Alex, 
Could you let me know where your data collection proposal is?
Regards,
Mrs B

I hope you are feeling a little better. Please could you indicate where I might find the outstanding homework of activity 11 and the exploration of the adverts.
Thank you,

Mrs Beckett

Language and technology.

What is technology?

"The medium is the message". Marshall McLuhan

All technology influences language, in ways that are not always obvious. The development of transport systems, for example, leads people to move around so that language forms used in regional varieties may move into other regions.
In studying language and technology, you will look at how the technology influences the language use, but you should not assume that the use of technology to mediate the language necessarily changes everything. All kinds of circumstances can affect the way we use language. Using technology may do this - as we may note from the way that some speakers react to a journalist's microphone, or an invitation to leave a message on a telephone answering machine.
The history of language and technology is not as old as the history of language, but is exactly as old as the history of recorded language, which means at first the recording of language by the use of symbols - pictograms and ideograms.


This may help us to distinguish between the technology in itself, and the things we do with it, from a linguistic perspective. In terms of modelling our ideas about technology and language, we may think

• first of the different technologies (printing, telephony, radio and TV, e-mail and so on)
• and only then about what we do with them.

Alternatively, we may think first of the kind of language interactions we make, and then of the technologies that enable this. In this kind of model, we might usefully think of

• levels of openness and privacy - is the language used in a public or restricted context?
• ownership of the communications - does an interaction or any of its results belong to anyone and if so, in what way?
• topology - are these one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many interactions, or something else?

Example:
From: "Jxxx Xxxxx"

Date: 27/02/2005 10:14AM

Subject: Poetry

Hi XXXXX

One of your correspondents was asking for sites giving access to poems. I'm afraid I deleted his email before I remembered this place (all my old "favourites" got wiped when I upgraded my operating system and I'm only retrieving them at the rate I need them again). It's pretty good - wide-ranging, lots of poems and poets, and pretty good search functions (though I'd like to have the ability to search thematically, stylistically, by poetic form and period, and with an interactive time line, and biographies, and poem notes, and literary reviews... and cultural context material... and... and... and...). Anyway, for future reference, it's http://www.poemhunter.com/

Jxxx


Pragmatics:

• Quality: the utterance is truthful and based on evidence (the sender refers to the evidence by giving the address of the Web site she recommends).
• Quantity: the message is brief (perhaps reflecting some haste in composition - it was sent from the writer's workplace in the mid morning), but long enough to provide detailed information about the resource it recommends.
• Relevance: the sender explains the relevance, in terms of a past request to the recipient.
• Manner: the message is clear, orderly and brief, avoiding ambiguity.

Lexis
This is very much that of the writer's speaking voice - a mixture of everyday conversational vocabulary (hi, pretty good [twice], anyway) and special lexis both to explain something that happened to the sender's computer (favourites, upgraded, operating system) and to comment on the site (thematically, stylistically, cultural context).

Grammar
This writer is confident in her control of sentence grammar, and uses a range of structures, beginning with a sentence that has a simple main clause, but appends a relative clause ("giving access to poems") at the end.

Activity- Graphology

 The use of iconic logos on branded products is to make the customer know it is one of there products. It helps the public recognise their products. A well-designed logo catches the eye and identifies the company without the need for analysis or reading. When you see the apple sign for example, you do not need to think or read anything else to recognize it as the apple company they sell phones and  other technological devices. Good logos "go viral" -- people know the logo and its associations so intimately that they start to use it themselves to make a statement. In the early 1990s, for example, teenagers got Nike "swish" tattoos. Men photograph themselves with the Calvin Klein label of their underwear visible to tell others they have class and sex appeal. Logos take an element of a company or product and make it appealing to its target audience. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Conservative party unveiled a new logo in 2006 that used the color green and the image of a tree to appeal to an environmentally conscious new generation. The Toys"R"Us logo uses bright colors and a bold, rounded font to appeal to children.
 Also, a Logo is a graphic representation of a business or product, and can be viewed as the first opportunity to impress someone enough to want to learn more about it.

If a business are promoting a product, then Branding becomes extremely important.

The faster a Brand becomes familiar, the better. The fastest way to establish Brand is with a Logo.

Ideas for my next part of coursework

An article on 'How to do Christmas for the first time'

• A recipe. -http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/863657/spiced-and-iced-christmas-trees
• Decorations ideas.
• Presents ideas.
• Possible Holiday Destinations for Christmas.`
• Christmas Fun.
• Christmas clothing eg Christmas Jumpers.

Fairy Tales

I am going to write a story that is based in a rehab clinic. The patients inside are all going to be the disney princeses, and they will all be telling their stories.

The princess im going to include are

• Cinderella- PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
• Jasmine- Kleptomanic.
• Snow White- Schitzophrenia.
• Belle- Recovering drug addict.
• Sleeping Beauty- Depression.
• Rapunzel- Paranoia.
• Ariel- Body Dysmorphia.

I bet you all thought princesses had a stress-free life. A fairly average childhood, rescued by Prince Charming, gets married and lives happily ever after. Not quite. You may not know it, but most of them end up here. Especially the well-known ones.  The PRC. Short for ‘Princess Rehab Clinic’.

Cindy? She’s here. For post-traumatic stress disorder and Snow White is here for schizophrenia.  Ariel has BDD (Body Dysmorphia), Aurora has depression, Rapunzel is paranoid and Jasmine, well she’s a kleptomaniac. And then there’s me.  Belle, recovering drug addict. Sounds amusing don’t it? Throughout my story I was high as a bird on ecstasy. I mean, you must have thought I was crazy to fall in love with that beast. And he truly is a beast. He burps, he farts he eats all the food and is very unsatisfying in bed. It was my 9^th day here; I’d stopped taking the pills and was recovering steadily. But what I hated most was the sharing part. I liked to keep myself to myself; I didn’t want everyone knowing my life. (This is ironic really, seeing as I have a book written about me)

‘Could patients 3574 to 3581 come to the auditorium for the counselling?’

I sat down on one of the chairs that were positioned in a circle, and watched Jasmine, Aurora, Ariel, Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel join me.  The councillor flounced in. A former patient, flounced in. Her new title is now ‘Fairy councillor’ Catchy right? First up to tell her story was Snow White.

‘It all started when I was young. I use to talk to my teddies, and I’d hear them talking back to me. But I thought it was normal. Anyone would. Just a child’s imagination. Later on though, we found that I had an illness, but it was okay it wasn’t severe and I had medication. When I turned 19, it was time for me to move out. My step-mother had bought me a little cottage in the woods, and I liked it there. The first night I was living there, I heard some little voices. Voices of men. Little men. Then they walked in, 7 little dwarves. We quickly became friends and they told me there names were Doc, Sneezy, Happy, Bashful, Dopey, Grumpy and Sleepy. I always found it strange though. How when I had taken my medication, they were never there. And in a few hours when it had worn of, they were back. One day, my step-mother came by with some delicious apples she had picked form the royal apple trees. Doc told me they were rotten apples, and I had to kill her. He argued with me until I agreed, so I did. I took her out on a walk, and as I ran to the top of the hill, I pushed a boulder onto her. Horrible death really. But it was them. The voices, I couldn’t help it’

‘That’s quite enough dear. Thank you for sharing. So who’s up next?’

‘I suppose it’s my turn now’ Aurora slowly whispered.

Short Stories

Planning A Short Story:

• What does your protagonist want?
• When the story begins, what morally significant actions has your protagonist taken towards that goal?
• What unexpected consequences — directly related to the protagonist’s goal-oriented actions — ramp up the emotional energy of the story?
• What details from the setting, dialog, and tone help you tell the story?
• What morally significant choice does your protagonist make at the climax of the story?

 Write a Catchy First Paragraph

• the first sentence of your narrative should catch your reader’s attention with the unusual, the unexpected, an action, or a conflict.

 Developing Characters

• In order to develop a living, breathing, multi-faceted character, it is important to know way more about the character than you will ever use in the story.
• You need to know the 4 main areas-
• Appearance. Gives your reader a visual understanding of the character. Action. Show the reader what kind of person your character is, by describing actions rather than simply listing adjectives. Speech. Develop the character as a person — don’t merely have your character announce important plot details. Thought. Bring the reader into your character’s mind, to show them your character’s unexpressed memories, fears, and hopes.

 Choose a Point of View

• Point of view is the narration of the story from the perspective of first, second, or third person. As a writer, you need to determine who is going to tell the story and how much information is available for the narrator to reveal in the short story.

 Use Setting and Context

• Setting includes the time, location, context, and atmosphere where the plot takes place.

 Set Up the Plot

• Plot is what happens, the storyline, the action.

 Create Conflict and Tension

• Conflict produces tension that makes the story begin. Tension is created by opposition between the character or characters and internal or external forces or conditions.

 Build to a Crisis or Climax

• This is the turning point of the story–the most exciting or dramatic moment.

  Find a Resolution

• The solution to the conflict. In short fiction, it is difficult to provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently.