Discourse Analysis: Some Starting Ideas for Lessons A2 English Language: Why do you speak the way you

do? Three Lesson Plans for Topic A Lesson 1 What different sorts of talking communities do you belong to? What are the factors that change your language? Is language consistent in all of them, or do different rules apply in different contexts? Teacher 50 Discourse Community Examples of Different uses Constraints/ Rules of language Informal Need to maintain order and discipline Affection Family agreed codes and in jokes More formal Structured/ pre-meditated in terms of lesson content Swear words Football, Saturday afternoon Limited topics Very informal Lower threshold for bad language Male dominated

Home and family

School

Lesson 2 Exploring the factors that influence your language: think of a variety of categories and give examples. Factor Education Gender Use of Language, with examples

How does your language reflect these different sorts of categories? Julian Pattison, March 2012

Discourse Analysis: Some Starting Ideas for Lessons

Lesson 3 Constructing yourself How do you construct your identity by what you or others do and say. You could look at professional groups, at groups of your friends who are interested in the same things, or choose a teenage sub-group and analyse both what makes them belong with each other and what they do to exclude others. Group Ways of belonging Clothing Vocabulary choice Ways of doing things

Julian Pattison, March 2012