Hey Joseph, I did the SAC before reading your reply, I was quite disappointed with my SAC, I pulled an 87, my main issue was not being able to understand what was going on in the text, and hence I didn't really 'engage' so much with the it.
Hello! Also doing Eng Lang this year haha. When I'm given a text, if it's spoken I imagine the interlocutor(s) speaking and if written I imagine the writer writing the piece, and when I do this I find it easier to understand what's going on. To engage with the text, you pretty much identify the features and question its existence. Why do the interlocutors use it? Why is it even there? You then link to sociolinguistic variables, particularly the social purpose and function, and include the names of the participants as well as the context.
For informal, a certain feature may (though it depends on the question for Section A):
- Promote solidarity
- Create a casual/intimate/conversational tone (e.g. By using contractions such as "can't" (5), A helps to form a casual tone in his conversation with B, reducing the formality of their discussion about unicorns <<< more relevant to Section B though)
- Help build or maintain rapport
- Decrease social distance
- Reduce formality of an exchange
etc etc