Production Diary #1

During the past few weeks of starting the English Language A2 course, I have had to think of ideas of what to base my coursework on. I decided to explore and compare interviews of one celebrity in a gossip magazine and a fashion magazine. I have started my proposal and an introduction into it however I plan to do some more research into it. I am very interested in journalism and creative writing therefore I felt that this project would benefit me greatly. I plan on using a high end fashion magazine such as Vogue UK as it is very sophisticated and well-respected, compared to popular gossip magazine OK! It is common sense that the language differs in these magazines quite a lot however I am interested in seeing how the same A-List celebrity is represented - which is most likely going to be in a completely different manner. A celebrity that I have already looked into using is Cheryl Cole. She is a very well-known celebrity in the UK - a model, singer and judge on the X-Factor. From just looking at the cover, we can already see distinctive differences in the two magazines - OK! is simply about her personal life - how she was 'depressed' and 'couldn't stop crying'; using very emotive language to make the audience want to read more about her relationship problems. In contast, Vogue see's Cheryl in a very positive light - somewhat as a female hero and inspiration. In this cover we can see that she has had a 'fresh start', juxtaposing with the OK! Cover where she was the opposite. Vogue tends to use language that has iconic symbols of fashion - 'fresh' and 'pure' connotating Spring, which we can tell is the correct season from the flowers that Cheryl is holding against the pink background. I am really looking forward to looking into these magazines and finding more linguistic differences.

Next lesson I plan on looking at the methodolgy - this is the next step within the project.