Mumsnet Article Analysis

Analyse how text A uses language to create meanings and representations.

Student response text A is a forum discussion from the website 'Mumsnet'. It is targeted towards mums, as clearly stated in the web address, and the purpose of the discussion is to get across to parents of teenage boys and girls different ideas and opinions on the topic of school proms that can then be shared and debated by parents who identify themselves through the use of monikers. By doing this, parents aim to seek support and reassurance from their audience as they argue prom's are utterly pointless and unnecessary and want others to agree with them. Additionally, the idea of the website being a place which promotes a constructive, mature discussion for adults further instigates the purpose as they want to encourage more parents to join. A note has even be placed at the beginning 'Please bear in mind that whilst this topic does canvass opinions, it is not a fight club.' to reestablish the forum's intentions. The forum has a very informal register which creates a friendly online environment as it suggests how members are welcome to be open about their different opinions on the spoken topics and to not get judged for doing so, despite some being shared coming across as controversial - these are some affordances of the forum. However, there are possibly more constraints of forums as people's intentions can be misinterpreted by others therefore this could result in offence and possibly create conflict which could lead to cyber bullying. This is why if you are opinionated, you will have to consider the repercussions before sharing your view to the online world despite having an anonymous identity.

The user 'woolyideas' expresses her strong opinions through the repetitive use of interrogatives through her entire post, such as 'but AIBU in thinking my DD's school should not be promoting limohire etc., as it's 'prom fair'?' These have also been frequently used in order to align herself with popular opinions other mums on the site would have, and acts as if she's looking for response and acceptance to reassure herself that her opinions are correct or valid. Also, the slang used in this interrogative 'AIBU' and 'DD', which are abbreviations for 'Am I Being Unreasonable' and 'Dear Daughter' further adds to the informal tone that the text creates. Furthermore, woolyideas goes on to reveal herself as 'I'm a bit of an old puritan about these things'. The quantifier 'a bit' has been used to position herself as reasonable, firstly making her out to seem more superior than her target audience, then the colloquial phrase 'old puritan' denotes that she's labelling herself as having more of a status and knowledge on the topic of proms, suggesting tradition and exposing her passion. This has also been used as part as a lexical field alongside the adjectives 'frothy' and 'sane', in the interrogative 'sane parent', to evoke a sense of anger towards those who don't agree with her views and are debating against them.

Later on, wooly ideas further targets parents as she switches from labelling one as 'what sane parent', not being at all general, to 'who are these parents' at the beginning of an interrogative, using the determiner 'these' to group them. This represents that she is trying to directly target parents this time to show she doesn't agree with their absurd ideas on proms being a beneficial thing, as well as using the abstract noun 'expenditure' to suggest that the general cost of it all together is simply not okay.

However, the forum then leads on to emphasise different views, beginning with participant 'MuckyCarpet'. Firstly, she uses the short sentence 'Don't be a grump!' to convey how she is against the negative viewpoint on proms. But then she contrasts this through the subordinating conjunction 'although' to state that she also finds the helicopters 'OTT' (over the top) as previously mentioned by wooly ideas in the declarative phrased as an interrogative 'asked whether they could land a helicopter in the school field?' to emphasise how ludicrous this idea was. Therefore, MuckyCarpet's alternating opinion shows that despite the website being a place for debate, she can still agree to disagree with people as the forum is portrayed as a friendly environment for a mature discussion.

On the other hand, the forum shows that the for and against's over if proms should occur for teenagers is very balanced. Some, like woolyideas, thinks it's just 'competitive consumerism' for their 'precious teens'. The adjective 'precious' has been used in a sarcastic manner to again place the participant as having more authority over others and in a sense regarding the teens as unimportant as if they're trying to say 'why should teenagers be deserving of this when everything get's done for them?'. Others such as 'Mrsrobertduvall' also back this up by using an adjective 'unnecessary', stative verbs such as 'naff' and identifies it as 'formal expensive' because of their young age, which seems to be the biggest issue here for those who are against proms.

Whereas some participants like 'McHappyPants2012' think that it is a fun excuse to get all dressed up, hence why overall, text A uses representations to show that the prom topic is controversial as opinions are clearly very varied and different parents have different lengths to how far or how much effort they are willing to contribute to their child's 'prom fair'.