Linguistics

We live in an increasingly connected world, thanks to globalization and advancements in communication and information technologies. Cross-cultural business and social interactions are becoming a norm around the world. This only increases the importance of learning a new language because language is a window into a culture. While childhood is...

Chicano English, which is also referred to as Mexican-American English, is an American-English dialect primarily used in the Southwestern region of the United States by Chicanos or Mexican-Americans. Not to be confused with Spanglish, Chicano English is not a mixture of English and Spanish or an inter-language but rather a...

Whilst working in a busy local convenience store, in was the responsibility of myself and a colleague to unpack the weekly delivery and place the stock upon the shelves. The first part of this task involved transporting the stock from the delivery cages in stockroom to the aisle, front of...

Who uses this item (in this way)? Does its use correlate with: region, social class, age, gender, ethnicity, race, or other factors? How strong are these correlations? The use of ‘ax’ in place of ‘ask’ is most often done by speakers of African-American English (AAE), also referred to as Ebonics....

Spelling absolutely matters. Many tools have been developed to help individuals spell words correctly. Auto-correct helps determine what words may or may not be spelled correctly. It will then “correct” the words that it determined are spelled incorrectly. However, auto-correct is a computer program. It cannot think like a human...

The article ‘Mother Tongue’ by Amy Tongue presents a personal overview of the English language and reiterates the diversity of the forms which the language can undertake. The author notes that her perception of the English language comes from the nature of being a writer. Thus, some emotions and the...

Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Tell Tale Heart, is about a man who kills his roommate, an old man, for no apparent reason other than he is bothered by the appearance of his roommate's eye. However, the story is also about the descent into madness. In The Tell Tale...

This article from the Harvard Business Review, discusses the viewpoint of social scientist Robert Cialdini in regards to his specialty: influence. Cialdini sat down with the editors of the magazine for an interview on what his studies have revealed about the power of persuasion. Primarily Cialdini reveals how persuasion can...

Imagine a country, or even a community, without a language policy. Imagine trying to learn, shop, or even pay bills in a community where there was no official language. It would be chaotic. Language underlies all the processes of a working system and community and without uniformity those break down....

The thesis that language plays a role in shaping and molding our thoughts, essentially meaning that in one fundamental sense language does in fact determine what we think, is a compelling claim, to the extent that it is also highly intuitive when one reflects on the issue. If we take...

Oppression is about taking power away from someone, but that restriction or taking of power can be unintended. It can also come from bad cultural habits that seem subtle such as the language we use. The way we talk about a person or population has an impact and it describes...

1. Examples of sentences:a) Phrasal modal: I’d be rather going to school every day than doing the cleaning in my room every single hour just as my mother asks me to do so. b) Very simple example to understand what is a social use could be seen in the following...

In the article, Addressing Cultural and Native Interference in Second Language Acquisition, Allard, Bourdeau & Mizoguchi, 2011, brings out the difficulties and challenges of second/foreign language acquisition and ways to deal with these problems. The article further evaluates matters of interference that can be traced to a student’s mother tongue...

Essentially, historical newspapers play a significant role in research on humanities. These data aims at providing resources about places and individual in historical perspective(s). In this scenario, the authors made an assumption that there is only a single “Joseph Lyons” annually in order to apply the named-entity-recognition (NER) as argued...

Effective learning of any foreign language depends on numerous factors, but initially potential student has to properly understand whether there is a necessity in learning that foreign language. Languages can be roughly classified into TOP and other by the number of speakers around the globe. For example, the TOP 3...

Of all the difficulties that a foreigner is most likely to face when familiarizing himself/herself with English pronunciation, it is important to make mention of the one that refers to the multitude of accents. Obviously, English should be viewed as presenting the pronunciation that varies dramatically depending on where the...

Learning a new language can be difficult for anymore, but when it comes to English language learners (ELL), they may face many obstacles in school that can progressively get worse if not taught correctly. According to Karen Ford with Colorin Colorado, an educational service of WETA, “research has shown that,...

Nonverbal language is prevalent in all societies. The way people carry themselves, their body language, and the social cues they give are mere nuances and are not overt. This noverbal language, or paralanguage as it is also called, is different among cultures and especially so in the Japanese culture. What...

The one who ever asked themselves what does the soul of a rapper looks like, should definitely listen to or just read the lyrics of Coolio’s song “My Soul”. This song is a piece of rap music, which makes its lyrics particularly interesting. From the point of stylistics, rap is...

This activity is based on the concept of grammatical metaphor, specifically the instances of logical metaphors and how they occur within spoken and written language. Logical metaphors usually occur when there is a sense of reasoning or explanation occurring within a clause or sentence.Justification The students will aim to learn...