Notes · English LanguageUK · A-Levels

Language discourses

This topic examines how texts REPRESENT language and attitudes towards it - accent, dialect, slang, change, gender and 'correctness' - and how such texts position and seek to influence their readers within wider public debates. It is the basis of AQA Paper 2 Section B, which pairs the analysis of two texts about a language issue with a piece of directed writing intervening in the debate.

4 sections~17 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 1 · Advanced 2

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Exam profile

AO1 · Apply methods and terminology to texts about languageAO2 · Demonstrate critical understanding of the concepts and ideologies at work in language debatesAO3 · Analyse how texts use language to represent language and position their readersAO4 · Explore connections between the paired texts

Operators:analysecompareevaluateexplore howwrite

basic level

AS-Level expects recognition of attitudes to language in a text and the ability to analyse how they are expressed.

higher level

The full A-Level requires critical analysis of how texts construct language ideologies and position readers, plus effective directed writing.

Depth

Text

Contents · 4 sections

Language discourses

What is a language discourse?#

FoundationAQA 7702/2 Section B language discoursesDfE GCE English Language subject content

Recurring language discourses

Fig. 1Recurring frameworks for talking about language; each encodes values about tradition, authority and identity beneath its claims about language.

A 'discourse', in the sense used here, is a recurring way of talking about a topic that carries a set of assumptions and values - not just any text, but a patterned framework of ideas that shapes how something is understood. A language discourse, therefore, is a recurring way of talking ABOUT language: the familiar frameworks through which accent, dialect, slang, grammar, change and 'correctness' are discussed in public. Recognising that these are DISCOURSES - constructed, value-laden ways of representing language - rather than neutral descriptions is the founding insight of the topic, and it turns the analytical tools of the whole course back onto texts about language itself.

Certain language discourses recur so often that they are worth naming. The 'decline' or 'crumbling standards' discourse frames language as deteriorating and in need of protection. The 'correctness' discourse assumes a single right way to use language and treats deviations as errors. The 'purism' discourse resists foreign or new influences (Americanisms, loanwords, slang) as contamination. Against these, a 'diversity-as-richness' or descriptivist discourse celebrates variation and change as vitality. These frameworks are ideological in the sense that they encode beliefs and values - about tradition, authority, class, nation and youth - beneath their claims about language.

The key concept is that texts about language are not innocent reports but interventions that construct a version of language and position the reader to share a view of it. Deborah Cameron's notion of 'verbal hygiene' captures the deep human urge to clean up, order and improve language, and shows how such efforts are always about more than language - they express anxieties about social order, morality and identity. Analysing a language discourse means asking what view of language the text constructs, through what means, and what social values that view carries.

This topic is powerful because it is synoptic: it requires knowledge from across the course (diversity, change, prescriptivism/descriptivism, power, representation) and turns it into the object of analysis. When a columnist attacks 'sloppy' grammar, the student can bring to bear the knowledge that non-standard forms are systematic (diversity), that change is natural (change), that the complaint encodes social prejudice (attitudes), and that the text uses specific linguistic strategies to position the reader (representation and power). The discourse topic is thus where the whole subject's understanding of language is applied critically to public argument about language.

Worked example

Identifying a discourse and its values

A letter to a newspaper argues that 'young people's constant use of "like" is ruining proper English'. Identify the discourse and its underlying values.

Name the discourse
The letter draws on the 'decline' and 'correctness' discourses: 'ruining' frames language as deteriorating, and 'proper English' assumes a single correct form.
Expose the assumptions
It assumes there is a fixed correct English, that change is damage, and that a particular feature ('like' as a discourse marker) is meaningless filler rather than a functional device.
Bring in course knowledge
Linguistically, 'like' has genuine discourse functions (marking approximation, hedging, introducing reported speech/thought), so the complaint misdescribes it; change and youth usage are normal, not corrupting.
Identify the real target
The complaint targets YOUNG PEOPLE via their language - encoding a generational value judgement, dressing an attitude about who speaks as a claim about how they speak.

Result: The letter draws on the decline and correctness discourses, misdescribing a functional discourse marker as 'filler' and encoding a generational judgement about young speakers - an ideological representation of language, not a neutral report.

Typical mistakes

Treating a text about language as a factual report to be agreed or disagreed with, rather than as a constructed, ideological discourse to be analysed.
Analysing only the content of the attitudes and ignoring the linguistic means by which the text constructs and promotes them.

Active revision

Identify the language discourse at work in an opinion piece about slang or accent, and analyse the assumptions and values it encodes about language and its users.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for English language (Department for Education)

How texts represent language and its users#

StandardAQA 7702/2 Section B language discoursesDfE GCE English Language subject content

Two discourses about language

Fig. 2Prescriptive and celebratory texts represent language through opposite metaphors and evaluations - but both are constructed discourses, not neutral reports.

Texts about language use exactly the representational tools studied earlier - naming, modification, metaphor, transitivity, modality - now turned on language itself and, crucially, on its users. Naming is central: describing a way of speaking as 'slang', 'jargon', 'dialect', 'proper English' or 'gibberish' evaluates it before any argument is made, and describing its speakers as 'lazy', 'ignorant', 'articulate' or 'authentic' judges them. Because attitudes to a variety are attitudes to its speakers, the representation of language is almost always simultaneously a representation of a social group - the young, a region, a class, an ethnicity - which is what gives language discourses their social charge.

Metaphor is the most powerful device in language discourses and repays close attention. Prescriptivist texts characteristically reach for metaphors of decay ('erosion', 'sloppiness'), disease ('creeping', 'infecting'), violence ('assault on the language', 'butchering grammar'), pollution ('contamination' by Americanisms) and moral failing ('laziness', 'carelessness') - the field Aitchison analysed. Celebratory texts use metaphors of growth, life, richness, creativity and democracy. Identifying the controlling metaphor of a text, and the semantic field it opens, often reveals the whole ideology in miniature, because the metaphor smuggles in an evaluation ('erosion' presupposes something is being worn away and lost) that the reader may accept without noticing.

Grammar represents attitudes too. High modality ('this WILL destroy English', 'standards MUST be maintained') presents opinion as certainty and obligation; the agentless passive and nominalisation ('the decline of grammar') turn contestable processes into taken-for-granted facts; and pronoun choice constructs an in-group of the 'right-thinking' ('we who care about English') against an out-group of offenders ('they', 'these young people'). Presupposition embeds contestable claims as givens: 'when did we stop teaching proper grammar?' presupposes that we did. These grammatical strategies let a text assert an ideology while appearing merely to observe.

Analysing the representation of language means naming these devices precisely and, above all, exposing what they take for granted and whom they judge. The mature analysis treats even a text it agrees with as a constructed representation: a celebratory piece about dialect is as much a discourse, with its own metaphors and value-loading, as a prescriptive rant. The point is not to catch texts being biased - all texts represent - but to make visible the linguistic machinery through which a view of language, and of the people who use it, is built and offered to the reader. This is the analytical heart of AQA Paper 2 Section B.

Worked example

Analysing a controlling metaphor

A column warns that 'American imports are contaminating our language and eroding its distinctive character'. Analyse the representation.

Identify the metaphors
'contaminating' opens a semantic field of pollution/disease; 'eroding' opens a field of physical wearing-away and loss - both strongly negative controlling metaphors.
Analyse the evaluation smuggled in
'Contamination' presupposes purity and treats change as impurity; 'eroding' presupposes a valuable, fixed 'distinctive character' being destroyed - both load the argument before it is made.
Analyse naming and pronouns
'imports' frames the new forms as foreign intrusions; 'our language' and 'its distinctive character' construct a national in-group whose possession is under threat, positioning the reader as a defender.
Expose the ideology
The text draws on the purism discourse, encoding nationalism and a fear of change; linguistically, borrowing has always enriched English, so the 'contamination' frame is ideology, not fact.

Result: The column's controlling metaphors of contamination and erosion, its 'imports' naming and its 'our language' in-group construct a purist, nationalistic representation that frames normal borrowing as threat - an ideology built by specific linguistic choices, exposed by analysis.

Typical mistakes

Spotting metaphors and other features without analysing the evaluation and ideology they carry.
Analysing only texts one disagrees with as 'biased', forgetting that celebratory and descriptivist texts are also constructed representations.

Active revision

Analyse how a text about language change or slang represents both the language and its users, focusing on its controlling metaphor, naming choices and modality.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level English Language (7702) specification (AQA)

Positioning the reader: stance and rhetoric#

AdvancedAQA 7702/2 Section B language discoursesDfE GCE English Language subject content

How a discourse text positions the reader

Fig. 3A language-discourse text positions its reader through stance and the rhetorical appeals, using rhetorical strategies to recruit agreement.

Language-discourse texts do not merely express a view; they work to bring the reader round to it, and analysing HOW they position the reader is central to the topic. Stance is the writer's attitude, made audible through evaluative lexis, modality, first-person intervention and tone (indignant, amused, authoritative, reasonable). A text constructs an ideal reader who will share its assumptions - through inclusive 'we', assumed common ground, and appeals to shared values ('any sensible person can see...') - and thereby draws the actual reader into agreement by making dissent feel like exclusion from the reasonable majority.

The classical rhetorical appeals remain the sharpest tools for this analysis. Ethos is the construction of the writer's credibility and authority (as an expert, a plain-speaking ordinary person, or a guardian of standards); pathos is the appeal to the reader's emotions (nostalgia for a golden age of 'proper' English, fear of decline, pride, humour); and logos is the appeal to reason and evidence (or its appearance - anecdote and cherry-picked examples often stand in for real data). Alongside these, the standard rhetorical devices - rhetorical questions, tripling and listing, hyperbole, irony, direct address, anecdote - do the persuasive work, and naming them precisely while analysing their effect is exactly the required skill.

Fairclough's synthetic personalisation is especially relevant: texts addressing a mass readership simulate a personal, one-to-one relationship ('you know the feeling', 'let me tell you') to build rapport and lower the reader's guard. Humour and irony are powerful positioning devices in these often light-touch opinion texts, allowing a writer to mock a target and recruit the reader into shared laughter, so that disagreeing means being the humourless butt of the joke. Recognising these strategies lets the analyst explain not just what a text believes but how it manoeuvres the reader into believing it too.

The evaluative dimension asks how EFFECTIVELY, and how legitimately, the text positions its reader. A strong analysis assesses the persuasive strategy - noting where it relies on genuine argument and where on emotional manipulation, false presupposition or the appearance of authority - and connects the positioning to the wider debate the text intervenes in. This is where the topic's power dimension surfaces: language discourses are contests over whose view of language, and therefore whose language and identity, will prevail in the public mind. Analysing reader positioning is thus analysing the exercise of influential power in the specific domain of talk about language.

Worked example

Analysing reader positioning

A columnist writes: 'We all wince when we hear "could of" - haven't we lost something precious? Call me old-fashioned, but surely clarity matters.' Analyse how it positions the reader.

Analyse the inclusive stance
'We all wince' constructs a shared in-group reaction and presupposes the reader shares it; dissenting would mean not being one of the sensible 'we' - synthetic personalisation building rapport with a mass audience.
Analyse pathos and the rhetorical question
'haven't we lost something precious?' appeals to nostalgia and loss (pathos) and, as a rhetorical question, invites the reader's assent rather than genuine consideration.
Analyse ethos
'Call me old-fashioned, but...' pre-empts criticism and constructs a modest, reasonable ethos, making the writer seem candid and self-aware rather than dogmatic.
Evaluate
The persuasion is skilful but rests on presupposition and emotion more than argument (no evidence that 'could of' harms clarity); it recruits the reader through belonging and nostalgia rather than reasoning - effective rhetorically, weak evidentially.

Result: The text positions the reader through an inclusive 'we', a nostalgic rhetorical question and a disarming modest ethos - synthetic personalisation and pathos recruiting agreement by belonging rather than argument; rhetorically effective but resting on presupposition, not evidence.

Typical mistakes

Listing rhetorical devices ('there is a rhetorical question here') without analysing how they position the reader or with what effect.
Describing the writer's opinion without analysing the strategies used to recruit the reader to it.

Active revision

Analyse how an opinion text about a language issue positions its reader, examining its stance, rhetorical appeals and use of synthetic personalisation, and evaluate how effectively it persuades.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for English language (Department for Education)

Analysing paired discourse texts and writing to intervene#

AdvancedAQA 7702/2 Section B language discoursesDfE GCE English Language subject content

Section B: analysis and intervention

Fig. 4Paper 2 Section B pairs an integrated comparative analysis of two discourse texts with an informed directed-writing intervention in the same debate.

AQA Paper 2 Section B presents two texts that present ideas and attitudes about a language issue and requires both an analysis of how each uses language to present those ideas AND an exploration of the connections between them (AO4), followed by a piece of directed writing on the same issue. The analytical task combines everything in this topic: identifying each text's discourse and stance, analysing its representation of language and its users, and examining how it positions its reader. As in Paper 1's comparison, the strongest analysis is integrated - organised by points of connection (their discourses, their metaphors, their reader positioning) and cross-referencing the two texts rather than treating them separately.

Comparing discourse texts is especially revealing because the two texts often take contrasting or overlapping stances on the same issue, so that setting their linguistic choices side by side exposes how each constructs its case. Productive points of comparison include: which discourse each draws on (decline versus richness); their controlling metaphors and semantic fields; their construction of authority (ethos) and their intended readers; their use of modality and presupposition; and the rhetorical strategies through which each positions its reader. The aim is not to judge which text is 'right' but to analyse how each builds and sells its representation of language.

The directed-writing task requires the student to intervene in the debate themselves - typically producing an opinion piece or article on the language issue for a specified audience. This tests AO2 (a genuine, critically informed understanding of the language issue) and AO5 (crafting an effective, appropriately registered text). Success depends on taking an informed position grounded in real linguistic knowledge (the descriptivist understanding of variation and change, the systematic nature of non-standard forms, the social loading of attitudes), and on deploying the very rhetorical and representational strategies the analysis has been dissecting - now used deliberately and, ideally, honestly.

The two halves reinforce each other. Analysing how expert opinion writers construct discourses, position readers and represent language gives the student a repertoire of strategies for their own directed writing; and writing to intervene deepens their understanding of the choices the analysis uncovers. Both are governed by the topic's core insight: talk about language is never neutral but always constructs a value-laden view of language and its users, and the educated linguist can both expose that construction in others' texts and perform it responsibly in their own. This synoptic, critical command of language debate is the endpoint the topic works towards and a bridge to the final evaluation of attitudes to language.

Worked example

Planning a Section B response

Two texts on slang - one condemning it as 'the death of articulate speech', one celebrating it as 'linguistic creativity' - are set. Plan the analysis and the directed writing.

Compare the discourses
Text A draws on the decline/correctness discourse (metaphor of 'death', high modality); Text B on the diversity-as-richness discourse (metaphor of 'creativity', growth). Compare their controlling metaphors directly.
Compare reader positioning
Analyse how each constructs its ethos and ideal reader - A as a guardian of standards addressing the concerned, B as an enthusiast addressing the open-minded - and their rhetorical strategies, cross-referencing throughout.
Bring in linguistic knowledge (AO2)
Evaluate both against real understanding: slang is systematic, marks identity and solidarity (covert prestige), and every generation's slang was once deplored - so A misdescribes it and B has the better linguistic case.
Plan the directed writing (AO5)
For an opinion piece, take an informed pro-diversity position; use a hook, a controlling metaphor of one's own (growth/vitality), synthetic personalisation and glossed linguistic evidence (covert prestige, historical slang) to persuade a general audience accessibly.

Result: A strong plan compares the two texts' discourses, metaphors and reader positioning in an integrated way, evaluates both against real linguistic knowledge of slang, and produces an informed, rhetorically crafted directed-writing intervention - satisfying AO3/AO4 in the analysis and AO2/AO5 in the writing.

Typical mistakes

Analysing the two texts separately and bolting on a comparison, rather than integrating the comparison by points of connection.
In the directed writing, offering uninformed opinion or slipping into the very prescriptivist assumptions the course has taught you to question, rather than writing from real linguistic understanding.

Active revision

Write the opening of a directed-writing opinion piece for a general audience arguing that regional accents should be valued rather than corrected, drawing on real linguistic knowledge and using deliberate rhetorical strategy.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level English Language (7702) specification (AQA)

References & sources

Sources

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for English language

AQA

AQA AS and A-level English Language (7702) specification

Language discourses

4 sections~17 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 1 · Advanced 2

Language discourses

Key points

Identifying a discourse and its values

Key points

Analysing a controlling metaphor

Key points

Analysing reader positioning

Key points

Planning a Section B response

Sources

Language discourses

Key points

Identifying a discourse and its values

Key points

Analysing a controlling metaphor

Key points

Analysing reader positioning

Key points

Planning a Section B response

Sources