Spoken Language Study

Educating Essex - by Sammy Taylor I am going to be investigating spoken language and how it is used in a community. The community I’ll be looking at is a school, the Passmores Academy, which was used in the documentary programme Educating Essex. First broadcast in 2011the documentary shows us the inside of a modern school from both the pupil and teacher perspective. It was praised for being insightful and won a number of awards. The way that we address one another is dependent on who we’re speaking to. This depends on their place in society (respect, position etc) or how we relate to that person (friends, acquaintances etc.) In this essay I am going to examine how the teachers, students and the language of the voiceover is used in different ways to communicate. Mr Drew is Deputy Head in the school and he often is the focus of the documentary episodes. Mr Drew’s relationship with the students is based on control and winning. He openly states in an interview with the camera that ‘I am the brickwall,’ this metaphor emphasises that no one is going to get out of line and the students will not get their goal of messing around. He has a number of techniques which he uses when speaking to students in the corridor.  The first is repetition and how he addresses the students: ‘Excuse me young person (.) just in case for some reason you have been unable to understand the very very clear rule...’ His pace is fast and the repetition makes us aware of the important parts in his speech. He chooses to address the boy as ‘young person,’ this gives an odd effect which is not even  gender specific.  In the montage of clips he also uses sarcasm as a way to intimidate students. ‘There is no need for you to wear that dead animal,’ he says to a girl with a spotted coat. He clearly tries to control the situation instead of shouting, sarcasm is humorous and entertains us as an audience but the girl probably feels a little low.  As well as using humour, Mr Drew also enjoys the sound of words. He uses alliteration, ‘constant conflict,’ which he says emphasising the C sound at the beginning of the word. I think he relishes using a variety of language techniques to make sure he doesn’t get bored saying the same thing over and over.  Sometimes he is flustered and he uses fillers to keep control of the situation. In his office he says: ‘I (.) I (.) y’know (.) I,’ when dealing with a student. This keeps the conversation with him, but allows him thinking time to deal with the child’s misbehaviour.  In rare cases he uses volume ad repetition in conjunction to emphsise his points. He repeats ‘Excuse me’ at greater and greater volume. Again this is to control the situation and the effect is to totally drown out the other person.  In the episode there is a really geeky kid who describes Mr Drew as ‘He’s an evil overlord who will completely incinerate you.’ As he’s talking to the camera this gives him the confidence to say something that he would never say to Mr Drew face to face. This metaphor, like the ‘brickwall’ earlier, reinforces our opinion of him as being a strict stickler for the rules. When we meet Charlotte she seems to be equally intense. She wants to get her own way. The voice over tells us ‘she’s become a regular visitor to the deputy head’s office.’ This tells us all we need to know to about the context of this relationship in the wider community. While Mr Drew uses repetition and a rhetorical question to try to wear her down: ‘Do you think I’ll be amused?’ Charlotte tries the same approach: ‘I don’t know (.) Are you?’ This seems confrontational and it is not clear who will win. Even by the end of the transcript we are not clear. By copying Mr Drew’s techniques, Charlotte is playing Mr Drew at his own game. It could be said that both are playing up for the camera and because both are observed, they are not backing down. In other sections of the transcript students seem to be caught saying stupid things for the audience’s entertainment: ‘What is pi? Where did it come from?’ I think that the documentary is more biased towards the teachers. As it’s a programme for adults it seems natural that this is biased towards them as it’s aimed at them. Mr Drew gets more air time than any of the other people. I think it’s a fairly good representation of school language. However, as it was broadcast two years ago there has been a massive change in slang which isn’t represented.