My top 3 favourite investigations so far

1. "How has lexis and semantics changed in rock lyricism from the 1960's to today?"
-This project comes from the language area of change.
-The data I'd collect would be song lyrics from a variety of rock songs from different eras, dating back to the 1960's, and going up to today.
-Pros of getting data: Easy to get, easily analyzable, large source of content to get data from.
-Cons of getting data: Large source of content could be overwhelming, certain songs have sub genres and might not fit into the rock genre wholly.
-Issues I could investigate could be whether the issues presented in the songs represent current issues in the world or relate to a specific problem, like an emotional response, and how they are handled by the artist, or whether or not the target audience has shifted to a slightly younger audience, and the effect it's had on the music and it's meanings.
-First steps include; choosing songs to analyse, listening to them and then researching meanings and  then analyzing them.

2. "Are males more likely to be competitive and females cooperative in a sporting/competitive event?"
-This project comes from the language area of gender.
-The data I'd collect would be a group of males and females engaging in a group activity against each other, like Quasar, bowling, or a video game like Mario Kart.
-Pros of getting data: Easy to do as you only need a tape recorder in a room or microphones on their person and fun to get as you are doing an activity.
-Cons of getting data: Lots of data to analyse and transcribe, quality could be bad due to loud background noises, candidates might not talk as they would know they're being filmed.
-Issues I could investigate: Whether or not language theories about males or females can be reinforced or disproved in these environments, are females competitive or males cooperative?
-First steps include getting teams together and discussing what the ideal place for collecting results would be, plus seeing if I am able to record there easily.

3. "Is the use of spoken lexis between males and females different when playing the same section of a video game?
-This project comes from the language area of gender.
-The data I'd collect would be 3 males and females playing a section from a single player game, like the level of a campaign, or an indie game like Slender.
-Pros of getting data: Easy to do as you only need a tape recorder in a room or microphones on their person and fun to get as you are doing an activity.
-Cons of getting data:  Lots of data to analyse and transcribe, quality could be bad due to loud background noises, candidates might not talk as they would know they're being filmed.
-Issues I could investigate: Whether or not language theories about males or females can be reinforced or disproved.
-First steps include getting candidates and letting them have experience with the game so they know what happens and how to play and then recording and analyzing the data.

Brainstorming investigation ideas

My top 3 investigation ideas taken from previous work or shown in the booklet are;

1. "The use of lexis and semantics in Black American hip-hop" as it showed the use of a personal idea and using linguistic methods to establish an investigation in an area where the student felt entirely comfortable.

2. "Are males more likely to be competitive and females cooperative in a sporting or competitive event?" I like this one as the research could be fun to carry out, as there are many different situations where you could carry this research out, and yield interesting results at the same time. 

3. "How does slang and lexis differ in children's television drama from the 1970's to today?" This would be a good investigation as you could easily compare television shows between the two eras, and even look at a show that has runt through both time periods, like Dr. Who to get a full idea of the comparison at hand.

The mini language change investigation- Reflection

Our mini language change investigation was based around how Scouting materials have changed over time by looking at Scouting for Boys, published in 1907, and comparing it to an article in the latest issue of The Scouting Magazine, published June 2014.
I think the investigation we did was the most interesting, as I am in the scouting movement myself, and it's interesting to see how the documents have changed over time to suit a different era and audience.
My feelings towards the language change investigation are that despite the fact it was very time consuming and challenging, it was interesting to look at language and how it changed over time.
Some websites and web tools that could be useful in the future could be Prezi, to present my findings, Google N. Grams, to look at how language has changed and see if certain words have become obsolete and what this tells us about the future of language, and Web archives, to give me a wide spectrum of resource material that I can use for my study.

Details about me that could be used for language investigations

Details about my life	Potential investigation areas
College: Full time student at ENSFC	Interactions between friend at college and how they differ dependant on gender, age or social standing. An investigation on official literature made by the college and how it communicates with students.
Family: Live with mum (Linen worker), dad (Lorry driver) and brother (13). Both sets of grandparents are alive and one great- grandfather	Interactions between Lorry drivers, all male, and how they differ to that or Linen room workers, all female, and if they differ dependant on gender.
Job:  Early morning paper boy	The comparison of front page headlines on different papers across one day and how it communicates with its audience members.
Volunteering work: Young leader in the Beaver section of Scouting	The use of language between male and female groups of Beavers and how it differs when the two different groups interact. The use of language through power between leaders and Beavers and who uses what kinds of power.
Locations: I’ve lived in Gorleston my entire life	A study into local dialect and how it differs from Standard English.
Hobbies: Guitar, Scouts, Karate, Video games	Guitar- How the language between teacher and student changes dependant on level of skill. Karate- How the language between teacher and student changes dependant on level of skill or gender. Video games- How gender is represented through story narrative and lexis used by characters in game. How males and females talk about a game they are playing, and how the language differs dependant on gender.
Interests: Playing and listening to music, video games, karate, scouting, bowling, quasar, going to the cinema, the internet and social media	Bowling/ Quasar- Are males more likely to be competitive and females cooperative in a sporting event? Social media- Can you tell a person’s gender from the way they type and their graphological use? Do interactions between males and females represent a real conversation?
Media habits: Fan of hard rock, heavy metal, ska and punk, I play single and multiplayer games with friends or online on a variety of platforms, I contribute to the Rooster Teeth online forum and discuss different topics like music, film making, video games and content that Rooster Teeth make. I enjoy Sci-fi and action films along with TV shows like Dr. Who, Sherlock, Fargo and Breaking Bad I have a number of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Steam, Rooster Teeth Forums and Blogger	Music- How language and semantics have changed in Roc lyricism from the 1960’s to today. How language and power convey messages and meanings between different genres of music dating back to the 1960’s. Forum- To what extent is field specific lexis used between forum members in threads? How is the lexicon between British and American drama different? Do British and American dramas portray gender and power differently through language use?
Aspects of Eng. Lang. I’ve enjoyed: Studying gender and power and how they relate to different texts	How is language used in a series of texts and what does it tell us about the representation of gender or power?
Other subjects: Media; Studying how drama conveys messages, the conventions of films and film making in general. Sociology; How the family is impacted by society and the different theories such as Functionalism and Marxism that offer differing ideologies about society and the family. History; How Russia was run and how it shaped the lives of the people living there from a monarchy to a socialist state along with how British warfare was conducted across 3 separate and devastating battles.	Media- How does the use of language portray gender and power in dramas? History- How has the language in official documents from 1930’s Russia to today changed? How are gender and power represented in World War One propaganda?

Practice Investigation

I've learnt much about the investigation process so far and how to plan and conduct research for the investigation. The investigation needs to consist of an hypothesis; a theoretical question that forms the basis of the investigation, methodology; the documentation of how you conducted your research, The use of linguistic methods to analyse your data and, most importantly, the data itself that will have been collected.
Some tips that I've picked up include choosing a topic you're interested in, so for me that would be something in the media, music or video game industry, using a wide range of linguistic methods to analyse data and keeping to topics you've topics you've previously studied like Gender or Power.
I feel doing an investigation would be eye opening and informative all in all and would offer me new perspectives of English language to analyse.
I feel the investigations based around topics I'm interested in and about Gender will have the most potential as I know a lot about the different specialist areas that interest me and how I can apply language theories and linguistic methods to them.
Websites and tools I could use include sites like Prezi that allow me to make online interactive PowerPoint presentations which could help me enhance my ideas, especially for presentation purposes.
Ideas I've had so far include how language and semantics have changed in rock lyricism from the 1960's to today, the representation of gender in video games and how close to a "natural conversation" they get and the hypothesis of "Are males more likely to be competitive and females co-operative in a competitive environment?"