click on image to enlargeSocial Varieties: Language & Power and Language & Gender
Power and Gender in The Office
The purpose of this activity is to consolidate the work students would have done on power and gender in preparation for ENGB1 (AQA B AS English Language). Students will need to have access to the script from episode one of series one of The Office (pp.27-32 of The Office: The Scripts) and it will also be advantageous if they watch the scenes on DVD. The students are asked to consider how language asserts power and represents gender in the extract. The following analysis is intended as teachers’ notes.
Background
The Office is a British sitcom, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, which first aired on BBC2 in 2001. It takes the form of a fictional documentary, or a ‘mockumentary’, which follows the working lives of fictional employees of the Slough branch of ‘Wernham Hogg’, a paper distribution company, and their boss, regional manager David Brent, played by Gervais. A mockumentary shares many of characteristics of ‘reality’ TV shows: the camera is often acknowledged as it follows the characters around, and there are frequent asides – or ‘talking heads’ – when characters speak directly to the camera. It might be seen to parody the many reality television programmes that feature on TV, especially those that are set in workplaces.
The sitcom, or situation comedy, has been a popular feature of our television schedules for many years. They are ‘a series of weekly shows based around an initial…
