Target age groups Essay Example for Free

Target age groups Essay Magazines are there as entertainment purpose and also to give information if one is interested on a specific topic like `Auto Trader which is aimed at a readership that is interested in buying cars or `Elle which is a fashion magazine. I wanted to investigate how the language varies in magazines aimed at females in different age groups and I plan to investigate this by getting magazines and analyzing a text to find common and different linguistical features like the semantic, lexical, grammatical and pragmatic choices used in the magazines to attract the target audience. The three magazines I shall be using are `Elle, `Sugar and `Go Girl which are all aimed at different readerships. I carried out a survey to find out the age group range for all three magazines. I think I shall find that the `Elle magazine uses less informal vocabulary, and has long complex sentences as the readership have a greater understanding and are more developed in their vocabulary than the target audience for `Sugar and `Go Girl who are still developing their vocabulary. Another difference I think I may find is the exclusive lexis used in `Sugar as it is aimed at teenagers who tend to use a lot of slang. In `Go Girl I feel that I shall find the sentences will be short and simple and the vocabulary will also be simple. This could be because the readers of this magazine are young girls who may find it difficult to understand long complicated sentences and have not yet come across such complex words and are still developing their vocabulary. Methodology: The three magazines I took into consideration are: `Elle which is supposed to be the worlds best-selling fashion magazine as stated on the magazine is the first magazine I chose in my investigation . It is a magazine for those who want to know how to look beautiful sophisticated and be up-to date on the latest trends and fashion. `Sugar which is said to be Britains best-selling girls magazine as it says on the cover is the second magazine I chose to use for my investigation. It is aimed at teenage girls but does not have a specific purpose like `Elle which is a fashion magazine. `Sugar is a magazine with articles on everything from clothes to music, make-up, gossip and problem pages. The last magazine is called `Go Girl which is aimed at a younger female readership is also like `Sugar which has articles girls like to read about such as what is going on in the lives of famous popstars? , fashion, gossip and other articles. First I got the same month issue for all three magazines, that is the July issue and carried out a survey on the target audience by asking girls what age group would read the three magazines. From my survey `Elle is found to be aimed at an audience from eighteen years and upwards, `Sugar is aimed at thirteen to seventeen year olds and `Go Girl for ages eight to twelve. Then I took the same type of article from all three magazines i. e. the monthly Horoscopes and decided to analyze the different linguistic features like Latinate words, colloquial words, slang words, clippings/abbreviations, the types of sentences and pragmatics. Analysis: Lexis This is to do with the choice of vocabulary used. Ive divided this section into Latinate words, colloquial words, slang words and clippings/abbreviations. The choices of lexis in all three magazines are found to be different, as there is a difference in the ages of the readership. However there are similarities in the lexis because the text I have used from all three magazines are on the same topic. The words used in Horoscopes are personal, tend to appeal to ones emotions and convey opinions on ones life. This could be because the purpose of horoscopes is to predict what will happen in the future and try to guide people on what they should do to improve their life or to avoid doing something wrong. So there will be some similarities like the use of nouns and adjective as well as the words semantically linked to astrology and time (which is also linked to astrology)(as shown in diagram1 and 2). Latinate words These are words that are derived from Latin and are usually used in texts that are important like in legal documents or in texts that are for an audience who are educated to show either importance, authority, intelligence or sophistication. I took two sections from all three articles randomly (around 120 words) and listed the number of Latinate words found in each. I found that in the first text from `Elle magazine there were more Latinate words used than in the other two. (as shown in the table 1 in appendix).