Text Producers and Receivers, and Genre

Agenda

Text producers and receiversAudience, context and purposeGenreRevisit homework: ‘My language biography’

Key Terms –note these down as we go…

Discourse eventText producerText receiverMulti-purpose textPrimary purposeSecondary purpose

Implied readerActual readerImplied writerActual writerDiscourse communityGenreIntertextuality

Starter

Turn to your partner and discuss the following cartoons using metalanguage.

What words do you find yourself using to discuss the cartoons?

Language about language

Text Producers and Text Receivers

Writers/speakers (purpose)

Listeners/readers(audience/impact)

ImpliedActual

ImpliedActual

Meaning making

Identifying PurposeCompare 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 islandTexts are rich and complex acts of communication = discourse eventThere is language AND language usersInterpretation depends on context/knowledgee.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

= a way of grouping texts based on expected shared conventions and characteristics

What do you understand by the word genre already?

1. What do we expect from adverts?2. What do we expect from flyers?3. What do we expect from a politicians’ inaugural speech?

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.