The first thing we did was watch Alison's virtual lecture of 'choosing a topic' to aid us in our decision of what to conduct our research on as a group. What was particularly interesting was knowing what topics previous students chose.
Once we watched that, we each exchanged what topics we felt particularly interested in or passionate about and of course the opposite. For example, a few members didn't feel a literary based topic like the language of Shakespeare's plays would be suitable. Nevertheless, it became apparent that each of us had a shared excitement about language variation and socio-linguistics. Two of us spoke about the idea of conducting a project centered around speech and language impairments in young children but the ethical issues and depth of research that would come with such research, made the project seem impractical and extremely complex.
Eventually we all agreed that it would be interesting to have televised news as our topic especially because keeping up to date with the world is such a significant part of our lives which in turn makes the project seem more approachable and exciting. This topic raised a large discussion where each of us were highlighting key linguistic areas of televised news that have an impact on viewers.
So this is what we discussed:
Once we watched that, we each exchanged what topics we felt particularly interested in or passionate about and of course the opposite. For example, a few members didn't feel a literary based topic like the language of Shakespeare's plays would be suitable. Nevertheless, it became apparent that each of us had a shared excitement about language variation and socio-linguistics. Two of us spoke about the idea of conducting a project centered around speech and language impairments in young children but the ethical issues and depth of research that would come with such research, made the project seem impractical and extremely complex.
Eventually we all agreed that it would be interesting to have televised news as our topic especially because keeping up to date with the world is such a significant part of our lives which in turn makes the project seem more approachable and exciting. This topic raised a large discussion where each of us were highlighting key linguistic areas of televised news that have an impact on viewers.
So this is what we discussed:
- The variation in accents and dialects of broadcasters
- Formal vs informal language
- The comparison between different news channels
- How the time of day the news is shown can affect the language used.
- A comparison of language used in different types of news stories.
- The difference in power relationships between co-broadcasters shown through their language.
- The influence of the broadcaster's language upon viewers and also the differences in language use in contrasting news channels such as the BBC and ITV vs. MTV and BBC Three with their specific viewers.
For example:
- We could create and distribute questionnaires to gather opinions on the language use of certain news channels and whether a broadcaster's accent or dialect has any impact on the way stories are illustrated to viewers
- A Transcription of the same/similar news stories aired by contrasting news channels in order to understand their different uses of language and thus the effect on how these stories are delivered and received
- A Corpus Investigation - may allow us to recognise and therefore analyse certain lexical choices of news broadcasters.
*each of these methods would be advantageous in the way that they will interlink and generate strong findings within our research
To conclude:
We left the meeting feeling positive about our chosen research topic and able to go away and have a think/plan of how to specify our research and what literature we can use.
*Present at this meeting was: Alice, Lucy, Sufia and Daniel
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