Minutes- 26th November

Venue and time: Computer Cluster Room 2 in the Arts building, from 3-4pm                                                                                 

All group members were present for this meeting.

 

In today’s meeting we edited our survey according to the feedback we received from Alison. We added an introduction so that our participants will know who we are, what we are researching and also so that they can be assured that their personal details will not be used. We also added questions asking for age, gender and ethnicity, as this will allow us to ensure we have gathered a wide range of data and whether participants’ age, gender or ethnicity effects their reaction and interpretation of the two war declarations. We are planning to publish our questionnaire by the next meeting.

 

We also discussed the power point presentation which we are going to create. Using the Wiki we have summarised the key elements which we need to include in our presentation which are:

·         Research topic

·         Research questions

·         Methods of collecting and analysing data

·         Findings and results

·         Our five individual slides based on the element each of us has chosen to research to do with the war declarations, these include elements such as the use of pronouns, structure and literary devices within the texts.

·         Brief evaluation- what we would do differently if we did this again and  the problems we faced and what we think we did well

·         Credits- what each member of the group contributed

 

We will print a copy of both speeches and allow people to read them before viewing our presentation, so that they can see the features we have analysed within the texts themselves.

 

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday the time and venue are yet to be decided.  

Minutes - 19th November

For this meeting we met in the Education library, and those present were Emily, Alice, Lucy, Sufia and Daniel.

We all came to this meeting having closely analysed both speeches in relation to the features we were assigned to study. This enabled us to start creating our survey questions using the website Survey Monkey, and to define what we are hoping to find out by distributing them and collecting data.

So far we've devised 5 questions and over the course of the next few days before our next meeting, we intend to think of a few more that we could possibly add. We decided on including no more than 10 questions due to the fact that we've included speech extracts in the questions which would make the survey quite time consuming to complete.

Agenda for the next meeting

We've agreed on meeting twice this week in order to really progress with our project. We've decided to meet on Thursday at 3 (location yet to be decided) and our intentions for this meeting are:

-to discuss ideas for any additional questions
-to decide on how we will distribute our survey
-to start constructing our presentation

MILESTONE 2

What we have done and what we need to do

Looking back:
We had a slow start with our project where our initial research proposal was holding us back from progressing forward. Nevertheless, with the help and feedback from Alison, which we are grateful for, we now have a new research proposal that we are all confident has a lot more potential. It has been hard trying to pick ourselves up as a group and start fresh but we have proven to work as a team and accomplish such hurdles which will hopefully benefit the outcome of our project. We have selected our sources which are two war declaration speeches by Bush and Chamberlain. We are currently analysing these two speeches in accordance to our delegated roles whilst reading relevant literature and critically analysing each source we refer to. We are each designing a survey that we will bring to our meeting next week so we can design and publish one survey that has been carefully and thoroughly thought out.

Looking forward...
Next week we are meeting with Alison on Monday to discuss our progress and receive feedback on our idea for a corpus investigation. On Tuesday we are meeting for two hours in which time we aim to finalise our survey and publish it so we can start to collect and analyse data relative to our own analysis of the two speeches. We are also meeting for one hour on Thursday next week to start putting our presentation together so we don't have to do it all in one go right before the deadline. So the main thing we need to do is collect data and start formulating a presentation.

Minutes - 14th November

We met at 3-4pm in the Mason Lounge in the Arts Building. Those present were Alice, Sufia, Emily, and me (Daniel).

We came to the meeting having further researched our topic over reading week, thus extending our knowledge of the speeches, and what available relevant literature there is surrounding our research question.

During the meeting we refined our literature choices, and identified the exact books/journals we would use. We agreed to take these out of the library or find them online - whichever is most appropriate.

We delegated which exact topics each individual would be covering, and they read as follows:

• Alice - field, tenor, mode, personal pronouns
• Dan - structure, format of the speeches
• Emily - adjectival phrases, semantic fields
• Lucy -language used to highlight the speakers' roles, including quality of faction information vs honesty
• Sufia - literary features of the speeches

We then discussed which methods we would use to collect data, including questionnaires regarding language over time and the persuasiveness/effectiveness of the speeches.

Agenda for next meeting (2 hours in week 8)

• Everyone draw up a survey, including 5-10 questions (open and closed).
• Think about a corpus investigation, perhaps contrasting the words 'defend' and 'attack' against one another.
• Bring references from relevant reading to the meeting.
• Finally, sign up for progress review meeting with Alison (done).

Daniel

Minutes- 31st October

For this meeting, we met from 1-2 pm in room E of the Library and those present were Alice, Lucy and Sufia.

We came to the meeting prepared from having looked closely at our two speeches under analysis: Chamberlain's declaration of WW2 and Bush's of the war in Iraq. There was a shared positive attitude about the two speeches where we each felt they would prove interesting to focus on and thus be effective in our research. 

Each of us had many insightful thoughts about the language features of both speeches including:

• The recurrent use of 3rd person pronouns reflecting a sense of unity which we've identified as a semantic field shared between both declarations.
• Typical uses of language i.e tripling, antithesis, parallelism, hyperbole
• The input of factual information (more apparent in Chamberlain's declaration which highlights an interesting change across time)
• 'fantastical' speech which cleverly disguises the horrors of war (very tactical way of gaining support, especially with Bush)
• The use of topic sentences which introduce each paragraph in a similar way between both speeches
• Despite the similar role/responsibility Chamberlain and Bush shared, the way they portray it to the audience is surprisingly different. In short, Bush is glorifying the war and portrays himself as someone in complete control of everyone and everything whereas Chamberlain is displaying a more honest and sorrowful approach.
• Both employ references to faith/religion
• in terms of format, there is a major contrast between the introductions of each speech. Chamberlain gets straight to the point (actually declares they are at war) Bush on the other hand, doesn't actually declare.
• Interesting use of 'fellow' to refer to listeners- possible focus for a corpus investigation into the way each speaker addresses listeners
• evidence of adjectival phrases
• semantic fields of 'unity' 'success/victory' and 'peace'

*Both figures have the ultimate aim in these speeches, to inform the public. What is being highlighted when analysing them is that language features are being inputted in contrastive ways which thus ignites the thought process that perhaps language has changed over time in this context and this will be referred to throughout our research.

Some other points raised in the meeting were:

• Which speech is more effective in terms of measuring their aims?
• It is worth noting the contexts in which these declarations were delivered. For example, the patriotism of the Americans combined with the destruction of the Twin Towers will have had a direct impact on Bush's declaration.
• Questionnaire idea- take lines from each speech but don't state which they are from and ask the participants to rate their effectiveness/impact

We agreed it was time to delegate roles to each member of the group. It was quite difficult doing so because not all of us were there so these are preliminary:

Sufia- to look at the literary features of the speeches

Alice- the relationship between the speaker and audience (tenor)

Lucy- language used to highlight the speakers' roles including the quantity of factual information vs honesty.

Agenda for next meeting (week 7)

• Maintain contact with group through email/facebook group
• To brainstorm what exact research methods we are going to use and how we will use them in relation to our investigation so that we can create a distribute a questionnaire and begin a corpus investigation
• Read relevant literature in order to aid analysis whilst being critical