positive or negative language attitudes towards others judging by the accent with which they speak. This essay will demonstrate that people who speak with an unpleasant accent will encounter social consequences, whilst people who use language correctly receive numerous opportunities; this is because decisions are made based upon the speakers’ speech. As a result, language attitudes express the linguistics preference based on which people are judging other’s speech. The purpose of this paper is to define language variation, language attitudes and linguistic discrimination within the field of sociolinguistics and to discuss the relationship between the mentioned concepts. The article will focus on studies that offer real life situations in which people linguistically judge others, including cartoon movies in which the main characters use a Standard English accent, whilst the other characters have foreign accents (Lippi-Green, 2012). The same issue is apparent within the workplace where linguistic discrimination is present as employers are more likely to hire people that speak in a pleasant manner (Garrett, 2010).

Keywords: Language Variation, Linguistic Discrimination, Language Attitudes

Papuc, R. D., (2016) “Language Variation, Language Attitudes and Linguistic Discrimination”, Essex Student Journal 8(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.5526/esj35

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Introduction

The literature in the field of sociolinguistics has covered the analysis of language variation, language attitudes and linguistic discrimination. The purpose of this essay is to explore and define the relationship between the previously stated concepts, using relevant examples from studies which have focused on analysing daily conversations . In order to determine this relationship, several authors have explained the importance of language variation, language attitudes and linguistic discrimination . In addition to these explanations, examples from Disney cartoons have been utilised in order to illustrate the noticeable relationship between the stated concepts. Furthermore, other studies have been conducted in order to demonstrate that people maintain different language attitudes towards other languages and to identify the relationship between the three concepts within the workplace.

Language Variation

Language variation is a subject that has been analysed not only in the field of sociolinguistics, but also in psycholinguistics and linguistics (Krug and Schluter, 2013). However, this assignment will focus on the analysis of language variation within the field of sociolinguistics. Language variation is related to the manner in which language varies and the elements which lead to the employment of one form of the language instead of another (Krug and Schluter, 2013). In this case, Stockwell (2007) has determined the most important factors which lead to language variation including occupation, age, sex, class, and ethnicity. Furthermore, Wardhaugh (1986) admits that each language has its own variations and that language variation is influenced by social factors such as the social group and the geographic zone. Moreover, Bell (2014, p. 103) has explained that “a variety is a relatively distinguishable form of a language, often based on geographical or social differences”. For example, taking England into consideration, it can be noted that there are language varieties such as Standard English, Oxford English and London English (Wardhaugh, 1986). This proves that one language has distinct language varieties.

Several definitions have been formulated in order to explain language variation. For example, Labov ( 1972, p. 323 ) defines language variations as “different ways of saying the same thing”. In this case, “runnin” and “running” are two distinct versions that express the same idea (Bayley & Lucas, 2007). Similarly, Hudson (1996, p. 22) defines language variation as “a set of linguistic items with similar distribution”. Furthermore, Lippi-Green (2012, p. 38) explains that “we exploit linguistic variation available to us in order to send a complex series of messages about ourselves and the way we position ourselves in the world”. It can be argued that individuals identify variation in the conversations of others and this is used to create an opinion about that person (Lippi-Green, 2012). As a result of this latter definition, language variation leads to language attitudes.

Language attitudes

Allport (1954) defines an attitude as “a learned disposition to think, feel and behave towards a person in a particular way”. This definition suggests that an attitude is not inherent, but learned and that individuals have mastered attitudes throughout the process of becoming part of society, thus making the person react towards the social world in a favourable or unfavourable way (Sarnoff, 1970).

It can be noted that language attitudes are a social phenomenon . Garrett (2010) explains that language attitudes have the role of creating opinions about other speakers, by judging their speech. Furthermore, Garett, Couplanf and Williams (2003) have studied the origins of language attitudes; they have admitted that attitudes are formed based upon the language varieties and have also found that language attitudes create either advantageous or disadvantageous opinions surrounding the speakers. Similarly, Garrett (2010) has focused on determining from where language attitudes arise. He has mentioned that a variety of factors including the individual experience and the social surroundings create language attitudes. The literature in this field emphasises the fact that there are two types of attitudes: positive and negative (Garett, Couplanf and Williams, 2003). In this case, Gerard (2012) explains that people are likely to believe that the manner in which they themselves speak is the correct way; hence the other varieties are wrong. As a result, these attitudes are classified into positive attitudes and negative attitudes. The negative attitudes lead to linguistic discrimination amongst speakers.

Linguistic Discrimination

According to Pool (1987), linguistic discrimination is related to an unequal treatment of languages, thus creating unequal linguistic attitudes. This concept is related to the discriminatory treatment of a person based upon their utilisation of a language. It can be argued that one form of language discrimination is linguicism. Skutnabb-Kangas and Cummins (1988, p. 13) have defined linguicism as “ideologies, structures and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language”. Furthermore, Rubagumya (1991) has argued that the effects of the linguicism are related to the fact that majority languages of many developed countries are imposed, whereas minority languages are ignored.

Lippi-Green (2012) explains that the Civil Rights Act created Title VII in order to ensure that employees could not be discriminated against due to aspects such as age, sex and ethnicity. In addition to this rule, the employer is not allowed to discriminate against applicants based on their own attitudes toward the language variation that the applicant uses. However, it has been accepted that “an adverse employment decision may be predicated upon an individual’s accent when – and only when – it interferes materially with job performance” (Lippi-Green 2012, p. 150). As a result, an employee cannot be rejected on the basis of linguistic discrimination. However, this is not the situation in the workplace. Taking into consideration the situation in the United Kingdom, numerous examples within the workplace relating to linguistic discrimination can be noted. However, people who are linguistically discriminated against in the workplace have adapted and so it does not occur unexpectedly.

In order to illustrate linguistic discrimination at the workplace, the General Accounting Office conducted research which reported that 461,000 nationwide companies admitted that when they hired people, they had linguistically discriminated against the employees with foreign accents (Lippi-Green 2012). Moreover, a research related to the discrimination of the applicants for advertised jobs has proved that the employers initially conduct telephone interviews in order to detect whether the applicant has an accent (Lippi-Green 2012). These evidences have been also highlighted in Carroll versus Elliott Personnel Services (1985), where it is argued that one employee of a recruitment agency was asked to screen all the candidates over the telephone in order to detect the persons who had a relevant accent (Lippi-Green 2012).

The Relationship between Language Variation, Language Attitudes and Linguistic Discrimination

Taking into consideration the discussions and the definitions provided above about language variation, language attitudes and linguistic discrimination, it can be argued that their particularities are related. Giles and Coupland (1991) have emphasised the fact that language attitudes and language variations cannot be regarded separately because a stable relationship exists between them. Language attitudes are usually constructed by assessing the speakers’ language variety, including dialects and accents due to the nature of language. Similarly, Meyerhoff (2006) has argued that attitudes concerning distinct varieties of languages may lead people to have different attitudes towards individuals that use those language varieties. As a result, the concept of language attitudes is a social, not linguistic, phenomenon and has a strong relationship with language variation (Giles and Coupland, 1991). Moreover, Gerard (2012) explains that language attitudes demonstrate the linguistic preferences which people hold and on which they judge other peoples’ speech. Similarly, Meyerhoff (2006) argues that people make assumptions about others by judging the manner in which they speak. As a result, language attitudes can be classified based upon a person’s language variety and this will be further discussed in the following sections.

Lippi-Green (2012) has identified examples from daily life in which the relationship between language variation, language attitudes and linguistic discrimination is visible. An example in this case is related to Disney cartoons that utilise language variation in order to reinforce different attitudes about each character’s speech. In Disney cartoons, characters are linguistically discriminated against due to the language variation that they use. For example, main characters in cartoons possess the so-called “Standard American/English accent”, whereas the other characters have different accents. This leads to the conclusion that said characters may not be regarded as significant as those characters that possess a British or US standard accent (Gerard, 2012).

An opening line from the animated Disney movie Aladdin was accused of discrimination. The line, “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face/ It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home”, has since been changed (Lippi-Green, 2012 p. 107). Although the line was altered, the accents remained the same. Furthermore, Precker (1993) explains that the positive characters within Aladdin talk with an American accent, whilst the bad and marginal characters have heavy Arabic accents (Lippi-Green, 2012): ‘This pounds home the message that people with a foreign accent are bad.’ (Lippi-Green, 2012, p. 107).

Lambert et al. (1965) conducted a study in which Arabic and Jewish students were required to rate readers in terms of their personality characteristics. The readers were two bilingual speakers and they were reading the exact same text in several different languages including Arabic, Yemen Hebrew and Ashkenazi Hebrew. The ratings prove that people maintain different language attitudes towards another language than their own ; this study illustrates that both Jewish speakers and Arabic speakers rated each other as less sincere and less friendly. In another study, Purnell et al. (1999) used different varieties of English, including a Standard English accent, a Hispanic accent and an African American accent, in order to book an appointment with landlords. All the callers began with the following sentence: ‘Hello, I’m calling about the apartment you have advertised in the paper’ (p. 153). The results of the research showed that in 70% of cases the speaker with the standard American English accent received an appointment, contrasted against only 30% for the other accents (Gerard, 2012).

It can be argued that language attitudes have social impact at the workplace (Bauer & Trudgill, 1998). According to Garrett (2010), language attitudes have also been studied in the employment area. Most of the employment decisions were based upon the speakers’ accent. However, other elements such as speech rate have been studied. In this case, employers preferred speakers with a regular or quicker speech rate than their own. Hopper and Williams (1973) have first studied the language attitudes in the job interviews (Garrett, 2010). Different varieties of English were rated such as the standard form, south white English dialect and the ‘Black English’ dialect. People working in the recruitment process are more likely to give the job to the person that has the most pleasant manner of speaking. By this logic, if someone with a Glaswegian accent and someone with a Standard English accent were applying for the job, the English candidate would get the job. Speaking with an unpleasant accent has social consequences. It is society that judges the speakers of different language varieties.

Distinct varieties of English are viewed differently. In England, researchers have discovered that various accents around the country are viewed as vulgar, such as accents from areas of London or Birmingham [1] (Lippi-Green, 2012). However, other accents, mostly from the rural zone, are described as delightful. Every person possesses his/her own personal preferred language or dialect sound according to Bauer and Trudgill (1998). Some dialects have a better reputation than others. This is how people in power reinforce standard varieties. People are taught that the manner in which they communicate is the main element to represent their identity. Moreover, educational academies denigrate the way in which certain ethnic groups and people that originate from low working class families speak.

Preston (2002) demonstrated in a research how states are rated for the language pleasantness, character and correctness (Gerard 2002). In the research, people from Michigan State rated their speech as the most correct and most enjoyable. However, they rated Alabama State the lowest. Although those from Alabama did not regard their own speech as the most correct, they believed that it was not worse than others states such as Michigan. This research proves that both people from Alabama and Michigan have distinct language attitudes towards language varieties (Gerard 2002).

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the concepts of language variation, language attitudes and linguistic discrimination. This study has identified the relationships by using relevant examples from the literature. The first three parts of this assignment have presented the findings about the concepts stated above. As a result, it can be noted that each of the above concepts is related to the others because language attitudes are related not only to language variation, but also to linguistic discrimination.

In order to explain the above theory, Giles and Coupland (1991) have argued that language attitudes, which are a social phenomenon, and language variations cannot be regarded separately. Furthermore, Meyerhoff (2006) suggests that language attitudes are created based upon language variation. As a result, language attitudes can be classified into positive attitudes toward a language variation, or in negative attitudes towards a language variation. The positive language attitudes are usually the standard language variation used by the person who is judging. In contrast, Gerard (2012) explained that the negative language attitudes are directed toward the language varieties other than the standard. This might lead to linguistic discrimination amongst speakers.

Lippi-Green (2012) has argued that even in cartoon movies, the main characters use a Standard English accent, whereas the other characters hold different accents. Thus, different accents reinforce negative language attitude. Moreover, Lambert et al. (1965) have conducted a study in order to illustrate that people are likely to create a negative language attitude towards those who use languages other than their own. Furthermore, Garrett (2010) has explained that a negative language attitude, which is linguistic discrimination, is present in the workplace because employers are likely to hire people towards whom they have a positive language attitude. As a result, people who speak the standard language variety have numerous opportunities in contrast to those who do not speak this language variety, because decisions are usually based upon the speaker’s speech. Furthermore, each person has his/her language variation preference which leads to different language attitudes. Based on the above discussion it can be argued that the relationship between language variation, language attitudes and linguistic discrimination is symbiotic and socially formed.

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(2016) 'Language Variation, Language Attitudes and Linguistic Discrimination', Essex Student Journal . 8(1) doi: 10.5526/esj35

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Language Variation, Language Attitudes and Linguistic Discrimination. Essex Student Journal. 2016 1; %}8(1) doi: 10.5526/esj35

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Learners of English and Their Attitudes Towards and Beliefs About Multilingualism

• First Online: 20 August 2024

Cite this chapter

• Paula Kalaja 4 &
• Ana Maria F. Barcelos 5  

Part of the book series: Springer Texts in Education ((SPTE))

This chapter addresses recent developments in research on two concepts: firstly, attitudes towards varieties or speakers of English, and secondly, beliefs about learning English as a second language (L2 is used in this chapter to refer to any additional language) held by learners, and importantly, from quite a novel perspective, namely, from the perspective of multilingualism. L2 learners of English already have other languages in their repertoires and thus they are multilingual by a current definition. The two concepts play an important role in the L2 learning process and outcomes, and they are closely related to learners’ autonomy, motivation, learning strategies, and actions in the classroom as well as to their emotions and identities, among other learner characteristics. The chapter first reviews recent literature on the two concepts that are crucial in understanding how learners approach the L2 learning process and how their teachers teach and make decisions in the language classroom. The chapter continues by illustrating how TESOL teachers could address the two concepts as part of their daily classroom activities and offers practical suggestions for action research that they could engage in to raise their students’ awareness of attitudes towards and beliefs about becoming or being multilingual in a globalized world. To these ends, the chapter suggests applying a variety of research methods, including questionnaires, interviews, visualizations of various kinds to challenge some traditional notions regarding multilingualism (such as monolingual bias and native-speakerism) in the contexts of teaching TESOL.

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1.1 Appendix A: Interview Questions (Adapted from Zeng et al., 2022 )

Note. Replace Chinese with a local language/nationality.

Are you proud of your English accent (= your way of speaking English)? Why/Why not?

Do you think your accent is intelligible to native speakers and non-native speakers when you speak English? Why/Why not?

What about the acceptability of your accent to them? Please give your reasons.

Would you like to be identified as a native speaker of English or a non-native speaker of English (a Chinese speaker of English) when you communicate in English? Please give your reasons.

Do you think people can tell you are Chinese from your English accent? How do you feel when someone recognizes that you are Chinese through your English accent?

Do you think non-native speakers of English have the authority to own the English language? Why/Why not?

Do you think non-native speakers of English have the authority to modify English based on their needs? Why/Why not?

Do you think non-native speakers of English can use other languages to avoid misunderstanding when communicating in English? Why/Why not?

Do you think teachers should help students to communicate effectively or help them to achieve a native-like proficiency? Please give your reasons.

Which one can be a good role model for Chinese learners of English—a native or a non-native speaker of English?

Do you think students should get familiar with the cultures and traditions of native speakers of English? Why/Why not?

Do you think it is necessary for students to have a native-like accent if they want to communicate successfully in English? Why/Why not?

Do you think students should be exposed to both native and non-native English accents? Why/Why not?

Can you share with me some of your experiences of using English for intercultural communication with foreigners and/or international students?

How do you feel when you speak English with foreigners and/or international students? What do you think about them and their English?

Do you want to maintain your Chinese identity when you speak English with foreigners and/or international students?

1.2 Appendix B: Questionnaire Items (Adapted from Muir et al., 2021 , Questionnaire Sections 1 and 2)

1.2.1 section 1.

We would like to begin by asking you to think about your English language role models . Remember, they might be a teacher, a famous actor/singer, a politician, a friend...but it could be anyone who speaks or writes in English!

1. Do you have anyone specific in mind as your English language role model(s)? Yes/No [If no, participant routed to the start of Section 2]

First of all, we would like to ask you for some basic information about him/her.

Your English language role model :

2. What sex is he/she? Male/Female/Other (e.g., fictional character, animation). If you selected “Other”, could you please tell us why?

3. Is he/she a native speaker of English (is English their first language)? Yes/No

4. Is he/she the same nationality as you? Yes/No. If they are a different nationality to you, what nationality are they?

5. Is he/she the same age as you?

(I think) they are about the same age as me

(I think) they are older than me

(I think) they are younger than me

6. Does he/she work in a similar job to you (or that you would like to do in the future)?

Yes/No/Their job is not relevant to why he/she is my English language role model

6a. If you ticked “No”, what job do they do?

6b. If you ticked “Their job is not relevant”, could you please explain why? It would be very interesting to know who you have been describing.

If he/she is famous, we would be grateful if you could please tell us his/her name and their job (for example, “Barack Obama—former US president”). If he/she is not famous, it would be very useful if you could please tell us how you know him/her (for example, “my grandmother” or “my first English teacher”). Thank you!

The person I have been describing is…

1.2.2 Section 2

We would like to understand more about the characteristics and features that make your English language role model so attractive to you.

If you can’t think of an English language role model or if you don’t have one, don’t worry, please just tell us what characteristics you think would be important to you in choosing one.

7. How important are each of the following characteristics when you think about an English language role model ?

8. Are there any other characteristics you think are important that are not in this list?

1.3 Appendix C: Questionnaire Items (Adapted from Busse, 2017 , Questionnaire Sections 2 and 3)

All questions (but the last one) use the following Likert scale : Strongly disagree (1), Disagree (2), Slightly disagree (3), Partly agree (4), Agree (5), Strongly agree (6).

1.3.1 Section 1: Languages other than English (LOTEs)

This section is to find out how you feel about learning a LOTE.

Select the appropriate number (from 1 to 6) to show how much you agree or disagree with the following statements. Note: replace Australia and Australians with the name of your country/citizens.

Anyone who tries can learn a LOTE.

My parents encouraged me to learn a LOTE.

The things I want to do in the future involve learning a LOTE.

LOTE study should be compulsory up to year 12.

LOTE is a girls’ area of study.

Learning a LOTE is necessary because people surrounding me expect me to.

For me LOTE is easier than mathematics.

My school friends say that Australians should learn a LOTE.

LOTE helps me to understand Australia’ s multicultural society.

I can imagine myself as someone who is able to speak a LOTE.

I make an effort to watch TV programmes in a LOTE I have studied.

If I fail to study a LOTE I will be letting other people down.

For me a LOTE is easier than English.

I believe all students should learn a LOTE.

I would rather spend time on subjects other than a LOTE.

I want to be the kind of person that speaks a LOTE well.

LOTE is only for clever students.

My friends say that learning a LOTE will get me a better job.

Girls are more interested than boys in studying a LOTE.

I believe that learning a LOTE is important because the people that I respect think that I should.

My parents tell me Australians should learn a LOTE.

I see myself one day speaking a LOTE with native speakers around the world.

For me LOTE is easier than science.

Learning LOTE is useless.

LOTE should be compulsory up to year 10.

LOTE will help me to understand my family’s cultural heritage.

My parents tell me that learning a LOTE will get me a better job.

Girls are more interested than boys in studying mathematics.

Studying a LOTE is important to me because an educated person is supposed to be able to speak a second language.

I make an effort to listen to radio programmes in a LOTE I have studied.

My school friends encourage me to learn a LOTE.

If I achieve my dreams, I will use a LOTE effectively in the future.

I feel that I should keep studying a LOTE because I have already spent years learning it.

I try to use LOTE outside of school.

It is difficult to score well in year 12 LOTE exams.

1.3.2 Section 2: Students no longer studying a LOTE

If you studied more than one LOTE, complete this section for the LOTE that you preferred, which was: ____________ (write your answer in the space provided). The following statements are about the letarning of a LOTE. Mark your choice with the appropriate number from 1 to 6.

I learnt something new in every LOTE lesson.

Even if I studied, I got nowhere in LOTE.

In the LOTE class, English was rarely used.

I did well in LOTE.

I did extra work in LOTE if I fell behind.

If new LOTE work was difficult to understand I forgot about it.

I was prepared to do extra work in LOTE to achieve good results.

I tried to concentrate in the LOTE class.

I would be happy to learn a LOTE in the future.

I did well in LOTE because I worked hard.

I found learning a LOTE required regular study.

We needed more school time to learn a LOTE.

Why did you not continue with your LOTE study?

I did NOT want to study a LOTE.

I do NOT need LOTE for my future studies.

I did NOT like learning a LOTE.

I did NOT like the LOTE teacher.

LOTE clashed on the timetable with subjects I preferred.

The teacher advised me NOT to continue with LOTE study.

I did NOT like the LOTE class.

I can use English if I go overseas.

LOTE will NOT get me a better job.

My friends dropped LOTE.

I could NOT fit LOTE into my course of study.

I found learning LOTE required constant work.

I will never have an opportunity to use a LOTE.

I was NOT good at LOTE.

I did NOT like the way that LOTE was taught.

I did NOT get on with the LOTE teacher.

The LOTE I wanted to study was NOT offered.

At what year level/grade did you last study a LOTE?

How likely are you to study an elective LOTE next year?

1.4 Appendix D: Interview Questions (Adapted from Espar, 2016 )

Background information about students’ language use: Note: Lx means any other language(s) you might know.

When do you use Lx , English or your mother tongue?

With whom do you use Lx , English or your mother tongue?

And why do you use Lx , English or your mother tongue in different contexts?

Of all the languages you speak, which one did you learn first?

Which language is used the most at home? Which language do you speak to your parents? Which language do your parents speak to you?

Many of you have several mother tongues. Which language do you consider yourself to know the “best” and why?

Which language do you feel the most comfortable speaking, and why?

Which language do you think in? Does it vary depending on the situation, and what do you think is the reason for that?

Associations towards the mother tongue

How do you feel speaking your mother tongue? Do you like hearing it?

Do you wish that you could speak your mother tongue as well as English or Lx ?

Do you think you will forget your mother tongue in the future?

Would you rather speak your mother tongue than Lx or English? Why?

Do you wish that you could speak your mother tongue more often during class?

If you have children, what language do you want them to speak and why?

The importance of language in general

Do you think it is beneficial to speak many languages? Why?

Can it be bad to speak many languages? Why?

Do you feel pride in speaking many languages? Why?

Do you feel you have an advantage over people who only speak one language? Why?

“Ethnic” identity

Do you consider yourself to be your nationality or something else? Please explain.

What decides whether you are a [your nationality]? Speaking the language?

Where do you feel the most at “home”?

Do you ever feel left out for having a foreign background? Please explain.

Have you ever experienced being discriminated against or treated badly because of your foreign background? Please explain.

1.5 Appendix E: Questionnaire Items (Adapted from Fisher et al., 2022 )

All questions use the following Likert scale : Strongly disagree (1), Disagree (2), Slightly disagree (3), Partly agree (4), Agree (5), Strongly agree (6).

Select the appropriate number (from 1 to 6) to show how much you agree or disagree with the following statements.

1.6 Appendix F: Questionnaire Items

(Adapted from Vogl, 2018 , a print version of the questionnaire provided by the author, Questionnaire Sections 4 to 7)

1.6.1 Your Motives for Learning Languages

Please read the following 16 statements carefully and tell us how much you agree or disagree with them. To what extent do you agree with the following statements?

If you choose 1 you completely disagree

If you choose 2 you mostly disagree

If you choose 3 you slightly disagree

If you choose 4 you slightly agree

If you choose 5 you mostly agree

If you choose 6 you completely agree

We learn languages to get access to other cultures.

When we forget our mother tongue, we lose our roots.

For finding a job you have to know at least one foreign language.

Travelling is more fun when you speak foreign languages.

Foreign languages can have a negative impact on our mother tongue.

You have to have foreign languages in your curriculum vitae.

It is important to have a passion for a country and its people when you learn a language.

It is important for us to have a good command of our mother tongue.

We should be able to communicate in the language of the country where we live.

You don’t have to speak foreign languages perfectly; the goal is to communicate.

Our generation has to learn foreign languages to compete in a globalized world.

A lot of our national languages are threatened by the English language.

It is a sign of bad education when we make mistakes in our mother tongue.

Every language is an expression of a distinct culture.

It is exciting to communicate with people from all over the world in different languages.

It is perfectly okay to make mistakes in a foreign language as long as people can understand you.

1.6.2 Your Languages

In this section, we would like to learn more about the languages that you speak and how you learnt them.

What is your first language? Write more than one if you grew up speaking more than one language. Separate the different languages with a semicolon.

_______________________________________________________________

How many other languages do you speak? Count all languages that you can comfortably have a conversation in.

What other languages do you speak? Write all languages that you can comfortably have a conversation in. Separate the different languages with a semicolon.

Do you speak a dialect? ____________________________________________

Which dialect do you speak? ________________________________________

If you speak a dialect, write the name of the dialect or dialects that you can comfortably have a conversation in. __________________________________.

What type of language learner are you? Choose the statement that characterizes you best.

(  ) I have to work hard to learn a language.

(  ) I pick up languages easily.

How many different languages or dialects do you speak within your family? Count all languages or dialects that you speak with different members of your family (not necessarily at the same time).

How many languages or dialects do you speak within your circles of friends?

Count all languages or dialects that you speak with all your different friends (not necessarily at the same time).

________________________________________________________________

How old were you when you learnt your first foreign language? By foreign languages, we mean all languages besides your first language(s).

(  ) it was before I went to school

(  ) when I was in primary school

(  ) when I was in secondary school

(  ) at university

How did you learn your first foreign language? Write about what you remember of your first encounter with another language. This might have been in a formal (school) context or in an informal context (e.g., on vacation).

______________________________________________________________

Do you sometimes mix languages or switch between languages within a given conversation or context? If yes, give a recent example! Please tell us who you were communicating with, about what topic and in which languages or dialects.

1.6.3 Attitudes Towards Language Learning

This section is about your experiences as a language learner. Please read the following seven statements carefully and tell us how much they apply to you as a language learner.

If you choose 1 the statement is almost never true

If you choose 2 the statement is usually not true

If you choose 3 the statement is sometimes but infrequently true

If you choose 4 the statement is often true

If you choose 5 the statement is usually true

If you choose 6 the statement is almost always true

I avoid loanwords from English or other languages when speaking my mother tongue.

I try to speak a foreign language correctly.

Native speakers are my models for correct language use.

When writing an essay, I focus more on the content than on writing correctly.

To find out if a word is correct, I look it up in the dictionary.

In a foreign language, I don’t care if I make mistakes.

To find out which word is correct, I Google it.

Attitudes Towards Code-Switching

People think differently about switching between languages or mixing languages within a given conversation or context. What do you think? Please read the following six statements carefully and tell us how much you agree or disagree.

If you choose 1 you completely disagree.

If you choose 2 you mostly disagree.

If you choose 3 you slightly disagree If you choose 4 you slightly agree.

If you choose 5 you mostly agree.

If you choose 6 you completely agree.

Mixing languages is a sign of incomplete linguistic competence.

Mixing languages makes communication easier.

People who mix languages often don’t know to which culture they belong.

Mixing languages is quite useful in times of globalization.

It annoys me when people switch between languages.

People should try harder to keep the languages that they speak separated.

Do people that you know mix languages or switch between languages within a given situation or context?

If yes, give a recent example! If possible, specify who they were communicating with, about what topic and in which languages or dialects.

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Kalaja, P., Barcelos, A.M.F. (2024). Learners of English and Their Attitudes Towards and Beliefs About Multilingualism. In: Cirocki, A., Indrarathne, B., McCulloch, S. (eds) Cognitive and Educational Psychology for TESOL. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-66532-5_12

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The Ultimate Guide to VCE English Language

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• What Is English Language?
• VCE English Language Study Design
• What's Involved in the Exam?
• How To Study for English Language
• Metalanguage List
• Sample Essay
• Year 12 Essay Topic Categories

1. What Is English Language?

Study design stuff.

English Language is 1 of the 4 different English subjects that are offered as part of the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). In this subject, you’ll explore how individuals and groups of various identities use different varieties of English, and how this ties in with reflecting their values and beliefs. English Language will provide you with a substantial understanding of the impact language has on societies, what it communicates about ourselves and the groups that we identify with, and how societies in turn can also influence language.

If you’re feeling uncertain about what exactly this subject entails, don’t worry! Let’s go through what’s involved in each unit, and what you’re expected to do in each.

2. VCE English Language Study Design 

Note: The study design contains a metalanguage list for Units 1 & 2 and for Units 3 & 4. They’re pretty similar, except the Units 3 & 4 list includes several new features, such as the addition of patterning (phonological, syntactic, and semantic), as well as a significant addition to the discourse subsystem (coherence, cohesion, features of spoken discourse, and strategies of spoken discourse). ‍

Area of Study (AoS1) 

AoS1 is called ‘the nature and function of language’. You’ll learn about the functions of different types of texts, the differences between spoken and written texts, how situational and contextual factors can influence texts, and most importantly, you’ll learn about metalanguage as per the Units 1 & 2 metalanguage list. 

Area of Study (AoS2) 

AoS2 is called ‘language acquisition.’ Here, you’ll learn about theories various linguistics and sociologists have proposed regarding how children acquire languages. Furthermore, you’ll also cover how second languages are acquired. One of the most important skills you’ll pick up in this AoS is how to apply metalanguage in discussions and essays.

English Across Time’, will provide you with a historical context for how we have achieved the form of English that we use today. You’ll learn about the processes which led to the development of Modern English from Old English, the changes this had on all the subsystems ( learn about the syntax subsystem here ), and the various attitudes that are held towards linguistic change.

‘Englishes in contact’, you will learn about the processes which have led to the global spread of English, the intersections between culture and language, and the distinctive features of pidgins, creoles and English as a lingua franca. 

‘Informal language’, will give you an understanding of the roles of informal language in the contemporary Australian context. You’ll learn about what makes texts informal, how this differs for spoken and written texts, and what social purposes can be achieved through informal language - such as maintaining or threatening face needs, building intimacy or solidarity, creating an in-group, or supporting linguistic innovation. 

‘Formal language,’ will provide you with a detailed insight of what makes texts formal, distinguishing features for spoken and written texts, and what social purposes can be achieved through formal language - such as reinforcing authority, establishing expertise, clarifying, obfuscating, or maintaining and challenging positive and negative face needs. 

In both of these AoS, you’ll be applying the Units 3 & 4 Metalanguage in your short answer responses and analytical commentaries. The additional metalanguage is typically taught in Term 1 of year 12, while you learn the content for Unit 3.

‘Language variation in Australian society,’ is a detailed study on how both standard and non-standard Australian English are used within contemporary society. You’ll learn about how identity is constructed through language, how varieties of English vary by culture (such as ethnolects or Australian Aboriginal English), and the attitudes that are held towards different varieties by different groups. 

In ‘Individual and group identities’, you’ll look at how language varies by different factors, such as age, gender, occupation, interests, aspirations, or education, and how these factors all contribute to our identities. You’ll learn more about in-groups and out-groups, and how they can be created and maintained through language. Furthermore, you’ll learn about the relationship between social attitudes with language, and how language can be shaped by, but also influence, social attitudes and community expectations. 

For more information, have a look at the study design . 

3. What's Involved in the Exam?

The Year 12 Exam involves 2 hours of writing time and 15 minutes of reading time. It has three sections:

• Section A: 15 marks (It is recommended that you spend approximately 20-25 mins in this section)
• Section B: 30 marks (It is recommended that you spend approximately 40-45 mins, and write 600-700 words)
• Section C: 30 marks (It is recommended that you spend approximately 45-50 mins, and write 700-800 words)

Make sure you have a read through of the assessment criteria for each section.

Section A is 15 marks of short answer questions. You are given a text, and you’re required to respond to questions about the stylistic and discourse features used in the text, while ensuring that you’re demonstrating a detailed knowledge of metalanguage through carefully selecting relevant examples from the text. 

A strong understanding of the metalanguage is really important, both in terms of knowing the meanings of each metalinguistic term, and also in knowing which category each term fits under (For example, knowing that inference is part of coherence and not cohesion). Therefore, it is important that you learn your metalanguage in terms of what each terminology means, and also in terms of which category each term fits into.

As a general guide:

• 1 mark – one idea or one example or one explanation
• 2 marks – one idea plus one or two examples with explanations
• 3 marks – two ideas plus one or two examples of each with explanations
• 4 marks – two or three ideas plus one or two examples of each with explanations
• 5 marks – three ideas plus one or two examples of each with explanations

One of the biggest mistakes students make here is not reading the questions properly. Students sometimes miss how many examples the questions specifies to identify (this information is often given as ‘identify 2 examples’ or ‘identify the purposes’ as plural), forget to check how many marks a question is, or mix up certain metalanguage terms, such as confusing sentence types with sentence structures. So, be very careful in answering these questions.

Here are some examples of short answer questions that have come up in past VCAA exams:

[Question 2, 2017 VCAA] - Identify and comment on the use of two different prosodic features. (4 marks).

‍ Here, you would identify 2 different prosodic features (pitch, stress, volume, intonation, or tempo), and discuss what effect they have on the text, taking contextual factors into consideration. For example, stress could be used to draw emphasis, or intonation could influence the emotion conveyed. 

[Question 1, 2015 VCAA] - What sentence types are used in lines 15 to 36? How do they reinforce the purposes of this text? (3 marks)

‍ Here, you would identify the relevant sentence types (declaratives, imperatives, interrogatives, and exclamatives), and explain their role in the text. You would also want to ensure that your explanations are specific to the context of the text.

[Question 9, 2010 VCAA] - Discuss the function of two different non-fluency features between lines 70 and 96. (4 marks)

‍ Here, you would identify two non fluency features (such as pauses, false starts, repairs, repetition) and give a 1 sentence explanation of its role or what it indicates.

[Question 1, 2012 VCAA] - Identify the register of the text. (1 mark)

‍ This question is quite straightforward, and you could use terms such as formal, informal, predominantly formal/informal in your response.

[Question 4, 2012 VCAA] - How does the verb tense in lines 9–34 support the purpose of this section of the text? (2 marks)

‍ Here you would identify whether the verb tense is in past, present, or future tense, and explain why it has been used in that way based on the contextual factors.

[Question 3, 2017 VCAA] - Using appropriate metalanguage, identify and explain two specific language features that reflect the speaker’s identity.(4 marks)

‍ Here, you can pick examples from any subsystem that relate to the speaker’s identity, such as jargon, colloquialisms, semantics of certain jokes, expletives, or pejoratives.

Note: The exams prior to 2012 have 2 sets of short answer questions, because analytical commentaries weren’t a part of the exam back then. This leaves you with lots of practice questions! However, do keep in mind that the metalanguage lists differed and certain features were categorised in different ways. For example, Question 2 from the VCAA 2013 exam asks you to talk about prosodic features, however, in the examiner’s report, pauses are suggested as an option. We know that in the present study design, pauses are classified as features of spoken discourse, under the discourse subsystem, whereas prosodic features are classified under the subsystem of phonetics and phonology.

Check out How To Respond to Short Answer Questions in VCE English Language if you need more help tackling Section A of the exam.

Section B is an analytical commentary (AC) worth 30 marks. The introduction for an AC is an explanation of the contextual factors, the social purpose, and the register, of the text. In the body paragraphs (generally three), you group your examples from the text by themes, and explain their roles. 

There are two main approaches for body paragraphs; the sub-system approach, and the holistic approach. In the sub-system approach, you would organise your examples so that each paragraph is addressing a specific subsystem. For example, your AC could be composed of the introduction, and then a paragraph on lexicology, one on syntax, and one on discourse. This approach is easier for when you’re starting out with ACs, but one of the issues with it is that you end up limiting yourself to just one portion of the text for the one paragraph. In the holistic approach, you would typically do a paragraph on social purpose, register, and discourse. In this approach, you are able to group examples from multiple subsystems and talk about how they work together in achieving specific roles in the texts. 

Make sure you’re attempting a range of different types of texts, such as, opinion pieces, recipes, oaths, editorials, advertisements, eulogies, social media posts, public notices, television transcripts, radio transcripts, letters, speeches, legal contracts, conversations, narratives, and more.

For more information, have a look at this video:

Section C is an essay worth 30 marks. There are a range of topics that can potentially come up in the exam, and it is really important that you practice writing a variety of essays. 

In essays, it is really important to ensure that you set out a clear contention in your introduction. This will basically tell the assessor what point you’re making in your essay, and it’ll also help you remember which direction to take your essay. After your contention, you need to signpost your ideas. This means that you need to summarise what 3 points you are stating in your body paragraphs. 

Here’s an exercise which is really helpful in refining introductions - When you’re writing your contention, write “In this essay, I will argue that [Insert contention]. I will do this by stating the following points [Insert signposting].” When you’re happy with your introduction, you can remove the underlined parts. This will help you really understand how the roles for contentions and signposting differ. You’ll also thoroughly understand what position you’re taking in the essay.

The body paragraphs follow TEEL structure. You begin with your topic sentence, state your evidence, explain it, and then link it back to your contention. You have three options for the type of evidence that you’ll use (stimulus material, contemporary examples, and linguist quotes), and it's important to use a combination of them. According to the exam rubric, you have to be using at least 1 piece of stimulus material. Contemporary examples should ideally be from the current year and the previous. Linguist quotes don’t have time restrictions but it’s a good idea to try and find recent ones.

One of the most important things in body paragraphs is to make sure that you’re able to link your example back to your contention. If you’re unable to do this, it means that your examples aren't relevant to the points that you’re trying to make. 

In your conclusion, you need to ensure that you don’t introduce any new examples or points. The role of the conclusion is to summarise and reinforce your points and your overall contention. 

If you would like further clarification, have a look at this post on English Language Essays.

4. How To Study for English Language

Time management and organisation.

Having a study timetable will make studying much less stressful than it needs to be. In your timetable, make sure you are allocating enough time for all of your subjects, as well as time for rest, extra-curricular activities, work, and socialising. A realistic time-table will also mean that you’re less likely to waste time trying to decide which subjects to study for. For example, every Sunday, you could spend 15 minutes planning out your week based on which assessments you have, and which subjects you would like to give time to. This becomes especially useful in SWOTVAC, where you’ll be responsible for ensuring you’re spending enough time on each subject whilst also balancing everything else outside of school. 

Here are some extra resources to help you with time management:

SWOTVAC: Planning Your Life

10 Hacks For Time Management

How to survive VCE - motivation and approach

Revising Metalanguage

Consistently revising metalanguage is one of the most important study methods for English Language. 

The basics of metalanguage are covered in Unit 1. Make sure you keep a clear set of notes for this content so that you’re able to look back on it to revise throughout the year. Before the year 12 year begins, you want to make sure that everything in the year 11 metalanguage list makes sense to you. Spending the summer holidays before year 12 begins in reinforcing the basics will help you throughout year 12, as you’ll be able to pick up on the new metalanguage much faster. One of the first things you'll cover is coherence and cohesion, so if you would like to get a head start, have a look at this post.

Throughout year 12, consistently revising metalanguage will be your responsibility. It is likely that you’ll be spending a greater proportion of class time in learning content, and writing short answer responses, analytical commentaries, or essays. Therefore, it’s really important to figure out a way that works best for you in being able to frequently revise metalanguage. Flashcards are pretty useful for revision, as well as making mind maps so that you’re able to visualise how everything is set out in the study design.

One issue students run into is that they’re able to define and give examples for metalanguage terms, however, they are unable to understand how it fits in in terms of the categories under each subsystem. For example, a student is able to remember what a metaphor is, but unable to recall that it fits under semantic patterning. Similarly, a student may know what a pause is, but not know if it’s part of prosodic features or discourse features. It’s important to know what all the categories are, because the short answer questions usually ask for you to identify features under a particular category. Therefore, spending time on just revising the definitions alone isn’t sufficient in learning metalanguage. You also need to be able to ensure that you can recall which category each term fits under.

Reading the News

For the essay, you’re required to use contemporary media examples as evidence (alongside stimulus material and linguist quotes). It’s really important for you to begin this process early so that you’re able to start using examples in essays as early as possible. For tips on how to find, analyse and store your examples, see our post on Building Essay Evidence Banks for English Language .

Having an awareness of Australia’s historical, political, and social context, will provide you with a more comprehensive perspective of the contemporary examples. So, if you don’t already do this, try to develop a habit of reading the news (The Conversation or The Guardian are a good place to start). Television programs like Q and A, The Drum, and Media Watch, will help you understand the Australian context, and often these programs will also discuss the roles of language, which directly links with what you're looking for as essay examples. It’s especially important to start early, and to build these skills over time, so that you are able to develop a holistic foundation. 

Extra Practice Pieces and Seeking Feedback

Doing extra practice pieces is a really effective way to develop and refine your analytical skills. Make sure you receive feedback for all your work from your teacher or tutor, as it’s the only way you'll know if you’re going in the right direction.

If you’re short on time, even writing up AC or essay plans, or just doing 1 paragraph, is an effective way to revise.

Learning Quotes and Examples

Memorising several pages full of linguist quotes and contemporary examples may seem daunting at first, but once you begin using them in essays, they’ll become much easier to remember. Right from the beginning of yr12, make sure you set up a document to compile your linguist quotes and examples into subheadings. For example subheadings such as ‘cultural identity,’ ‘jargon,’ ‘hate speech,’ ‘free speech,’ or ‘Australian values’ will make it easier for you to navigate your notes when you're planning your essays.

If you start early, you’ll be able to remember everything bit by bit as you progress through the year, which is definitely easier than trying to remember the evidence the night before the assessment. Additionally, you’ll be ready with quotes and examples as soon as you begin essays in class, so you’ll be able to use your examples earlier, hence learn them earlier, and therefore be able to memorise your quotes and examples in advance. If you’re in year 12 and you’re nearing the end of the year and still struggling to memorise your examples and quotes, try using flashcards to remember your evidence.  Make sure you’re doing a range of essays on different topics so that you’re able to apply and analyse your evidence. 

Learning From Your Mistakes

It can be pretty disheartening to make the same mistakes repeatedly and continue to lose marks. So, compiling the mistakes that you make throughout the year in a separate notebook or document is a fantastic way to keep track of the key things you need to remember. You’ll also be less likely to repeat those mistakes.

Group Studies

Studying in groups for English Language is a highly effective way to refine your understanding of the content, and see different perspectives in the way certain ideas can be applied. Revising metalanguage and testing your friends on their knowledge can be a light and engaging way to ensure you and your friends are on the right track. Sharing the ways you and your group have approached a specific AC is also an effective way to learn about different approaches. Discussing essay topics is a useful way in refining your arguments, as you’ll be exposed to different opinions and be able to work on ensuring that your arguments are relevant and strong.

See How To Extend Yourself in VCE English Language for more tips!

5. Metalanguage List

Please refer to pages 9-10 for the Year 11 list, and 17-18 for the Year 12 list !

6. Sample Essay

Language is fundamental to identity and consequently we draw on our linguistic repertoire to project different aspects of our identity according to context. Discuss this statement in the contemporary Australian context with reference to at least two subsystems in your response.

(This essay topic relates to Unit 4 - AoS1, ‘Language variation in Australian society.’) 

Introduction

Language plays a pivotal role in establishing and communicating various facets of identity. As such, individuals can alter their linguistic repertoire to establish in-group membership. Teenspeak is an effective mechanism in expressing teenage identity, but can also be used by the older generation to appeal to young people. Code switching between ethnolects and standard Australian English further illustrates how individuals can manipulate their linguistic choices to suit their environment, whilst simultaneously reflecting ethnic identity . Furthermore, jargon plays a critical role in establishing professional identity and signifying expertise or authority. Consequently, linguistic choices are capable of expressing diverse and multifaceted identities.

Body Paragraph

Teenspeak is capable of expressing identity and establishing in group membership amongst teenages, however it can also be used by those in the out-group to appeal to teenagers. Professor Pam Peters asserts that “Teenagers use language as a kind of identity badge that has the effect of excluding adults." Consequently, teenagers are able to establish exclusivity and in-group membership. Bakery owner Morgan Hipworth, who largely has a teenage following and is a teenager himself, employs teenspeak in a video recipe, where he responds to the question ‘Can you make a 10 layer cheese toastie?’ with ‘Bet, let’s go.’ Through using the teenspeak term ‘bet,’ Hipworth is able to relate and connect with his young audience while further asserting his identity as a teenager. This demonstrates how teenspeak can be effective in both establishing in-group membership, and expressing identity. Similarly, Youtuber Ashley Mescia’s extensive use of teenspeak initialisms in Instagram captions, such as ‘ootd’ for ‘outfit of the day,’ ‘grwm’ for ‘get ready with me,’ and ‘ngl’ for ‘not gonna lie,’ allows her to connect with her predominantly teenage following, thus allowing her to establish solidarity and in-group membership. This further indicates that teenspeak is an effective mechanism in expressing identity and building in-group membership. In contrast, teenspeak can also be used by older people in an effort to appeal to teenages. For example, in 2019, ABC’s Q and A host Tony Jones ended a promotional video for an opportunity for high-school students to appear on the panel with ‘It’s gonna be lit fam.’ This was done in an effort to appeal to younger people by exploiting the notion that it is often seen as cringeworthy when older people use teenspeak. Linguist Kate Burridge asserts that “older people using contemporary teen slang often sounds insincere and phoney,” and Jones was aware of this, however his purpose was to appeal to this to be able to further promote the video. Therefore, teenspeak is effective in both establishing in-group membership and expressing identity, and also appealing to the in-group and a member of the out-group.  

7. Year 12 Essay Topic Categories

1: australian english.

• Australian English differs from other national varieties – this theme looks at what makes Australian English unique and the factors that have contributed to its development over time. You can learn more by checking out our blog post on Australian Cultural Values
• What makes this variety unique as a national variety
• Broad, General, Cultivated accents
• Aboriginal English
• Attitudes towards Australian language varieties
• Standard Australian English and its prestige value
• Non-standard varieties operating in Australia
• Regional variation within Australia
• The role of language in constructing national identity
• Face needs (read blog)

2: Individual and Group Identity

• Social and personal variation (age, gender, occupation, interests, education, background, aspiration)
• Individual identity and group membership
• Standard and non-standard English and prestige varieties
• In-groups and exclusion
• Social attitudes to non-standard accents and dialects

3: Register

• Relationships between speaker/writer and interlocutors/audience
• Physical setting, situational and cultural contexts
• Subject matter/topic/domain/field
• Mode (spoken, written, electronic)
• Purpose/function of the interaction
• Social attitudes and beliefs of participants

4: Social Purpose of Language

• Inclusion and exclusion; in-groups and out-groups; social distance and intimacy
• How language can be used to uphold or threaten positive or negative face needs (read blog)
• Prestige forms of language
• Political correctness (read blog)
• Discrimination and hatespeech
• Euphemism and dysphemism (watch video)
• Taboo, pejoratives, and swearing
• Jargon, and how language establishes expertise
• Slang and colloquialisms
• Manipulation of language (obfuscation, doublespeak, gobbledegook)
• Politeness strategies and social harmony
• Language in the public domain; public language
• Linguistic innovation
• How language represents or shapes social and cultural, values, beliefs, attitudes
• How language can express identity 
• Other functions of language, such as recording, clarifying, entertaining, promoting, persuading, commemorating, celebrating, instructing, informing

5: Attitudes to the Varieties

6: Language Change

Although language change features more heavily in Units 1 & 2, it is still important to be aware of how language is changing in everyday lives to reflect social needs, attitudes and values. Consider the following:

• Australian English and its development and evolution over time
• Taboo, swearing and dysphemism and the role of changing social values
• Political correctness , non-discriminatory language and changing social values
• Linguistic innovation and informal language
• Technological advances and their impact on language - this includes emojis and text speak
• Global contact and other social changes and their impact on contemporary Australian English
• Migrant ethnolects and Aboriginal English

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Literature is probably one of your hardest VCE subjects. If it’s not, then go you! (please tell me your secrets).

However, if you’re anything like me, then you probably look a bit like this when you begin considering the overall meaning of a text, the author’s views and values, and how any three passages in the text create the meaning.

When I became awash with confusion, like our old pal Ryan Renolds, the first thing I did (after eating a whole block of chocolate), was ensure I understood the context of the text. Without a clear understanding of the context of your text, you cannot fully comprehend the views and values of the author, nor the overall meaning of a text (it’s also part of the criteria for literary perspectives)!

So if you want to be feeling like this after you write a piece for literature:

Consider the following:

AUTHOR’S CONTEXT VS. READER’S CONTEXT 

Austen was hunched over her small writing desk in the village of Chawton during England’s Georgian era as she wrote  Persuasion.  You are more likely reading it in a cozy bed, listening to Taylor Swift and half considering what you’re going to watch on Netflix later. Remember, your current social and cultural context can have a great influence on how you read a text, so it’s always important to imagine the author’s own context – whether this be very similar, or very different from the context of their text. It’s as easy as a Google search!

For a more in-depth look into how authorial intent and context is important in VCE English, read Context and Authorial Intention in VCE English .

SOCIAL CONTEXT

The social context of a text is the way in which the features of the society it is set in impact on its meaning. There are two aspects to social context: the kind of society in which the characters live, and the one in which the author’s text was produced.

Charlotte Brontë’s  Jane Eyre  was set in the same social context she herself lived in. It was one in which women were seen as the lesser sex, there was a great divide between the wealthy and lower class, and strict class boundaries were enforced. All of these societal features are key in determining Brontë’s views on the importance of social inclusion, and her championing of the strength of women. Or just listen to Phoebe:

HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

The historical context of a text is entangled with its social context, as underlying norms and convention are historically specific. The historical context is important to note especially when large changes have occurred between the time the work was produced, and our current day, so it is not assessed by our own concerns alone.

Aeschylus’ Agamemnon was first performed in 458BC, in Ancient Greece, a time vastly different from our own. Therefore, it is important to be aware of how the play was delivered, at the festival of Dionysus as part of a trilogy. Also have an understanding of the myths surrounding the Trojan War as well as those surrounding Agamemnon, Cassandra and Clytemnestra.

CULTURAL CONTEXTS

Culture refers to a particular ‘way of life’, involving religion, race and nationality, as well as things like food, dress code and manners. Furthermore, culture can relate to art, music, writing and literature itself. Cultural context, which is similarly linked with social, historical and ideological context, is especially important to note if the author is attempting to make a comment on an aspect of culture, or the clash of two cultures.

Cross cultural contact between an Indigenous tribe in Western Australia, and the British colonizers of this land, is explored by Kim Scott in his novel  That Deadman Dance.  He reveals aspects of culture largely unknown to current members of Australian society, as well as explores whether assimilation can be seen as a harmonious sign of friendship, or an intrusive loss of culture. The evolution, damage and protection of culture is an important context in this novel, and has a large bearing on the overall meaning of the text, as well as Scott’s views and values.

IDEOLOGICAL CONTEXTS

Ideology refers to the systems of beliefs and ideas that underpin our attitudes and behavior. Such ideology may be valued by society as a whole, or be the basis of conflict. Ideology is a context that is in many ways ‘invisible’. This is because our own is largely internalized and normalized, we act accordingly to our assumptions and social norms.

Many texts explore ideological context, either challenging or championing it. In his play  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  Edward Albee challenged perceptions at the time of the family unit, portraying a couple that symbolizes the immense dissatisfaction caused by idealistic portrayals of marriage, and the fallacies of the American Dream. He illuminates how George and Martha escape from meaningless by creating fantasies and illusions, but how these eventually lead to the breakdown of their mental health.

So next time you’re struggling to get started on a literature piece, remember to think deeply about the different aspects of your text’s context!

Theme vs. Motif vs. Symbol

Themes, motifs and symbols are different kinds of narrative elements - they’re parts of a story that help to shape its overall effect. However, even though they’re words we use all the time in our English studies, it isn’t always easy to tell the difference!

This post will take you through some definitions , give you some examples and show you how you can use them in essays too. Let’s start with the broadest of the three…

What Is a Theme?

A theme is an idea or a subject that an author wants to explore. Themes appear throughout a work, and they’re often abstract ideas rather than concrete images that you can explicitly identify. Themes usually appear in interactions: for example, a parent reuniting with a child might evoke the theme of parenthood or family, an experience of discrimination might evoke the theme of prejudice or racism, a character facing a difficult choice might evoke the theme of morality or conflict, and so on. As you might be able to see, themes can require us to read between the lines because they are usually implied.

What Is a Motif?

A motif is something a bit more specific. Rather than an abstract idea, we’re looking for a concrete object (usually physical items, but also potentially sounds, places, actions, situations or phrases) that returns time and time again throughout a text. This repetition of motifs helps to create structure for a text - it can tether parts of the story to or around a central image. Because motifs are often linked to a theme , they can also serve as a reminder of that theme’s importance. For example, if the central theme was family or parenthood, the author might create a bird’s nest outside a character’s room; as we watch the bird and the chicks grow throughout the text, parallels are also drawn back to the theme.  

What Is a Symbol?

You can think of symbols as motifs minus the repetition . It’s the more default word we use when referring to an object that represents an idea, and unlike a motif, symbols only need to appear once to have an impact. They can simply tell us more about a character or situation in that instant, at that specific time, rather than being a parallel or recurring throughout a text. However, they’re still identified in a similar way to motifs: symbols are also concrete objects and they’re still connected to themes. 

Examples of Themes, Motifs and Symbols

Here are some text-specific examples for a closer look at these terms: 

Check out our Macbeth , Rear Window and The Great Gatsby blog posts for more on these texts. If you’re studying other texts, have a look at our list of text guides in The Ultimate Guide to Text Response .

Identifying and Using Themes

Themes usually come across in interactions , and a possible first step to identifying them is thinking about if an interaction is good or bad, and why. For example:

In Rear Window , one of the neighbours berates everyone else for failing to notice their dog’s death.

This is a bad interaction because:

• a dog dying is never any good
• it tells us that none of these neighbours are looking out for or really care about each other
• someone may have killed the dog

The theme we might identify here is duty. The film might suggest that we have a duty to look out for our neighbours (without sacrificing their privacy) or to do our part to keep the neighbourhood safe from potential criminals.

Another example might be:

In The Great Gatsby , the Sloanes invite Gatsby over for dinner without really meaning it.

• it tells us how nasty the Sloanes are
• Gatsby still seems to be a misfit despite his wealth
• Tom is at best complicit in the Sloanes’ insincerity 

The themes here might be society, wealth and class . This interaction shows us where these characters really stand with regard to these categories or ideas. Because he is ‘new money’, Gatsby cannot understand or fit in with the cruel and disingenuous customs of ‘old money’.

Most interactions in a text will fit into a theme somewhere, somehow - that’s why it’s been included in the story! Try to identify the themes as you go , or maintain lists of interactions and events for different themes. Because themes are so broad, they’re useful for guiding your understanding of a text, particularly as you’re reading it. They also provide a great foundation for essay planning since you can draw on events across the text to explore a certain theme.

Identifying and Using Motifs & Symbols

While themes can generally appear in texts without the author needing to make too much of an effort, motifs and symbols have to be used really consciously . A lot of interactions might just be natural to the plot, but the author has to take extra care to insert a symbol or motif into the story.

To identify either, pay attention to objects that might feel unusual or even unnecessary to the scene at first - from the examples above, Gatsby showing Daisy his shirts might seem like a strange detail to include, but it’s actually an important symbol in that moment. Then, you go into the brainstorming of what the object could represent - in this case, Gatsby’s newfound wealth. Symbols in particular often appear at turning points : the relationship between two characters might take a turn, an important sacrifice might be made or perhaps someone crosses a point of no return - all of these are potential plot points for the author to include symbols. For motifs , look more for repetition . If we’re always coming back to an image or an object, like Daisy’s green light or Lisa Fremont’s dresses, then it’s likely that image or object has significance.

Symbols and motifs can be more subtle than themes, but they will also help to set your essay apart if you find a way to include them. You’d usually include them as a piece of evidence (with or without a quote) and analyse what they tell us about a theme. For example:

‍ On the surface, Gatsby appears to be financially successful. Over several years, he has acquired many material belongings in order to demonstrate his great wealth. For example, Fitzgerald includes a scene featuring Gatsby tossing his many ‘beautiful’ shirts onto Daisy, who sobs as she admires them. This display of wealth represents the superficial natures of both characters, who prize material belongings over the substance of their relationship.

You don’t need a quote that’s too long or overpowering ; just capture the essence of the symbol or motif and focus on what it represents. This is a really good way to show examiners how you’ve thought about a text’s construction, and the choices an author has made on what to include and why. To learn more about text construction, have a read of What Is Metalanguage?

Studying both English and Literature in VCE is an interesting undertaking, and I’ve heard very mixed opinions about whether or not it’s a good idea. For me it was a no-brainer; I’d always loved English so why wouldn’t I take advantage of the opportunity to study two English-based subjects? Looking back on my VCE experience now, and comparing my experience of studying each subject, I can see that they are each very different. However, if you’re going to study both, don’t expect that each subject will unfold in isolation, because your work in one of these subjects will undoubtedly impact upon your work in the other - even if, like me, you complete them in different years. So if you enjoy English I would 100% endorse studying both VCE English and VCE Literature, but being an English-nerd I still think there are benefits to analysing the process of studying this dynamic-duo back to back.

The Content

At the beginning, I assumed that Literature and English would be fairly similar in terms of studying and writing. It’s all about reading books and writing essays, right? Well, whilst this is essentially true, it turns out that the process for each subject is quite different. I studied year 12 Literature first, completing it in 2017 as a year 11 student, and as my only unit 3/4 subject for that year it was the focus of a lot of my time, energy, and creativity. What I loved about VCE Literature from the beginning was the departure from formula; the impetus to “dive right in” as my teacher always used to say. Instead of worrying about how many sentences your introductions and conclusions have to be, in Literature you can simply get straight into the analysis and see how far it takes you.  So, if you’re the kind of person who needs to stick to that body paragraph structure acronym that has always served you so well, then when you first start studying Literature it might be a challenge to loosen up. Or, if you’re like me and can’t shake the compulsion to write paragraphs that take up double-sided sheets of paper, you might find this subject to be a welcome respite from some of the restrictions of English tasks.

Although English is often viewed as the more ‘basic’ of the two, in many ways I found it more difficult once I hit year 12. Having just finished VCE Literature, shifting my focus back to English definitely wasn’t as seamless as I might have expected. In comparison to my Literature essays where I would base paragraphs around in-depth analysis of a few of Gaskell’s sentences, my English text responses felt stunted and forced – English isn’t really compatible with tangents, and so it was difficult to train myself to be expressive whilst also being concise. In my opinion, the most daunting of the year 12 VCE English SACs is the comparative, and this is where my lack of flow was most evident. Being accustomed to delving into complex discussion of the details of my Literature texts, it seemed impossible to provide insightful analysis of two texts simultaneously, whilst also comparing them to each other and also keeping my essays well structured. My first comparative practices sounded somewhat awkward when I read over them, and I just felt like I never really knew what I was trying to get across. This provoked me to be frustrated with myself, and then my frustration distracted me from writing, and then my essays read even more contrived; you get the idea.

So, how do you push past this sense of friction between the study of English and the study of Literature? Well, I think the best way to reconcile the conflicting approaches is to realise that each subject brings out different strengths, but these strengths can be applied to either type of study. Yes to a certain extent English is supposed to be formulaic, but you can use the analysis skills you learn in Literature to enhance your English text responses and give your work a point of difference. On the flip side, the structure you work with in English can be applied to Literature to ensure that your essays always exhibit direction and purpose, even if they encompass a broader range of discussion. Once I realised that I didn’t have to discard all of my Literature skills and start writing my English work exactly the same as everybody else, I began to develop a more fluid, balanced writing style that enhanced all of my English tasks – even the comparative.

Let’s start with the obvious comparisons between the English exam and the Literature exam. Firstly, the English exam encompasses three essays in three hours (with 15 minutes reading time), whilst Literature is only two essays in two hours. The English exams tasks include a text response to a prompt, a comparative text response to a prompt, and a language analysis. The Literature exam involves a passage analysis, and a text response to a prompt influenced by a literary perspective. Where in the English exam you are given a choice of prompts for each text choice, whereas for both sections of the Literature exam only one choice is available for each text. Whilst both exams involve some supplied material, in Literature this material is a passage from one of the set texts, however for the language analysis section of the English exam this is completely unseen material created by the VCAA. For me, this felt like a very significant difference, because there is no familiar material (i.e. passages from the texts) to rely on in the English exam; if you get lost you can’t latch on to anything except what you have memorised.

Personally, I think that the study strategies I utilised for each exam were fairly similar, although obviously geared towards different tasks. I took in depth notes on my texts, planned essays, memorised quotations and explored their significance, timed my practice essays etc. My actual approach to each exam was also similar, for example I made sure to allocate one hour for each different task and did all of my planning mentally during reading time. So although obviously everyone’s study and exam techniques are different, this shows that your own personal strategies that you develop can be applied to both the Literature and the English exams. However, despite the continuity in this sense I still found myself feeling very different coming out of my English exam than I had leaving my Literature exam the year before. Where after the Literature exam I had been content with the knowledge that I had showcased the best version of my abilities, after the English exam I felt much more unsure and ready to believe the worst about the outcome. This particular comparison is of course specific to every individual person, however I think it could have something to do with the knowledge that most VCE students study English and the difficulty in believing that your work could stand out from the work of 40,000 others.

The Results

In the end, I achieved very different results from these two subjects, with English being my highest study score and Literature being one of my 10% contributions. It seems to be a general consensus (or at least it was at my school) that it is more difficult to crack the high 40s in Literature than in English, and whether this is true or not it definitely impacted my expectations of my results each subject. However, that said, after being slightly disappointed with my Literature results in year 11 I was not overly optimistic about doing much better in English. When talking about this with my Literature teacher, she told me to “remember that English is marked very differently to Lit, so don’t think you can’t get a 50” and I think this is very solid advice. Whilst you might feel you were equally skilled at both subjects, this doesn’t mean you will receive equally ‘good’ results’, but don’t let this disparity discourage you because, as we have discussed throughout this post, when it comes to Literature and English one size does not fit all.

Have a read of our Ultimate Guide to English Language if you haven't already done so!

[Modified Video Transcription]

Prescriptivism Versus Descriptivism - GIF or JIF?

Ever since the inception of the format, we have been arguing with each other over whether we should say 'gif' or 'jif'. This debate has raged both online and offline, but does it really matter? On one side, supporters of 'gif' claim that because the acronym stands for Graphics Interchange Format , the G sound in 'graphics' should be maintained. Whereas the 'jif' camp argues that because the inventor of the format, Steve Wilhite, says 'jif', so should we all. However, a far more sane argument is that as long as what someone says (whether it be 'gif' or 'jif') is understood, it shouldn't matter how they say it. 

As students of English language, we should aim to primarily take this descriptive approach to studying language. We identify and describe what people are saying or writing, and the effects this has, but we don't then ascribe our own judgement. Language exists to be a vessel for our communication, and so, as long as it is transferring meaning between its users, it's serving its purpose. There is no correct way of speaking or writing because there isn't really a good way of determining what this correct way is. 

What Are Prescriptivism and Descriptivism? 

Simply put, prescriptivism is an attitude that prescribes how language should be and how you, as its speaker, must use it. A prescriptivist most often promotes Standard English or a similar variety. This is the variety of English you will find in most textbooks, government letters and notices and in your English classroom. 

Descriptivism on the other hand, is a non-judgemental approach to looking at language. As descriptivists, we place more importance on how English is actually being written and spoken rather than trying to identify a correct way. The vast majority of linguists, dictionaries and other English language authorities consider themselves to be descriptive and not prescriptive, and this is a really important distinction. 

If the way that we as English speakers use or spell a word changes, the dictionary will change too, in order to reflect this. The Macquarie Dictionary made one such change in 2012, which entered the public spotlight. The word 'misogyny' has been used for many years to mean 'an entrenched prejudice against women' and not necessarily 'a hatred of women', as it says in the dictionary. So, when Julia Gillard used the word in her speech on the topic, it seemed to conflict with what it said in the dictionary. Yet, we all knew what she meant. And so, The Macquarie Dictionary updated its entry for the word to better reflect how we actually are using it. That's all well and good in the academic world, but why is this distinction important outside of a video about language? 

Language Prejudice

Throughout history, and still to this day, prejudice exists against people who speak differently.

For example, for much of the 20th century, and to some extent still to this day, Aboriginal Englishes have been deemed substandard and inferior to varieties used by people with European heritage. This has led to demonstrable discrimination in places like courts and hospitals, but often the time and care is not taken to actually interpret what Aboriginal people mean when they speak. By seeing that prescribing how a language ‘should’ be doesn't actually do anything to improve its effect or usefulness, we can be far more accepting of the fact that language varies depending on who is speaking and that it changes with time. 

We have the option of either allowing the people to define how a language is used or allowing a linguistic academy like the Council for German Orthography in Germany, or the French Academy in France, to prescribe how we should speak.

Language Shift

So, where can we find relevant examples in today's society? We're seeing a shift to prescriptive attitudes in the realm of teen-speak and text-speak, with people like David Crystal saying that creating new words and new ways of speaking is a rite of passage for young people. In the rapidly evolving fields of technology, social media or even politics these days, we are seeing new words and phrases and even entire new ways of constructing sentences being coined every day. But, not everyone is accepting of this and plenty of people still cringe when they hear a hashtag used in regular speech. We're also experiencing a shift to the normalization of informal language, Australian slang and hypocorisms, even in social and situational contexts where traditionally we would use a more formal register. Just how many times have we heard the likes of Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull used the phrase ‘fair dinkum’?

But when does this matter in English language? We should be careful not to say that certain ways of speaking or certain varieties of language are inherently wrong and instead, describe what makes them 'non-standard uses' of language. This description is far more interesting than a subjective judgment of a particular way of using English. 

Descriptivism and Prescriptivism as Metalinguistic Tools

The terms descriptivism and prescriptivism can also be good metalinguistic tools when we are analysing opinions about language. Look out for segments on the radio, television or even the opinion columns of newspapers for discussions about varieties of English. People can identify very strongly with certain varieties of language, so a prescriptive attitude can often also indicate other beliefs. This can be important when identifying the social and cultural context of a text . We can also employ this knowledge in our own writing and speaking. Instead of trying to use correct language, we can instead focus on using appropriate language. This doesn't mean that you can start spelling words however you want, and giving your essays a generous sprinkling of commas and apostrophes where they don't belong (because these will often get in the way of you being easily and clearly understood), but the next time you're writing and you see a red line under that word that you're a hundred percent sure is correct, you can be safe in knowing that it's probably the dictionary, and not you, that needs an update.

When it comes to planned, non-spontaneous texts including written discourse and speeches, the manner in which the text is put together can be explained by elements of coherence and cohesion. While spontaneous discourse will also display coherence and cohesion, it is emphasized in planned texts because there is a greater deal of thought and intention behind the use of cohesive ties and devices of coherence.

They can however often be difficult concepts to grasp. For starters, it is essential to understand the difference between the two terms.

Coherence is defined as the quality of being logical, consistent and able to be understood. Imagine coherence as a building (It’s an analogy, go with it).

Cohesion on the other hand refers to the act of forming a whole unit. It is effectively a subset of coherence. Picture cohesion as the bricks and cement which make up the building.

Bricks and cement can be put together to create any form of structure. However, it is only when they are laid together properly that they form a building. Similarly, a text will be cohesive if cohesive ties are used however it will only be coherent if the cohesive ties are used appropriately to create meaning.

You can have cohesion without coherence but you cannot have coherence without cohesion. The picture does not make sense unless the correct pieces are placed in the correct order, even if certain pieces may be the same size and shape.

“I bought some hummus to eat with celery. Green vegetables can boost your metabolism. The Australian Greens is a political party. I couldn’t decide what to wear to the new year’s party.”

In the example above, there are lexical links from one sentence to the next; cohesive ties are used to join the sentences. There is evidence of lexical repetition, ‘green’ ‘party’ and collocations, ‘new years’. 

However, this string of sentences do not make any sense; there is no binding semantic link. This is an example of cohesion without coherence.

Cohesive devices effectively help the discourse flow. They include collocations, lexical repetition, linking adverbials, substitution, ellipsis, conjunctions, synonymy/antonymy, hypernyms/hyponyms and referencing (anaphoric, cataphoric, deictic). These devices create physical links between the words in a discourse.

Coherence which we previously defined as understanding can be achieved through devices such as cohesive ties, formatting techniques, inference, logical ordering of information, semantic patterning and consistency.

These all enhance the ability of a text to be successfully interpreted and understood. Recipes, terms and condition documents, informative brochures all make use of formatting in the form of headings, bolding, underlines etc. to emphasis certain aspects of the text and draw audience attention to the most important elements.

The focus of coherence factors is determined by the social purpose of the text. Is the text made to entertain? Inform? Persuade? Celebrate? If so, why? What is the overarching intention of the text? Answering such questions can help explain the purpose of coherence factors and cohesive devices within a discourse.

This is effectively what you are aiming to do in your analytical commentaries and short answer questions in the exam. Identify the social purposes of the text and use them to explain the role of coherence and cohesion within the discourse.

The other major factor of consideration is the intended audience of the text. Is the text aimed at teenagers? the Australian public? Or specifically to “bogan” Australians? The language choices and ideas implied in the text will reflect the intended audience. If a text is aimed at Victorian’s it may include lexemes such as “Mornington Peninsula” or “Shepparton” which Victorian’s can infer as locations within Victoria, however these terms would need to be further explained to those who reside outside this state. Lexical choices which require outside inference would be included if it can be reasonably interpreted that the intended audience would be aware of their meaning. Finding examples of inference in texts can be useful in identifying the social purpose of the text.

The main thing to be mindful of is that finding cohesive devices and evidence of coherence in texts alone is not enough. You will gain your marks in your exam for linking these fragments of evidence to the wider social purposes of the text.

Understanding the Syntax Subsystem for English Language

One of the most common areas of difficulty and confusion in English Language is the syntax subsystem , so you are not alone if you find this difficult. You will already have an intuitive understanding of how syntax in English works (you speak the language after all), but being able to effectively analyse and parse sentences and utterances can be tricky. It is important that you understand what the following word classes (aka parts of speech ) are, and what their role is in a sentence, you may need to revise them from Unit 1/2.

• Preposition
• Conjunction
• Interjection

There are innumerable online and physical resources, such as Sara Thorne’s fantastic Mastering Advanced English Language , which you can look at to revise these word classes. These are the fundamental building blocks that we have at our disposal when building up a sentence and are vital for understanding syntax. Syntax is how we arrange these building blocks into phrases , which we combine to form clauses , which in turn create sentences .

What Is a Phrase?

Phrases are words or groups of words that function together in a clause . Often we class phrases in terms of what role they are playing: we might have a noun phrase, a verb phrase, or an adverbial phrase, for example. Look at the example below to get a feel for what is meant by a phrase.

Authorised Officers are here to help keep your public transport running smoothly and make sure everyone is paying their way.

The main phrases are:

• 'Authorised Officers', 'your public transport', 'everyone', 'their way' (noun phrases)
• 'are', 'to help keep…running', 'make sure', 'is paying' (verb phrases)
• 'here’, 'smoothly' (adverbial phrases)
• ’and’ (coordination conjunction)

What Is a Clause?

Clauses can be entire sentences or be one of several parts of a sentence. At a minimum, standard clauses must contain a subject and a verb , but usually have other components too. To help us understand what makes up a clause, it is important to re-familiarise yourself with the five clause elements :

Clauses must contain a verb, or else we class them as fragments . The following is a clause:

They watched the sunset together.

But this is a fragment :

What a sunset!

Note that the clause above contains a subject (They) , verb (watched) , object (the sunset) and adverbial (together), whereas it is not entirely clear how to classify the elements of the fragment, because there is no verb telling us how the words relate to each other.

There are two types of clauses we need to be concerned about: independent (main) clauses and dependent (subordinate) clauses. An independent clause can stand by itself as a simple sentence, whereas a dependent clause sits inside another clause and usually adds extra or supporting information.

Sentence Structures

Now for one of the key skills that is assessed in short answer questions and analytical commentaries : understanding how we combine clauses to create different structures.

Simple Sentences & Utterances

The first sentence structure is the simple sentence , which contains only one clause . Often these are seen as “short” sentences, but this is not always the case. For instance below is an example of a simple sentence:

All the school children, their families and their teachers were at the carnival for a day of fun and competition.

Compound Sentences & Utterances

Compound sentences consist of at least two independent clauses (ones that have a subject, a verb and form a complete idea on their own), joined by a comma, semicolon or a coordinating conjunction . Take for example the following compound sentence comprised of three clauses:

She swam and she surfed, but her thoughts inevitably returned to the dangers of the sea.

Complex Sentences & Utterances

Complex sentences, on the other hand, contain one independent or “main” clause, as well as one or several subordinate clauses . To identify a subordinate clause, you need to think about whether the clause you have identified stands as a complete thought, or whether it relies on the rest of the sentence to make sense. An example is included below, where only the main clause is bolded.

Now, if you turn to your right, you’ll see the gallery , which was constructed in 1968.

Compound-Complex Sentences & Utterances

Compound-complex sentences, exactly as one would expect, are a combination of several independent and subordinate clauses , to form what is most often quite a long sentence . If you know how to identify compound and complex sentences, this one should not pose much difficulty. Here is an example, where only the dependent clause is bolded.

Now it wouldn’t matter how fast he ran, he would never make it there in time, nor would he have anyone to blame but himself.

Give me a ring if you’re coming , or tell Max on his way home from work.

Sentence Fragments (Minor Sentences)

It may occur to you that not every sentence or bit of language that you ever come across fits neatly into one of the above categories, especially if there is not any identifiable independent clause. These we class as sentence fragments , and they are often found in informal spontaneous discourses .

Too easy mate, good on ya, etc.

Like any skill in English Language, getting good at syntax takes practice. To build your confidence, try parsing any of the texts you come across in school, or even texts you see in a magazine or newspaper. Check with a teacher, friend or tutor to see if you got it right, and where you might still need a little bit of work. And, come back to this blog post anytime you need a refresher!

Be sure to read our Ultimate Guide to English Language for an overview of the study design, what’s involved in the exam, how to study for the subject and more!

Let’s talk about emoji’s. There is a wide debate about whether or not these small icons we know as emoticon’s are the birth of a whole new language. What once started off as a :) at the end of an email has rapidly grown into a vast array of icons which serve multiple purposes and convey various meanings. I would not call emoji’s a new language for it lacks grammar; the very foundation which kneads a language together. Most often, emoji’s are used in conjunction with words on online platforms to enhance communication. The laughter emoji or smiling emoji is frequently used to close social distance or convey a sense of playfulness where a message may be perceived to be hostile. They can also be used to save face and reduce personal embarrassment. Frankly, emoji’s can be used to express a range of emotions and conversational tones which are difficult to achieve with words alone. In this way, they cater for the inability to use intonation and paralinguistic features such as hand gestures, facial expressions within written speech.

As emoji’s become a more prevalent part of online communication, they have begun to carry their own connotations. The eggplant and water-drop emoji’s are classic examples of this within young adolescents. However, even within smaller social groups, emoji’s can take on secondary meanings. (You probably have emoji’s within your friendship group which have connotations or act as inside jokes).

In this way, emoji’s are not replacing our language, but rather, they are an addition to comprehension of written language.

While emoji’s don’t have a complex syntactical system, they are loosely governed by grammatical rules. While this does not constitute emoji’s as a new language, one can still communicate meaning by stringing emoticons through semantic fields. Content words can be replaced with emoticons, however the relationship between emoticons must be inferred or expressed through functional words.

Hence, there can be communication difficulties when the relationship of an emoji to context is not effectively implied or explained. Julie Bishop’s use of the red faced emoji to describe Vladimir Putin on Twitter is a classic example of this notion. This emoji used on its own caused confusion as to what Julie Bishop thought of Putin, whether he was an angry man or whether she disapproved of him. Due to limited context and no words to back up Bishop’s opinion, there was controversy around her response.

Emoji’s are an addition to the written mode of language, catering for paralinguistic features which cannot be expressed through words. However, due to the lack of complex grammar binding emoji’s they cannot become a new language.

Have a read of our Ultimate Guide to English Language if you haven't already.

[Video Transcription]

Sometimes when using language we may want to, or need to discuss a topic that is uncomfortable to deal with directly. For these cases we often employ the technique of euphemism to make the bad things sound better. As Quentin Crisp put it, "Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne".

Semantic Fields and Situational Contexts

Euphemism is found in a wide range of semantic fields and situational contexts, but a few where they appear often include:

• In the domain of politics and political correctness
• In public-facing language, such as press conferences and interviews
• In discussions around uncomfortable topics such as death, termination of employment, and sex
• In the corporate world

So this begs the question of why people sometimes choose to employ euphemism, and what social effects it has on relationships and also society as a whole?

The Purpose of Euphemism

There are two sides to the euphemism coin, which are important to keep in mind when discussing and observing the use of euphemism. On the one hand, it can allow us to talk about uncomfortable topics more easily and without losing face, but on the other it can mask the truth or even be used to actively confuse others.

Many would argue that the primary purpose of euphemism is to maintain positive face, and it can often be very effective in doing so. Let’s consider the example of an employer navigating the social taboo topic of dismissing one of their employees. No matter how they go about broaching this topic, some of the face needs of the employee will not be met. According to a variety of online human resources sites, some of the euphemisms that employers or hiring managers are encouraged to use, include:

• "Exit strategy”
• “Career change opportunity”
• “Freeing for availability to the industry”
• “Making a team move”

These terms are widely favoured over the bluntness of something like “you’re fired”. By using such euphemisms, employers seek to put the focus onto the minor upsides of being laid off, rather than directly dealing with what will often feel like a personal attack for the employee. In this way, they try to, although not necessarily effectively, meet the face needs of both their employee and themselves in navigating this socially taboo topic.

The euphemisms that we use can also reflect and reveal our shifting social mores as the euphemisms that we use change over time. For example, if we consider the words we use surrounding the semantic domain of animal slaughter, we are seeing more and more euphemisms being employed today, as the topic becomes taboo and unpalatable. Instead of “killing” animals, today people are describing animals as being “depopulated” or “harvested”. We can even see this shift in how we describe the deaths of household pets, who are “put down”, rather than “euthanised”. Such euphemisms reflect our society’s shifting values and attitudes, namely that we now value animal life far more than we have in the past. We now wish to avoid the negative connotation surrounding the traditional lexemes of this semantic field, in order to maintain social harmony and positive face.

However, euphemism is also often used to hide or conceal the truth, and can mislead both those who hear it, and even those who use it. Clear communication is sometimes sacrificed for the sake of maintaining one’s positive face. When euphemism is used to obfuscate the truth, it is often classed as “doublespeak”, a term stemming from the neologisms “doublethink” and “newspeak” in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four . For example, local councils may describe a “pot-hole” as a “pavement deficiency” to save face in being unwilling or unable to repair roads. This term is deliberately ambiguous as to the nature of the specific damage, and has been chosen over the far clearer and more familiar term “pot-hole” in an effort to obscure the truth. According to linguist Kate Burridge, euphemisms such as these “tell us how it isn’t”.

Even something as commonplace as life-insurance policies are in reality euphemistic terms for something that really insures one’s death. But insurance agencies and carriers don’t want their product being associated with the social taboo of death, and instead they choose to use the more positively-connoted term “life” to create positive brand recognition. All sorts of euphemisms surround us constantly, and we are often so used to them being used, that we don’t even notice.

Linguist Stephen Pinker describes a “euphemism treadmill”, which is a good metaphor for the way that the connotations of euphemisms can often change over time, as they are used and over-used. The classic example of this process is in the terms used by Nazi officials in the late 1930s and '40s to describe the Holocaust. Initially, the term “Sonderbehandlung” or “special treatment” was used to refer to the summary execution of so-called “unfavourable people”. However, this term quickly became as negatively connoted as the term it was designed to replace among the German people, and so the phrase “die Endlösung der Judenfrage”, “the final solution to the Jewish Question” was formulated - a phrase which again became infamously associated with the atrocities of the Holocaust during the Nuremburg trials. In fact, we’ve observed the overwhelmingly negative connotation of this former euphemism recently in Australia, with Fraser Anning being met with widespread criticism after using this term in the senate. In this example, we can see how over time euphemisms can lose their ameliorating effect as they become more associated with that which they are trying to mask.

Whether you believe that euphemisms are a valuable and useful part of our language, or that they are ambiguous and misleading, their prevalence in our contemporary Australian society make them an important part of a discussion of the evolving semantics of Australian English and of language as a whole.

For an overview of English Language, the study design, what’s involved in the exam and more, take a look at our Ultimate Guide to English Language .

There are several strategies you can use to your advantage to extend yourself in VCE English Language. 

Make Finding Examples a Habit

One simple way to expose yourself to more examples is to follow news pages on social media so that you can see regular updates about current affairs. Have a read through of point 7: Year 12 Essay Topic Categories in our Ultimate Guide to English Language so that you can understand what types of examples you should be keeping an eye out for. 

Right from the start of the school year, make sure you set up a system to keep track of your examples. You could do this by setting up a document with headings (such as ‘free speech’, ‘egalitarianism’, ‘ political correctness ’, ‘double-speak’, ‘ethnolects’ and ‘ Australian identity ’) and adding examples to this document throughout the year as you find them. For more information about the potential headings you could use, have a look at the dot points in the VCE English Language Study Design from page 17 onwards. 

I’d also highly recommend checking out Building Essay Evidence Banks for English Language as it teaches you a great table method for storing and analysing your examples. 

The advantage of creating an example/evidence bank of some sort is that if you start looking for examples right at the start of the year, you’ll have more time to analyse and memorise them. Additionally, you’ll also be able to use them far earlier in your essays, which means that the quotes and examples you select will become much easier to remember for the final exam.

Have a Basic Understanding of Australian History, Politics and Social Issues

Having a basic understanding of Australian history, politics and social issues is highly beneficial for enhancing your analytical skills for English Language. This is essential in developing strong contentions for your essays. Some key issues that would be worth having some background information on include the following:

Australia’s colonial history and treatment of Indigenous communities, racism, and the language surrounding these matters.

 Look into the following: 

• How does language reflect or perpetuate prejudice? 
• How does hate speech affect social harmony? 
• How can language be used to establish in-group solidarity?

Sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia.

• How can bias and prejudice be conveyed through language? 
• What are some examples of implicit and explicit bias? 
• What role does political correctness play in this context? 
• Does political correctness create benefits or does it restrict societies? 

Environmental issues, and the way this intersects with politics. 

• How can euphemisms , doublespeak, and bureaucratic language be used to obfuscate or mitigate blame? 

Immigration and refugee policy related discourse. 

• What are the origins of pejoratives such as ‘boat people’ and ‘queue jumper’ that are frequently used against refugees? 
• How does this influence the values or beliefs of a society? 

Business and economic issues, labour exploitation 

• How can bureaucratic language and jargon be used to mislead and manipulate?

Political affairs (historical and recent)

• How can formal language be used to mitigate blame and responsibility, negotiate social taboos, or establish national identity? 

Having an awareness of key events and social issues in Australia, an understanding of the groups that make up Australia, and exposing yourself to a diverse set of media is really important in developing your essay writing skills. It does take time, but what will ultimately happen is that your discussions in your essays will be much more insightful and demonstrate a well thought out argument.

Apply Your Critical Thinking Skills

When writing essays, try your best to apply your critical thinking skills . Identify the assumptions you’re making when you present a certain point, and try to develop arguments against your position so that you can better understand why you have chosen your side. Developing a holistic and detailed contention is far better than just picking one side out of simplicity, as it allows you to demonstrate consideration and analysis of a range of factors that affect a certain issue. Use your evidence (contemporary examples, linguist quotes and stimulus material) to develop your points, and position yourself to be mindful of any biases you may have by continuously asking yourself what has influenced your way of thinking. Above all, try to discuss your essay prompts with your peers, as this will provide you with different perspectives and help you strengthen your own point. 

Consistently Revising Metalanguage

Consistently revising metalanguage is crucial for doing well in English Language. Throughout Year 12, consistently revising metalanguage will be your responsibility. It is likely that you’ll be spending a greater proportion of class time in learning content, and writing practice pieces. Therefore, it’s really important to figure out a way that works best for you in being able to frequently revise metalanguage. Flashcards are useful for revision on the go, as well as making mind maps so that you’re able to visualise how everything is set out in the study design. 

One issue students run into when it comes to learning metalanguage is that they’re able to define and give examples for metalanguage terms, however, they are unable to understand how those terms fit into the categories under each subsystem. For example, a student is able to remember what a metaphor is, but unable to recall that it fits under semantic patterning. Similarly, a student may know what a pause is, but not know if it’s part of prosodic features or discourse features. 

It’s important to know what all the categories are because the short answer questions usually ask you to identify features under a particular category (e.g. you’d be asked to talk about semantic patterning, not metaphor or pun). Therefore, spending time on just revising the definitions alone isn’t sufficient in learning metalanguage. You also need to be able to ensure that you can recall which category each term fits under. Refer to the study design (pages 17-18) , for a list of categories you need to remember; these include: 

• Prosodic features
• Vocal effects
• Phonological patterning
• Processes in connected speech
• Word classes, word formation processes
• Sentence types
• Sentence structures
• Syntactic patterning
• Features of spoken discourse
• Strategies of spoken discourse
• Semantic patterning
• Sense relations/other semantics

Using Meaningful Examples in Essays

When you talk about a certain variety of English, say for example ethnolects or teen speak, rather than just providing a lexical example or translation, try to find a contemporary example of the term being used in the media, online or by a prominent individual. For example, rather than saying:

  ‘The lexeme ‘bet’ is an example of teen speak which allows young people to establish solidarity ’,

you could say:

 ‘ Bakery owner Morgan Hipworth, who largely has a teenage following and is a young person himself, employs teenspeak in a video recipe, where he responds to the question “Can you make a 10 layer cheese toastie?” with “Bet, let’s go. ”’ 

This will provide you with a better opportunity to talk about in-groups and identity, rather than just defining and identifying an example as part of a particular variety. In doing so, you’re better able to address the roles of different linguistic examples in a contextualised and detailed manner. 

In Building Essay Evidence Banks for English Language you’ll see that a short analysis for each of your examples (the ones you are collecting throughout the year) is encouraged, but, you could take things one step further - add on an extra column and combine your analysis and example in a practice sentence. Head to the blog to learn more about building evidence banks .

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Evaluative language in undergraduate academic writing: expressions of attitude as sources of text effectiveness in English as a Foreign Language

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the use of attitudinal language stands as a potential source of effectiveness in undergraduate academic writing in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). In order to achieve this purpose, interpersonal features of a corpus of essays written by Mexican undergraduate students of English Language and Literature were analyzed. The model of appraisal (Martin, James R. & Peter R. R. White. 2005. The language of evaluation: Appraisal systems in English . Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan) was used to trace and contrast attitude resources of affect, judgement and appreciation in academic essays in relation to the grades they were granted by university professors at different levels of instruction. The results of the study confirm a significant relation between the use of resources of attitude and the perceived (in)effectiveness of the analyzed texts, as well as factors which potentially determine the nature of such relation and pose relevant implications for academic writing instruction in EFL in the context of the analyzed corpus.

1 Introduction

Writing academically in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is widely recognized as central to undergraduate education due to its role as the main means of production and dissemination of knowledge in international contexts ( Nesi and Gardner 2012 ). Academic writing is also considered as an activity which involves complex sets of skills that even expert writers keep on improving after continued experience ( Chazal 2014 ). As part of such complexity, the appropriate expression of interpersonal meanings has been found to be one of the most challenging components when learning how to write academically ( Hood 2010 ), mainly because of the pedagogical challenges involved in an appropriate induction of learners into the linguistic conventions developed by specialized discourse communities to produce interpersonal meanings.

Different from skills and competencies related to the communication of factual information and conventional paradigms of textual organization, construing interpersonal meanings involves the use of linguistic resources to express interaction among speakers, as well as the communication of the feelings and points of view they intend to share ( Moss 2011 ). Interpersonal meanings also convey social roles and evaluations ( Hyland 2005 ), as well as the speakers’ expression of a subjective reality, which conveys social relations, personal values, and different kinds of opinions they want to share with other speakers ( Perales et al. 2012 ). Additionally, the expression of interpersonal meanings relates to authorial presence, also known as stance, in academic texts; “how writers present themselves and express their own views and judgements” in relation to others ( Candarli et al. 2015 : 193). Because of their discourse semantic nature, the workings of these dynamics and their rhetorical effects might make it harder for learners of EFL academic writing to acquire, observe, and evaluate than grammatical and organizational features, as attested by observations like Lancaster’s (2014) , who has referred to interpersonal dynamics as recurring patterns of language use that are difficult to notice from casual scanning.

As explained by Ken Hyland, research has shown that fundamental challenges in teaching and learning interpersonal conventions in writing are found in two main sources of difficulties. For one thing, despite its actual social nature, academic writing may still be regarded as objective, rational and impersonal, which results in a neglection of the fact that academic, disciplinary practices involve variations in systems “of appropriate social engagement with one’s material and one’s colleagues” ( Hyland 2004 : 11). Additionally, cultural factors that shape students’ expectations, strategies, beliefs and, in general, schemas of knowledge and the whole process of learning also present learners with important challenges; besides the acquisition of grammatical structures, lexical resources, and notions of textual organization, learners writing in EFL have to deal with differences between diverse cultural conceptualizations of knowledge construction and communication. While certain cultures tend to favor “an analytical, questioning, and evaluative stance to knowledge”, others “have a very different perspective that favors conserving and reproducing existing knowledge” ( Hyland 2003 : 38).

Hyland’s considerations coincide with Chitez and Kruse’s (2012) observations about what they call writing cultures , which result from the fact that “each educational system creates its unique mixture of educational genres, writing/learning practices, assessment procedures, instructional materials, expectations towards writing, and required writing competencies, in varied relationships with the genres and practices of professional or scientific domains” (p. 153). An imminent consequence of this is that communities of learners and individual writers carry particular writing dynamics acquired from their various experiences, many of which differ significantly from each other. Thus, students learning how to write in EFL face the challenge to adjust – to lesser or greater degrees – to generalized conventions according to which they are expected to demonstrate their knowledge by voicing their judgements and putting their opinions forward in certain ways. Adjusting appropriately to such conventions may result in effective writing, which has been defined by Vega (2015) as the instantiation of argumentation which appropriately accommodates to the audience’s framework of attitudes and beliefs, gaining force in its adhesion to the speaker’s proposals.

Based on the consideration that the expression of interpersonal meanings plays an important role in the production of successful written academic texts and, as a result, may represent a significant source of (in)effectiveness in academic writing, several works have analyzed the use of interpersonal resources by undergraduate students in EFL in diverse international contexts. Some of such works have explored this dimension of academic writing from the perspective of Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse model ( Candarli et al. 2015 ; Crosthwaite and Jiang 2017 ; Lee and Deakin 2016 ), while others have adopted the systemic-functional perspective of the appraisal model ( Martin and White 2005 ) as their theoretical and methodological basis ( Derewianka 2007 ; Lee 2008 , 2015 ; Mei 2006 , 2007 ; Ryshina-Pankova 2014 ).

Despite the abundant production of research this subject has seen around the globe, the exploration of the relationship between interpersonal resources and effectiveness in academic EFL writing has not received much attention in Mexico and Latin America, where most related research has focused on academic writing in Spanish L1 ( Castro 2013 ; Castro and Sánchez 2013 ; González 2011 ; Ignatieva 2021 ; Navarro 2014 ; Valerdi 2021 ; Zamudio 2016 ). It is also worth noticing that, as it will be shown in further sections of this paper, most previous works beyond Latin American contexts have explored the interpersonal discourse of EFL writers from disciplines which require effective communication in English, but not the professional mastery or depth that is expected from future professionals of the English Language and Literature at different levels of linguistic and disciplinary instruction. Such potential mastery and depth in knowledge represent the need to analyze the workings of interpersonal language considering as many realizational variables as possible. Stemming from this, the objective of this paper is to use qualitative and quantitative research methods to analyze the use of interpersonal resources in a corpus of academic essays written in EFL by Mexican undergraduate students of English Language and Literature at a public university in Central Mexico. This exploration is developed within the framework of Martin and White’s (2005) model of appraisal with specific focus on the system of attitude and the instantiation variables of attitudinal category, realization, explicitness, trigger, and authorship. In this work, I compare the features of attitudinal realizations in low-, middle-, and high-graded essays in order to understand the relationship between the use of attitudinal language and the perceived effectiveness of the essays where it is instantiated. Additionally, the features of the evaluative language in the corpus are observed in relation to the instructional and linguistic experience of the undergraduate authors of the texts, which were classified as basic, intermediate, and advanced.

In the following section, a brief account of the system of attitude is presented with particular focus on the categories that have been analyzed in this research. This is followed by an account of previous works that have explored the relationship between attitudinal language and the (in)effectiveness of academic writing by undergraduate EFL learners from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Then, a description of the mixed methodological approach which was applied in this research is presented. Finally, I report the most significant findings of this work in order to discuss their implications to teaching academic writing in EFL in the Mexican context.

2 The appraisal model and the system of attitude

Martin and White (2005) developed the appraisal model as an extension of the analysis of the interpersonal metafunction proposed in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (1985 , 2004 . While Halliday describes this metafunction at the lexicogrammar stratum in terms of the clause as an exchange through the system of mood , the appraisal model approaches the expression of feelings, points of view and social relations at the stratum of discourse semantics through the systems of attitude , engagement , and graduation . The first one involves the discursive negotiation of emotion-related meanings (feelings, moral/ethical judgements, and aesthetic responses), while the second one relates to the speaker’s positioning in relation to other voices. The system of graduation has to do with the resources deployed to intensify and attenuate realizations of attitude and engagement ( Martin and White 2005 ).

This paper is concerned with the system of attitude , which encompasses the linguistic expression of emotions and their institutionalization as opinions related to the notions of ethics and aesthetics. The ultimate objective of using these resources is to share subjective points of view for the audience to consider them and, if the discourse is successful, adhere to them. In this sense, the expression of attitude is central for speakers’ argumentation of their positions and the representations of the world they communicate since “it is possible to adhere oneself not only to a thesis, but also to ways of thinking, seeing, and feeling” ( Amossy 2009 : 67–68). Thus, considering Vega’s definition of effectiveness (2015) as argumentation which accommodates to the audience’s attitudes and beliefs in order to increase its adhesion to the speaker’s proposals, the rhetorical effects of communicating one’s propositions accompanied by attitudinal evaluations may have the potential to enhance the effectiveness of the produced text beyond the scope of its objective contents.

In the model of appraisal , expressions of attitude are analyzed in terms of three sub-systems: affect , judgement , and appreciation . Affect relates to the linguistic realization of feelings, considered as the most basic forms of personal reaction in human linguistic development ( Martin 2000 ; Painter 2003 ; Torr 1997 ). These expressions are usually classified into the categories of +/− happiness [“affairs of the heart” ( Martin and White 2005 : 49)], +/− security (related to ecosocial well-being and sensations of anxiety and confidence), +/− satisfaction (linked to the satisfaction of personal needs and goals) and +/− desire (involving the willingness or attraction towards entities and processes). Prototypically, instances of affect are lexically realized in the form of qualities (attributes and epithets), mental and behavioral processes, and modal adjuncts. Table 1 illustrates examples of affect analyzed in the corpus of this study. The two columns on the right present information about the variables of realization – the lexico-grammatical form – and category – attitudinal sub-type – of each example.

Instances of the four categories of affect .

All the examples presented on this and other tables and figures are instances of evaluative language analyzed in the corpus of this research, except for *, which has been adapted from Martin and White (2005 : 46).

Resources from the judgement and appreciation sub-systems are the result of the modelling and sophistication of affectivity according to social norms and aesthetic parameters produced by social conventions, hence their status as institutionalizations of affect . These institutionalizations represent moral/ethic judgements about people, their actions, and the consequences of their actions, as well as personal considerations about the aesthetic properties of things, processes, and people. Following Martin and White’s (2005) description, expressions of judgement are classified into the categories of +/− normality (how special or unique someone is), +/− capacity (how able a person is), +/− tenacity (how resolute someone is), +/− veracity (related to people’s honesty) and +/− propriety (linked to people’s integrity). Judgement is typically realized through qualities and modal adjuncts ( Table 2 ).

Instances of the five categories of judgement.

Expressions of appreciation encode aesthetic evaluations of speakers in terms of three categories: +/− reaction (emotional responses provoked by things and processes), +/− composition (perceptions of the balance, regularity, and order of things), and +/− valuation (opinions about the aesthetic and practical value of things). Prototypical realizations of appreciation take the form of qualities and circumstances ( Table 3 ).

Instances of the three categories of appreciation.

The examples of attitude presented up to this point correspond to inscribed realizations; expressions that encode attitude overtly or explicitly. Affect , judgement , and appreciation can also be indirectly invoked . The particularity of invoked realizations of attitude is that they demand a special effort from the audience or interlocutor to identify and process the type of evaluation the speaker is doing. Another peculiarity of this type of realization is that it involves the selection of resources pertaining to the ideational metafunction, which “gives structure to experience, and helps to determine our way of looking at things, so that it requires some intellectual effort to see them in any other way than that which our language suggests to us” ( Halliday 2002 : 175). Hence observations by Hood and Martin (2005) and Hood (2010) of processes and participants as efficient attitudinal invokers: ideational meanings are seldom neutral, and speakers choose non-inherently evaluative resources for their invoking potential.

attitude is prototypically invoked through lexical metaphors, processes, nominal participants, and nominalizations of processes and qualities. A notorious exception to these invoked realizations is the case of affect , which can be inscribed through mental and behavioral processes. Table 4 illustrates invoked realizations of attitude analyzed in the corpus of this work.

Invoked realizations of attitude.

An additional remark on attitudinal invocation relates to potential double coding ( Martin and White 2005 ) resulting from indirect realizations of attitude where a given evaluation from one category may be invoked by means of the inscription of another category as in (1) below. In this example, the author expresses a negative evaluation of a reviewer’s knowledge ( appreciation > −composition), which indirectly realizes a negative evaluation about his abilities as a literary analyst ( judgement > −capacity). The possibility of finding such types of invoked realizations in discourse represents the need to make methodological decisions regarding the labelling of attitudinal realizations in an analysis, as was the case in this work. Pertinent observations are made later in the Section 4 .

For the purposes of this research, additionally to the variables of realization, category and explicitness, the variable of trigger is particularly relevant. This variable indicates the stimulus that motivates an evaluation. For the nature of the essays studied in this work – i.e., essays on literary works from English Literature – triggers of attitude were related to characters, other components of the literary works commented by the authors of the corpus (atmosphere, style, plot, etc.), and entities external to the literary works about which they write in their essays (literary concepts, periods, genres, currents, other works, different authors, etc.). Table 5 illustrates instantiations of attitude with labels of their realization, category, explicitness, and trigger.

Instantiations of attitude with realization variables.

3 Research on attitudinal meanings in undergraduate EFL academic writing

The study of the linguistic expression of attitude and its relationship with successful EFL academic writing has received considerable attention in international contexts. Jalilifar and Hemmati (2013) analyzed a corpus of argumentative essays written by postgraduate Kurdish-speaking Iranian students of TEFL to explore whether appraisal resources can be used as a reference to evaluate argumentative writing in low- and high-graded essays. These authors found that higher proportions of attitude were characteristic of more successful texts, although both groups of texts were similar in a tendency to use more judgement and appreciation than affect . Additionally, high-graded essays displayed significantly more invoked affect through nominalizations and more inscribed valuation than low-graded texts, which tended to inscribe affect through mental processes and to invoke valuation . In terms of judgement , the main contrast between both sub-corpora lied in the selection of sub-categories, with high-graded essays mainly displaying resources of capacity and low-graded texts mainly instantiating normality . Jalilifar and Hemmati (2013) conclude that, although clear tendencies showed that more successful essays tend to display more attitude , punctual instantiations suggested that “in assessing the essays as high- or low-graded, more important than the number of appraisal markers exploited in essays was how these resources were employed” (p. 75). This conclusion coincides with observations by Hunston (2011) , Hunston and Su (2019) , and Valerdi (2021) , who have pointed at the centrality of lexico-grammatical patterns and the strategic use of evaluative language in argumentative structures over low or high proportions of appraisal resources in texts.

Reaching similar conclusions, Myskow and Ono (2018) studied how Japanese undergraduate students of Law and Political Science used resources of affect, judgement and appreciation as part of their arguments’ justifying evidence in a corpus of 62 biographical essays. Having rated the texts as either high or low on the basis of a self-designed rubric, these authors found that both low- and high-rated essays displayed similar proportions of general attitudinal appraisal , with judgement as the most prevalent type of evaluation. Here, the relevant contrasts took place in terms of the most frequently used sub-systems in each group of texts, with high-rated essays displaying higher proportions of appreciation and judgement , and low-rated texts displaying more resources of affect . Additionally, for these researchers, what students found challenging was not the selection of particular attitudinal categories, but finding appropriate grammatical constructions for them to support their arguments; they noticed students relied heavily on attributes to inscribe conclusive evaluations about people. Myskow and Ono (2018) suggest writing teachers should not encourage learners to adopt critical perspectives through heavily polarized inscriptions, but to integrate evaluations with evidence in support of their conclusions through particular grammatical constructions.

In a work that explores the relationship between undergraduate students’ lack of critical voice and limitations in the management of evaluative language, Lee (2015) compared high- and low-graded persuasive essays written by native (Australian) and non-native (South Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese) undergraduate EAP students to identify how evaluative language contributes to academic writing success. In that study, native and non-native writers deployed judgement and appreciation ten times more frequently than affect . When focusing on appreciation resources, the author found that valuation was predominantly more used over expressions of composition and reaction , which they interpretated as a subject-specific particularity. When contrasting low- and high-graded essays, Lee found that less successful texts displayed affect-related reaction twelve times more frequently than successful essays. Additionally, she found that high-graded essays by both native and non-native writers displayed similar tendencies, with frequent use of judgement -invoking valuations . In 2008, Lee had reported very similar tendencies in a study based on a remarkably similar corpus, with high-graded essays deploying significantly more varied attitudinal resources – mainly invoked evaluations of judgment  – and depersonalized attitude  – in the form of nominalizations – than low-graded texts. For  Lee (2015) , shaping an appropriate use of evaluative language is key in EAP instruction, where “students’ exposure to the appraisal system helps them to acquire the relevant English Language skills including grammar and vocabulary most effectively in a context-appropriate manner” (p. 73).

In a work which supports Lee’s (2015) position, Bahmani et al. (2021) propose the model of appraisal as a pedagogical tool to help EAP writers show their critical stance in their texts. To support their claim, the authors developed an experimental study at an Iranian university, comparing the writing successfulness of an experimental group of 30 postgraduate students of English Language Teaching to that of a control group with the same number of students. The experimental group received writing instruction with explicit explanations and analyses of attitude and graduation . On the basis of standardized pre-tests and post-tests applied to both groups, Bahmani et al. concluded that explicit instruction on the use of evaluative language enabled the experimental group to perform more successfully in contrast with the control group, which did not improve its performance significantly.

Besides research based on appraisal analysis, the role of attitudes in academic writing in EFL has seen remarkable contributions developed through applications of Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse model. Despite general differences between metadiscourse and appraisal , both models have been found to share remarkable similarities in their conceptualization of linguistic attitudes (Du et al. 2023) : linguistic resources that “indicate the writer’s affective […] attitude to propositions” via markers of surprise, agreement, frustration, importance, etc. ( Hyland 2005 : 53). In this paper, key metadiscourse works are worth mentioning for their special focus on contrasting less or more effective texts on the basis of their attitudinal features.

One of such works is that by Crosthwaite and Jiang (2017) , who support the idea that successful attitudinal conventions can stem from instruction in academic writing. They explored how explicit instruction on the use of attitudinal metadiscourse affects the development of stance features in essays and reports. The authors investigated the development of attitude markers and other metadiscoursal resources during one semester of EAP instruction to undergraduate students from various disciplines in Hong Kong. After analyzing written samples before, during, and after explicit instruction, Crosthwaite and Jiang (2017) found that undergraduate authors had reduced their use of attitudinal markers significantly in their texts. Additionally, when they graded the same written samples, they found that interpersonal features developed through instruction were more likely to have a positive impact on evaluators. For these authors, “the ability to express a relevant and plausible stance is a crucial indicator of writing quality and development” (p. 94). As challenging as this has been proved to be, such ability can be trained in undergraduate students, who enter university writing privileging their attitudes about their claims and their positions, but may be instructed to develop a new academic voice, “gaining control over the rhetorical and linguistic aspects of academic discourse via the use of a more careful, narrower, less polarising and less personal range of expressions with which to convey their attitudes on a given topic” (p. 102).

Lee and Deakin (2016) looked more closely at the role of attitudinal metadiscourse markers in the effectiveness of undergraduate writing in EFL by analyzing essays written by Chinese learners enrolled in their first or second writing course at a university in the United States. The essays had been rated through a standardized grading rubric either as low or high. Lee and Deakin (2016) found that authors of successful essays had a tendency to include significantly more attitudinal markers than less successful essays. Additionally, these authors observed that attitudinal resources in high-rated texts displayed more varied lexico-grammatical realizations. In these authors’ corpus, the expression of authorial stance through attitude seems to be an important factor of success. Nevertheless, compared to other types of stance markers – namely hedges, boosters, self-mention, and engagement markers –, they observe that attitudinal resources are among the least used expressions of interpersonal meanings in both low- and high-rated essays. These findings can be related to those by Crosthwaite and Jiang (2017) in that not only do linguistic realizations of attitude seem to be modulated by EFL writers when writing in English, but they also appear to stem from effective instruction that results in the acquisition of rhetorical conventions of academic EFL writing. Adhering to or neglecting such conventions affects the impression of (in)effectiveness of undergraduate academic texts.

These works have explored and confirmed, to varying degrees and from interrelated perspectives, the possibility to link the use of evaluative attitudinal language to effectiveness in academic EFL writing in different international contexts. The following section presents a description of the methodological approach that was applied in this research in order to explore such relationship in the Mexican context. This will be followed by a report of the results obtained.

4 Methodology

The purpose of this paper is to analyze realizations of attitude in undergraduate academic essays in EFL in order to determine if their attitudinal features represent a potential source of text (in)effectiveness beyond lexicogrammatical and structural considerations. This is done through a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodology, comparing the deployment of resources from the three attitude sub-systems in essays written by Mexican undergraduate students from different instructional levels of the major on English Language and Literature at a public university in Central Mexico.

The major in English Language and Literature consists of eight consecutive semesters. Students entering the first semester must provide evidence of having completed three years of EFL instruction during their high school studies. Additionally, they must pass an exam that determines whether they possess competencies equivalent to band B2 from the Common European Framework. As part of their studies in the major, they study four 16-week language courses during the first four semesters (one course per semester). From the fifth to the eight semesters, their training in the language takes place through specialized content subjects that are taught in English. These subjects include advanced English Literature courses where essay writing is a regular instructional and evaluative practice.

4.1 The corpus

The corpus of this work includes 41 essays that were written as final assignments in 16-week English Literature courses by students from different instructional levels: it comprises 15 essays written by students from 1st through 3rd semester – labeled as ‘basic’–, 15 essays from 4th through 6th semester – classified as ‘intermediate’ –, and 11 essays from 7th through 8th semester – considered as ‘advanced’ –. The texts were written under the general instruction to analyze one of the literary works studied during one semester, identify its most remarkable literary features, and justify observations about the chosen work. Each essay was evaluated by the teacher of the English Literature course where it was collected and was granted a grade from 5 to 10. During the recollection of the corpus, teachers in charge of the courses reported to have evaluated the essays on the basis of appropriate analysis of literary concepts and features, as well as cohesion, coherence, and grammatical accuracy. No standardized or specially-designed rubric was used, so the results of evaluation resulted from the expert view of teachers according to the academic liberty policy of the university.

For the purposes of this study, the texts were further divided into three sub-categories according to the grade they were granted by course teachers: low-graded (essays with notes from 5 to 6), middle-graded (notes from 7 to 8), and high-graded (notes from 9 to 10). Table 6 illustrates the composition and distribution of the corpus.

Composition and distribution of the corpus and sub-corpora.

4.2 The analysis

All realizations of attitude in the corpus were recorded and analyzed taking into account the variables of category, realization, explicitness, and trigger. For the trigger variable, five subject-specific labels were established due to the nature of the analyzed discourse: Author 1 (A1) is marked when the writer evaluates him or herself; Author 2 (A2), when the writer evaluates the author of the literary work he or she discusses in the essay; Character (CH), when the evaluated entity is a character or narrator from the literary work discussed in the essay; Text (TXT), when the writer evaluates elements of the literary work he or she analyzes in the essay, such as atmosphere, style, plot, etc.; and Other (OTH), when the evaluated entity is external to the literary work under analysis, such as literary periods, genres, other works, different authors, etc. Additionally, the authorship of attitudinal evaluation was identified through the variable of appraiser ( Martin and White 2005 ). This variable distinguishes between authorial (the writer is the one who evaluates attitudinally) and non-authorial (the writer attributes an attitudinal evaluation to someone else) realizations of attitude .

Besides tracking attitude types in the corpus, the purpose of observing all these realizational variables was to avoid misleading recordings due to potential double coding – i.e., invoked realizations of one attitudinal category instantiated by inscribed realizations of a different one. Because a delicate analysis of this type of invoked attitude is beyond the scope and purpose of this work, when examples of this were identified in the corpus, the inscribed interpretations were considered for the analysis on the basis of prototypical realizations and variables described earlier in Section 2 .

Table 7 illustrates attitudinal instantiations from the corpus with the labels of all the variables observed, including an instance of invoked judgement which was recorded as inscribed appreciation (**). In this example, inscribed appreciation ( +valuation ) is used to evaluate human +veracity indirectly.

Instantiations of attitude with labels of five realizational variables.

All instances of attitude were recorded and quantified in dynamic tables. Proportions of expression of each type of attitude were calculated by dividing the number of occurrences of each attitudinal paradigm by the total number of clauses in each text and sub-corpus (# of attitude instantiations/# of clauses). When focus was on attitude sub-types and realizational variables, proportions were calculated by dividing the number of the corresponding attitudinal paradigm by the total number of attitude instantiations in each text and sub-corpus. As in previous work on appraisal ( Lee 2008 ; Mei 2007 ; Valerdi 2016 ), Chi-squared tests were performed in order to confirm the statistical significance of the findings. This type of test is used to “examine the distribution of data across the categories of our analysis” and “the extent to which the distribution of your observed data varies from the distribution that would be expected if the independent variable had no effect on the dependent variable” ( Levon 2010 : 78). The students’ instructional level (basic, intermediate, and advanced) and perceived effectiveness (low, middle, and high) are independent variables in this study while the expression of attitude and its variables are dependent variables.

In linguistic studies involving categorical dependent variables, chi-square tests with a resulting p value of <0.05 indicate there is a relationship between the variables ( Rasinger 2013 ). In other words, such tests “tell you that there is at least a 95 % chance that the independent variable does in fact have an effect on the dependent variable” ( Levon 2010 : 81). The following section presents the results of the study and indicate p values obtained by the chi-square tests.

5.1 Attitude in the general corpus and by instructional level

As a general feature, there is a significantly reduced proportion of evaluative language in the whole corpus, with only 18.02 % of the clauses expressing attitude. This is reflected in each of the instructional level sub-corpora: 19 % in basic essays, 16 % in intermediate essays, and 20 % in advanced essays. Additionally, these sub-corpora display appreciation as the most recurrent type of attitudinal positioning, while affect is the least frequent attitudinal paradigm in the corpus. The proportions of the different types of attitude are statistically significant in all the instructional levels of the texts ( Table 8 ).

Proportions of realization per attitude sub-system by instructional level.

a When a p value is too long to be contained in a single cell, Excel, the program used for quantitative explorations in this work, reports the result with the suffix ‘E’ followed by an entire number. Such coding means that, for an exact reading of the p value, the decimal point in the result must be moved as many places to the left as indicated by the number following ‘E’. In this case, the value of p is statistically significant, as the full result (0.0000000000000000108249) is meaningfully bellow conventional 0.05.

When considering the variable of explicitness, the corpus features a progressive reduction of evaluative inscription, which is predominant in basic essays and reduces by 21 % in advanced texts ( Table 9 ). The differences in explicitness among the sub-corpora are highly statistically significant.

Proportions of inscribed and invoked attitude by instructional level.

Further careful analysis of the explicitness variable reveals that evaluations of  affect and appreciation are mainly inscribed in the three groups of texts while resources of judgement tend to be invoked ( Table 10 ). This corresponds directly to the most representative lexical realizations of attitude in the corpus: attributes, epithets, and mental processes for affect; attributes and epithets for appreciation; and processes, nouns and nominalizations for judgement. The proportions of explicitness were found statistically significant for judgement and appreciation only.

Proportions of invocation and inscription of attitude types by instructional level. Predominant tendencies are highlighted.

Regarding the realizational variable of triggers, authors of intermediate and advanced essays have literary characters, literary features, and external entities related to the works they analyze in their essays as stimuli for evaluative expressions, in that order of saliency and in almost identical proportions. Writers of basic essays, on the other hand, focus primarily on the authors of the works they discuss when positioning themselves attitudinally, but coincide with their intermediate and advanced counterparts in focusing on literary features of their analyzed works secondly, and thirdly on external entities ( Table 11 ).

Triggers of attitudinal evaluations by instructional level. The three most representative types of triggers in each sub-corpus are highlighted.

5.2 Attitude by perceived effectiveness

The corpus displays meaningful contrasts in the evaluative features of the essays when their perceived effectiveness is taken into consideration. In Table 12 , we can see there is an increasing presence of attitudinal evaluation that progresses from low-graded to middle-graded essays in the basic and intermediate sub-corpora. Such progression, however, does not continue in essays from the advanced sub-corpus, where the distribution of attitudinal realizations contrasts with the other texts and was found to be not statistically significant.

Proportions of attitude in relation to grades granted by university teachers.

A ppreciation resources are the most recurrent attitude type in all low-, middle-, and high-graded essays, followed by judgement and, in much lower proportions, by affect . Additionally, as illustrated in Table 13 , proportions of judgement and affect are close in representativeness to each other in all groups of texts, which indicates an interesting regularity related to the degree of effectiveness attributed to the essays by university teachers.

Proportions of attitude types in relation to grades granted by university teachers.

The explicitness variable does not seem to affect the tendencies in the corpus when related to perceived effectiveness ( Table 14 ). Inscribed appreciation and invoked judgement are the most representative choices in low-, middle-, and high-graded essays. Realizations of affect are significantly inscribed with two exceptions to this tendency. First, intermediate middle-graded essays display invoked affect over inscribed realizations by a difference of 20 %. Secondly, advanced low-graded essays are radically different from middle- and high-graded texts from the same instructional level with 100 % of affective realizations being invoked. Despite the clarity of these tendencies, differences in explicitness were not found statistically significant in relation to perceived effectiveness.

Proportions of invocation and inscription of attitude types in relation to grades granted by university teachers. Predominant tendencies are highlighted.

Table 15 shows remarkable regularities in the types of triggers that undergraduate writers of two sub-corpora have in mind when expressing attitudinal evaluation of different types. In the intermediate and advanced sub-corpora, all low-, middle-, and high-graded essays display evaluative focus on characters, textual literary features, external elements, the authors of their analyzed works, and the very authors of the essays, in that order of predominance. Interestingly, essays from the basic instructional level differ in every single proportion of trigger choice from the others, with textual literary features as the main attitudinal trigger in all low-, middle, and high-graded essays. The second most representative triggers in low- and middle-graded essays are external elements and characters, respectively, while high-graded essays prioritize authors of their analyzed woks. Finally, low- and middle-graded texts coincide in privileging the attitudinal evaluation of the authors of the works they study in the third place. High-graded essays, on the other hand, prioritize their attitudinal stance regarding elements external to their analyzed literary works. These results were found to be highly statistically significant for the basic essays of the corpus, slightly non-significant for the intermediate texts, and markedly non-significant for advanced essays.

Triggers of attitudinal evaluation in all sub-corpora in relation to grades granted by university teachers. The three most representative types of triggers in each sub-corpus are highlighted.

6 Discussion

The results of this research show a meaningful relationship between the use of attitudinal evaluation in undergraduate academic EFL writing and the production of effective texts in the context of the analyzed corpus. In this section, this is shown by discussing the results from general to particular starting with a global scenario of the corpus, then looking at attitudinal features of the texts according to their instructional levels, and finally discussing attitude in relation to the essays’ perceived effectiveness. Following this order, it will be easier to relate the findings to attitudinal features in general undergraduate academic writing and then observe specific features where perceived effectiveness in the texts plays a distinctive role in the corpus of this work.

6.1 Attitude in the general corpus

The first relevant observation is the reduced presence of expressions of attitude in the global corpus, which is a general regularity that previous studies from various contexts have found as a significant feature of academic writing. The low occurrence of attitudinal evaluations in this sort of discourse can be understood in terms of argumentative pertinence. As Hunston states ( 1999 ), in academic discourse, only certain things get linguistically evaluated and they do it in specific ways when it is worth it. Additionally, looking back at Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) observations on the effects of subjective language in discourse, the appeal to the affective responses of an audience usually takes place at strategic points where an objective argumentation may lack the necessary persuasive potential. Thus, in discourses where objectivity is highly appreciated, attitudinal evaluations are used in limited proportions and forms, leading to a strategic management of evaluative resources.

Such strategic nature in the use of attitudinal evaluations has been previously explored in academic discourse in Spanish and in EFL academic writing. Valerdi (2021) found that attitude resources occurred in limited proportions due to their usefulness in certain specific types of argument components in postgraduate academic discourses in Spanish. The corpus of this study seems to conform to this strategic management of attitudinal expression. Within the area of EFL academic writing, Jalilifar and Hemmati (2013) concluded that particular dynamics of attitudinal deployment in texts are more determinant than large global amounts of attitudinal language in texts. In line with this, Crosthwaite and Jiang (2017) concluded that effective writing displays limited and careful expression of attitudinal meanings. Considering these antecedents, the general features of evaluative expressions in the corpus of this work seem to respond to academic writing conventions that learners have associated to their use of their target language and, in turn, reflect a general tendency that has been identified as a feature of effective writing in academic contexts.

6.1.1 Attitude types

A second feature the corpus shares with general effective writing is the predominance of realizations of appreciation in more than 50 % of evaluative resources. Such predominance prevails when breaking the corpus into smaller sub-corpora of basic, intermediate and advanced instructional levels. This leaves little room for affective evaluations, which occur in no more than 9 % of attitudinal realizations in all sub-corpora. As mentioned before, only certain things are evaluated in academic texts, and they are in certain ways only. This is confirmed when comparing these findings with those of previous works on appraisal in different contexts. Zhang and Cheung (2018) , for instance, found appreciation as the most realized type of attitude in articles on Second Language Writing, which they see as the result of a strategic evaluation which focuses on the value of things in order to objectify observations that are subjective in nature. Lee (2015) observes similar tendencies in undergraduate essays and emphasizes the importance of evaluating things related to the subject matter in the production of academic texts. According to these interpretations, prioritizing the appraisal of discipline-related things is central in academic arguments, where evaluation tends to be more objective than it would were it based on observations about human behavior or emotional responses of writers.

6.1.2 Attitudinal explicitness

The inscription and invocation of attitudinal meanings display one more regularity of the corpus that remains constant in the basic, intermediate, and advanced sub-corpora. From a general perspective, attitudinal evaluations are predominantly inscribed, making their attitudinal stance accessible in terms of the effort their identification and interpretation demand from the reader ( Halliday 2002 ). Nonetheless, such inscribing tendency changes when looking at each attitudinal category; realizations of judgement tend to be invoked in more than 65 % of occurrences.

These features carry interesting implications in terms of the degrees of explicitness with which EFL academic undergraduate authors deploy their evaluations. First, the global tendency to inscribe evaluations coincides with Hood and Martin’s (2005) observation that academic writers do not usually invoke attitude when constructing arguments around their work. The features of the corpus of this work confirm the validity of that observation in EFL academic writing. Regarding the contrasting realizations of judgement , previous research has shown how evaluations focused on people and their behavior tend to be managed more carefully in academic contexts than those triggered by things, taking the form of invoked attitudinal resources ( Hood and Martin 2005 ; Valerdi 2016 ). Apparently, the authors of the corpus behave more freely or confidently when evaluating things related to the subject matter of their work and their own personal impressions through appreciation and affect than when dealing with human – or humanized – triggers, in which case they tend to proceed more cautiously. It seems plausible to say these features correspond to generally effective evaluative dynamics in academic writing. Even though proportional differences between inscribed and invoked affect are not statistically significant ( Table 10 ), the regularity of their plain contrast and the significance of differences in judgement and appreciation stand as a remarkable feature of the corpus.

6.1.3 Triggers of attitudinal evaluation

The tendencies of the most recurrent triggers of attitudinal evaluation in the corpus are another area of significant regularity across instructional levels. The vast majority of attitude realizations is triggered by elements inherently associated to the literary works the authors analyzed in their essays; in the overall corpus, the most recurrent triggers are literary characters, followed by textual features from the realm of literary studies, and entities and concepts external to literary works in second and third place, respectively. These results seem to be a direct consequence of the instructions authors were given to analyze a literary work by identifying its most remarkable features as instances of literary genres and to justify their observations. Here, the notion of justification is key; since the authors were expected to justify their observations about literary features, it would seem natural to expect arguments founded on argumentative conclusions and supporting ideas focused on such things as characters, textual features and the contexts around literary works. Such was the case of the corpus of academic essays analyzed by Myskow and Ono (2018) , who found that attitudinal resources were used as part of the two central components of arguments, namely conclusions and supporting ideas, connected to subject matter-related triggers. Taking into consideration Myskow and Ono’s experience, together with Valerdi (2016) findings on the realizations of attitudinal evaluations directly connected to specific argument components, the statistically significant features of the triggers variable in this corpus confirm the centrality of attitudinal evaluation on the elaboration of academic arguments.

6.2 Attitude by instructional level

The corpus displays significant variations if the results are seen from the perspective of the three levels of instruction of the authors of the texts. There is a clear tendency for uses of affect and appreciation to decrease progressively from basic through advanced essays, while realizations of judgement increase from 13 % to 40 % ( Table 8 ). This could be interpreted as the direct consequence of the authors’ choice to evaluate characters from the works they studied and, as a result, it further supports the strategic nature of evaluative choices in the corpus; if any type of attitude was to remain present at different instructional levels, it was the one triggered by human-like entities. Additionally, despite the general reduction of inscribed evaluations in all three sub-corpora ( Table 9 ), expressions of judgement developed on the opposite direction, reducing their invoked realizations significantly ( Table 10 ). These observations suggest interesting evaluative dynamics on the corpus; while there is a general caution on the part of authors to evaluate human and human-like entities in their texts, there also seems to be certain development of a notion of discursive authority ( Poynton 1985 , as cited in Valerdi 2016 ) allowing writers to express their stance regarding human triggers in more open terms through inscribed judgmental evaluations as they gain more linguistic and disciplinary experience.

The relationship between evaluative language and disciplinary experience can also be seen in the triggers on which authors focus their attitude realizations. Writers of basic essays contrast with writers of intermediate and advanced texts in their evaluative focus on authors of literary works as the third most relevant triggers ( Table 11 ). Clearly, the interpretation of writers of basic essays regarding what elements are central in literary analysis is particular. Considering previous observations about the relevance of prioritizing arguments around the value of things to objectify evaluations ( Zhang and Cheung 2018 ), it seems plausible to conclude that, in intermediate and advanced texts, the less central consideration of human elements different from literary characters is the result of the development of a more specialized selection of elements worthy of literary discussion. These findings further support what has been observed by Candarli et al. (2015) , Lee and Deakin (2016) and Crosthwaite and Jiang (2017) ; attitudinal choices seem to be modulated by EFL writers when writing in English and, in parallel with this, they stem from disciplinary instruction which leads to the acquisition of academic EFL writing rhetorical conventions. On the grounds of these observations, it is clear how previously discussed general features of effective writing develop in the corpus as essays progress towards more experienced writing.

6.3 Attitude in relation to perceived effectiveness

The results of the analysis evidence a tendency in high-graded essays to display significantly greater proportions of attitude than texts graded as low and middle ( Table 12 ). The fact that the advanced sub-corpus displays an irregular distribution – with middle-graded essays presenting the most attitude  – could be explained by the acquisition of more regularly applied conventions by advanced writers resulting in closer proportions between these groups of texts. Further explorations of advanced essays in this and similar contexts are needed to confirm this. Still, even though the p value of 0.11234221 indicates results might be different for this sub-corpus if this research were replicated, in the actuality of these results low-graded essays display the least instances of attitudinal evaluation.

It is remarkable to notice the significant predominance of appreciation over judgement and affect stands when effectiveness is considered. This indicates the development of attitude -related interpersonal conventions along basic, intermediate, and advanced instructional levels has been shaped by pedagogical dynamics that favor the observed tendencies via both instruction and academic evaluation: what teachers disseminate and evaluate as effective motivates what learners use to shape their discourse in this type of writing as they move towards more specialized levels of literary analysis. It is worth remembering that, according to what they reported, teachers who assessed the essays did not consider attitudinal expressions in their evaluation criteria. Then, in line with Lee’s analysis (2008), we can conclude that teachers might have perceived the management of evaluative language, which directly relates to writers’ stance and voice, as part of the appropriate analysis of literary components and features they sought; attitude is central to effectiveness in the corpus of this work.

Similar findings in previous research indicate the latter interpretation may also apply to other contexts; Jalilifar and Hemmati (2013) found successful EFL texts by Iranian writers displayed significantly more frequent instances of appreciation than judgement and affect , just as Myskow and Ono (2018) did in their essays by Japanese students. Moreover, similarly to this research, patterns of attitudinal inscription and invocation in the corpora analyzed by those authors can be significantly related to degrees of (in)effectiveness. In the corpus of this work, inscription of affect and appreciation contrasts with invocation of judgement in low-, middle-, and high-graded essays – save for minor variations in affect , the least representative category, in the basic and intermediate sub-corpora. Although these contrasts may require further exploration to confirm statistical significance, their plain tendencies and their consistency with the significant dynamics by instructional level confirm the role of attitudinal meanings in the shaping of undergraduate writers’ positioning and, most importantly, a positive relationship between realizations of attitude and the effectiveness of undergraduate EFL academic writing instantiated by the corpus.

Such relationship is further evidenced by the development of attitudinal triggers selection patterns. As it was previously described, in both intermediate and advanced essays, characters, textual features and external literary elements are the most representative triggers in low-, middle-, and high-graded essays. In the basic sub-corpus, however, the very authors of the essays figure as either the second (low- and middle-graded texts) or first (high-graded-texts) choices. The contrast this represents can be explained, once more, on the basis of instruction and academic evaluation; although attitudinal stance focused on the very authors of the essays conflicts with the general features of the corpus, the fact that the other two main trigger types in basic essays remain within what can be seen as disciplinarily central in the general scenario may have allowed for certain tolerance on the part of teachers. Although having access to feedback received by the writers of the basic essays would be the only way to confirm this, it should be enough to notice that trigger selection in relation to text effectiveness takes a clear orientation in the rest of the corpus, thus corroborating the role of attitudinal evaluations in undergraduate academic writing instantiated by the corpus.

In the light of these results, a positive relationship between the expression of attitudinal meanings and academic texts (in)effectiveness has been confirmed. What is more, the writing conventions followed by the authors of the corpus of this work suggest that attitudinal features privileged by university teachers in basic levels of instruction determine the conventions adopted in effective texts at more advanced levels, even when attitudinal dynamics do not seem to have been explicitly prioritized. Apparently, attitudinal dynamics in the context of the corpus have developed from complex influences which go beyond mere linguistic and disciplinary instruction. These observations relate to Chitez and Kruse’s (2012) considerations about writing cultures: further extra disciplinary features related to writing cultures shape what could be considered as effective or successful in writing academically. These include learners’ class experience before and during university education, contact with diverse curricular arrangements, university-specific organizational structures, national writing cultures, and differences among languages. As evidenced by the findings of this work, these factors represent important aspects to consider in the design of academic writing programs and discipline-specific writing courses as these may have to take into consideration the features of their participants’ target audiences, including potential expectations determined by their own linguistic, cultural, and even institutional backgrounds.

All these considerations have a particular centrality in programs focused on training future professionals in English Language and Literature for, as it has been shown, even when interpersonal dynamics involving attitude conform to similar general tendencies in the whole corpus of this study, they vary significantly at more delicate degrees of analysis such as instructional levels and realizational variables. Additionally, exploring such delicacy in variation, which can only be done by analyzing the academic discourse of speakers from different instructional levels within the same undergraduate community, may also serve as a valuable source of information for pedagogical actions aiming to guide undergraduate writers in the production of effective texts in other disciplines.

7 Conclusions

As the findings of this work have shown, the construction of interpersonal relationships through the use of linguistic resources of attitude plays an important role in the perceived effectiveness of undergraduate EFL academic writing at different levels of experience and disciplinary instruction, which indicates the importance of broadening assessment criteria of academic writing beyond the constraints of lexicogrammatical accuracy and text structure, as well as pertinent observations about attitudinal positioning in instructional processes, in favor of deeper interpersonal metalinguistic awareness in both students and writing instructors. In order to face these instructional challenges, it is important to emphasize the results also show that the influence of attitudinal language in the (in)effectiveness of academic texts is furtherly determined by a complex series of contextual factors including discursive authority, writing experience, discipline-specific focus objects, and the multi-faceted writing-related cultural background of writers.

These conclusions are supported by six main findings that have been reported in this paper: 1) In adherence to general academic writing, the corpus displays a significantly low occurrence of attitude resources, which results from a strategic deployment of interpersonal resources by writers as to what is evaluated in their texts and in what ways; 2) General attitudinal features in the corpus privilege appreciation as the most frequent type of attitude and position affect as the least deployed evaluative resource, which reflects the writers’ prioritizing of evaluations of discipline-related things to project an objective-like positioning; 3) Realizations of judgement throughout the corpus are mainly invoked, signaling the adoption of particular evaluation strategies around human or human-like triggers; 4) Basic essays feature greater use of attitudinal resources than intermediate and advanced essays, suggesting a progressive development of objective-like writing dynamics; 5) Overall, high-graded essays display more frequent expressions of attitude than middle- and low-graded essays, suggesting that the expression of attitude is not simply reduced in learners’ discourse as they move forward in their academic training, but according to conventions that favor certain types of strategic attitudinal positioning in texts; 6) In general, the realizational variables of attitude category, explicitness and trigger selection show significantly matching tendencies in high-graded essays in the basic, intermediate and advanced sub-corpora, confirming the central role of the strategic use of affect , judgement and appreciation resources in terms of their realizational variables in the production of effective texts, even when writing conventions develop towards reduced proportions of attitude . Those findings which were not found to be statistically significant might need further exploration, perhaps on the basis of a larger corpus, in order to refine their implications from a statistical perspective. Still, it is worth remembering statistical interpretations, either descriptive or inferential, always leave room for open possibilities.

Regarding the latter point, interpretations of the reported results need to take into consideration that a relevant limitation of this study is the size of its corpus. Although the results of the analysis demonstrate consistent and mostly statistically significant features, their full implications apply to the context of the academic community where the essays were collected. In order to obtain more generalizable findings with more predictive potential in relation to the Mexican context, future work might need to replicate the study on the basis of a larger and more varied corpus.

While the scope of the results of this work is limited to the boundaries of the context of this research, the implications of its findings represent meaningful contributions that complement previous research on the workings of appraisal resources of attitude in EFL academic writing. Most importantly, this work contributes to further understanding of the workings of evaluative language in academic instruction in the context of Mexico, where pedagogical developments from the systemic functional perspective of appraisal theory are still in their early stages. It is ideal that the focus of future work seek to implement research findings in the development of concrete instructional tools which improve the scenario of effective interpersonal positioning for undergraduate authors seeking to take part in international disciplinary dialogue through academic English.

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Attitudes to Language: Reading Answers & PDF

IELTS Academic Test – Passage 07: Attitudes to Language reading with answers explanation, location and pdf summary. This reading paragraph has been taken from our huge collection of Academic & General Training (GT) Reading practice test PDF’s.

Attitudes to Language

It is not easy to be systematic and objective about language study. Popular linguistic debate regularly deteriorates into invective and polemic. Language belongs to everyone, so most people feel they have a right to hold an opinion about it And when opinions differ, emotions can run high. Arguments can start as easily over minor points of usage as over major policies of linguistic education.

Language, more oven is a very public behavior so it is easy for different usages to be noted and criticized  No part of society or social behavior is exempt: linguistic factors influence how we judge personality, intelligence, social status, educational standards, job aptitude, and many other areas of identity and social survival. As a result, it is easy to hurt, and to be hurt, when language use is unfeelingly attacked.

ln its most general sense. prescriptivism is the view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value than others, and that this ought to be imposed on the whole of the speech community. The view is propounded especially in relation to grammar and vocabulary, and frequently with reference to pronunciation. The variety which ls favoured, in this account, ls usually a version of the ‘standard’ written language, especially as encountered in literature, or in the formal spoken language which most closely reflects this style. Adherents to this variety are said to speak or write ‘correctly’; deviations from lt are said to be ‘incorrect`.

All the main languages have been studied prescriptlvely, especially in the 18th-century approach to the writing of grammars and dictionaries. The aims of these early grammarians were threefold: [a) they wanted to codify the principles of their languages, to show that there was a system beneath the apparent chaos of usage. (b] they wanted a means of settling disputes over usage, and (c] they wanted to point out what they felt to be common errors, in order to ‘improve’ the language. The authoritarian nature of the approach is best characterized by its reliance on ‘rules’ of grammar Some usages are prescribed; to be learnt and followed accurately; others are prescribed to be avoided. ln this early period, there were no half-measures: usage was either right or wrong. and it was the task of the grammarian not simply to record alliterative  but to pronounce judgement upon them.

These attitudes are still with us, and they motivate a widespread concern that linguistic standards should be maintained. Nevertheless, there is an alternative point of view that is concerned less with standards than with the facts of linguistic usage. This approach ls summarized in the statement that it is the task of the grammarian to describe not prescribe to record the facts of linguistic diversity, and not to attempt the impossible tasks evaluating language variation or halting language change. In the second half of the 18th century, we already find advocates of this view, such as Joseph Priestley, whose Rudiments of English Grammar (1761) insists that ‘the custom of speaking is the original and only just standard of any language. `Linguistic issues, it is argued, cannot be solved by logic and legislation. And this view has become the tenet of the modem linguistic approach to grammatical analysis.

In our own time, the opposition between ‘descriptivists’ and ‘prescriptivists’ has often become extreme. with both sides painting unreal pictures of the other. Descriptive grammarians have been presented as people who do not care about standards, because of the way they see all forms of usage as equally valid. Prescriptive grammarians have been presented as blind adherents to a historical tradition. The opposition has even been presented in quasi-political terms – of radical liberalism vs elitist conservatism.

Questions 1-8

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 7? In boxes  1-8  of your answer sheet , write:

YES  if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer NO  if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer NOT GIVEN  if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1. There are understandable reasons why arguments occur about language. 2. People feel more strongly about language education than about small differences in language usage. 3. Our assessment of a person’s intelligence is affected by the way he or she uses language. 4. Prescriptive grammar books cost a lot of money to buy in the 18th century. 5. Prescriptivism still exists today. 6. According to the descriptivist, it is pointless to try to stop language change. 7. Descriptivism only appeared after the 18th century. 8. Both descriptivists and prescriptivists have been misrepresented.

________________

1) IELTS 9 READING PASSAGE – THE LIFE & WORK OF MARIE CURIE ↗

2) IELTS 9 READING PASSAGE – YOUNG CHILDREN SENSE OF IDENTITY ↗

3) IELTS 9 READING PASSAGE – THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSEUMS ↗

Questions 9-12

Complete the summary using the list of words,  A-l , below Write the correct letter  A-l , in boxes  9-12  on your answer sheet.

A  descriptivists B  language experts C  popular speech D  formal language E  evaluation F  rules G  modern linguists H  prescriptivists I  change

The language debate

According  to  9  ………….., there is only one correct form of language. Linguists who take this approach to language place great importance on grammatical  10  ……………………. Conversely, the view of  11  ………….., such as Joseph Priestley, is that grammar should be based on  12  …………………. .

Questions 13

Choose the correct letter  A, B, C  or  D . Write the correct letter in box 13 on your answer sheet.

13. What is the writer’s purpose in Reading Passage?

A  to argue in favour of a particular approach to writing dictionaries and grammar books B  to present a historical account of differing views of language C  to describe the differences between spoken and written language D  to show how a certain view of language has been discredited

Check out Attitudes to Language reading answers below with explanations and locations given in the text.

1. YES 2. NO 3. YES 4. NOT GIVEN 5. YES 6. YES 7. NO 8. YES 9. H 10. F 11. A 12. C 13. B

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Impact of AI on Retirement Professionals and Retirees - Essay Collection

August 2024

The Society of Actuaries Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program Steering Committee issued a call for essays to explore the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLM) on retirement professionals and retirees. The objective was to gather a variety of perspectives and experiences with AI and LLM in different retirement settings—both now and in the future. It is the goal of this collection to spur thoughts for future research and set the stage for upcoming efforts.

The seven essays that form this collection are included below and are also compiled here: Impact of AI on Retirement Professionals and Retirees - Essay Collection

Prize winners

Three essays were chosen for creativity, originality and the extent to which an idea might help promote further thought in this area, are noted here:

The Retirement Reckoning – When Family Ties Clash with Financial Realities Stefano Orfanos, FSA, CERA

Can Artificial Intelligence Help Me with Retirement Planning: An Individual Perspective Anna M. Rappaport, FSA, MAAA

A Retiree’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence risks and Mitigating Those Risks Gregory Whittaker, FSA, FASSA

Remaining essays

Artificial Intelligence and Retirement Planning John Cutler, J.D.

Artificial Intelligence as a Partner for Retirement Professionals: What Are the Issues? Anna M. Rappaport, FSA, MAAA

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Financial Decisions for Retirees Mark Dennis, DBA, CFP®

Pick a Payout Using AI John Blocher, FSA, MAAA

Acknowledgments

The SOA Research Institute Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program thanks the Project Oversight Group (POG) for their careful review and judging of the submitted essays. Any views and ideas expressed in the essays are the authors’ alone and may not reflect the POG’s views and ideas nor those of their employers, the authors’ employers, the Society of Actuaries, the Society of Actuaries Research Institute, nor Society of Actuaries members.

Gavin Benjamin, FSA, FCIA Bonnie Birns, FSA, MAAA Ruth Schau, FSA, MAAA, FCA, EA Andrea Sellars, FSA, MAAA Matthew Smith, FSA, MAAA Cavan Stackpool, FSA, CERA

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