1. Overview
This assessment is a written piece of work in which you report the results of a text/discourse analysis and discuss their significance. The assessment is a 6,000 word piece. The assessment addresses all learning objectives of the module:
1. Select appropriate analytical tools for the analysis of language patterns across the course of whole, authentic texts/discourses
2. Justify, as relevant to the particular texts/discourses under study, the selection of analytical tools for the analysis of language patterns of texts/discourses
3. Analyse authentic texts/discourses for the language patterns which operate across them using the appropriate tools
4. Critically evaluate how language patterns which operate across whole texts/discourses are related to the social activities of which they are a part and their wider contexts

2. Task
a) In order to focus your analysis and your report, you should produce a suitable and well-defined research question – one that is interesting to you, relevant to your data and relevant to the ways in which you will analyse your data.

b) You should select suitable text(s)/discourse(s) which will allow you to address this research question. You can choose any kind of text/discourse that you like. You may choose one lengthier text/discourse and use your analysis to offer an explanation of it. You may instead choose a small number of texts/discourse and analyse them in the spirit of ‘compare and contrast’.

c) Then you should select suitable analytical tools which will allow you to try produce a suitable answer to the research question you have designed. Analytical frameworks which can be used are those which are discussed on this module: transitivity, conceptual metaphor, mood, modality, im/politeness, appraisal, theme-rheme, cohesion.
A few further notes on (a) to (c) above: the data you choose can be from any text genre, so long as it is in English. You can choose text genres which have been presented in the module (newspaper texts, advertisements, user generated comments online, courtroom discourse, educational texts, etc.) or ones that have not been (literary texts, instructional texts, speeches, etc.). We advise that you use data of around 2,000 – 3,000 words in total. We strongly advise that you run your texts by a member of the teaching team, especially if you are not sure if they are suitable. We recommend that you choose a maximum of three analytical frameworks to analyse your data. Our experience is that students find that the use of two analytical tools is most desirable in most cases.

3. Structure
This assignment is a report on a text analysis – not an essay. Consequently, you should use headings and sub-headings in order to present your analytical work in the clearest possible way. You should also use tables, graphs and other figures, as well as annotate your texts where appropriate. It is likely that the majority of your word count should be devoted to the ‘Results’ and ‘Discussion’ sections. The basic structure for your assignment should be as follows:
Introduction: This is a short section where you explain what your research question is and why exploring an answer to this question is an important undertaking. It will be relevant to bring in a little background reading here.

Methodology: This is another short section where you briefly explain and justify, first, what data you have chosen to analyse and, second, the tools you have adopted to analyse this data. You should subsequently explain why both these choices allow you to answer your research question. You can assume that we know what ‘mood’, ‘transitivity’, etc. are. So you do not need to provide a long description of these. However, you do need to briefly show that you understand what the analytical categories are (e.g. for transitivity, what process, participants and circumstances are; within processes, what relational, material, mental and verbal process types are) and why the framework in question is useful for your topic and data.

Results: This is a longer section where you present the outcome of your data analysis. The exact presentation will vary according to the tools that you have chosen. But it is very important that the presentation of results is well structured and transparent. This is a good opportunity to show that you can perform a detailed and accurate analysis. It is very likely that you will show quantitative trends revealed by your analysis as well as illustrate these trends by means of providing analysed examples. You can also refer to relevant sources in order to support your analysis.

Discussion: In this section you demonstrate that you can say something meaningful about your data given your results and your research question. That is, you should relate your analytical findings directly to your research question and to previous academic research, so as to make sense of your findings. Note that while the Results section will be concerned with language phenomena alone, this section involves a discussion of other phenomena, language phenomena aside, to which your language analysis is related (e.g. power, representation, gender, context, etc.).

Conclusion: This is a very short section where you summarise the most important and interesting findings and their significance. You can also briefly note any ways in which your analysis could be developed and improved in a future project.
Appendix: You must provide the text(s)/discourse(s) that you have analysed and your analysis of them as appendices. If you have any extra information, you should also include this as an appendix. For instance, you may have a very complex table of results for which you produce a summary version which is more easily readable for your Results section. Do then include the more complicated version as an appendix if you wish to cross-refer to it in your Results or Discussion.

SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS
Font – Times New Roman 12pt
Double line spacing
APA Style
The analysis should use a ‘compare and contrast’ format using snippets from 3 of Nelson Mandela’s most famous speeches to analyse changes in, as well as, differences and similarities in his use of conceptual metaphor and mood over the passage of time. The analysis should reveal whether there are any significant and noteworthy changes in his use of conceptual metaphor which might run parallel to the changes over time in both the South African political situation as well as his own personal changes in circumstances from being sentenced, to being elected President and stepping down as President. The analysis should be drawn from a dataset of 2000 – 3000 words comprised of snippets from the 3 speeches below:
‘An ideal I am prepared to die for’ – April 1964 – Attached but also found here:
http://db.nelsonmandela.org/speeches/pub_view.asp?pg=item&ItemID=NMS010&txtstr=prepared%20to%20die

‘Inaugural speech’ – May 1994 – Attached but also found here:
http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/1994/940509_inauguration.htm

‘The final sitting’ – March 1999 – Attached but also found here:
http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/1999/990326_parlfinal.htm

References: (among others)
Austin, J.L. (1962). How to do things with words. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. Psychology Press.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1979) ‘Modes of meaning and modes of expression: Types of grammatical structure, and their determination by different semantic functions’. In Allerton, D.J., E. Carney and D. Holdcroft (eds.) Function and Context in Linguistic Analysis: Essays Offered to William Haas. London: Cambridge University Press
Halliday, M.A.K. (1985) ‘Systemic background’. In Benson, J.D. and W.S. Greaves (eds.) Systemic Perspectives on Discourse. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex
Halliday, M.A.K. (1993) ‘Systemic theory’. In Asher, R.E. (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 4505-4508
Jeffries, L. and McIntyre, D. (2010) Stylistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, G. (2004) Introducing Functional Grammar. 2nd edition. London: Arnold.
Stockwell, P. (2002) Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
Stockwell, P. (2009). Texture: a cognitive aesthetics of reading. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Jonathan Charteris-Black – Politicians and Rhetoric – The Persuasive Power of Metaphor – 2005