GCSE English

Features of multi-modal communication - a checklist

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:32:00 +0000

One reason for using these features is brevity - but other reasons might be to do with in-group membership/exclusion of outsiders, communication of (taboo) humour, conveying emotion to reader etc

Vowel omission
Letter substitution
Initialism - abbreviations consisting of spoken initial letters of a name or phrase - e.g. MD for Managing Director
Acronyms - when the abbreviation is pronounced as a word — like “SCUBA
Non-standard spelling
Numbers for phonemes - Gr8
Symbols for words
Phonetic spelling
Incomplete clauses - e.g. home safe, speak soon
Simple sentence
Smileys/emoticons
Youth sociolect

Example Essay Plan for Spoken Language essay

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:28:45 +0000

Explore different social attitudes to the ways digital communications are affecting language

Opening

· give a brief history of digital communication - first text sent, some facts and figures about texting traffic etc (not too much!)

· outline main methods of digital communication - text, email, chatrooms, social networking, blogging etc

· briefly outline different opinions about digital communications which you are going to explore - those who believe it is destroying the English Language (led by Humphrys) and those who believe it has positive and creative effects on language use (Crystal)

Section 1

· explore effects of digital communications on language

· outline the differences between speech and writing and explain that digital communication is multi-modal - contains features of both

· outline key features and reasons for using them - acronyms, numbers for phonemes, vowel omission etc for brevity, as well as other reasons such as difficulty of judging tone/humour etc when non co-present (emoticons etc)

Section 3

· explore digital communication in action using some data - this could be any of the conversations we have looked at, or your own data

· look at how key features are being used in your data - eg, acronyms, vowel omission etc for brevity; youth sociolect to confirm membership of a group; ellipsis/incomplete clauses;

· make sure you focus on how these features relate to context - eg youth sociolect used to assert social closeness/belonging in new friendship; use of mild taboo to suggest social closeness; emoticons to indicate tone etc – you aren’t just feature-spotting…

Section 4

· look at public attitudes - firstly, the “destruction of the English Language” argument:

· refer to article on txtspeak essay, Mail online article and John Humphrys article

· remember to bring in the opinions of any other individuals such as parents/teachers/friends if they are relevant

· summarise the opinions of these writers at the end of the para

Section 5

· look at - David Crystal, research by Coventry University, the various prizes given for creative use of technology including Orange text poetry competition

· remember to bring in the opinions of any other individuals such as parents/teachers/friends if they are relevant

· summarise these opinions at the end of your para

Conclusion

· this is where you give your opinion. You can side with Humphrys or Crystal, or fall somewhere in between, but remember to give evidence for your views

· it’s fine to include the views of other people you have spoken to during the course of studying for this unit

Exemplar texting 1

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:14:36 +0000

c. says: babe

c. says: how WAS LONGON

c. says: LONDON

b says: SO MUCH FUNNNNN. omg the a&f models blow my mmmmmmmmmmmmind theyre so fine

c. says:did you get a picture with one

b says: yes hahaha

c. says: dayummmmmmmmmm

c. says: how was cousineys play

b sent yeah tht was amazing bt wierddddd BUTT i met the cast and things which was good

c. says hhaaa HOW WAS IT WIERD

b says: like some of the stuff she had to do

b says: how was home

c. says: home was aite

c. says: bit boring

c. says: and stuff

c. says: also i send you THE LAST THING TO RINT OFF FOR PROBABALY ANOTHER MONTH?

c. says: OKAY?

c. says: OKAY

c. says: i swear on my life its just this week has ben coursework mental

b sent OKAYYYYYYY OMGS YOU OWE ME

c. says: i do i do

c. says: I WILL BRING YOU ESSAY IN TOMOROOW

b says: haha

c. says: NO JOKE I WILL

Exemplar texting 2

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:14:14 +0000

A says: (18:02:00) hey B

B says: (18:02:09) hey zak

A says: (18:02:17) how r u?

B says: (18:02:36) im good just eating some yummified crisps you?

A says: (18:02:53) yeah, gdgd, hungry now tho

A says: (18:02:56) wubu2?

B says: (18:03:44) awww toddle off and get some food then lmao oh yeah xD and nothing much just chilling and what not you?

A says: (18:04:07) watching top gear lol. i have so much of a life!!

A says: (18:04:16) ooh guess what, i found my ipod!

A says: (18:04:49) well, kate did.

B says: (18:05:23) yeah but top gear rocks!!! and where was it?

A says: (18:05:46) …in the middle of my duvet, like inside the cover lol. :S idiot me.

B says: (18:06:00) lmao! how the hell did you manage to get it there? :S

B says: (18:06:07) and not notice it!

A says: (18:06:24) god knows lol. xD happy tho, this wkend rawks

A says: (18:06:57) hows charlie?

B says: (18:07:50) awww bless as strange as normal… he’s mutilated a teddy bear all over the living room and did something really funny to jim i shall explain later

A says: (18:08:03) lmaoooo

A says: (18:08:21) btw, u wer right, that group rocks. CHARLIE UNICORN ftw!!

B says: (18:08:35) Inoo :D you watched the second?

A says: (18:08:56) not yet lol. keep meanin to, but yah

B says: (18:09:13) watch it is so so so funny!

A says: (18:09:31) lmao i want a charlie the unicorn shirt.

B says: (18:10:04) buy one then you retard

A says: (18:10:25) just cuz i is a retard. ok, that’s it I’M GETTING ONE!!!

B says: (18:10:37) YAY!!!!

A says: (18:11:02) lol, so how is jimmy boy?

B says: (18:11:29) he’s amazing :D:D:D:D:D:D:D

A says: (18:11:43) ayaya xD im so happy for ya!

B says: (18:12:23) yay thanks we were talkin bout stuff the other night and lewis had said something bout it being long term and i told jim and he was like yeah a year at least i hope i was like

A says: (18:12:24) “noooo, fugu!”

B says: (18:12:30) wha?

A says: (18:12:52) fugu fish. im watching unicorn 2

B says: (18:13:15) lmao! innit amazing xD

A says: (18:13:19) lol yesh.

A says: (18:13:33) that’s rlly good tho, goin back abit

A says: (18:13:35) *a bit

B says: (18.13:55) haha thanks

A says: (18:14:59) Anyway i rlly shud go 4 tea. Staaaaaaaarvin!!

A says: (18:15:04) byebye xxxxxxxxxxxx ly

A says: (18:15:30) chooo shoooo!!

A says: (18:15:48) put a banana into your ear!

B says: (18:15:50) byee xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Exemplar texting 3

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:13:53 +0000

10.30pm Guy: bucks!

10:31pm Charlotte: heyyyy horlock!xxx

10:34pmGuy: you alrright not seen you in a while!

10:35pmCharlotte: i know as usuual! yeah i’m okay thanks how are youu?

10:35pmGuy: dgdd you??

10:37pmCharlotte: yehhhhh im okay thanks

10:40pmGuy: kayy what you been up too

10:43pmGuy: out this weekendo?

10:44pmCharlotte: one sec

10:44pmGuy: kk

10:51pmCharlotte: yeah i’m out friday we’re going for a meal for annas birthday then going to town, then working sat night. are youu doing anything good what do you do now guy

you’re like mr invisible

10:52pmGuy: i know ive barely been out got id now thoo

10:53pmCharlotte: ahh sick whose do you have?

10:57pmGuy: my broos

10:57pmCharlotte: about timeee. well annoying wish i had a permanant one i have to ask this girl for hers like every week i feel really guilty!

10:58pmGuy: so you should she cant go out can she ! well harsh !!

10:58pmCharlotte: no shes working! but i still feel bad

10:58pmGuy: well out of order: what if she want to go out after

10:58pmCharlotte: haha she doesn’t care but I still feel harsh lol

11:01pmGuy: im only messing

11:02pmCharlotte: so are you out this weekenddd

11:02pmGuy: yeah should be

11:03pmCharlotte: doing what so i know not to goo

11:03pmGuy: whatever you dnt actually have plans just waiting to see what i do !

11:04pmCharlotte: haha yeahh that’s exactly what im doing

11:05pmGuy: haha ermm dnooo yet town maybe !

11:05pmCharlott: ahh go on friday

11:07pmGuy: yeee probs who out of your lot is going

11:07pmCharlotte: i think like most of us, some cba though

11:08pmGuy: fairr enough

11:08pmCharlotte: you lot come with us lot because we never do anything together like both groups anymore!

11:09pmGuy: i know your fault !\

11:09pmCharlotte: i beg to differ mr stay at home for 2months!

11:10pmGuy: point taken

11:11pmCharlotte: okay text me nearer the weekend then horls im going to bed ive been awake too long

11:12pmGuy: okay okay nutter !!!xxxx

'The GR8 Deb8' - David Crystal article

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:13:28 +0000

THE GR8 DB8

Despite doom-laden prophecies, texting has not been the disaster for language many feared, argues linguistics professor David Crystal. On the contrary, it improves children’s writing and spelling.

Last year, in a newspaper article headed “I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language”, John Humphrys argued that texters are “vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago. They are destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped.”

As a new variety of language, texting has been condemned as “textese”, “slanguage”, a “digital virus”. Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into people’s minds - people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language. Scares accompanied the introduction of the telegraph, telephone, and broadcasting. But has there ever been a linguistic phenomenon that has aroused such curiosity, suspicion, fear, confusion, antagonism, fascination, excitement and enthusiasm all at once as texting? And in such a short space of time. Less than a decade ago, hardly anyone had heard of it.

People think that the written language seen on mobile phone screens is new and alien, but all the popular beliefs about texting are wrong. There is increasing evidence that it helps rather than hinders literacy. Although many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood. There is no point in paying to send a message if it breaks so many rules that it ceases to be intelligible. Research has made it clear that the early media hysteria about the novelty (and thus the dangers) of text messaging was misplaced. In one American study, less than 20% of the text messages looked at showed abbreviated forms of any kind - about three per message. And in a Norwegian study, the proportion was even lower, with just 6% using abbreviations. In my own text collection, the figure is about 10%.

People seem to have swallowed whole the stories that youngsters use nothing else but abbreviations when they text, such as the reports in 2003 that a teenager had written an essay so full of textspeak that her teacher was unable to understand it. An extract was posted online, and quoted incessantly, but as no one was ever able to track down the entire essay, it was probably a hoax.

There are several distinctive features of the way texts are written that combine to give the impression of novelty, but none of them is, in fact, linguistically novel. The most noticeable feature is the use of single letters, numerals, and symbols to represent words or parts of words, as with b “be” and 2 “to”. They are called rebuses, and they go back centuries. Adults who condemn a “c u” in a young person’s texting have forgotten that they once did the same thing themselves (though not on a mobile phone). In countless Christmas annuals, they solved puzzles like this one: YY U R YY U B I C U R YY 4 ME (“Too wise you are …”)

Similarly, the use of initial letters for whole words (n for “no”, gf for “girlfriend”, cmb “call me back”) is not at all new. People have been initialising common phrases for ages. IOU is known from 1618. There is no difference, apart from the medium of communication, between a modern kid’s “lol” (“laughing out loud”) and an earlier generation’s “Swalk” (“sealed with a loving kiss”).

In texts we find abbreviated forms such as msg (“message”) and xlnt (“excellent”). Almst any wrd cn be abbrvted in ths wy - though there is no consistency between texters. But this isn’t new either. Eric Partridge published his Dictionary of Abbreviations in 1942. It contained dozens of SMS-looking examples, such as agn “again”, mth “month”, and gd “good” - 50 years before texting was born. English has had abbreviated words ever since it began to be written down. Words such as exam, vet, fridge, cox and bus are so familiar that they have effectively become new words. When some of these abbreviated forms first came into use, they also attracted criticism.

Texters use deviant spellings - and they know they are deviant. But they are by no means the first to use such nonstandard forms as cos “because”, wot “what”, or gissa “give us a”. Several of these are so much part of English literary tradition that they have been given entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. “Cos” is there from 1828 and “wot” from 1829.

But the need to save time and energy is by no means the whole story of texting. There are an extraordinary number of ways in which people play with language - creating riddles, solving crosswords, playing Scrabble, inventing new words. Professional writers do the same - providing catchy copy for advertising slogans, thinking up puns in newspaper headlines, and writing poems, novels and plays. Children quickly learn that one of the most enjoyable things you can do with language is to play with its sounds, words, grammar - and spelling.

The drive to be playful is there when we text, and it is hugely powerful. Texting can be truly creative. To celebrate World Poetry day in 2007, T-Mobile tried to find the UK’s first “Txt laureate” in a competition for the best romantic poem in SMS. The length constraint in text-poetry fosters economy of expression in much the same way as other tightly constrained forms of poetry do, such as the haiku. Put such a discipline into the hands of a master, and the result can be poetic magic. Of course, SMS poetry has some way to go before it can match the haiku tradition; but then, haikus have had a head-start of several hundred years.

An extraordinary number of doom-laden prophecies have been made about the supposed linguistic evils unleashed by texting. But five years of research has at last begun to dispel the myths. The most important finding is that texting does not erode children’s ability to read and write. On the contrary, literacy improves. The latest studies (from a team at Coventry University) have found strong positive links between the use of text language and the skills underlying success in standard English in pre-teenage children. The more abbreviations in their messages, the higher they scored on tests of reading and vocabulary. The children who were better at spelling and writing used the most textisms. And the younger they received their first phone, the higher their scores. Children could not be good at texting if they had not already developed considerable literacy awareness.

Some people dislike texting. But it is merely the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative and to adapt language. There is no disaster pending. We will not see a new generation of adults growing up unable to write proper English. The language as a whole will not decline. In texting what we are seeing, in a small way, is language in evolution.

Guardian article - 'Is txt mightier than the word?'

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:12:43 +0000

Is txt mightier than the word?

Is text messaging infecting or liberating the English language? Judge for yourself, as we rewrite classic texts in txt.

When a 13-year-old Scottish girl handed in an essay written in text message shorthand, she explained to her flabbergasted teacher that it was easier than standard English. She wrote: “My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it’s a gr8 plc.” (In translation: “My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York. It’s a great place.”) The girl’s teacher - who asked not to be named - was not impressed, saying: “I could not believe what I was seeing. The page was riddled with hieroglyphics, many of which I simply could not translate.”

Text messaging, e-mail and computer spell-checks have long been blamed for declining standards of spelling and grammar. A publisher of a new dictionary warned last Friday of a “degree of crisis” in university students’ written English.

Despite the advent of predictive text, which completes words as you write them, and even the launch of next generation mobile networks, it seems that the simple texting skills people have learnt in the last three or four years will be around for a while yet. But could the anonymous Scottish schoolgirl be right? Could txt take over more of our expression because addicts simply find it easier than normal writing? And could this mean the liberation of our use of language?

Already, text message shortcuts have been adopted by those keen to get their point across in as little space as possible, be it advertising copy, poetry or Biblical passages. Even Shakespeare - famously inconsistent in his own spelling - might succumb. Is it a great travesty to render his more famous passages in text message shorthand?

• 2b or not 2b thats ?

• a @)—-`—-`—- by any otha name wd sml swEt

• rm rm w4Ru rm?

• 1nc mr un2 T brech dr frnds 1nc mr

The Lord’s Prayer, for instance, could be thought of as somewhat stuffy even in its updated version, so the satirical Christian online magazine Ship of Fools ran a competition to rewrite it in 160 characters or less - the length of a mobile phone text message. The winner, Matthew Campbell of York University, condensed it thus: “dad@hvn, ur spshl. we want wot u want &urth2b like hvn. giv us food & 4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uvaz. don’t test us! save us! bcos we kno ur boss, ur tuf & ur cool 4 eva! ok?”

It may be just a coincidence, but when invited to pick a classic text to read together for World Book Day this Thursday, BBC News Online readers voted for the slimmest volume on the list - Heart of Darkness, a dark but short read at a mere 96 pages. Rewritten in txt, Joseph Conrad’s tome would be shorter still.

Surely such treatment would make epics such as Tolstoy’s War and Peace - at present a whopping 1,400+ pages - into a handy pocket-sized read. But linguistics expert Dr Joan Beal doubts such a tome will grace the nation’s bookshelves any time soon. For it would rather spoil the pleasure of reading, having to work out all those abbreviations.”

Daily Mail article - 'I h8 text messaging' - article by John Humphry

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:11:37 +0000

I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language

By JOHN HUMPHRYS

A good dictionary is a fine thing - I yield to no man in my love for one. If I stretch out my right arm as I type, I can pluck from my shelves the two volumes of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. They are as close to my heart as they are to my desk because they are so much more than a useful tool. Leafing through a good dictionary in search of a single word is a small voyage of discovery - infinitely more satisfying than looking something up on the internet. It’s partly the physical sensation - the feel and smell of good paper - and partly the minor triumph of finding the word you seek, but it’s rare to open a dictionary without being diverted somewhere else. The eye falls on a word you’ve never seen before or one whose meaning you have always wanted to check, and you close the dictionary just a little bit richer for the experience.

But my lifetime love affair with the OED is at risk. The sixth edition has just been published and - I feel a small shudder as I write these words - it has fallen victim to fashion. It has removed the hyphen from no fewer than 16,000 words. So in future we are required to spell pigeon-hole, for instance, as pigeonhole and leap-frog as leapfrog. In other cases we have two words instead of one. Pot-belly shall henceforth be pot belly. You may very well say: so what? Indeed, you may well have functioned perfectly well until now spelling leapfrog without a hyphen. The spell-check (sorry: spellcheck) on my computer is happy with both. But that’s not why I feel betrayed by my precious OED. It’s because of the reason for this change. It has happened because we are changing the way we communicate with each other, which means, says the OED editor Angus Stevenson, that we no longer have time to reach for the hyphen key.

Have you ever heard anything quite so daft? No time to make one tiny key-stroke (sorry: key stroke). Has it really come to this? Are our lives really so pressured, every minute occupied in so many vital tasks, every second accounted for, that we cannot afford the millisecond (no hyphen) it takes to tap that key?

Obviously not. No, there’s another reason - and it’s far more sinister and deeply troubling.

It is the relentless onward march of the texters, the SMS (Short Message Service) vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours eight hundred years ago. They are destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped.

This, I grant you, is a tall order. The texters have many more arrows in their quiver than we who defend the old way. Ridicule is one of them. “What! You don’t text? What century are you living in then, granddad? Need me to sharpen your quill pen for you?” You know the sort of thing; those of us who have survived for years without a mobile phone have to put up with it all the time. My old friend Amanda Platell, who graces these pages on Saturdays, has an answerphone message that says the caller may leave a message but she’d prefer a text. One feels so inadequate. (Or should that have been ansafone? Of course it should. There are fewer letters in that hideous word and think how much time I could have saved typing it.)

The texters also have economy on their side. It costs almost nothing to send a text message compared with a voice message. That’s perfectly true. I must also concede that some voice messages can be profoundly irritating. My own outgoing message asks callers to be very brief - ideally just name and number - but that doesn’t stop some callers burbling on for ten minutes and always, always ending by saying: “Ooh - sorry I went on so long!” But can that be any more irritating than those absurd little smiley faces with which texters litter their messages? It is 25 years since the emoticon (that’s the posh word) was born. It started with the smiley face and the gloomy face and now there are 16 pages of them in the texters’ A-Z.

It has now reached the stage where my computer will not allow me to type the colon, dash and bracket without automatically turning it into a picture of a smiling face. Aargh!

Even worse are the grotesque abbreviations. It is interesting, in a masochistic sort of way, to look at how text language has changed over the years. It began with some fairly obvious and relatively inoffensive abbreviations: ‘tks’ for ‘thanks’; ‘u’ for ‘you’; 4 for ‘for’. But as it has developed its users have sought out increasingly obscure ways of expressing themselves which, when you think about it, entirely defeats the purpose. If the recipient of the message has to spend ten minutes trying to translate it, those precious minutes are being wasted. And isn’t the whole point to ‘save’ time?

Then there’s the problem of ambiguity. With my vast knowledge of text language I had assumed LOL meant ‘lots of love’, but now I discover it means ‘laugh out loud’. Or at least it did the last time I asked. But how would you know? Instead of aiding communication it can be a barrier. I can work out BTW (by the way) but I was baffled by IMHO U R GR8. It means: “In my humble opinion you are great.” But, once again, how would you know? Let me anticipate the reaction to this modest little rant against the text revolution and the OED for being influenced by it. Its defenders will say language changes. It is constantly evolving and anyone who tries to get in the way is a fuddy-duddy who deserves to be run down.

I agree. One of the joys of the English language and one of the reasons it has been so successful in spreading across the globe is that it is infinitely adaptable. If we see an Americanism we like, we snaffle it - and so we should. But texting and ‘netspeak’ are effectively different languages.

The danger - for young people especially - is that they will come to dominate. Our written language may end up as a series of ridiculous emoticons and everchanging abbreviations.

It is too late to save the hand-written letter. E-mailing has seen to that and I must confess that I would find it difficult to live without it. That does not mean I like it. I resent the fact that I spend so much of my working day (and, even more regrettably, weekends) checking for e-mails - most of which are junk. I am also cross with myself for the way I have adapted my own style. In the early days I treated e-mails as though they were letters. I tried to construct proper, grammatical sentences and used punctuation that would have brought a smile to the lips of that guardian of our language, Lynne Truss. Now I find myself slipping into sloppy habits, abandoning capital letters and using rows of dots.

But at least I have not succumbed to ‘text-speak’ and I wish the OED had not hoisted the white flag either. I recall a piece of doggerel which sums up my fears nicely: Mary had a mobile. She texted day and night. But when it came to her exams She’d forgotten how to write.

To the editor of the OED I will simply say: For many years you’ve been GR8. Don’t spoil it now. Tks.

Daily Mail article - 'Struggling pupils use "text speak" in essays'

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:10:38 +0000

Struggling pupils use “text speak” in essays

Pupils struggling with English at school often write essays in the language of text messages, a Government report found today.

Many of those who failed to make progress between 11 and 14 had short attention spans, according to a Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) report on 285 struggling pupils in 42 schools.

There were also fears that “lightweight” reading material at home was damaging writing skills.

Pupils who fell behind in maths found the subject “boring” and wanted more games and puzzles in lessons, the study also concluded.

The study came as figures showed about 198,000 14-year-olds failed to reach expected standards in both their maths and English tests last year.

One in 10 pupils made no progress in English between the ages of 11 and 14, while seven per cent stalled in maths.

The DCSF study reported on the experiences of 285 pupils who struggled to make progress and their teachers in 42 schools in England.

Pupils who struggled in English admitted that their engagement in lessons could “depend on their mood”, the report said.

“The boys had short attention spans and tended to rush their work whereas the girls were quieter and could be overlooked in lessons,” the study said.

“They struggled with personal organisation, tending to lose work, books and folders, which teachers sometimes saw as avoidance tactics.”

In reading, there were fears that too much “lightweight” material read at home damaged pupils’ writing skills.

“They enjoyed lightweight fiction and magazines and often read at home for pleasure as it meant they could read what they liked,” the report said.

“However they didn’t always regard this as valid reading. Some teachers regarded it as ‘comfort reading’ and were concerned about its impact on pupils’ writing.

“Some teachers believed that the informal style of pupils’ personal reading diets pervaded their writing in school, making it inappropriately colloquial when the task required a more formal style.

“Both pupils and teachers were concerned that the language of texting and e-mail sometimes crept inappropriately into their writing when a more formal genre was required.”

Link to discussion of texting

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 06:31:44 +0000

Link to discussion of texting:

Here is a ten minute discussion on texting and teenagers. The key speaker is David Crystal.

Your ANNOTATION homework for Thursday the 13th of December

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 10:06:00 +0000

Please read the poem you were given in class.

Then find out answers to the questions below. For the ‘who’ questions you may find an image search in google to be helpful (as well as a text search).

Annotate your copy of the poem with your answers.

Who was the Duke of Ferrara?
Who was the Duchess of Ferrara?
Who was Fra Angelico?
Who is Neptune, and what’s he taming?
What’s a ‘countenance’?
What’s a ‘mantle’?
What’s an ‘officious’ idiot?
What’s a ‘favour’ that you can wear?
What is ‘stooping’, metaphorically?
In what sense might a warrant be a promise?
What might ‘munificence’ be?
Find out what a ‘dowry’ is.

The Old Swamper

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:37:46 +0100

The Boss - Head of the Ranch

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:37:07 +0100

Appearance-

seems generous but has authority. He seems quite cowboyish and he wears cowboy boots. He has built a good relationship with his workers which is proved by “at christmas he gave us a gallon o gin”. He was wearing jeans, and a denim jacket.

Quotes-

“fingers in the loops of his belt” “short, quick steps of a tat legged man” “sly” “you wont get away with ‘nothin”

Description-

Acute, macho, decent, king, sly, cowboy, authority,

Slim - Jerkline Skinner

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 23:33:27 +0100

Appearance: tall, long black hair, blue jeans, short denim jacket.

Quotes: “prince of the ranch” , “ear heard more than was said to him” , “moved with majesty” , “gravity in his manner”, “all talk stopped when he spoke”, “word was taken on any subject”.

Descriptive Words: authority, respected, prudent, friendly, welcoming/approachable, influential, wise, astute/perceptive, acknowledged, sociable.

The Stable Buck- Crooks

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 23:33:24 +0100

Crooks has a crooked back from where he was kicked in the back by a horse. He job is now to look after the horses and he is known as the ‘Stable Buck’ because of this. ‘Buck’ is a dismissive and racist way of referring to the fact that he is a black man. We also learn that he ‘gets a lot of grief when the boss is in a bad mood’, which tells us that at least some of the white men on the ranch treat him badly just because he is not white. Besides perhaps making us feel sorry for him, perhaps Steinbeck also seeks to portray him in a positive light as we are told that Crooks is clever enough to be able to read books, not just the magazines that the other workers favour. Considering he was not of the most educated part of the American population of the time, we might conclude that he has self- educated himself. He might be treated very differently compared to the other workers due to his colour as they were quite racist in the 1930s, but he is also clever and driven.

By Kirsty, Joe R, and Parmeet.

Curley's Wife: Some Notes

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 23:33:18 +0100

Appearance

- dressy/not very appropriate?

- dominant colour is red - danger, beauty - ‘ostrich feathers’ is a feminine touch - seems out of place in rough ranch yard

- influenced by film stars - popular culture

- “she puts her hands behind her back… thrown forward” - female stance, best assets forward, unfortunately misunderstood/misleading

- not mature enough to realise what message she is giving off to the men

Actions

- stance:girly, craves attention

- “bridles” as Lennie looks at her - suggests she startles/rejects control of male gaze - conscious of her appeal, but not of how it might be read

- “smiled archly” - in control of her expression - imagines she’s taking hold of situation?

- blocks out the sunlight - angelic backlight? - yet the bunkhouse is now darker because of her/sinister

- “apprehensive” when Curley might find out that she might not be where she should be: in the house

What people think of her

- “tart”

- opposite effect of what she wanted

- misjudged - lonely - looking for someone to talk to

- she wants attention; like a younger girl

Curley

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 23:29:46 +0100

Curley is the boss’ son and he is very aware of his power as the ‘Old Swamper’ warns George of him almost confirming his arrogance. Curley is very rude (”Let the big guy talk”) and demanding, this could be due to his status and authority. Curley gives the impression of a boxer or fighter, the old swamper calls him ‘handy’ however boxers think tasks through before taking them in to practice unlike himself. George is very aggressive ‘clenched his hands into fists’, ‘His eyes flashed over George’, ‘Pugnacious’ these quotes reinforce the idea of the quick acting, violent nature of Curley. Curley, is also very mannered: he wears ‘A glove fulla vaseline’, he is a very odd, explainable character and impetuous. Curley ‘lashed his body round’ is very showing of his body language, the word ‘lashed’ is very descriptive of a whip, suggesting he is quick.

Photo

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 22:38:00 +0100

Huphrey BogartA famous american actor who starred in...

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:08:41 +0100

Huphrey Bogart
A famous american actor who starred in Casablanca.

Huck McKenna

Jake Naparstek

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:08:39 +0100

Jake Naparstek