Through time people have manipulated words and their definitions to mean what they like. Pinker offers the example of Seinfeld saying, ‘“Coffee” doesn’t mean coffee! “Coffee” means sex!”’ to illustrate how connotative meaning has changed and is now very different from the literal meaning. Bacon’s theory about the misuse of words and their definitions still remains strong in society for a few reasons, one being the fear of being labeled insensitive or offensive. In everyday interactions with friends, family and strangers we consciously or subconsciously alter the structure of our speech to be more cordial or friendly depending on how we wish the hearer to perceive us.
Certain elements, such as acronyms, initialisms, incomplete sentence structure, or the omission of vowels, included in abbreviated messaging technologies (sometimes referred to as “textese”), have contributed to the English language, reflected in the literature and writing skills of the people who use these media. As a response to the skepticism as to whether text messaging is more detrimental or beneficial to the English language, one reviewer comments “f u cn rd ths thn wats th prblm?” (Crystal
While written English has always had a role in creating durable records that were never intended to be read aloud, the 'oral' side of writing has been far more important than we tend to realize. Through most of the English language's history, an essential function of writing has been to aid in subsequent representation of spoken words. According to George Orwell written English refers to the preferred form of English as it is written according to prescriptive authorities associated with publishing houses and schools. Orwell defines Spoken English often less formal, spoken in the dialect of the person speaking, whereas written English depends of the context it can be informal but usually it’s tends to be more standardised. The general consensus is that they are differences between Spoken and written English since they represent different ways of communicating and offer different ways of knowing and of reflecting on experience.
To be an audist, the ability to hear is not the main factor because many deaf people can be audists as well. They repress each other and may not even realize that. Audists continue to judge a deaf person’s intelligence and success due to their ability of language. The ability or inability to hear does not have anything to do with superiority among humans. The main point in life where the deaf community encounters discrimination is during an interview or applying for a job.
No one true resource can be used without doubt coming from it because of the greed of the Spaniards or the sympathy of scholars for the Mayans that might have been used in the sources. The “confusion of tongues” then can not only come from the actual misinterpretation of the languages, but from the classes, genders and religion aspects as well. This book was a really interesting read from a historian point of view even with the author sometimes making it clear she favors one side over the other. Even with that in mind, she does bring across to the reader the problems from the beginning the Spaniards had with this particular area to conquer, unlike Mexico, Peru and other places in the Caribbean. It all eventually became the same, disease killing off the natives, Spaniards using slaves and mixing of castes with them taking native wives, and how the indigenous people tried to cling onto their beliefs and ways even knowing the harsh punishments that would come to them if found out.
Since they can not speak each other language, an interpreter by the name of Marina, translates each others’ speeches. Therefore we can not be a hundred percent sure, that dialogue that took place between each other is completely true. Marina could have easily twisted words around to each other or added and subtracted words from each other speech. She’s the only one that spoke both languages, so she’s the only one that truly knows what they said to each other. Marina had to translate several languages to Cortes and sometimes the translation process required a middle man, Diaz.
In those who have emigrated while still quite young and native language such as English makes a lot of problem in adapting and communicating especially for children. Essayists who describe America’s existence as a culture, a sound, an accent, a walk makes a real dilemma to pick Spanish or English (p. 233). I completely acquiesce with this statement being experienced by myself as a bilingual guy; there is often the question in my mind of which language is
Would you rather have a professor that speaks one or two languages? People may think that knowing two tongues is impressive and important to the students, but it could also bring confusion to the other peers. A student in an English class would feel more comfortable knowing that the instructor’s first language is English. Then by surprise the students find out that the instructor messed up the student’s attention by speaking in Spanish. Students will start to think, “I thought we were in an English class?” The reason why the instructor spoke in a different language may be that he/she has students from Mexico, the most common language spoken around here is Spanish, or perhaps Spanish is the first language he/she learned.
This is becoming a problem across America, it is showing immigrants and foreigners that it is alright to speak their own language and not worrying about learning English. When entering a foreign country, it is often hard to understand one word said due to the fact that they most likely speak another language, and often there are not signs in English. Therefore it makes sense to learn that country’s language to get by and survive there, depending on how long the stay is. With making English our national language, it would make all foreigners realize that they should not be lazy, and actually try to learn some or a lot of the English language. Foreigners who enter America’s borders do not know much or any English at all.
2-Crucial Departure Points when Thinking about Bilingualism: The degree of bilingualism: Degree of bilingualism refers to the levels of linguistic proficiency which a bilingual must achieve in both languages to be considered as a bilingual. BaetensBeardsmore(1982)described two extremes of[Bloomfield’s] and[Mackey’s and Weinreich’s] as : Maximalist approach towards bilingualism Bloomfield(1933:55) defined bilingualism as ‘native- like control of two languages’. This approach describes the ideal bilingual who will find nomatch in reality.This is equally unsatisfactory because it fails to make a distinction between those who have only minimal communicative ability in a second language and those who use the language actively in their daily lives in a large range of settings. Minimalist approach towards bilingualism Mackey(1962:52) defined bilingualism as ‘the ability to use more than one language.’ In a similar way to Mackey,Weinreich(1953) defined