Synthetic Personalisation

Synthetic Personalisation is the process of addressing mass audiences as if they were in a one on one conversation. An example of this is an advertisement.

Martin Joos' Five Levels of Formality 1962

Level 1: Frozen Levels - Set phrases or conventional structures 
For example : Wedding vows - https://www.theknot.com/content/traditional-wedding-vows-from-various-religions
 

Level 2: Formal Level - Speaker and audience, speech, lecture, no ususal interaction or interruption. 
For example: Wedding speech - http://www.hitched.co.uk/wedding-speeches/example_best-man_speeches_1/adam_3013.htm?selection=Best
 

Level 3: Consultative Level - where interaction is the norm between anyone. 
For example: Tutor and student - https://goodreadingfor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/a-dialogue-between-teacher-and-student_12.html
 

Level 4: Casual level - Informal setting between who know each other well, colloquialisms, interruptions. 
For example: work collegues - https://www.easypacelearning.com/all-lessons/english-lessons-level-3/1238-conversation-about-promotion-at-work-between-2-colleagues
 

Level 5: Intimate level - reserved for close friends and family in private, may have code words or shared context.  
For example: husband and wives - http://lqcollections.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/husband-wife-funny-conversation-must.html

Mumsnet.com forum analysis about Prom Fairs.

Paper 1 Language and Representations-example response

Text A is from Mumsnet and is a forum discussion about school Proms. The purpose of the discussion, initiated by the participant woollyideas, is to seek reassurance from other Mums about

her view that school Proms and unnecessary and extreme.  

The purpose of the website, Mumsnet is to promote the site and encourage other parents to join. Some affordances of using forums are: that an individual can interact with many users, and they are distant from other participants, so they can afford to convey their opinions strongly.   

However, some constraints of forums are that the absence of face-to-face conversation means that ideas mean that meanings can be misconstrued, mainly due to the fact that participants cannot use paralingustic features, emphatic stress and intonation.    

The overall representation of school Proms in text A is that they are ridiculous, extreme and unnecessary and Mumsnet is represented as authoritative, useful but also friendly.

The participant woollyideas uses the stative verb “want” in the interrogative “What sane parent would want to pay an entry fee to go to a “Prom Fair”...?” This represents parents as emotionally

involved in and passionate about school Proms which, as it is used within the interrogative shows that the efforts parents go to for their child’s Prom is ridiculous.  The expressing of strong opinions

like these represents Mumsnet as a place for debate. The mode of text A means that woollyideas is distant from the group of parents whom she is targeting, so she can afford to convey her opinion

more strongly without directly offending them. By attacking this group of parents, woollyideas positions herself above them.

Woollyideas  goes on to target this group of parents even more later on in the response when she

groups them by using the determiner “these” in the interrogative “Who are these parents who think that this sort of expenditure... is ok?”. In the post, woollyideas  goes from saying “What parent” to “these parents”- in the earlier part of the response; she is being more general and using the singular form, then she later using the plural grouping “these” parents in order to target them more directly, which again puts them in a lower position than herself.  It represents such parents as ridiculous and conveys woollyideas’ disgust at the amount of money they spend.

The participant MuckyCarpet uses the subordinating conjunction “although” in her response: “Don’t be a grump!, Although the helicopter is way OTT!”

At first, she expresses her strong opinion about Proms but makes this more moderate by using the subordinating conjunction to contrast her view. This allows her to conform with the other

participants, perhaps because she wants to avoid starting an argument or causing offence. This shows that whilst Mumsnet is a place for debate, it is still friendly. The use of the subordinating

conjunction shows that the participant has a balanced viewpoint.

Within the first paragraph of the text explaining the rules of the forum, a complex sentence is used:

“Please bear in mind that whilst this topic does canvass opinions, it is not a fight club.” The conjunction  “whilst” is used to introduce the subordinate clause “whilst this topic does canvass

opinions”. The fact that this clause is subordinate shows that the offering of opinions is not the most important thing about the forum. “It is not a fight club” is the main clause of the sentence,

which shows that the most important thing to the creators of the website is that users stay safe and that the debate is friendly. 

This represents Mumsnet as a safe place for debate that welcomes

everyone. A constraint of an online message board is that if arguments occur, there is not a person there to mediate as the interaction is not face-to-face. Therefore, the use of sentence structure here almost acts as this mediator. Furthermore, the positioning of this sentence right at the beginning of the forum makes it clear to participants the conventions of the debate in order to make them think before they post.