A Sociolinguistic study. Is there such a thing as mens and womens language? Discuss these issues with detailed reference to one sociolinguistic study in this area.
9. Is there such a thing as men’s and women’s language? Discuss these issues with detailed reference to one sociolinguistic study in this area. . Introduction “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”(Holmes, 2008, p.164). From the end of 1960s to the beginning of 1970s, the study of “language and gender” has drawn people’s attention in developed countries such as the United States, Europe and Japan. During the second-wave feminism movement, women tried to reconsider the male-dominated society, culture and attitudes toward any areas such as media, education and communication. To improve women’s status in society, they paid attention to the language everyone uses in terms of communication. It was proven that there were some differences between women’s and men’s talk in points such as how they speak, who they communicate with and what vocabularies and phrases they tend to use. These cannot be explained simply because of sex differences but instead come from the deep background and history of women and men’s position in our society. Though people use a language without thinking, some stereotypes will also develop unconsciously. However, there should not be strict rules of how women and men should speak from the aspect of femininity and masculinity. In this essay, I shall consider features of men’s and women’s talk and what cultural background is
Placing a Biography in the Context of History
Asian American Studies 20A Tiffany Tsai 1619 2666 Placing a Biography in the Context of History GSI: Joanne Since her childhood in India, Pooja Sharma, aged twenty-three, believed she was destined for different things. "Since I was little, my mom says I was very different," she begins. "I just wanted to do something different. My sisters, after they were nine or ten, they'd starting painting their nails. I got into tae kwon do; I got my black belt. I used to beat up my sisters, my brother." She recalls visits to the hospital, where her sisters would look at needles and "pee in their pants," while Pooja wanted to touch those needles. Her father was from the Indian royal family and was disowned when he fell in love with and married her mother, a Nepalese. "He had to start from scratch. They had nothing." Her father became a "very, very successful" businessman, but when Pooja was twelve years old, he died of lung cancer and left the family with enormous debts. "Most of money, our property, went to paying them off. She [Pooja's mother] didn't have anything left... She lived a very rich life, and later, she had nothing," she explains. An opportunity for positive change arose five years later. Pooja, a top student recently accepted into medical school, was among the three of 500 applicants who were awarded scholarships to visit New York and explore
Analysis of Language Use in Hugh MacDiarmid's "Water Gaw" and Gerard Manley Hopkins "The Windhover".
________________ Louis Althusser’s thesis that, ‘Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence’[1] means that reality is always subjected to the system beliefs of the dominant culture. Born in Scotland, Christopher Murray Grieve strived to go against the dominant language system of English instigating a revival of the Scots language in literature. Reinventing himself in what Laura O’Donnell defines as: the ‘Anglicised Gaelic pseudonym Hugh MacDiarmid’, he reconstructs himself as a Bard, in a hyperbolic attempt to define his nationalism[2]. He wrote in Scots from 1922, when he published The Watergaw, until 1929, when the limitations of the Scots language and the lack of monetary viability saw him move back to writing in the dominant English language. Roderick Watson highlights that, MacDiarmid, when advised to write in his old lyric style by the Scots Observer, wrote a ‘furious letter which resolutely refused to consider the tastes of the Scottish reading public ‘in any way’’.[3] This essay will compare The Watergaw with MacDiarmid’s English translation, to consider the stylistic and ideological implications of the translation. I will argue that MacDiarmid’s sabotage of the English language was deliberate and that despite his antisyzygy he anglicised some of his words unnecessarily, conforming to
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
What makes a new word successful? A response to Metcalfs FUDGE Model
SEL 3025 03784924 What makes a new word successful? A response to Metcalf’s FUDGE Model . Introduction The introduction of new words into our languages is a process which often goes unnoticed and is seemingly overlooked. However it is because of these constant new additions that our language is ever evolving and thus allows us to maintain a concept for an infinite number of situations and occurrences. It is extremely rare that a new word will be deliberately coined from nowhere; the majority of new words come from some form of manipulation of an already existing word (Harely 2006: 91). Work into the production and processes of forming new words does not account for a large field within linguistics. Throughout this essay attention will be paid to a leading model by Allan Metcalf (2004) which aims to form a procedure whereby the success of new words can be predicted and whether this method is a reliable model. In order to do this, an analysis of Metcalf’s model will be undertaken including awareness of its problems and these may affect my results and hence the reliability of the model itself (section 2); a methodology will then be presented outlining how the model will be tested including data collection (section 3). Results will then be displayed (section 4) followed by a discussion and interpretation of the results found (section 5). This essay will conclude with
What is the usefulness of comparing human language with other communication systems? How similar (or not) are systems of animal communication to human language?
What is the usefulness of comparing human language with other communication systems? How similar (or not) are systems of animal communication to human language? When comparing language systems and communications systems, one must look at the different stages of language development; when the utterance of words becomes more advanced and the individual has an autonomous control of language that they can use in a meaningful way. Language is a series of signals with structural properties that, mostly, fall into phonological, syntactical and semantic categories. It is useful to compare communication system with language, as it tells us about human abilities, genetic structures of the brain, and how humans develop cognitively from childhood in relation to other species. Equally, the similarities between human language and animal communication can highlight a lot about the intelligence of many species, however, despite the close comparisons, the contrasts highlight crucial advantages that humans have over animals in terms of language ability. If we are to compare human language with other communication systems, we first of all need to define what is meant by the term ‘language’. This is a difficult enough task in itself, causing a fair amount of controversy about what the essential components of a language are – even if an individual is able to utter a grammatically correct
Literacy Practices
3. 'Literacy is a social activity and can best be described in terms of the literacy practices which people draw upon in literacy events' (Barton 1994: 34). Discuss, with reference to your own literacy practices. Table of Contents . Introduction 3 2. Defining terms 3 3. How do literacy practices describe a given domain's literacy? 5 3.1 My literacy practices... 5 3.1.1 ...when attending a lecture 5 3.1.2 ...when revising between lectures 5 3.1.3 ...when revising before assessment 6 3.1.4 ...when being assessed 6 3.2 Discussion 7 4. Conclusion 9 5. Reference list 10 . Introduction Literacy is an extremely broad concept. All theorists have their own views and opinions about its definition, which tends to change according to context. One all-encompassing definition of literacy is Street's: '... the social practices and conceptions of reading and writing' (1984: 1) Barton (1994, 2002) writes that people's literacies vary depending on the domain they find themselves in. The home, the workplace and the school are all domains of life. He states that literacy is situated: it cannot exist outside of a social context. In this essay, I will look at literacy from a sociocultural perspective. I will start out by defining relevant terms, and will go on to discuss the following quotation: 'Literacy is a social activity and can best be described in terms of
What were the main features of women's experience of the homefront in world war two?
What were the main features of women's experience of the home front in world war two? Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939.Although this was when the war officially started, for many; it was a long time before. For most women, their men had already signed up for active service and had left or they were about too. Major changes in the role of women in society were therefore about to begin. Before the war a women's place was considered to be in the home following marriage. Her role was to a good mother and housewife. From a young age girls were trained to cook and clean etc. whilst boys were educated but this didn't seem necessary for girls. Some women did work before the war but usually they tended to have gentle occupations or were providing a domestic service for wealthier families. These women were mainly lower class although some middle class women did work before they were married as they were expected to give up their jobs once married otherwise it implied that her husband could not afford to keep her and this was seen as shameful on her husbands part. Because the government already had experiences from the First World War they started to re-form all the successful campaigns and strategies that were around then. For example, women were already being asked to volunteer for work and the Women's Land Army re-formed itself a few months before. These early
Homosexual Etymology: The History, Terminology and Movements of Gay and Lesbian.
Homosexual Etymology: The History, Terminology and Movements of "Gay" and "Lesbian." The language of the gays has debuted immensely into society's vernacular in the past two decades. Words such as gay, homosexual, faggot, lesbian and dyke are at least known if not accepted throughout the entire country. Extensive work researching these words and this language has been appearing in such places as women's studies, anthropology, and speech communication since the 1940s. This essay will review the research that has been done on the etymology of the word gay and lesbian and the terminology involved with, around and inside the gay and lesbian culture. Homosexual is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "of or involving sexual activity with a member of one's own sex." The prefix homo is not from the Latin homo "man" but from the Greek homos, which means "the same," thus giving the word homosexual its definition of "same sex relationship." It seems that the word homosexual is not as highly accepted because it seems to emphasizes the word as just a sexuality but not as a cultural and social attitude which gay and lesbians considered themselves to have. (Safire). The Oxford English Dictionary does defines gay as a slang noun that originated in the United States meaning "homosexual." It originally meant "exuberantly cheerful." The word "homosexual" was coined in 1870 and
Analysis of a passage from John Le Carr, "Single and Single". This opening passage begins with Mr Winser being confronted with an automatic pistol being aimed at him, and we immediately see the events portrayed through Mr Winsers point of view, despi
Table of Contents Initial Impressions 2 Thought and Speech Presentation 2 Deictic sub-worlds 3 Viewpoint Effects 4 Deviation and Foregrounding 5 Semantic Deviation 5 Graphalogical Deviation 6 Parallelism and Grammatical Deviation 6 Lexis 7 Elegant Variation 7 Context and Tone 8 Conclusion 8 Appendix 9 Bibliography 10 Initial Impressions This opening passage begins with Mr Winser being confronted with an automatic pistol being aimed at him, and we immediately see the events portrayed through Mr Winser's point of view, despite the majority of the passage being written in 3rd person. This effect is achieved through the use of thought presentation, such as direct thought, for example in the opening sentence "this gun is not a gun" (which is foregrounded throughout the passage). There are also other devices used throughout the passage to help the reader see the scene from Mr Winser's perspective such as deixis, the use of the definite article, possessives and adjectives. There is grammatical, semantic, and graphological deviation throughout the text, which helps us understand Mr Winser's thought patterns and rationalisation to add to the pace of the novel, appropriate for this genre. The tone of the passage, despite the severity of the situation is tense, but not too serious, and is almost quirky and slightly eccentric due to slightly unusual characteristics in