The document provides guidance for students on conducting a 2500-word scientific investigation. It outlines the required sections of the investigation including an introduction, methodology, analysis, conclusion, and evaluation. Students are advised to develop a clear hypothesis informed by their research and to use sub-headings to systematically analyze their data. The document also discusses different types of investigations such as experiments, longitudinal studies, cross-sections, and naturalistic studies and emphasizes the importance of comparability, reliability, and ethics in data collection and methodology.

1. A2 investigation

2. Investigation specifications
 A 2500-word scientific study presented in specific
sections:
 Intro – why what I am studying/collecting is interesting
 Methodology – how I have made it scientific
 Analysis – close study of the data under sub-headings
 Conclusion – noticing patterns and/or significant factors
and explaining them in context (overview)
 Evaluation – how well did the process, focus etc. work?
 Appendices (not part of word-count) – your data, any
questionnaires, permissions, relevant research etc.

3. Hypothesis (part of the intro)
 The investigation should (ideally) spring from
research you have done into a topic, where you have
read something you would like to test/explore e.g.
whether Fairclough’s ‘synthetic personalisation’
appears more in adverts in expensive magazines or
cheaper ones
 The theory you are testing provides the hypothesis (in
declarative form) e.g. Synthetic personalisation will
appear proportionally in all the magazines sampled
(even if you believe you will discover otherwise –
because he didn’t suggest whether it would or not)

4. Quick task
 As a pair or three, name three theories from AS you
could investigate e.g. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

5. Style
 Not an essay! You are partly marked on your choices of sub-headings,
for example:
 The techniques you chose to examine
 The hypotheses you are testing
 The questions you asked of the data e.g. In an investigation into
the effect of gender in competitive and co-operative discourse: Do
men or women use the most overlaps/interruptions? Do men or
women encourage participation more? Where did the male and
female participants fit in the scale of average turn length/number
of turns?
 It should be formal but should be helpful and engaging – you
are guiding the markers through your process and findings

6. Quick task
 What sub-headings could you use to break down an
investigation into the uncertainty features used by
women when completing a challenging group task?

7. Investigation types - Experiment
 Design a way to capture language as naturally as
possible, controlling the variables
 e.g. a gender experiment: provide a discussion
stimulus (e.g. a newspaper article – about a
controversial issue) to a mixed gender group, and
two single-gender groups but keep the age, social
group, home-town etc. the same (as far as possible),
so that gender is the only significant variable to
explain differences between the groups – this is a key
issue called ‘comparability’

8. Experiment task (imagination
required!)
 How could you set up an experiment to test the
effect of different communication technologies on
how your friends respond to a request?

9. Investigation types – Longitudinal
study
 Find a corpus of data that shows change over time e.g.
your sibling’s exercise books over several years, Brooker’s
articles for The Guardian, The Queen’s speeches etc.
 Sample the data scientifically – don’t ‘cherry pick’ the
texts you want to look at or the ones that fit your
hypothesis: find a reliable way to select randomly or
logically e.g. every fifth speech, although you could look at
how a significant example would change/skew the data
e.g. The annus horribilis speech

10. Longitudinal study task
 What corpuses/corpora of data do you have access
to?
 What would you like to have access to?

11. The cross-section
 Study language used at a given time by taking as wide a
sample as possible e.g. Vox pop interviews about a topical
issue, questionnaires about the language respondents use,
a range of headline stories from different newspapers on
the same day, a dj’s intros throughout her show over five
consecutive shows
 Test that data with a variety of hypotheses to see what you
find, according to what your reading leads you to expect –
you should be able to generalise these findings (but you
won’t, because it is such a small investigation!)

12. Cross-section task
 You can use questionnaires/interviews to support the
data for other types of investigation to (to give
context or make generalising data possible)
 What could you ask on a questionnaire or in an
interview that could form the basis for an
investigation or that could support an investigation
you have in mind?

13. The naturalistic study
 Sample data as naturalistically as possible (easy with
written data, much harder with spoken data) to see
how it is used in real situations (mitigating the
‘observer’s paradox’ as far as possible e.g. How a
child speaks at mealtimes (recorded by the parent),
how texting in the morning varies from texts sent in
the evening (sampled from a friend’s phone ideally,
with written permission from all participants), the
difference in language used by left-wing and right-wing
broadsheets to discuss a current issue

14. Naturalistic study of spoken
language task
 The observer’s paradox states that, as soon as
someone knows they are being observed, they stop
acting naturally, but ethics means you can’t record
them without their knowledge
 What could you do to mitigate the observer’s paradox
if you were recording a child and parent interacting?

15. The analysis
 Warning – it is difficult to avoid falling into ‘essay’ mode if
you choose this type and you won’t hit all the criteria for
scientific approach without careful planning
 Taking a text you are interested in and analysing it e.g.
Which powerful language techniques dominate the speech
of Voldemort and Dumbledore in the first novel? How does
Russell Brand use varying politeness strategies to comic
effect in the stand-up show ‘Shame’? How does Maya
Angelou use metaphor powerfully in her six most popular
poems?

16. Analysis task
 What aspect of a text or language use you like could you
analyse?
 How could you select which parts of the text to focus on in
your analysis e.g. Could I look at all of Russell Brand’s
politeness strategies in the whole show? I could find a
random method of selection e.g. The first, third , fifth mini
routine... or look at the two routines with the highest
incidence of switches in politeness strategy (better
because it shows evaluation and logical selection)

17. Comparability/reliability/ethicality in
your methodology
 Comparability – are there enough comparability
factors, so the one variable is possible to investigate?
 Reliability – is the data sample typical of the data
pool? (a bigger sample will be more likely to be
typical, as anomalies will form a smaller percentage of
any quantified data)
 Ethicality – don’t record someone without their
permission; ensure you have full, informed consent;
and keep the signed permission forms

18. Where are the marks?
 Whether or not your methodology (way of
choosing/collecting the data) is “appropriate” or not is a
limiting factor
 How “systematic” you are – i.e. are you methodical in your
analysis (using well-chosen sub-headings, giving good data
coverage, applying theory throughout)?
 How “evaluative” you are about your choices and what
you can/can’t tell about the data and about why your
findings may be the case in context (do this throughout,
not just in the ‘evaluation’

19. Pitfalls
 Not doing enough reading throughout AS or at least NOW to
choose theory worth testing/exploring
 Not ensuring the comparability/reliability/ethicality of your data
collection so your methodology is not appropriate (really think
through what you might get if you collect it one way and then
another – get some sample data, quick!)
 Not meeting the submission deadlines for parts of the draft –
you can’t do this well without me
 Leaving much of it until the last minute and giving in poor work
– you need to chip away at it and keep rethinking what you have
done and what is best to include (you may end up not using
aspects you have worked hard on, or having to do big rewrites –
you must do what is in the best interests of getting the grade
you deserve

20. Pleasures/benefits
 Pick something you are really interested in as you will
be spending a great deal of time with it – but you will
come away with a much richer understanding of it
and some excellent study skills to apply to everything
you read and listen to from now on