Roland Bathes Analysis
Roland Barthes 'We seem as a species to be driven by a desire to make meanings: above all, we are surely homo significans - meaning makers' (Chandler, D, 2nd 2002:13) Roland Barthes is a clear homo significan as he constantly tried to extract the ideologies behind written language. Roland Barthes was born in Cherbourg, France 1915. He was a French linguist, philosopher and educator. He was greatly influenced by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre and Ferdinand de Saussure. Barthes declare that 'Perhaps we must invert Saussure's formulation and assert that semiology is a branch of linguists.' (Chandler, D 2002:20) Which Barthes went on to explore in his works. He was adamantly against the bourgeois society who he constantly tried to expose through his writing. This paper shall look at some of Barthes most influential works on; the signifier and the signified, his Mythologies, Structuralism and Existentialism and the photographic message. Barthes expanded on Saussure's work and stated that every sign has a signifier and a signified; he argued that you cannot have one without the other. This contradicts what Saussure said about arbitrariness as Barthes argues that every sign has a relationship between both the signified and the signifier. Barthes called this 'the third message' referring to the relationship as 'quasi-tautological' (When something is so imprecise it
Critically Assess The Argument That Pornography Is Harmful To Women.
Critically Assess The Argument That Pornography Is Harmful To Women. Pornography, unlike any other media representation of sex and sexuality, has become within postmodern society a cultural category of significance (McNair1996: 1) The traditional imagery of seediness has been lost somewhat and replaced by a society that uses highly sexual imagery within the advertising industry, the music industry and also as a theme for many late night mainstream TV shows. This shift in attitudes towards the use of sexual and erotic images in today's society raises certain questions that need to be answered. What is pornography and how is pornography defined? If pornography is harmful then who does it harm and in what way? In order to fully explore the question is pornography harmful to women it is important to first define what pornography is and look closely at the different arguments around defining it. Pornography is in the main understood as being photographs or video images of explicit sexual acts. So despite the fact that there are some differences of opinion on the definition of pornography most people would appear to agree that its content is sex. Although it has been claimed that 'what pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death. (Sontag 1982: 105) that said, to most commentators images to be defined, as pornographic not are
Analysis of creativity in an English language text
E301THE ART OF ENGLISH: TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENT 05 The inspiration for the material used in this assignment arose from a service of thanksgiving for the local hospice that I attended a few weeks ago. The speaker used a passage from Mark's Gospel to illustrate one of the healing miracles of Jesus, and to draw out aspects of plot and character from the text. This gave me the idea that it would be suitable for this assignment, so my purpose is to examine the characterisation and plot which are revealed in the text and how this might provide evidence of creativity. The passage is from Mark chapter 5, verses 24 to 34, taken from the New International Version of the bible, and I have retained the verse numbering for reference. The text is included at appendix 1. There are three different approaches that can be taken to creativity in language: an inherency model, a socio-cultural model and a cognitive model. (Carter, 1999, cited by Swann, 2006, p10.) In an inherency model of creativity, the concern is how the text is constructed, with the emphasis on the language used. A socio-cultural approach takes into consideration the background of the speaker and the writer, and the social, cultural and even historic contexts of the text. It is concerned with the effect that the effect that the language produces on the receiver. A cognitive approach to language examines links between
The Relationship between Pornography and Violence.
The Relationship between Pornography and Violence While researching pornography, and I have come across sources that deal with my sub-topic, Feminist Views on Pornography. There are many women who are against pornography and disagree with it, but they don't have the intention of speaking out and making a difference towards such activities. But of course there are many other women who speak out on what they believe should be done towards pornography, and the class that women are categorized in by men. And for this preliminary report, I am going to be informing you on facts that I have come across by my readings through the different books I have on such an issue-pornography as the cause to violence. "Politically, contemporary feminist agree that sexuality is of the utmost importance, and indeed, sexual demands have been present since the beginning of the current uprising" (Echols; Coote and Campbell). Even the best- known slogan of the movement, "The personal is political," is often thought to refer primarily to bringing sexuality, the most secret, hidden, and "personal" aspect of life, out into the open and exposing it as a major domain for the development and exercise of domination" (Leonore Tiefer pg. 114). Many feminist argue that sexuality is important, because of the norms regarding "proper" and "normal" sexual behavior. "Women's sexual freedom and women's sexual
What are the prospects for the application of first-order logic to the semantic analysis of a natural language like English?
What are the prospects for the application of first-order logic to the semantic analysis of a natural language like English? The purpose of this essay is to explore the prospects for the application of first order logic to the semantic analysis of natural languages. To begin the essay I will show an understanding of first-order logic and natural languages. First order logic is, put simply, the symbolised reasoning in various sciences (in this instance, linguistics, though it is also used in computer science, mathematics and philosophy) in which each sentence, or statement, is broken down into a subject and a predicate (first order logic is a form of predicate logic). A predicate is a feature of language which you can use to make a statement about something e.g. Liam is nice applies the predicate is nice to Liam, who would be the subject. A natural language is any language which has occurred in a spontaneous fashion as a result of the human intellect's innate facility for language (e.g. acquired not invented). The internet encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, elaborates on natural languages by stating; Linguists have an incomplete understanding of all aspects of the rules underlying natural languages, and these rules are therefore objects of study. The understanding of natural languages reveals much about not only how language works (in terms of syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology,
Modelling Bilingual Representation and Processing
Modelling Bilingual Representation and Processing The bilingual's ability to process several languages almost simultaneously and overcome the conflicts across languages is striking. The main topic of interest here is how a non-target language affects target word identification under various experimental circumstances. In this research, empirical investigation and computer simulation go hand in hand. To account for collected empirical data, several models of bilingual representation and processing have been developed. This essay will examine the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) model which simulates orthographic level of representation, the Distributed Feature Model (DFM) which specifies the semantics (i.e., meaning) of isolated words, and the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM) which accounts for the interlanguage connections between lexicon and concepts/semantics as a function of L2 learners' proficiency. The strengths and weaknesses of these three models will be evaluated on an empirical stand and the author argues that a comprehensive model (e.g., BIA+ model) is needed to simulate and account for all the above perspectives (i.e., orthographic, semantic as well as phonological representations and individual differences in terms of bilinguals' L2 proficiency). The BIA model (Dijkstra & van Heuven, 1998; van Heuven, 2000) is a bilingual extension of the monolingual
How do we learn language?
How do we learn language? Theoretical Research Paper about the different theories of language acquisition Introduction Language- it is one of the most important factors for our lives. Linguistics studies analyze every possible part that language itself offers or particular features that derives from it. "How is it that we can all open our mouths and speak, [...], without consciously thinking about the construction of the sentences we are using? And how is it that four-year-old children can apparently do the same thing?" (Cattell 2000: book cover) Most of the people nowadays do not invest time thinking about the origin of language. They do not wonder about how we acquire language. It is just there. We all use it. We start learning it automatically when we are born and as we grow older, we extend our vocabulary more and more. "Infants enter the world of language and of culture with a readiness to find or invent systematic ways of dealing with social requirements and linguistic forms." (Bruner 1983:28) Does first language acquisition really take place so easily? Are there any other factors that influence the first language acquisition of a child positively or negatively? Those questions will be dealt with after I have talked about language in general and where we use it. Moreover, I will have a close look at the three main theories about language acquisition: Noam
"We got him!" Those three words were finally muttered by President George W. Bush on the 16th of December 2003 to rapturous applause after months of grueling and often deadly searching for the ousted ex-president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.
"We got him!" Those three words were finally muttered by President George W. Bush on the 16th of December 2003 to rapturous applause after months of grueling and often deadly searching for the ousted ex-president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. "A new day in Iraq is dawning," explained the elated Bush in the press conference. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country in East Los Angeles, California, Maria, a single mother of two, has recently arrived from her second job to her cramped public housing quarters. Unaffected by the news in the former, she begins to worry in terms of how she is going to pay for her children's healthcare, now that numerous low-cost healthcare schemes for children have been cut. She is also worried about the rampant violence that she and her children are exposed to due to the rivaling gangs that 'control' certain parts of the vicinity. Why is Maria worrying? Why is she not happy with the news of Saddam Hussein's capture? The answer is obvious; she has other things that are more important to worry about. Is this capture going to signal a reform in healthcare? Probably not, but it will certainly calm the fears set forth by the media and redeem the statuses of certain Americans, after all isn't spending billions of dollars somewhere abroad to 'preserve freedom' the American way. Maria and millions others under the poverty line in the US certainly
The Past, Present And Future of American English
Seminar Leader: Khanh Duc Kuttig Graham Buchanan gb219 9th April 2009 School of European Culture and Language Studies English Language Unit LZ325 Global communication: English as a World Language The Past Present and Future of American English Table of Contents Section One p1 -4 Section Two p4-8 Interview Transcript Appendix 1 Television Listings Appendix 2 Sample Questionnaire + Results Appendix 3 Section One The first section of the essay will focus on how American English (AE) has developed, the differences between American English and British English, including lexis, grammar, style and spelling and to suggest reasons as to why this divergence happened. The second section is attempting to show how British English (BE) has been influenced by American English (AE) including some of my own research. According to author Bill Bryson, when the British pilgrims arrived in America, firstly in 1607, founding the first English settlement of Jamestown, and secondly in 1620 on board the Mayflower, both bringing with them the language of an Elizabethan England (Bryson, 1998). For the next 200 hundred years the immigrants were predominantly British, 90% of the first 4 million settlers were of British origin, hence why the English language has prevailed (Bryson, 1998). It is worth noting however that America still to this day has no official
Code-Switching
What is meant by code-switching? Discuss the main types and functions of code-switching that have been identified. In many societies, people use several different languages in conversations. In Montreal, Canada, it is not uncommon to hear two people speaking English and French to each other in an effortless way. Even in a country that is mostly monolingual, such as England, people must choose which language variety they will use. People from the north of England will often decide to speak in a manner that is closer to RP English when they move south. These phenomena are examples of code-switching. In this essay, I will explain what code-switching is. I will also discuss the main types and functions of code-switching. First, it is important to establish what a code is. A code is a neutral term that is used to talk about language varieties. According to Wardhaugh, the term 'code' "can be used to refer to any kind of system that two or more people employ for communication" (Wardhaugh 1998: 86). It is not easy to outline the difference between a language and a dialect. The mainland Scandinavian languages, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, are very closely related and often mutually intelligible. Norwegian has several different dialects, and some of them are extremely hard to understand for most Norwegians. A Norwegian that speaks the dialect used in Oslo would find it easier to