Appendix 1: Sample examination paper

Answer THREE questions (all three questions carry equal marks). Candidates may NOT reproduce the same material in more than one answer, in this examination or in any other Advanced Level Course examination.

  1. 1. Discuss some of the historical and social factors that led to the standardisation of English in the British Isles. What are some of the positive consequences and some of the negative consequences of standardising the language?
  2. 2. In what ways does social class interact with language? Draw on evidence and research to support your discussion.
  3. 3. Discuss attitudes to standard and non-standard varieties of English using examples to support your discussion.
  4. 4. Until relatively recently, pidgins and creoles were not thought of as worthy of study. Examine why this might have been the case, drawing on evidence and research to support your discussion.
  5. 5. Illustrate some of the features of both African American Vernacular English and London Jamaican, and examine why these two language varieties are considered to be so contentious.
  6. 6. Discuss some of the ways in which language is used by a person/group to express their ethnic identity. Provide examples and refer to research in this area.
  7. 7. Does language determine the way we think? You should draw on theories and research, and illustrate your answer with examples.
  8. 8. Discuss the ways in which strategies such as euphemism are used to describe distressing or controversial events and the effect this may have on people’s perception of those events. Your answer should be informed by research in this area, but you should also provide examples of your own to support your discussion.
  9. 9. Is the English language sexist? Illustrate your answer with examples and, with reference to specific literature and scholarly research, suggest some of the ways in which we can avoid perpetuating stereotypes about men and women.
  10. 10. Critically discuss and compare the deficit, the dominance, the difference and the social constructionist approaches to language and gender research.
  11. 11. Examine some folklinguistic or stereotypical beliefs about the way men and women speak and discuss to what extent the research has shown these beliefs to hold true.
  12. 12. Compare and contrast the Ethnography of Speaking and Interactional Sociolinguistics with Conversation Analysis. What are the benefits and what are the drawbacks of using only one approach or, alternatively, using more than one in combination in an analysis of spoken interaction?
  13. 13. Identify the rhetorical strategies used in the speech in Appendix 2 by Kennedy. Analyse the way in which these strategies make the speech persuasive.
  14. 14. Analyse the attached transcript ‘It was a laugh man' (Appendix 3). Use any method or approach that seems reasonable to you. You may use more than one approach, as long as it is made clear within your analysis that you are doing so and that you are able to apply theories to the data systematically.