Introduction for my essay - first draft

How do football magazines ‘Four Four Two’ and ‘Match!’ use different language to maintain and further develop their audience?

Nowadays, a lot of the British public seem to have turned their attention to the use of the internet in order to find out the latest news and reviews in the world of football. But despite this, there are still the regular magazines managing to maintain their sales figures. ‘Match!’ with a current average weekly circulation of 72,861 in the UK^[1], and “Four Four Two” magazine, as of June 2012, had 631,000 readers worldwide^[2], in countries including Malaysia, Brazil, Vietnam and of course, Great Britain.

So for my investigation, I have compared these two magazines – ‘Four Four Two’ and ‘Match!’ for several reasons. From my research, I have found that first and foremost, they are the two highest-selling magazines in the UK^[3] and as well, they are both aimed at different age-ranged audiences(Four Four two – 18-40^[4], Match! – 11-14^[5]). Also, a good similarity between them that is helpful for my investigation is that they were both released within 3 days of each other and therefore they both contain the same latest news to compare which made them much easier to compare.

The theorist that I am looking at is ‘David Ogilvy’, who was hailed as the “father of advertising”, said that certain words can be used to attract the audience’s attention. These words include qualifiers like ‘new’ and ‘free’, with also verbs like ‘buy’. This is something that will most likely be found on the front cover, and I will quantify the usage by both magazines. He also said that other techniques used by magazines include things like the use of puns, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia and rhyme. Away from language, I also will look at the use of graphology in the magazines, to see how consistently they use images – and how effectively they use them.

Also, to compare the difference between the two in terms of language used, I decided to find a couple of articles that are the same/very similar within them and quantify the number of polysyllabic words used. I did this with three articles so that I obtained reliable data. I had originally expected that as a result of doing this, I would find that ‘Four Four Two’ had a significantly higher use of these words - compared to the jargon in ‘Match!’

^[1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_(magazine)

^[2] http://www.mediauk.com/magazines/42220/four-four-two/readership-figures

^[3] http://www.w3newspapers.com/magazines/soccer/

^[4] http://magazineindustry.wikispaces.com/file/view/foufourtwo+case+study_Alex.doc

^[5] http://magazines.bauermediaadvertising.com/magazines/detail/match

Media text –synthesising skills: An article for ‘Baby and Pregnancy magazine’ – a guide of how parents can teach their baby/toddler to speak

Banning your baby’s babbling

A guide for you, the parents, on how to teach your child the second-most spoken language in the world.

When you’re a parent, and your child has reached that age when they are starting to join us in learning our language, you can sometimes feel a bit pointless and confused in this learning spectrum. But that’s where I come in; I’m here to guide you on how you can aid your little ray of sunshine in their early learning years.

As a parent, it’s important to know your personal part you can play in their learning curve, and there are many simple things you can do to help enhance your toddler’s progression.

Child expert ‘Caroline Bowen’ said that at the age of around 1-2 years old, your child should be at the level of being able to follow easy and simple instructions such as “Where is your arm?” and “Point to the car!” for example. So work on simple questions like these can go a long way and prove to be very effective in developing their understanding of structuring sentences. Bowen also went on to say that at this age, your child is likely to enjoy things like listening to simple stories and singing songs/saying rhymes. Repetition of these techniques is something that they would ask you to do, if they could!

Whilst doing these techniques, another non-language feature you can use to help is the excessive use of both hand and body movements. This will help greatly as it will intrigue them and keep them interested in you. If you are able to keep them interested and have their attention, it is much more likely that they will take in what you are saying and provide you with feedback. Similarly, the use of entertaining and exaggerated facial expressions are another option you can use to keep their attention, and this could prove to be more useful as it will have them looking at your face – exactly where you want them looking ideally.

All of these aspects and features, although useful, will only be effective if you manage to do one thing: Talk to your baby as often as you can. Your baby will require you to speak clearly and also fairly-slowly to them if you want them to learn. Remember what Ogden Nash said in his poem ‘It must be the milk’ – “Their pronunciation is awful.” So they are counting on you to provide both the language, and the successful pronunciation of words. So if you are mumbling when talking – you can guarantee that they will have a hard time picking up what you’re saying.

Furthermore, something you MUST remember is that although it’s important to interact with your child and speak with them as much as you can, with using the techniques as said above, a vital aspect you need to take into account is being aware when you are talking to someone other than your child. It’s very important to always remember how much your child can pick up just from copying your personal language use. So in this sense, it’s almost like you’re teaching your child to talk, whilst not even interacting with them...so bear that in mind!

Media Text Activity - Football Managers and their reactions.

In the 'beautiful game' of football, there's nothing quite as sweet as earning the full 3 points on match day. After that long 90 minute period of sport, the match finally draws to a conclusion - well for the players at least. After this, it's up to the manager to play his part and give a good performance in the post-match interview. This can be a dreaded job for a manager if they've seen their side defeated, but on the contrary, it can be the easiest job in the world if you've come away with a win.

Since the premier league began in 1992, we have witnessed all different kinds of gaffer - from Terry Venables and Sir Bobby Robson, to now, in which we can see the likes of David Moyes, Brendan Rodgers and the fan-favourite Chelsea boss, Jose Mourinho. What do these men all have in common? They've managed teams at the highest level in the English game, successfully. How do they differ? With their personal, individual post-game 'injection' to the matches.

In our day and age, it seems that you can never know what to expect from a manager, especially newly recruited ones. They can differ from the dignified, highly-respected figure of Sir Alex Ferguson himself, to the Bristolian madman, Ian Holloway - who has made a great name for himself! Not in the conventional way as you'd expect though, the majority of the public don't see him as the leading man who in his managerial career has led both Blackpool and Crystal Palace to the premier division in England, but they seem more intrigued at his interview informality, that always contains humour. A recent quote by him was after his Crystal Palace side were successful play-off winners against Watford, which ensured that they were the premier league new-boys, he was quoted as saying - "Every dog has its day, and today is woof day! Today I just want to bark!"
Not exactly what you'd expect from a premier league head-man, but is this the change and enthusiasm our game needs?

Media Text Idea

For my media text idea, I have decided to look at how different managers speak in post-match interviews after winning football matches with their team.

I will look at how the different managers act in these interviews, depending on their personality. I will look at ‘Sir Alex Ferguson’, a very dignified, high profiled manager at Manchester United, after winning a random match last season.

I will also look at ‘Ian Holloway’ who is a Bristolian manager, currently managing Crystal Palace in the premier league as he is known for being more informal in interviews. I will likely compare him when he was managing Blackpool in the championship, to now, managing Palace in the premier league. I’ll look to see if he changes how he is in interviews due to being in a more prestigious, higher division.

Choose a framework to test your hypothesis with and select an extract from your data to do a sample paragraph of analysis on

There is a specific article in the magazines that has caught my attention as it is a perfect example of how they are different. The article is about football merchandise that the magazine is trying to sell. Firstly, beginning with the article titles, and you can already see a clear difference in approach here. Match magazine in general, as demonstrated here tends to use informal lexis – the heading reads “Hot Stuff!” in orange and red writing, with a picture of a flame within the letter ‘O’ to symbolise the ‘hotness’ of the items. Whereas the Four Four Two heading reads “Suit up for the new season” which is a more formal, dignified title, which is also in black to further show its seriousness.

Going into the articles, and again you can clearly see the difference in lexis used by the magazines. Using the ‘box-out’ section of the column, you can see that they use different techniques to advertise. Match has a sub-heading of “Get a load of these footies!” and just tries to sell the item simply on the image. Whereas Four Four Two tells us that the advertised items are “Essential Accessories” that you presumably ‘must have’. They also give a short, but clear description about each item. For example ‘TruSox’, one of the many items on sale here, is said to “Use non-slip pads”, “prevent unnecessary movement inside your boot” and “Prevent blisters”, so it gives you good information of what to expect.

Also, when talking about their boots, similarly Four four two goes into more depth for detail. They describe the ‘Mizuno Moreila Neo Boots’ by saying that at just 170g, they increase the boot’s ‘flexibility’ and also hence the owner’s ‘mobility’. They give similar detail to their other pairs of boots on this page, unlike Match, who do their advertising differently. They, like before in the box-out, try to advertise a number of products with just a hook line, “Check out Nike’s latest indoor and astro trainers! From the awesome Bomba finales to the slick Elasticos, these trainers will help you bust nets in courts and cages all over the place! Class!” This is accompanied by large pictures of the products, with a wide variation of colours which will in particular attract children, hopeful of obtaining their parent’s money. So in this sense, you feel that Match believe that the picture itself (of the item) will be a good enough selling point.