...Linguistics & English Language (University of Edinburgh) 2013-2014 How to Write an Essay in Linguistics The following guidelines range from very general to very specific. They are also more specifically geared toward writing essays in sociolinguistics or empirical methods rather than other areas of linguistics, though many of the same general principles apply. It is to your benefit to try follow these guidelines from the start of your first draft; the closer you follow them, the easier it will be for your instructor to make useful comments on your drafts, focusing on content, rather than style; on linguistics, rather than writing ability. It will also save you a lot of time because there will probably be less restructuring needed between your first draft and your final draft. GENERAL STRUCTURE: 1. Tell us what you’re gonna tell us. 2. Tell us! 3. Tell us what you told us. At a very basic level, this is all you need to know. The main point here is that your paper is not a mystery novel; there should be no ‘big reveal’ at the end. Rather, you want to set up the reader’s expectations so that they know up front what you’re trying to argue and, while reading your paper, will see if they’re convinced by how you make your arguments. The first step roughly corresponds (to the first paragraph of) your introduction and the third step roughly corresponds to (the first paragraph of) your conclusion (remember that this is an art, not a science, and these are guidelines...
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...than for men? My term paper shall try to answer those questions, look at typical forms of language use in relation to gender and I will aim to find possible reasons that explain a gender-based difference. But first it is important to explain why in sociolinguistics the term gender is used rather than sex. While sex refers to biological characteristics, gender is “a social category that is connected to the roles of women and men in society” (Becker & Bieswanger 2010: 185). My term paper will start with some general definitions about gender and language like gender-exclusive speech difference, gender-preferential speech features and gender and class. I will focus especially on women´s linguistic behaviour and answer questions like “Do women talk more than men?”. I will try to find explanations for a different linguistic behaviour. After focusing on explanations for a possible different use of language I will finally give features of women´s language that will make differences obvious. At the end of my paper I will also try to explain what is meant by a “sexism in language” and whether or not English is a sexist language and what could be done to reduce it. I often find myself in a situation were I realize that I sometimes use quite a sexist language and have trouble to avoid it, for example when I am writing a school paper. Because of this, I decided to choose “Language and Gender” as the topic for my term paper. The main source I worked with to write this paper is Janet Holmes´...
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...definition Applied Linguistics Today, development of linguistics is growing fast. Another aspect related to the fields of language study is also growing. Studies on language not only include one aspect only, but have spread to other aspects outside the language associated with the use of language and human life. Linguistic theory is a branch of applied linguistics that focuses on the general theory and methods in language research. Branches of linguistics can be divided into phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Therefore, applied linguistics can be applied in any field. One of these fields is education. More exactly in terms of language learning, in this case there should be more discussion about the relationship linguistic applied to language learning. The word linguistics (linguistics-UK) comes from the Latin "lingua" meaning language. In the French language "-langage langue"; Italian "lingua"; Spanish "lengua" and English "language". the function of Suffix "ics" in linguistics to indicate the name of a science, which means the science of language, as the term economics, physics and others. According Pringgodigdo and hasan shadili, "linguistics is the scientific study of language". linguistic is divided into two categories, as an adjective and a noun. Linguistics as an adjective means "the study of language and languages". While linguistics as a noun, means "the science of language; methods of learning and studying languages ". so it means linguistics is the science...
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...Running head: TRACING THE NATURE OF SEMANTIC CHANGE Tracing the Nature of Semantic Change Shahrin Akter 1521358655 Department of English North South University Tracing the Nature of Semantic Change Introduction Language never stands still. All living languages are continually changing over the course of time due to social, cultural, environmental, historical and linguistic factors. Semantic change is one of the major phenomenon of language change. Basically, semantic change deals with the change of the original meaning of a word as well as the development of a new word which is reflected in the way the words are being used. This paper mainly puts an insight to the major causes of semantic change as well as trace the traditional classification made by various scholars. According to Varshney, “The main factors responsible for semantic change are vagueness in meaning, loss of motivation, polysemy, ambiguous contexts and the structure of the vocabulary”. (p. 284). Over the passage of time, people use words in a new context. Hence the meanings of the words are changing gradually, often to the point that the new meaning is radically different from the original usage. For instance, the word ‘awful’ originally meant ‘awe-inspiring, filling someone with deep awe’, as...
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...Lecture 1 Introduction to research in applied linguistics • What is research? • Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind Marston Bates, American writer • Research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing Von Braun, American engineer • If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research. Wilson Mizner, American dramatist Lecture 1 Compulsory Readings Cohen, L., et al. 2007. Research Methods in Education. London and New York: Routledge (P. 5- 47) Nunan. D. 1992. Research Methods in Language Learning. Cambridge: CUP (P. 1 - 23) Brown, J.D. & Rodgers, T.S., 2002, Doing Second Language Research, Oxford: OUP (P 3-18) Wisker, G. 2001, The Postgraduate Research Handbook, New York: Palgrave (P. 113 - 126) McDonough, J. & S. McDonough, 1997, Research Methods for English Language Teachers, London: Arnold (P. 37 - 55) Lankshear, C. & M. Knobel, 2008, A Handbook for Teacher Reasearch, From Design to Implementation, Glasgow: McGraw-Hill (1-39) The distance between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory. The nature of research 4 traditional kinds of empirical research: • Scientific and positivistic methodologies • Naturalistic and interpretive methodologies • Methodologies form critical theory • Feminist educational research The search for truth • The search for understanding the nature of...
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...CONTENTS INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….....3 CHAPTER I. THEORY OF THE NOMINATIVE PROCESSES……......………...5 1.1. General data…………………………………………………………………....5 1.2. The Semantic Triangle………………………………………………………....8 1.3. Semantic types of nomination………………………….. .…………....…….. .11 1.4. The methods of nomination…………………………………………………...14 1.5. Transposition and identification as the two stages of nominative process…….16 CHAPTER II. THE ROLE OF NOMINATION IN LANGUAGE ORGANIZATION……………………………………………………………...…19 2.1. Creative approach during the process of color nomination……………………19 2.2. The main types of lexical nomination of the words of the group «clothes»……21 CONCLUSION……....………....……...…………………………………...…….23 SOURCES…......………...……………………………………………………..…24 INTRODUCTION The actuality of this work is that the issue of change of meaning has always attracted attention of a great deal of scholars both in America and in Europe. The long history of language studying shows the interest of scientists to determine the issue of basic language functions, which inevitably include the nominative one. As a primary language function, the nominative function assumes the language system ability to designate and to isolate fragments of reality, transferring their notions into words, word combinations, idioms and sentences. The dynamic development of cognitive and communicative activities of human society and, as a result, the emergence of new realities, artifacts, objects of material and...
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...Corpus linguistics and language pedagogy: The state of the art – and beyond Joybrato Mukherjee Justus Liebig University, Giessen Abstract The present paper provides a selected overview of the state of the art in corpusinformed language pedagogy. Starting off from a general assessment of the impact that the corpus revolution has already had on English language teaching (ELT), the focus of the main part of this paper is on some typical examples of corpus use in three language-pedagogically relevant areas: (1) using corpora for ELT (e.g. producing learner dictionaries); (2) using corpora in the ELT classroom (e.g. in data-driven learning); (3) using learner corpora. With regard to learner corpus research, for example, the paper also sketches out some prospects for future research, e.g. the compilation of local learner corpora. 1 Introduction: the corpus revolution and English language teaching There is general agreement among empirically-oriented linguists that the advent of large, computerised corpora has revolutionised the linguistic description and analysis of the English language. In modern corpus linguistics, not just any group of texts qualifies as a corpus, but it must be "a collection of texts assumed to be representative of a given language, dialect, or other subset of a language" (Francis 1982: 7). Representativeness is a key issue in corpus design because it captures the attempt to compile a database that provides a statistically viable sample of language...
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...Stores 4.1.1 Preliminary Überlegungen 4.1.2 The experiment 4.1.3 The results of the department store study 4.2 Study of Lower East Side 4.2.1 The MFY Survey 4.2.2 The ALS (American Language Survey) 5. The meaning of Labov’s studies for modern sociolinguistics 6. Conclusion 1. Topic and Introduction The topic of this term paper are “Labov’s studies in New York and Martha’s Vineyard”. Labov’s observations in Martha’s Vineyard served Labov as a model for his Master’s essay and his observations in New York as a model for his dissertation. The second chapter will give a survey of William Labov’s motivation for studying sociolinguistics. Chapter 3 is about his observations in Martha’s Vineyard. After that I’ll give a detailed description of his studies in New York (chapter 4) divided up into the two parts: First, the social stratification of (r) in New York City Department Stores (4.1) and second The Lower East Side (4.2). These studies are Labov’s most famous works and two of his early publications. With his studies he created the base for a modern way of analysing language without using tape-recorded interviews (see also chapter 5 of this term paper, the meaning of Labov’s studies for modern sociolinguistics). Finally a conclusion will be given in chapter 6. 2. Labov’s motivation for studying Sociolinguistics William Labov was born on December the 4th...
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...MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, SCIENCE, YOUTH AND SPORT OF UKRAINE IVAN FRANKO NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LVIV THE FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES LINGUISTIC MEANS OF POTRAYING MAIN CHARACTERS IN “THE CANTERBURY TALES” BY GEOFFREY CHAUCER COURSE PAPER PRESENTED BY LILIA YAREMA a fourth year student of the English department SUPERVISED BY SPODARYK O. V. an assistant professor of the English department LVIV 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………… 3-4 CHAPTER I. THEORETICAL ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS…… 5-16 1.1 Linguistic analysis……………………………………………… 5-8 1.2 Discourse and Text analyses….…………….………………….. 9-11 1.3 Stylistic analysis ………………………………………………… 12-16 CHAPTER II. LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF CHAUCER’S CHARACTERS 17-28 2.1 “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” ……………………………………… 18-22 2.2 “The Pardoner’s Tale” ………………………………………….. 23-28 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………. 29-30 REFERENCES...… ………………………………………………………….. 31-32 INTRODUCTION The theme of the course paper is “Linguistic means of portraying main characters in “The Canterbury tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer”. This paper intends to make an analysis of the language in the collection of stories “The Canterbury Tales”, written by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of 14th century. We will analyze the language used to describe characters. It was based on the idea that every choice made by the author of a sentence is meaningful. Therefore, once we understand the choices...
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...VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES THE FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES [pic] THESIS PROPOSAL AN INVESTIGATION ON THE COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES USED BY VIETNAMESE TOUR GUIDES TO OVERCOME LANGUAGE LIMITATIONS WHEN COMMUNICATING WITH FOREIGN TOURISTS (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ CHIẾN LƯỢC GIAO TIẾP MÀ CÁC HƯỚNG DẪN VIÊN VIỆT NAM SỬ DỤNG ĐỂ KHẮC PHỤC NHỮNG HẠN CHẾ VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI GIAO TIẾP VỚI KHÁCH DU LỊCH NƯỚC NGOÀI) Supervisor : Prof. Nguyen Hoa Name : Hoang Thi Thanh Date of birth: 25/12/1989 Cohort : 22 (2013 – 2015) Class : D HANOI, 25/08/2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS |CONTENT |PAGE | |RATIONALE OF THE STUDY |1 | |OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY |3 | |SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY |4 | |SCOPE OF THE STUDY ...
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...Conventionality of a Linguistic Sign as a Social Factor in Language Development By Krystyna Poluektova CONTENTS CHAPTER I – Introduction Statement of the problem and purpose……………………………………………3 CHAPTER II Literature review, definition of terms and main ideas………………………………………………………………………………………………….5 CHAPTER IV – Conclusion…………………………………………........................14 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………….15 Introduction Statement of the problem and purpose The idea of the linguistic sign, which is today asserted or implied in most works of general linguistics, came from Ferdinand de Saussure. Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics. Saussure's ideas had a major impact on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century. Two currents of thought emerged independently of each other, one in Europe, the other in America. The results of each incorporated the basic notions of Saussurean thought in forming the central tenets of structural linguistics. Saussure posited that linguistic form is arbitrary, and therefore all languages function in a similar fashion. According to Saussure, a language is arbitrary because it is systematic in that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Also, all languages have their own concepts...
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...analysis’ role is to cast information into its proper intelligence framework and in the process minimising being biased. If evaluation and analysis is quality the intelligence given to policy makers will help policy makers to come up with quality policies and if the evaluation and analysis is poor obviously the policy makers will come up with ineffective policies. There are repercussions if intelligence services fail to analyse. Sign theory help in deductive, inductive and abductive types of reasoning. In this discourse I will define the sign theory, evaluation, analysis, four tools of analysis and the implications of sign theory to evaluation and analysis as a process which is scientific, logical, methodological and verifiable. Theory is a term that is misused and used in academics cycles. Du Ploy (2008) defines a theory as an abstract generalization that seeks to explain a phenomena. A theory provides some explanation on insights into a particular phenomenon. It is not a haphazard arrangement of ideas but rather it is logical, scientific and even methodical in its endeavour to explore and explain the nature of reality. A...
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...This term paper discusses the concept of language universals as proposed by two scholars, Noam Chomsky and Joseph H. Greenberg. Both of these scholars bring in their different points of view concerning their understanding of language universals and they stipulate the rules underlying their proposals. In the last part of this term paper we try to show the relationship between language universals and language acquisition. Language universals are a pattern that occurs systematically across natural languages potentially true for all of them. For instance, all languages have verbs and nouns and they have phonological aspects such as consonants and vowels The research in this area of linguistics is nearly connected to the study of linguistic typology and also intends to portray generalizations across languages such as cognition and perception of the mind. Noam Chomsky His arguments on language universals were mainly on grammar. He proposed that if human beings are brought up under normal conditions, then they will always develop language with a certain property e.g. distinguishing function words from lexical words. As a result this property, it is considered to be a property of universal grammar in the most general sense. He argued that there are theoretical senses of the term universal grammars well. The most general would be that universal grammar is whatever properties of a normally developing human brain cause it to learn languages that conform to the universal grammar. Using...
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...theories of communication. The basic aim of this paper is concerned with identifying the points of similarity and difference between honorifics in Modern Standard Arabic and English with regard to structure. It also aims at giving a brief account of the term honorifics and how are honorific expressions realized in both languages. It is hypothesized that the structure of honorifics in Modern Standard Arabic is different from that in English. 1. The Concept of Honorifics: Honorifics are derived from outputs of politeness strategies where these directly or indirectly convey a status deferential between speaker and addressee or referent, where they indirectly convey such a status deferential, as in French Tu / Vous pronouns do via the general strategy of pluralizing in order to impersonalize (Brown and Levinson 1978: 183). 1 Honorific Expressions in Arabic and English with Reference to other Languages Hashim Sa'doon Saleem Al-Ni'aymi Honorifics have been defined as “politeness formulas in a particular language which may be specific affixes, words, or sentence structure” (Richard et al., 1985: 131). Languages which have a complex system of honorifics are, for instance, Japanese, Mudurese (a language of Eastern Java), Hindi, and Arabic; English, on the other hand, has no complex system of honorifics, but there are few cases of compound honorifics; e.g. professor doctor, dear sir, etc. (ibid.: 131). Irvine (1995: 1) points out that “linguistic honorifics are forms of speech that...
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...Introduction The theme of my course paper sounds as following: «Adjective, its types and categories». Before beginning of investigation in our theme, I would like to say some words dealt with the theme of my course paper. Without referring to the traditional definition of adjectives you can find in any dictionary, Let's make our way into talking about the standard role of adjectives in language. In English the adjective is multifunctional. It is used essentially to describe an object but, in general, it is meant to enrich and clarify ideas and lead the interlocutors to communicate eloquently. Standing on such ground, I would like to point out tasks and aims of my work 1. The first task of my work is to give definition to term «adjective». 2. The second task is to describe the role of adjectives in our speech. 3. The last task of my work is to characterize adjectives from grammatical point of view. In our opinion the practical significance of our work is hard to be overvalued. This work reflects modern trends in linguistics and we hope it would serve as a good manual for those who wants to master modern English language. Also this work can be used by teachers of English language for teaching English grammar. The present work might find a good way of implying in the following spheres: 1. In High Schools and scientific circles of linguistic kind it can be successfully used by teachers and philologists as modern material for writing research works dealing with English adjectives...
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