The genre of this piece of text is a speech. The register is
informal as a head teacher is the one talking and has a high status. The audience
of this piece of text is the parents of the students of the school. I know this
because the head teacher continuously repeats ‘your sons and daughters’ to the
audience. The mode is spoken as the head teacher wants to impress the audience
as she wants to make school look good. She starts off with ‘I’d like to welcome
you’ which is a formal introduction. The purpose of this text is to persuade
the parents that they picked the right school and their children will get on
well there. The subject in general is the students but links to the schools
results and what the plans are for their children.
There is power asymmetry in this text as it’s between the
head teacher and the parents. The head teacher uses possessive determiners. She
mainly uses ‘your’ when talking about the parents and their children. This shows
power as although there is no relationship between the head teacher and the
children yet, she is indicating that every one of them is individual and that
she as head will get to know them.
Another language technique used is the use of personal
pronouns such as ‘I’. During the head teachers speech she talks about what she
thinks and what she wants from the students. For example she states ‘I want’
and ‘I could’ which is clearly stating what she expects. This shows she has
power because it’s clear what she wants will happen and she is making this
clear to the parents and students.
Another language technique used in the head teacher’s speech
is declarative sentences. An example of this is ‘I don’t want to hear words
like I can’t’. By using a declarative sentence she’s making a statement. This
gives the audience the idea that they don’t have a choice but to agree with
her. As she is probably at the front and talking at the audience, not having a
conversation, she isn't expecting a response. This will give the audience no
option but to agree as they have no chance to argue. This give the head teacher
power as it shows she is stating something, not suggesting something.
Although in the speech, the head teacher is leading, the
audience does have some power over her. She is talking to the parents of the
students who may be older and at a higher status in their profession. This
means that she would want to impress them. They have the power to choose the school,
or withdraw their child from the school as well as make a complaint if they
wanted to. This is the reason she varies her subject of her speech from the
students and the school specifically. She states that ‘we exceed our targets by
ten percent’. This is something the parents would want to hear and this would
persuade them that they made the right choice when choosing the school for
their children. As the head teacher is trying to persuade them this means that
she has influential power as its down to her whether the parents believe it’s a
good school or not.
The head teacher also uses modal auxiliary verbs when
suggesting something. She states ‘you can read the full report online’. By using
the word ‘can’ it is informing the audience what they are able to do. It
softens the sentence to make sure they don’t feel intimidated or threatened. If
the head teacher was to replace ‘can’ with ‘must’, it changes the suggestion to
a demand and the audience are parents who she cannot tell what to do. This is important
as it shows some power that the audience has over her. You can tell she would
really like them to read the report as it has a positive effect on the school however;
she does not have enough power to make the parents do what she wants.
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