Text Producers and Receivers, and Genre

Agenda Text producers and receivers Audience, context and purpose Genre Revisit homework: ‘My language biography’

Key Terms –note these down as we go… Discourse event Text producer Text receiver Multi-purpose text Primary purpose Secondary purpose Implied reader Actual reader Implied writer Actual writer Discourse community Genre Intertextuality

Starter Language about language Turn to your partner and discuss the following cartoons using metalanguage. What words do you find yourself using to discuss the cartoons?

Text Producers and Text Receivers Writers/speakers (purpose) Listeners/readers (audience/impact) Meaning making Implied Actual Implied Actual

Identifying Purpose Compare the following texts

Texts as discourse events An act of communication occurring in a specific time and location involving writers/speakers and readers/listeners In other words, it takes two to tango…

Context is everything… Texts do not exist in a vacuum; they are not without context ‘No man is an island’ = no text is an island Texts are rich and complex acts of communication = discourse event There is language AND language users Interpretation depends on context/knowledge e.g. A: I hear John is giving Susie a really nice present for her birthday. B: Well, there was a yellow Beetle parked outside Susie’s place this morning.

Writing exercise: context Imagine you are writing an email to your boss about your summer holiday. Now do the same but to your friends! What differences are there?

Genre What do you understand by the word genre already? = a way of grouping texts based on expected shared conventions and characteristics 1. What do we expect from adverts? 2. What do we expect from flyers? 3. What do we expect from a politicians’ inaugural speech?

What other type of text is this advert ‘borrowing’ from? Adverts exploit genre Advertising offers a good way of exploring how text producers can exploit generic conventions in innovative ways to make their texts and the products that they are advertising memorable. What other type of text is this advert ‘borrowing’ from?

Intertextuality A process by which texts borrow from or refer to conventions of other texts for a specific purpose and effect

Language Biography Share your language biography with a partner. Your partner will feed back one interesting detail to the class.

Homework Find an example of an advert and apply what you’ve learnt to it. Identify and annotate the key terms from today’s lesson. Be ready to present next lesson.