George and Lennie Essay

The title of the book comes from a poem by the 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns. â€Å"Of Mice and Men† is a novel written by John Steinbeck. It is set in California in 1930s during the time of the depression. During this time of depression, people lived in poverty, finding it difficult to gain employment and often had to search ranch to ranch for employment. At this time people were inspired and motivated by the â€Å"American dream† a dream of a land in which life should be better and richer. This, however was nothing but a lost dream. They went on to search for a job, which would fullfill, their dreams. In Of Mice and Men we know that there are characters that have a dream. A dream that they are really working hard for and there are characters whose dreams are already taken away from them. I think John Steinbeck wrote this so he can provide the reader with a historical and social viewpoint and background of life in the 1930s. An outsider is someone who does not fit in to the mainstream of Society. In this essay I will write about Candy, the oldest person on the farm. Crooks, the crippled Negro and Cuerly’s wife, the only women in the book, who did not even get a name. I have chosen them because they don’t fit in with the other characters. In the 1930s Curleys Wife represents people who were ignored and suffered from loneliness. First of all John Steinbeck does not reveal the name of Curley’s Wife as he thinks she is not important which makes me think that she has no other part to play other than being Curleys Wife. Curly’s Wife is stuck on a farm when she thinks she should be in Hollywood.   

Mia philippines Essay

The Philippines was first put on the map by Portuguese adventurer Magellan working for the Spanish throne on March 16, 1521. The Philippines had become a Spanish colony and was the first country to be named after a sovereign, Phillip II of Spain.1 Spanish rule had continued until 1898 when the Philippines had become an American colony following the Spanish-American War for the stately sum of $20 million. In 1942 during WWII, the Philippines had fallen under Japanese occupation and was liberated by American and Filipino forces under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur in a fiercely contested battle that raged on between 1944 and 1945. The Philippines had attained its independence on July 4, 1946, and had a functioning democratic system. 2 The Philippines Archipelago consisted of 7,100 islands, covering an area of 299,735 square kilometers and was slightly larger than Arizona. The capital city of Manila was situated on the largest Philippine island of Luzon (see Exhibit 1). The Philippines had a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of $3,400.3 The percentage of the population of the Philippines living below US$2 a day was 45.2 per cent in 2006.4 PHILIPPINE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT Research conducted in 2009 showed that the Philippines was ranked 140th for ease of doing business and 155th for starting a business, out of a total of 178 countries. It took on average 15 procedures and a total of 52 days to complete business startup procedures in the Philippines compared to six procedures and 44.2 days and 5.8 procedures and 13.4 days for the same process in Asia and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, respectively.5 The Philippines had the second lowest savings and investment as share of GDP ratio in Asia6 (see Exhibit 2). PHILIPPINE FISHING INDUSTRY The Philippines has total territorial waters of 2.2 million square kilometers, of which coastal waters comprise 266,000 square kilometers and coastal reef area (10 to 20 fathoms deep, where reef fishing takes place) comprise 27,000 square kilometers.7 In 2003, the Philippines ranked eighth among the top fish-producing countries in the world with its total production of 3.62 million metric tons of fish, crustaceans, mollusks and aquatic plants (including seaweed). The production constituted 2.5 per cent of the total world production of 146.27 million metric tons.8 The fishing industry’s contribution to the country’s GDP was 2.3 per cent and 4.2 per cent, at current and constant prices, respectively. The industry employed a total of 1,614,368 fishing operators nationwide,9 of which the artisanal fisheries sector accounted for 1,371,676.10 Artisanal fishing operations were typically family-based and used smaller craft. There were a total of 469,807 fishing boats in the Philippines, of which 292,180 were non-motorized and 177,627 were motorized.11 Fish was not only an important source of nutrition, but as fishing did not require landownership or special permits it was an employment of last resort for people who had no other means of subsistence. MIA, DENMARK MIA was established in Denmark in 1975 by wealthy businessman Hagen Nordstrom, who dedicated the NGO to his wife Mia and made fighting poverty his life’s work. (MIA stood for â€Å"beloved† in Danish.) MIA had initially focused solely on poverty-alleviating projects in Africa and had expanded its operations to Latin America and the Caribbean only in the early 1990s. The grandson of Nordstrom, Gillis Nordstrom, had taken over as MIA chairman in 2004 on the eve of the Bander Aceh Tsunami of December 26, 2004, which devastated Southeast Asia and killed as many as 130,000 people.12 Nordstrom had taken initiative and redirected MIA to focus on disaster recovery and poverty alleviation projects in Southeast Asia. MIA had established an office in Manila in January 2006, and the young Danish development economist Borje Petersen was hired to manage the MIA Philippines office. Petersen was paid a starting salary of $75,000 a year plus housing, slightly below average for a comparable development economist position. Petersen knew that MIA’s attention was focused on Indonesia and Malaysia, which had been the hardest hit by the tsunami, and was anxious to carve out a position for MIA Philippines by designing an exceptional project. As the expansion into Asia was the pet project of MIA’s chairman, Petersen felt assured that funding would be easily appropriated and even expedited. Petersen knew that the average overseas posting for a development economist for MIA was two years and had quickly established contact with local and international stakeholders and set up numerous meetings with large development project counterparts such as the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the German development aid organization GFZ to get an expedited understanding of the Philippines and its unique needs. Based on the initial research, Petersen had decided that, whereas an agricultural project would be feasible, it would take a long time to realize and the outcome could be complicated given the Philippines’ proneness to be hit by typhoons. Petersen’s research had revealed that small-scale aquaculture projects had been successfully implemented in the Philippines in the past. However, there were hardly any projects to speak of directed at artisanal fishing and picking up on the vested opportunity and his desire to deliver fast results and prove himself worthy of the task that MIA and its chairman demanded, he had chosen to design a project helping artisanal fishermen. Petersen had researched the possibility of helping a fishing village close to Manila and the search for the ideal village had come to a successful ending when MIA’s driver, Vicente Tubo, had mentioned how some of his distant cousins fished for a living in a fishing village seven to nine hours by car from Manila. A factfinding mission to the village Barangay San Hagon was undertaken and the village was thus chosen as the beneficiary of MIA’s pilot project in the Philippines. BARANGAY SAN HAGON Barangay San Hagon boasted 125 households and had a resident population of 625. San Hagon lay on the south coast of Luzon, the largest island of the Philippines. The Barangay was the smallest administrative division in the Philippines and stemmed from the Spanish â€Å"Barrio.†13 Barangay San Hagon was administered by a local government unit (LGU) and consisted of seven Barangay council members and a chairman. The chairman of Barangay San Hagon was Rafael Buenaventura, age 59, who had held office for more than a decade. Fishing villages in the Philippines were very vulnerable to external risk, especially natural calamities such as typhoons, flooding and fish kills, which severely affected their financial situation.

Web design project. Phebra, Australia Case Study

Web design project. Phebra, Australia - Case Study Example Phebra is a pharmaceutical company based in Australia. They specialise in medicines which are considered to be innovative for the hospital market. Their market place is tailored to serious and life-threatening conditions. They are specialists in their field. They have a range of pharmaceuticals to cater for the majority of conditions in the "serious" and "life threatening" categories.This project has arisen out of a need to review and improve the existing Phebra website. The task of the new look website will be to communicate the Phebra message in a simple easily readable format. As much information about the company should be placed on a single page, rather than splitting the information into separate pages. This should also make the site easier to navigate. As Phebra were previously known as PharmaLab, it could also be considered as a "rebranding" promotion. Therefore the look and feel of the new site is important, from the perspective of customer branding and effective marketing.T he existing design is based on a blue and white colour scheme. The main focus of the front page is the pull down menu which details the products on offer from the company. The site is fairly simplistic on the front page, in that the main sections include the business, products, ordering information and a contacts page. The main theme of the business is covered with the title "Life-enhancing medicines." This is quite effective. The news section on the left of the web page provides information on recent events. At the right of the home page a typical product is featured. The target audience is not obvious from the home page, even though the intended audience is hospitals. There are no links or information on current customers, even though they market to several countries. The areas Phebra cover is not easily identifiable from the home page information. The colour scheme is easy on the eye, and has a friendly outlook. The marketing message is good overall, but leaves room for improvement and could be more targeted. The information on the products however, is not easy to understand to the lay-person i.e. anyone who is not a pharmaceutical professional, and could be improved. Evaluation of existing design solution The existing design of the Phebra website is partly based on history, following the change in branding from "PharmaLab" to "Phebra". The site is well established and is attractive. The main problem with the site is that the information is quite technical and not understood by the everyday user. The site may be fine for pharmaceutical professionals, but in order for managers and the general public to find information a description of terms and products could be provided in a more user-friendly manner. They provide a useful contact us page, and the current format is suitable, as is. From a marketing perspective the text used does get to the point, but could do with a facelift. Their objective is to sell pharmaceutical products to hospitals in several countries. Therefore a simple statement about the products they sell is fine up to a point. However, in order to compete with numerous other companies in the same field, it would help to include demonstrations of products perhaps in flash movie format. Another way of gaining competitive advantage would be to include testimonials and a list of established customers. This would enhance Phebras reputation is a market leader in their field.

Questions for Case at the AQRs Momentum Funds (The Momentum Effect) Study

Questions for at the AQRs Momentum Funds (The Momentum Effect) - Case Study Example The existence and ability to implement the strategy despite up or down markets is implied due to the aspect of relative performance as a component of momentum. Authors such as Jegadeesh and Titman in their publication, present models of behavior with a basis on the idea that momentum profits result due to inherent biases in the way an investor interpret given information (7). Others however argue that momentum investors realized massive returns as mere compensation for risk. Generation of momentum returns can be as a result of rational and irrational reasons. Some of these reasons include momentum being a consequence of overreaction and under reaction to news pertaining to the market and failing to incorporate them in their transaction prices. This argument can be explained by examples such as positive announcements from companies resulting in price increases thus more buying of stocks (Jegadeesh & Titman, 10). With respect to the time series of returns, we can conclude that each stock’s past return is a future predictor meaning that stocks with high expected rates of return in adjacent time periods are expected to have high realized rates of returns in both periods. In the case of return reversals, such appear mostly in later years following the formation date where it is most likely that an investor will lose

Discrimination Based on Religion and National Origin Essay

Discrimination Based on Religion and National Origin - Essay Example Accordingly, as it is made known to her that customers need English speaking sales professionals, Mary was aware of the needs of the customers as well as her responsibilities, which include speaking in English. Additionally, the Spanish language was not prohibited as long as it is used to communicate with a Spanish-speaking customer. In the context of Mary’s case, it can be said that the imposition of the â€Å"English Only Policy† is to prevent misunderstanding between employees and customers. Murray and Bernard mentioned that with the diversity in the workforce today, there is a need to impose a preferred language to ensure effective and comprehensible communication among customers and employees (1). Additionally, Mary’s dismissal is not merely based on her language, but it is based on the idea that she did not use the prescribed language preferred by the company. For this reason, Sears did not violate the law that protects employees against racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination. Based on Title VII, Tucker and Haddad flesh out that the concept of religion, in the juridical context, includes all the religious practices, observances, and beliefs of an individual (217). With this definition, it can be said that religion has a wide scope that accommodating all of the employees’ religious preferences may be difficult. Furthermore, although it is a general rule that employers should not discriminate an employee’s religion, service industries and religious-related organizations are exempted from the limitations prescribed in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Service industries and organizations associated with a particular religion can discriminate an employee’s religion. For instance, the airline industry, in its service-oriented business process, is allowed to disregard the religious practices of their employees and oblige them to work especially when the work is a business necessity. Considering the rationale of the exception, I

Question repository and test paper generator Literature review

Question repository and test paper generator - Literature review Example The online examination system provides a user friendly interface with all the features of any original examination system. The online examination system conducts exams using multiple-choice questions, gap-fills and open questions. The online examination system provides a platform where the teachers can easily conduct tests as they do not have to waste time on checking the test of each individual student and students can easily give exams. The system is convenient for students as they don’t need to worry about things like pens and teachers will only need to prepare the basic question-bank once with the system allowing addition of additional questions later.The online examination system has two users classified as Administrators and the students. (Jin & Lin, 2012) The administrators are the typical examiners and are responsible for the management of users, tests to be conducted, subjects, questions and results. These administrators also manage system backup and recovery strategi es. The second user of the system is the student who uses it to sit for examinations. The students take exams in the front desk using usernames and passwords given to them by the administrators. The system shall distribute questions to the student automatically and start the countdown for the students to complete the test within the stipulated time, and submit answers to the server. Depending on the type of exam, the system divides the questions into objective and subjective questions, with papers being corrected by the system and the teachers. The system shall aggregate final results, and students can check their scores on the system breaking the time and space constraints of traditional test, and achieve paperless office. The online examination system supports the management of users, questions, subjects and results of course. The system is fully automated and it evaluates thoroughly and does calculations of the tests done providing test summary and results summary to both the tes t conductor and the student. Students can check their results online. The online examination system shall be all browsers compatible to give all its users the best experience with different browsers. In each management section there shall be a provision of a searching option providing a ‘what you see is what you’ get editor to make preparations of questions easier. The system shall also provide some Indic language support. Advantages of online exam system The advantage of the online examination is that it can be conducted for candidates in remote areas and evaluation of answers can be fully automated for multiple choice questions. Depending on the type of the questions and the requirements, essay type questions can be evaluated through the system. The system allows for examinations to be conducted at any time as per the availability and convenience of the users and reduction of costs substantially since there is no paper work involved like printing exam papers and prepa ring paper admissions. (Peter, 2004) The examination results could be viewed just after the exams and there is an option to display the correct answer or hints, for formative testing. There are no distribution expenses for the question papers since the papers would not be distributed to different locations. There are no invigilators involved and also there is no

Law and ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Law and ethics - Essay Example In the case at bar, Jack is already a 72-year-old man, who is at the time of the incident, intoxicated or under the influence of alcohol. Hence, at that precise moment, he cannot validly give consent of refuse a medical treatment which can put his health at risk. Therefore, although Jack is considered a competent adult, the current situation he is into will endanger his life if he refuses to be given a medical treatment taking into consideration his old age. His present medical condition can lead to further complications which can only be prevented by a timely treatment shall to be administered to him. 2. It is important that doctors shall give an assurance that Jack’s condition is stable. A certification coming from a doctor that Jack is out of any danger will justify Jack’s wishes to be left at home and that he is on his way to recovery. In the case of Malette V Shulman, [1991] 2 Med LR 162, Donnelly J., highlights that â€Å"the right to refuse treatment was an inhe rent  component of the supremacy of the patient's right over his own body not  premised on the risks of refusal. ... Details of good medical practice and duties of a doctor can be found at the General Medical website, which can be viewed at . Although Jack is a competent adult who can decide what to do with his own body, it is important that the first priority is the health of Jack and ensure his speedy recovery. It is the duty and responsibility of the doctor to make the care of his patient the main concern. The best interest and welfare of the patient should come first. 11. Although Jack may demonstrate the capability to carry-out a normal conversation, the fact that he is intoxicated and on warfarin is an indication that his present medical condition is unstable. The doctors cannot rely on the decision of Jack to stay at home and refuse treatment because his right to self-determination is impaired and inaccurate. His irrational decision of choosing to stay at home which can lead to internal hemorrhage or blot clot in his head signifies that he is incompetent to make a sound decision to protect h imself. In the case of Re: C (Adult: Refusal of Treatment), [1994], the Supreme Court ruled that he legal test for competence is set out in Justice Thorpe's  decision. â€Å"First is the ability of the patient to comprehend and retain the information; and Secondly, believing  it and Thirdly, weighing it in the balance to arrive at a choice." Here, there is a clear indication that the patient cannot fully understand and comprehend the consequences of his actions and decisions because he is under the influence of drugs (warfarin) and alcohol. Therefore, it is the duty of the doctors and the people surrounding him to make an intelligent decision for Jack, which is to bring him to

Urban Legends Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Urban Legends - Essay Example It also evaluates how our lives change throughout adulthood when these legends disappear. †¦Modern folklore believed to be true by the people who preach about them†¦ [An urban legend is] an incredible story that may be true or false but gets exaggerated by the people who tell the story. As the story grows older, the more unbelievable the story becomes...Urban legends are a way for people to try and explain the unexplainable. Every culture has their own urban legends that people create. The stories carry their own traditions as they are passed down to later generations (Smith, Smith and Bobbitt, 2008, p. 93). Urban legends originate for a number of reasons. They may have been propagated as an explanation for unexplainable phenomena, as a fun addition to festivities, as a consolation for tragic events, as a way of inculcating certain morals and values, or merely as a creative release. Whatever the reason be, the fact is that these are lies. In most cases, those who propagate these stories know them for false. The questions that emerge here are – is it ethical to spread stories that we ourselves know are false? Is it right to lie to small children about the existence of characters such as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? Is it valid to justify those lies by believing that they serve a fun or moral purpose? These questions continue to be a matter of debate. In early childhood, we live a magical time. We grow up listening to fairy tales, tales of dragons and brave princes. Our festivities, especially Christmas time, are immersed with hoards of expectations from Santa Claus and fun with the Easter Bunny. We grow up idolizing the characters we hear stories of. As children, we do good and avoid bad because we know Santa Claus will get us what we want. Gifts appearing miraculously under the Christmas tree, stockings left overnight filled with candy from Santa,

Jesus had a way of teaching his disciples Essay Example for Free

Jesus had a way of teaching his disciples Essay Jesus always had a way of teaching his disciples how to be better people. He used events to teach them, he also used small talking sessions to teach them. The disciples were taught many valuable lessons from Jesus. In the modern world some people think that only bishops, priests or vicars are real disciples but every Christian who has been baptised should try to be a follower of Jesus. Christians today work for each other and for the people that they see as the weak in society such as the elderly, alcoholics, drug addicts and one-parent families. There are plenty of schemes run by voluntary Christian organisations for the poor and weak in society. The Salvation Army is well known for its concern of outcasts in society. They practise many different activities including childrens day centres and nurseries and family welfare work and homes for the elderly. The Salvation Army does plenty for the weak of society and other Christian denominations have their charity organisations, which provide similar services. There are international Christian organisations that include the Tear fund and Christian Aid, these groups care for the needs of developing nations. They help third world countries to live life as best as they can by providing clean water, health care and education. Some Christians today choose to become priests or join a religious order as their way of being disciples of Jesus in the modern world.A priest is a servant of Gods people. The Priests job is to proclaim and preach the gospel, to bless the bread and wine offered at mass. to care for the needs of people in the parish, especially by showing his worshippers what they can do for each other and to devote themselfs to God. Some people should use their talents to improve the world, to try and make the world peaceful and loving place. They have a duty to be aware of all the worlds problems such as crime, prejudice and violence. Christians who take part in the Eucharist are sent to serve others at the end of mass. The priest says, Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. We can serve others by donating our clothes to charity shops so that others will benefit. We can visit the lonely, offer shelter, feed the hungry, pray, provide love and comfort, in doing all of these things we are serving the Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength(Marks Gospel 12: 30-31). This is an extract from Marks gospel in the passage of The Great Commandment; it is what Jesus said to be the greatest commandment of all. Jesus explains this to mean that God is the only Lord we have so therefore we need to love him in the best way that we can. The second greatest commandment of them all is to Love your neighbour as yourself(Marks Gospel 12: 31). When Jesus was talking of these two great commandments he wanted us to realise that life does not revolve around ourselves it is about what we can do for others. This message is to show us not to be selfish and be prepared to suffer for our beliefs. We should never contribute to Mickey taking or peer pressure as we would not like that if it was directed at us. We should give our time for other people which many people do as a careers options so they are also giving their life to God at the same time by serving to others such as Nurses, Doctors, teachers, fireman and missionaries all these jobs are for someone elses benefit giving their time up for people like us when we are in danger or ill. we can contribute our ways to discipleship by going to church to pray, prayer in general if it to be at home, personal or within a group in a community at school or in a parish. It is important Christians/disciples have childlike qualities that they are proud to be a Christian, they are honest, faith, enthusiasm everything seem brilliant hope and trust in God at the lowest times in your life.Even when tragic accidents happen such as suffering with cancer, A death of someone you love or such incidents as September 11th the attack on the twin towers New York. We should still have faith and believe they are with God and happy. I think that it is extremely difficult to be a modern day disciple because many people take the modern lifestyle for granted and the mission now has a different meaning to the one in Jesusà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ time. in the modern world because so many people are judged by many different aspects of their lifestyle. They are usually judged in a positive way about their possessions and general lifestyle but they are judged in a negative way about their religion. Religion has become very unfashionableà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ and this is not just because it is considered a waste of time but it is also because Jesusà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ teaching methods were unfashionable. Todayà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s world is so materialistic and people would not judge someone kindly if abandoned their family responsibilities to become a disciple. many people still suffer great persecution and rejection.. A modern day disciple would find it difficult because our world is so materialistic and it would be extremely difficult for a person to give up the wealth gained from a job. Many items in society like drugs can be a barrier between a person and their path towards discipleship. But I do think that some peopleà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s faith is strong enough to enable them to be a modern day disciple. There are many people who have made great sacrifices to follow Jesus and do his work in our world today. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a strong believer in Christ and she is an example of a disciple in the modern world. Society does hold back a personà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s path towards discipleship but a true disciple should be able to overcome that difficulty. Being a disciple of Jesus has many implications for every area of a personà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s life and this is because their every action is influenced by Jesusà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ example. St Teresa of Avila once said, Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. This means that we are on earth to represent Jesusà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ and he lives in us and this is another way of us being disciples of Christ. In our lifetime today we are given a very important mission and that is to serve Jesus during our time on earth and be disciples, and also preach the word of Jesus to the people who do not yet know.

Applied linguistics Essay Example for Free

Applied linguistics Essay Applied linguistics 1 History The term applied linguistics dates back at least to the 1940s in the USA when linguists applied analytical methods to the practical problems of producing grammars and phrasebooks and developing language courses. 2 What Is Applied Linguistics? Applied linguistics: (1) was interdisciplinary, drawing on psychology, sociology, and pedagogy as well as theoretical linguistics; (2) included a range of fields including lexicography, stylistics, speech pathol ogy, translation, language policy, and planning among others; (3) performed a mediating function between theory and practice. Ð pplied linguistics must take into consideration the nature of language and the nature of the particular world in which language is used, the beliefs, social institutions, and culture of its users, and how these influence language use. Ideally, the job of an applied linguist is to diagnose a problem in real-world language use, bring the insights of linguistics to bear on the problem, and suggest solutions. 3 Relation of Theory and Practice: the Case of Language Teaching The applied linguist stands at the intersection of theory and practice, but it is not always clear how the applied linguist mediates between the two. This suggests a one-way street in which theory is at the starting point, and the applied linguist directs traffic from theory to practice. Influenced by structuralism in linguistics and by behaviorism in psychology, applied linguists believed that language was a collection of discrete learnable structures, speaking was primary, and learning a language was a matter of correct habit formation. To inculcate correct habits, teachers drilled students incessantly in correct pronunciation and patterned practice of grammatical structures. Under the influence of the theoretical work of Noam Chomsky, applied  linguists saw language learning as a cognitive process of hypothesis testing, in which errors indicated the stage of the language learner’s interlanguage. Instead, knowing a language means knowing how to communicate in the language; it involves acquiring â€Å"communicative competence. † A richer model of the relationship among theory, practice, and applied linguistics sees it as a two-way street in which the applied linguist directs traffic from theory into practice and from practice into theory. Similarly in applied linguistics, practice provides a testing ground for theory,  but it is more than that: real-world language use provides new questions and issues requiring new theories. 4 Recent Range of Inquiry Nevertheless, the central characteristics of applied linguistics remain: (1) focus on contextualized language use; (2) application of theory to practice and vice versa; (3) practical problem-based approach; (4) multidisciplinary perspective. 4. 1 Second language teaching and cross-cultural linguistics 2Accurate description of language use with the ultimate goal of teaching has motivated research in cross-cultural discourse and pragmatics. Concentration on  spoken language, combined with speech act theory among others, has engendered numerous research projects in applied linguistics investigating specific speech acts such as making requests and apologies in different languages and cultures. Applied linguists have examined the development of pragmatic competence in second language learners and the possibilities for teaching pragmatics. 4. 2 Language use in context: contributions of discourse analysis Outside the area of language pedagogy, the burgeoning of discourse analysis has provided a means whereby linguistic insight can be applied to real-world situations. Other institutional and professional settings, too, have come under scrutiny from applied linguists using theoretical constructs to explain how language is used in real-world settings such as commerce, employment, and public services. A field that has developed considerably in recent years in response to societal concerns is the investigation of language and gender. Recent empirical studies have enriched understanding of the interrelationship of language and gender and demonstrated that generalizations about male and female speech are unreliable when the particular communicative contexts in which the speech occurs have not been examined. Other work has examined gender and language cross-culturally and in specific institutional settings. 4. 3 Language maintenance and endangered languages and dialects The work of applied linguists on endangered or minority languages and dialects brings together field linguistics, anthropology, sociolinguistics and education. For example, a longitudinal study of language use and cultural context draws together sociolinguistic research into language use, research in language socialization, and second language acquisition research into educational discourse. It is not only minority languages that are under threat, but also dialects. 2. Contemporary linguistic approaches: Clinical, forensic, computational linguistics ( Ð ²Ã'‹Ã'‡Ð ¸Ã' Ã »Ã ¸Ã'‚Ð µÃ »Ã'Å'Ð ½Ã °Ã'  )( 29, 30, 25) We have chosen to focus on four relatively popular areas of inquiry: †¢ syntactic parsing; †¢ discourse analysis; †¢ computational morphology and phonology; †¢ corpus-based methods. Parsing and discourse analysis have had the longest continuous history of investigation. Computational morphology and phonology began to grow as a separate discipline in the mid-1980s. Corpus-based approaches were investigated as early as the 1960s. 1 Parsing (Ã'€Ð °Ã ·Ã ±Ã ¾Ã'€) Parsing is the act of determining the â€Å"syntactic structure† of a sentence. The goal is to represent â€Å"who did what to whom† in the sentence. Parsing involves tagging 3the words with an appropriate syntactic category and determining their relationships to each other. Words are grouped into phrase-like constituents, which are arranged into clauses and sentences. Machine translation systems employ parsing to derive representations of the input that are sufficient for transfer from the source to target language at either the syntactic or semantic level. A great deal of attention to the application of syntactic parsing models for language modeling for automatic speech recognition. 2 Discourse Analysis. The area of discourse analysis is concerned with inferring the intended meanings of utterances. In order for the dialogue participants to successfully carry out a dialogue, they must be able to recognize the intentions of the other participant’s utterances, and to produce their responses in such a way that will enable the other participant(s) to recognize their intentions. A recipe is a generic template for performing a particular action. The recipe library contains a collection of generic recipes, and during discourse understanding, the plan inference module attempts to infer utterance intentions and relationships using  information provided by this library. 3 Computational Morphology and Phonology Roughly speaking, the topics can be classified into computational morphology, which treats the analysis of word structure; and computational phonology, which, deals with the changes in sound patterns that take place when words are put together. 4 Corpus-based Methods The word corpus in linguistics is typically a collection of texts. Corpora have been widely used by linguists to identify and analyze language phenomena, and to verify or refute claims about language. However, a corpus also reveals important  quantitative information about the distribution of various language phenomena. 29 Clinical Linguistics Clinical linguistics is the application of the linguistic sciences to the study of language disability. 1 Identifying Linguistic Symptoms Attention has now come to be focused on important symptoms of language disability, and to those aspects of the problem which have been ignored or misdiagnosed. â€Å"Less noticeable† refers to any feature other than the audible qualities of pronunciation, the order and omission of surface grammatical elements, and the actual items which constitute vocabulary. These features exclude  most of the properties of phonological systems, the sense relations between lexical items, the constraints operating on discourse in interaction, and the many ramifications of underlying syntactic structure. All of these play a major part in identifying the various kinds of language disability. The use of a clinical linguistic frame of reference has also enabled people to make progress in identifying disorders of language comprehension. That requires careful testing and the controlling of variables. Disorders of a pragmatic kind, likewise, 4 have often remained undiagnosed, or have been misdiagnosed as problems of a  psychological or social behavioral type. 2 The Role of Clinical Linguistics 2. 2 Description A major area of clinical linguistic research has been to provide ways of describing and analyzing the linguistic behavior of patients, and of the clinicians and others who interact with them. 2. 3 Diagnosis An important aim of clinical linguistics is to provide a classification of patient linguistic behaviors. This can provide an alternative diagnostic model, and one which is more able to provide insights about intervention in cases where there is no clear evidence of any medical condition. 2. 4 Assessment (Ð ¾Ã'†Ð µÃ ½Ã ºÃ °). Clinical linguistics has also been much involved in devising more sophisticated assessments of abnormal linguistic behavior. A diagnosis tells us what is â€Å"wrong† with a patient; an assessment tells us just how seriously the patient is â€Å"wrong. † 2. 5 Intervention The ultimate goal is to formulate hypotheses for the remediation (Ð ¾Ã ·Ã ´Ã ¾Ã'€Ð ¾Ã ²Ã »Ã µÃ ½Ã ¸Ã µ) of abnormal linguistic behavior. Not all aspects of a patient’s problem are directly relevant to the need for linguistically based intervention, clinical linguistics can help clinicians to make an informed judgment about â€Å"what to teach next,† and to monitor the outcome of an intervention hypothesis, as  treatment proceeds. To a large extent, moving well beyond the patient’s language, to include an investigation of the language used by the person(s) carrying out the intervention, the kind of teaching materials used, and the setting in which the interaction takes place. 3 Linguistic Insights The chief aim of clinical linguistics is to provide the clinician with increasing levels of insight and confidence in arriving at linguistic decisions. The three pillars of any clinical linguistic approach: description – grading – intervention. All change needs to be regularly monitored, to demonstrate that progress is being made – this  is the task of assessment. The keeping of comprehensive linguistic records is a further priority, without which the efficacy of intervention can never be demonstrated. Forensic Linguistics Now linguists also have begun examining voice identification, authorship of written documents, unclear jury instructions, the asymmetry of power in courtroom exchanges, lawyer–client communication breakdown, the nature of perjury, problems in written legal discourse, defamation, trademark infringement, courtroom interpretation and translation difficulties, the adequacy of warning  labels, and the nature of tape recorded conversation used as evidence. 1 Trademark Infringement Typically, they respond to requests of attorneys to help them with their law cases. 2 Product Liability 5But the linguist, calling on knowledge of discourse analysis, semantics, and pragmatics, can determine the extent to which the message was clear and unambiguous and point out the possible meanings that the message presents. Once this is done, it is up to the attorney to determine whether or not to ask the linguist to testify at trial. 3 Speaker Identification Linguists have been used by attorneys in matters of voice identification. If the tapes are of sufficient quality, spectographic analysis is possible. If not, the linguist may rely on training and skills in phonetics to make the comparison. 4 Authorship of Written Documents Law enforcement agencies process provide a â€Å"psychological profile† of the person. Calling on knowledge of language indicators of such things as regional and social dialect, age, gender, education, and occupation, linguists analyze documents for broad clues to the identity of the writer. Stylistic analysis centers on a writer’s habitual language features over which the writer has little or no conscious awareness. 5 Criminal Cases Suspects are recorded with court authorized wire taps placed that none of the speakers is aware of being taped, or by using body microphones and engage suspects in conversation. If the law enforcement agency is concerned about the adequacy of the language evidence that they have gathered, they may call on a linguist to make transcripts of the conversations, analyze them. The tape recorded conversation itself points to the use of the other tools of the forensic linguist, including syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics, dialectology, and discourse analysis. 3. Discourse analysis (17) Discourse analysis is concerned with the contexts in and the processes through which we use oral and written language to specific audiences, for specific purposes, in specific settings. 1 What Is Discourse? A Preliminary Characterization The big D concerns general ways of viewing the world and general ways of behaving, the small d concerns actual, specific language use. Discourse analysis emphasizes that language is not merely a self-contained system of symbols but a mode of doing, being, and becoming. Discourse research can be divided into 2 major types of inquiries: (1) why some but not other linguistic forms are used on  given occasions and (2) what are the linguistic resources for accomplishing various social, affective, and cognitive actions and interactions. 2 Communicative Motivations for the Selection of Linguistic Forms Language is inseparable from other aspects of our life and that the selection of linguistic forms should be explained in terms of authentic human communicative needs (i. e. , social, interactional, cognitive, affective needs). 2. 1 Context 6One of the first questions is what is happening in this stretch of talk, who the participants are, where they are, and why they are there. Linguistic choices are  systematically motivated by contextual factors. Context is a complex of 3 dimensions: First, the field of social action in which the discourse is embedded. Second, the set of role relations among the participants. And third, the role of language in the interaction. In this view, language is a system of choices made on the basis of a contextual configuration which accounts for field, tenor, and mode. 2. 3 Speech act What kind of speech act utterance is and whether this act is accomplished through direct or indirect means. Speech act theory says that language is used not only to describe things but to do things as well. Further, utterances act on 3 different levels: the literal level (locutionary act), the implied level (illocutionary act), and the consequence of the implied act (perlocutionary act). 2. 4 Scripts / plans Script is to describe the knowledge that we have of the structure of stereotypical event sequences. If such knowledge can be described in a formal way, then we may have a theory of how humans process natural language. 2. 5 Referentiality How entities (Ð »Ã ¸Ã'†Ð °) are referred to in utterances. Some analysts are interested in how referential forms make a stretch of discourse cohesive in form and coherent in meaning. 2. 6 Topicality and thematicity What is an utterance about, what is the starting point of a message, what is the focus of a message. Topic the part of the utterance about which something is said. Prague School linguists developed the functional sentence perspective which says that word order has to do with how informative each element in the utterance is – communicative dynamism, or CD. A sentence begins with elements with the lowest CD and ends with those with the highest CD. Theme is the part of the utterance with the lowest degree of CD. 2. 7 Sequential organization The sequential context of the utterance. Discourse analysts have sought to explain linguistic choices in terms of ethnographic contexts, knowledge structure, rhetorical organization, communicative intentions, textual organization, information management and sequential organization, among others. Discourse Analysis, Linguistics, and More Discourse analysts research various aspects of language not as an end in itself, but as a means to explore ways in which language forms are shaped by and shape the contexts of their use. Further, discourse analysis draws upon not only linguistics, but also anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, and  other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences concerned with human communication. Discourse analysis promotes a view of language which says that 7 Resource Center Saved Recents Uploads My Answers Account Products Home Essays Drive Answers Texty About Company Legal Site Map Contact Us Advertise  ©2016 StudyMode. com HOME   ESSAYS   LINGUISTICS   LINGUISTICS Linguistics Applied linguistics, Discourse analysis, Language By maor87 Apr 17, 2015 6489Words 150Views More info PDF View Text View PAGE8 OF 18 language use is not only reflective of other aspects of our lives but is also constitutive of them. As it draws insights from various disciplines, it also contributes to interfacing linguistics with other domains of inquiries, such that we might now investigate the construction of culture through conversation or program computers to generate interactive texts based on our understanding of the rules and principles of human interaction. It focusses on language as it is used by real people with real intentions, emotions. 4. Linguistics and pragmatics (16) The Puzzle of Language Use: How Do We Ever Understand Each Other? Pragmatics is the study of communication – the study of how language is used. This study is based on the assumption of a division between knowledge of language and the way it is used; and the goal of pragmatics is providing a set of principles which dictate how knowledge of language and general reasoning interact in the process of language understanding, to give rise to different kinds of effects which can be achieved in communication. Pragmatics as the Application of Conversational Principles to Sentence Meanings The starting point for studies in pragmatics is the mismatch between what words â€Å"mean, and what speakers â€Å"mean† by using them. There is the knowledge of  language, which dictates the meanings of words and the ways in which they can combine. This is called the encoded meaning. On the other hand, there are pragmatic principles which enable a hearer to establish some different interpretation – the nonencoded part of meaning. Moreover, given the full array of rhetorical effects such as metaphor, irony, etc. , all of which are uses of expressions in context in some sense, the proposed approach maintains a natural separation between literal uses of words, which are reflected in sentence-meanings, and the various non-literal uses to which they may be put. Knowledge of language: sentence-meanings as partial specifications of interpretation The problem for this â€Å"clean† view is that we use commonsense reasoning, whatever this consists in, not merely in working out why a speaker has said something, but also in establishing what she has said in using the words chosen. The overall picture of interpretation is that grammar-internal principles articulate both syntactic and semantic structure for sentences, a semantic structure for a sentence being an incomplete specification of how it is understood. Pragmatic theory explains how such incomplete specifications are enriched in context to yield  the full communicative effect of an uttered sentence, whether metaphorical, ironical, and so on. The Process of Reasoning: How Do Hearers ever Manage to Choose the Right Interpretation? Grice’s cooperative principle and the conversational maxims According to Grice who was the pioneer of the inferential approach to conversation, there is a general assumption underpinning all utterance interpretation that the interpretation of utterances is a collaborative enterprise. This 8collaborative enterprise is structured by a number of maxims, which speakers are presumed to obey: †¢ The maxim of quality: do not say that for which you lack evidence; do not say what you believe to be false. †¢ The maxim of relevance: be relevant. †¢ The maxim of quantity: make your contribution as informative as is required, but not more so. †¢ The maxim of manner: be perspicuous (avoid obscurity, avoid ambiguity, be brief, be orderly). Grice articulated the maxims as a means of simplifying the overall account of the relation between the use of language in logical arguments and the conversational use of language. Relevance theory This theory claims to characterize pragmatic phenomena in terms of a single  cognitive concept, that of relevance, replacing the social underpinnings of Grice’s cooperative principle. The principle of relevance Optimal relevance is getting the right balance between size and type of context and amount of information derived. The more information some stimulus yields, the more relevant it is said to become, but the more effort the interpretation of that stimulus requires, the less relevant it will become. And to be minimally relevant a stimulus must lead to at least one non-trivial inference being derived. However interpretation of an act of communication involves two agents – the  speaker and the hearer. The constraint of balancing cognitive effect with cognitive effort will also apply to what the hearer does, but here the task of interpretation is more specific because the hearer has to try and recover what the speaker intended to convey. There are two aspects to the task: 1 Decoding the information associated with an uttered expression– i. e. working out what words have been said and the information that they by definition carry. 2 Making choices which enrich that encoded information to establish what the speaker had intended to convey using those words. Relevance and speech acts  On the speech act view of language, language can best be understood in terms of acts such as these which speakers carry out in using language. The observation by speech act theorists that there is more to language than just describing things is quite uncontentious. Nonetheless, in relevance theory, where the type of implications that can be drawn is quite unrestricted, there is no need of any special discrete categories for such different kinds of act. 5. Linguistic typology and its directions (14) 1 The Diversity of Human Languages The field of linguistic typology explores the diversity of human language in an  effort to understand it. The basic principle behind typology is that one must look at as wide a range of languages as possible in order to grasp both the diversity of 9language and to discover its limits. Typology uses a fundamentally empirical, comparative, and inductive method in the study of language. That is, typologists examine grammatical data from a wide variety of languages, and infer generalizations about language from that data. The basic discovery of typology is that there are limits to linguistic diversity. By comparing diverse languages and discovering universal grammatical patterns, one can attempt to disentangle what is  universal about the grammars languages from what is peculiar to each individual language. 2 The Nature of Language Universals: Word Order One of the first areas of grammar where it was recognized that there are limits to grammatical diversity was the order of words. Word order is probably the most immediately salient difference in grammatical patterns from one language to the next. First, one must examine a sample of languages in order to infer the range of grammatical diversity and its limits. A variety sample collects as broad a range of languages as possible from different geographical areas and different genetic  groupings. Its purpose is to ensure that all possible language types are identified. Second, one must be able to identify phenomena from one language to the next as comparable. The basic problem here is the great variety of grammatical structures used in the world’s languages. The solution to this problem is due to another insight of structuralism: the basic unit of the language is the sign, a form that conventionally expresses or encodes a meaning. The basis for cross-linguistic comparison is a particular linguistic meaning; once that is identified, we may examine the different structures used to encode that meaning. Third, we must identify a range of grammatical patterns or types used to express the linguistic meaning being examined, and classify languages according to what type(s) is / are used in them. For instance, in describing word order of the sentence, the relative position of subject (S), object (O), and verb (V) are used to classify language types. Language structure is determined by factors of language use, such as processing. Language structure is also determined by historical relationships among grammatical patterns, which themselves are due to similarity in meaning. However, these factors do not uniquely determine a language structure, but  compete with each other. Speech communities resolve the competing motivations in arbitrary, language-particular ways; this leads to the diversity of languages found in the world. 3 Language Universals and the Formal Encoding of Meaning Word order universals appear to be motivated in terms of processing of linguistic structure in the act of producing and comprehending language. Word order is a fundamental grammatical property of sentences. 3. 1 Typological markedness and morphological representation 10Some of the earliest work in typology examined the coding of grammatical and  lexical concepts in inflected word forms. The universals go under the name of (typological) markedness. Typological markedness represents an asymmetric pattern of the expression of meaning in grammatical categories across languages. Typological markedness has two central characteristics. First, typological markedness is a property of conceptual categories – e. g. singular and plural – or more precisely, how those conceptual categories are expressed in languages. For number, the singular is unmarked and the plural is marked. Second, unmarked status does not imply that the unmarked member is always left unexpressed and the marked member is always expressed by an overt morpheme. The presence / absence of an overt inflection encoding a conceptual category is only one symptom of markedness, namely structural coding. Typological markedness is found in another aspect of the coding of concepts in words and constructions. Most words in sentences express more than one conceptual category. Pronouns in English, for instance, can express gender as well as number. In English, neither the singular nor plural pronouns express number by a separate inflection; instead number is implicitly expressed by distinct forms such as he and  they. The grammatical coding of additional, cross-cutting, distinctions in the singular but not in the plural is an example of the second symptom of markedness, called behavioral potential. Behavioral potential is also represented by an implicational universal: If the marked member of a category grammatically expresses a crosscutting distinction, so does the unmarked member. A third property of typological markedness points to its underlying explanation. The unmarked member is more frequent than the marked member in language use. Concepts that occur more frequently in language use (e. g. singular) will tend to be expressed by fewer morphemes than less frequently occurring concepts (e. g. plural). This explanation for how meaning is encoded in grammatical form is a processing explanation, called economy or economic motivation. 3. 2 Hierarchies and conceptual spaces We can describe the cross-linguistic distribution of plural markings across classes of pronouns and nouns with the animacy hierarchy. The hierarchy is a succinct way to capture a chain of implicational universals: if any class of words has a plural, then all the classes to the left (or higher) on the hierarchy have a plural. These  patterns are defined over a conceptual space. The conceptual space describes a network of relationships among conceptual categories which exist in the human mind and which constrains how conceptual categories are expressed in grammar. Grammatical change must follow the links in conceptual space. For instance, a plural marking spreads from left to right in the animacy space. Conceptual spaces specify what grammatical category groupings are found in, and how constructions spread (or retreat) over time in their application to grammatical categories. If we compare absence vs. presence of case marking on nouns for the grammatical  11 relations hierarchy, we find that absence of case marking occurs at he higher end of the hierarchy, and presence thereof at the lower end of the hierarchy. The grammatical relations hierarchy also defines the distribution of verb agreement across languages. Verb agreement is associated with the higher end of the grammatical relations hierarchy – the ability to trigger verb agreement indicates the greater behavioral potential of the grammatical relation. These facts demonstrate that the two grammatical relations hierarchies in fact reflect a deeper cross-linguistic universal pattern, found in many different parts of the grammar of languages. 3. 3 Economy and iconicity Economic motivation: the more frequently used category is more likely to be reduced in expression or left unexpressed. Iconic motivation the structure of language reflects the structure of concepts. In the example, each conceptual category, both singular and plural, are overtly encoded in the word form. A subtype of iconicity called isomorphism: the correspondence between forms and meanings. There are two ways in which isomorphism occur in human languages. The first way is in the correspondence of forms and meanings in the combination of words and inflections in a sentence. This is called syntagmatic isomorphism. Economic and iconic motivation compete to produce the range of attested and unattested correspondences between form and meaning. There are 3 predicted patterns. Overt expression is iconically motivated: there is a one-to-one correspondence between meanings and forms. However, it is only moderately economically motivated: it is more economical than expressing a meaning with more than one word or morpheme, but less economical than not expressing the meaning at all. Non-expression of a particular meaning, such as the singular of English nouns like car-O (vs.plural book-s), is economically motivated: zero expression breaks one-to-one correspondence between forms and meanings. The third possible option, zero marking of both singular and plural, corresponds to the absence of expression of the category. This option is economically motivated: either the meaning can be inferred from context, or it is not relevant to the communication. There is another economically motivated pattern of expressing meaning in form: the combination or fusion of discrete meanings in a single form. For example, the suffix -s in English run-s indicates 3rd person subject, singular  subject and present tense, all in a single suffix. In other languages, inflectional categories are found in separate suffixes, as in Turkish. The second type of isomorphism is the correspondence between form and meaning in the inventory of words stored in the mind; paradigmatic isomorphism. 12The possible means of expression of meanings in words are limited by economy and iconicity. Unmotivated possibility: the existence of more than one word with the same meaning, synonymy. It is not iconically motivated. A one-to-one match between a word and a meaning is called monosemy. It isiconic ally motivated but not that economically motivated: we would need very many words to express each discrete meaning. Homonymy is economically motivated, but it is not iconically motivated (many unrelated meanings are expressed by a single form). By far the most common state of affairs in languages, however, is polysemy: the grouping of related meanings under a single form. Polysemy is economically motivated because it subsumes several meanings under a single form, as with homonymy. It is iconically motivated, because the meanings are related. 4 The Dynamic Approach to Language Universals The most common word.