1. Mode

2. Agenda Revisit homework: ‘My language biography’
Recap: text receiver/text producer and genre
Mode

3. Key Terms –note these down as we go…
Mode
Oppositional view
Continuum
Blended-mode
Prototype model

4. Starter: Language Biography
Share your language biography with a partner.
What metalanguage key terms have they used to describe their use of language?

5. Recap: text producers and text receivers, and genre
Look at the examples of adverts you collected for homework. Can you identify their intertextual links within the genre of advertising? Are they ‘borrowing’ from other genres?
= a way of grouping texts based on expected shared conventions and characteristics

6. Mode What do you understand by the word mode already?
= The physical channel of communication: either speech or writing

7. How can we identify mode?
Fill in the gaps.
How can we identify mode?
Writing is:
Speaking is:
Objective
Interpersonal
A monologue
Ephemeral
Planned
Loosely structured
Grammatically simple
Concerned with the present
Formal
Decontextualised

8. How can we identify mode?
Check your answers
How can we identify mode?
Writing is:
Speaking is:
Objective
Interpersonal
A monologue
A dialogue
Durable
Ephemeral
Planned
Spontaneous
Highly structured
Loosely structured
Grammatically complex
Grammatically simple
Concerned with the past and future
Concerned with the present
Formal
Informal
Decontextualised
Contextualised

9. Have we missed any? Watch the video and add other characteristics:
Writing is:
Speaking is:
This way of thinking about difference is called oppositional view.
= a way of defining the difference between modes by arguing that the have completely different features

10. Discuss and compare these examples
Writing is:
Speaking is:
Objective
Interpersonal
A monologue
A dialogue
Durable
Ephemeral
Planned
Spontaneous
Highly structured
Loosely structured
Grammatically complex
Grammatically simple
Concerned with the past and future
Concerned with the present
Formal
Informal
Decontextualised
Contextualised

11. = a text which contains conventional elements of both speech and writing
Blended-mode texts
Many texts do not fit into the neat distinctions proposed by the oppositional view. For example, a birthday card sent by one friend to another is clearly interpersonal.
What about these examples?
Graffiti
Political speech
Telephone Conversation between friends

12. = a sequence in which elements that are next to each other are not noticeably different but elements at the opposite ends are very different from each other.
Continuum
An alternative way that avoids problems with the oppositional view is to consider speech and writing as ends of a continuum.
Text X
Text Y
Text Z
Writing
Speech

13. Can you place the examples we’ve examined on the continuum?
Text X
Text Y
Text Z
Writing
Speech

14. Does this text demonstrate characteristics of both modes? Where?

15. The prototype model
= a model of looking at differences within a category or mode by thinking about typical and less typical examples.
A final way of thinking about mode and distinguishing between types is to categorise and classify based on a prototype model.
In any given category, there will be ‘good’ and ‘less good’ examples.

16. The prototype model ?
Place the three texts we have looked at in their correct position on the prototype model. ? ?

17. Homework Explore mode by collecting some texts of your own.
How spoken mode features in writing help to convey meaning
How the language choices that text producers make depend on the convention of the medium they are writing in
How the language choices text producers make depend on their own purposes for communicating