Text 'A' is a transcript of a private spontaneous speech between two friends, Rebecca and Sonia. They are talking about their attitudes towards food, cooking and cookery programmes. Sonia is positive about the three topics whereas Rebecca firmly hates cooking. Text 'B' is an extract from an online article based on an interview with Raymond Blanc. The audience is the general public as it is accessible online, but is probably mostly read by adults with an interest in cooking. Contrasting text 'A', Blanc's interview shows a hugely positive attitude to both food and cooking. The purpose of the article is to inform the reader about Raymond Blanc.
In text 'A' Sonia and Rebecca's vocabulary and speech features are influenced by the context of their conversation, a private, spontaneous and friendly situation. The conversational topic starts out as cookery programmes, as initiated by Sonia. The topic is only discussed briefly, before the conversation moves onto the topic of cooking. Cooking is not a topic Rebecca is comfortable with and she is bold with her attitudes towards it. "I hate cooking", the stress on the word "hate" shows how strongly she feels about this topic. Sonia's attitude is different from Rebecca's and this is shown when, before Rebecca has finished her sentence, Sonia overlaps with "What" showing that she is surprised enough to interrupt her friend. After Sonia expresses her shock Rebecca takes conversational dominance to explain herself, but she seems to be more defensive than explanatory when doing so. She give five reasons about why she hates cooking but they are all very similar to each other. For example, "whatever I make always turns out wrong" and "that's not the same when I do it". The repetition of similar statements suggests Rebecca is irate and on the defensive. The is illustrated further when she repeats "you see these (.) these people". The pause and repetition suggests "people" might not have been her original choice of word, and that she perhaps changed it to "people" because her original word choice was rude. This outburst from Rebecca gives more context to her relationship with Sonia as she remains informal while she talks, using words such as "telly" and if she was trying to argue a point to someone who wasn't her friend the conversation would likely have had more formality. Sonia shows interest in what Rebecca is saying by prompting her to talk more by asking a question "why do you like watching food programmes then". Rebecca responds lightheartedly as she laughs while explaining that she watches them because she loves food, but still with seriousness as she stresses the words "love" and "hate" to convey to Sonia how strong her attitudes towards cooking are. Even though Rebecca is being clear, Sonia pries further "but don't you". This seems to irritate Rebecca as she overlaps her with "sorry", presumably for interrupting Sonia's speech. Rebecca then starts a tirade on the origins of her hatred for cooking. She starts with "i think" as if she is unsure where her hatred comes from but she then goes on to show a specific memory of its potential origins. Suggesting that she might be embarrassed that such strong emotions and attitudes come from a badly made beef cobbler and a mean teacher. The repeated use of the same conjunction (and/an) give the speech a rhythm as if she is listing what happened rather than detailing it. Possibly because she wants to say it quickly because of embarrassment or other negative emotions from the memory. From Sonia's continued disbelief we can deduce that her feelings about all things cooking related differ strongly from Rebecca's, i.e. "you must cook some stuff" the stress on the must insinuating that Sonia cooks a lot, hence why she can't believe Rebecca doesn't.
In text 'B' the topic is introduced immediately with the topic line "Blanc is certainly passionate about food." The opening paragraph already shows a drastic difference between the two texts. The use of idioms ("wax lyrical") and minor sentences ("not just any local ingredients of course)" gives the article the formality that the transcript text 'A' didn't have. It sets up the context of the article neatly and lyrically which is greatly different from the set up of Rebecca and Sonia's conversation which was spontaneous and naturalistic. The direct speech included in Raymond's article is simple but formal ("wow, that is something quite special") and highly edited due to the nature of the article. Raymond's English is also "heavily accented" and so we can assume much of his speech was edited. Raymond's attitudes to food differ from Rachel's dramatically and his feelings about cooking and food are repeated throughout the article both through direct speech and the journalists writing ("he could wax lyrical...for hours about how to cook the perfect steak or make your souffle rise") in contrast to Rachel who rushed through all the talk of cooking and says she has "never been able to cook". Text 'B' conveys a lot more information than text 'A' through occasional facts such as facts about Raymond himself "Blanc moved to England in 1972" and "Blanc took part in a reality TV cookery show in 2007 called The Restaurant" as well as food related facts such as "we produce as many cheeses as the French" and "food was class led in the UK". Text 'A' has no straight facts that aren't about Rachel herself. Blanc's article isn't just positives, it provides Raymond's insight on the positives and negatives of British food but he is consistently positive in his overall outlook, a contrast to text 'A' in which the topic if constantly shifting from positives to negatives. The end of the article loses some of its formality ("shouty-sweary" and "nonsense") but ends with a positive message less relevant to the topic but that concludes the conversation: "we need to create a modern business in which young people will be empowered and treated with respect." The ending is clearly not impromptu and doesn't have the casual and simple ending of text 'a' which ends with a joke and a laugh between the friends. This is because of the context in which Raymond spoke as he probably felt under pressure to end on a positive message after insulting a fellow chef.
In conclusion, the texts convey information and attitudes in vastly different ways. Text 'A' is much more informal and probably more honest about attitudes due to the casual and friendly setting, and the conversation being privately held so the speakers probably felt more freedom in their speech. Text 'B' was more formal in its delivery of information and attitudes because the speaker was aware his words were being heard not only by the interviewer who was likely a stranger, but also read by anyone else who wishes to access it. This restricted his freedom of speech hence why he constantly added positives on the end of each negative statement he gave.