Historical Linguistics, Ideology, Power, and Linguistic Theory - Literature review Example

Text Analysis and Interpretation Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade/Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name Date Introduction Interpretation and analysis are two controversial terms in search for meaning. Many scholars are involved in the search for meaning in either objective or subjective way and both ways attract diverse judgments. However, analysis and interpretation are open to dissent views especially for texts, which have words or idiomatic expressions that speak its meaning. Interpretation and analysis of a text, therefore, may include; understanding the author, environment and purpose in content, conversation, discourse analysis and interpretation. In this paper I have selected five texts for a matter of analysis. The texts are from history of linguistic and there is a visual text in form of a poster. The five texts are different in their tenor and mode dimensions and thus can fit to be used in teaching English. These texts are; 1. Historical Linguistics by Jasanoff Jay 2. Introduction to Computational Linguistics General Introduction by Jan-Philipp S¨ohn, 3. Ideology, Power, and Linguistic Theory by Pullum Geoffrey K. 4. Pragmatics and Computational Linguistics by Jurafsky Dan 5. A poster (n.d) from http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters/examples/example10.html Historical Linguistics by Jay Jasanoff This article, which is gotten from jay Jasanoff website, is a pure text written in a descriptive manner. The article is written in stages flowing from introduction, where he introduces the concept of historical linguistics, to the end. Although the article has no definite conclusion, the author suggests some more references thus marking the end of his thoughts, regarding the subject he was dealing with. The structure of the article is informal with the topic and subtopics, but hangs for the lack of a conclusion. The first part, although is not marked so, is introduction which introduces the topic and tells the reader what to expect in the rest of the paper. This is done by providing a thesis statement. This part is crucial as it welcomes the reader into the article and tries to shed some light on the content of the paper. This part has also given some light on the structure of the paper as the writer hints that at the end of the paper there will be a provision of further reading suggestions. The subtopics The article has subtopics which deal with specific subjects and this way the article is split into understandable portions. These portions, in an article, give the reader a clear flow of the subject matter of the article. This avoids contradiction and mix of ideas and therefore even the writer will get to assess the level of coverage of the subject matter. Mode of the text For the purpose of mode, which involves symbolic organization of the text, it has symbols which emphasize voices and a variety of typefaces. All these features reinforce the scientific nature of the text. These are essential in linguistics which is a one of the discipline that claims to be scientific in nature (Halliday, McIntosh, & Strevens, 1964). In terms of tenor, the article is very clear that the writer must be an informer, a teacher who is trying to demonstrate the topic to learners. That is why it uses an authoritative language and formal way of presentation. This is also evident because the author has suggested more reading materials for the reader who may require more information regarding the subject matter. This way the writer is depicted as a knowledgeable person who is more informed than the reader. This is important for the reader to be confident that whatever he or she is reading comes from a person of authority in the field and that the material can be relied on for knowledge (Halliday & Hasan, 1985). Introduction to Computational Linguistics General Introduction by Jan-Philipp S¨ohn This is a multimodal text where graphics have been in almost every page. Although the article is in form of a course outline it provides much information about the subject matter. The articles are formally structured starting with course goals, introduction to the end. The work is presented in a PowerPoint with colorful page designs which plays the role of appealing to the reader. The logical structure of the paper is presented where the writer begins by giving the history of the digital computer, definition of the main concept all the way to scientific strategies. The presentation is a bit informal in both language and graphics thus setting a mood of discussion. The graphics are used to make the interaction more practical and reader engaging than if it were pure text. For scientific purpose there are symbols used in the text as well as mathematical formulas. This being a scientific paper in presentation and linguistic in subject matter the tables, photographs, typefaces all emphasize the multimodal way of its presentation (Jan-Philipp, 2007). The relationship between the writer and the reader is that of a learner and his guide, not necessarily a teacher who does everything but both have to be engaged for a common purpose. One purposeful part of this text is where the learner is probed to think whether the machines think and what follows is a presentation of the arguments against the artificial intelligence. This is very important because it has the purpose of understanding the reality about the computers and their linguistic complexity. Ideology, Power, and Linguistic Theory by Pullum Geoffrey Pullum (2004) has presented a very formal article on the subject of ideology, power and linguistic theory as evidenced by its structure from introduction to conclusion. The text is a combination of different typefaces, symbols and no graphics. Lack of graphics tells about the mood and value of the text. Being explanatory and descriptive the text sets the authors authority over the subject matter and the intended readers’ level of knowledge (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The detailed nature of the text tell us that the reader is informed from the scratch on the subject matter and this is also evidenced by the symbols used, the typefaces used to emphasize the nature of thought patterns and step by step presentation which makes understanding easy. The introduction sets the pace where the writer does not waste a lot of words but goes directly to thesis statement in the first sentence. He just starts straight away thus” my aim in this paper is to discuss…” this also shows the mode of the text type in this genre where the author has limited space and time to explain present the article. Moreover, the writer is very critical of other writers who have discussed the same thus setting a deliberate tenor of the text. There is also a lot of rhetorical devises in the text which tells the reader that what is reading is a controversial and albeit mind engaging text (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Pragmatics and Computational Linguistics by Dan Jurafsky This is a long text which has a purely formal structure flowing from introduction to conclusion and reference. It is a complete text by itself which is presented in an academic formal way (Oshima & Hogue, 1981). The text is a mixture of different typefaces, symbols, tables, flow diagrams and figures. Like any other text, these symbols reinforce the scientific nature of the text and the subject matter in general. Introduction The introduction is long because the writer has taken his time to set the pace of the paper with background information regarding the topic. It is in this introduction part that the writer gives the scope of the paper and a more focused and limited discussion which is to be expected. The subtopics The writer splits the paper into subtopics where he gives a detailed and scholarly presentation of the subject matter with supported evidence from other authorities in the field. In tenor the writer used his voice to show direct relation and proficiency of the subject. He is authoritative in his presentation and thus his relation to the reader is that of a teacher and a learner. The author has tried to argue his subject and has used other authorities as we have mentioned to substantiate his argument. He is also a bit critical to some arguments about the subject matter and acknowledges some arguments thus deliberately express the text’s tenor. To achieve the purpose of the text there is a lot of rhetorical devices in the text like the ones on page 4 and 5. For easy explanations and breakdown of information tables and figures are employed because as it is said that there are a thousand words in a picture. A poster from http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters/examples/example10.html This poster is an example of visual text which is supposed to communicate something. Being a form of language, it fits in the linguistic analysis and for this case picture takes the central stage and they communicate a lot. Moreover, a poster will appeal if a combination of visual designs is used with regard to the purpose of the poster content. This poster has got text in different typesets, pie charts, photographs and different color variations (red, yellow, blue and orange). The poster has a heading and sections which make the reader to find all what is required to be communicated inside the page. It is structured into the heading, the goal of the poster, subtopics and conclusions. It also contains mathematical formulas and symbols making it scientific in presentation. Answers for Step 2 questions In this section, we are going to analyze an excerpt from Jurafsky (2000) “Pragmatics and Computational Linguistics” and Jasanoff’s (2010) “Historical Linguistics” The importance of this contextual role of discourse cues has been a main focus of the conversation analysis tradition. For example … on the way that the changing discourse context and the changing understanding of the hearer affects their interpretation of the discourse function of the utterance. … example utterance: (14) Do you know who’s going to that meeting? which occurs in the following dialogue: Mother: Do you know who’s going to that meeting? Russ: Who? Mother: I don’t kno:w Russ: Oh:: Prob’ly Missiz McOwen. . . Mother had meant her first utterance as a REQUEST. But Russ misinterprets it as a PRE-ANNOUNCEMENT, and gives an appropriate response to such preannouncements, by asking the question word which was included in the pre-announcement. What do you notice about the textual organization of your text? In this text, there is a way that the text is organized to help the readers to understand the information. First there is the background of the information to be presented as given by the sentence “The importance of this contextual role of discourse cues has been a main focus of the conversation analysis tradition.” Secondly the theme of what is to be presented is presented by, “…example utterance: Do you know who’s going to that meeting? which occurs in the following dialogue:” this gives the reader a hint that what is going to follow is an example. There are also determinants such as ‘that’ and ‘this’ in the text. A pronoun ‘it” has also been used to avoid repetition of the word ‘first utterance’ the explanation given by the author after the example. Another notable text organization is in the form of the reported dialogue between Russ and his mother. What do you notice about the representation of experience or ideas (experiential)? The idea flows from the way the text is organized in the order of introduction, example and explanation of what arose from the theme on the example. This way the main idea of the text is presented shows that the argument is well represented. How does the text engage its reader/viewer? What do you notice about its interpersonal meanings? The text engage its reader by presenting an example after mentioning where a problem of misunderstanding arises and affects responses as in this sentence; “…the changing understanding of the hearer affects their interpretation of the discourse function of the utterance.” By providing an example the text calls for the reader to engage his or her thought in verifying the argument. How are messages logically structured in each text? (Consider sentence messages in verbal texts and related messages in visual/multimodal texts. The message in this text is very clear because there is the introduction of the premise, then an example then an explanation of the example and why it is so. This gives a complete structure with all required components as for it to be complete information. The message in the theme messages is that changing understanding affects interpretation and the function of the utterance as is in the example provided. The second text for analyses comes from Jasanoff’s Jay (2010) “Historical Linguistics” and is as follows; As more and more sound changes were studied, an important generalization emerged: if the statable, language-specific phonetic environment for a given sound change was satisfied, the change took place; otherwise it did not. The change of voiceless stops to voiceless fricatives in Germanic, for example, always applied word-initially and after vowels and sonants, but never after stops or fricatives (Skt. star- : Eng. strew, not **sthrew). The global claim that “sound change is regular,” or that “sound laws have no exceptions,” was first made by the German “Neogrammarian” (Junggrammatiker) school in the late 1870’s and has been accepted in some form ever since. What do you notice about the textual organization of your text? The way the text is organized is very poor so that a reader will not understand its message easily. There is also the verbatim quoting of the phrase “sound change is regular” which gives the text another level of external information sourcing. There are also use of phonetic symbols and words from different languages such as “Skt. star- : Eng. strew, not **sthrew” . These characteristics give the text an unpredictable complex organization. What do you notice about the representation of experience or ideas (experiential)? The ideas presented in this text, although they are positivistic and factual is very complex due to the depth of the subject especially because it is a phonetics text. The idea of the text comes a bit clear at the end of the text where the author has concluded that the argument that “sound laws have no exceptions” has been accepted partly from 1870s. How does the text engage its reader/viewer? What do you notice about its interpersonal meanings? The text engages the reader in a very formal way by first assuming that the reader should understand more of a phonetics than presented in the text. The interpersonal meaning therefore is limited to students of phonetics who understand such terms as ‘fricatives’ and ‘sonants’. How are messages logically structured in each text? (Consider sentence messages in verbal texts and related messages in visual/multimodal texts. The sentences in this text are very complex with the shortest sentence comprising of thirty three words and the whole excerpt being made of three complex sentences. The messages are complex also for instance the sentence “The change of voiceless stops to voiceless fricatives in Germanic, for example, always applied word-initially and after vowels and sonants, but never after stops or fricatives (Skt. star- : Eng. strew, not **sthrew).“ The sentence carries numerous themes which the reader has to read not once in order to capture the idea. However the logical sense of the text only comes by because the three complex sentences are talking about sound change. The next text to analyze is a poster which is a visual text selected by this study What do you notice about the textual organization of your text? This poster is divided into sections and each section has its explanatory texts. The text is organized into respective themes because there are two main ideas being presented in it; the Season and Auxin Study and Age and Stumping Study. Each of these sections is presented in their unique ways for example the Season and Auxin Study uses line graphs for illustration and the other uses bar charts. Each part also has its conclusion because they are separate themes. What do you notice about the representation of experience or ideas (experiential)? As a result of the above organization, the representation of the ideas is very clear and the conclusions are separately drawn. For clear representation also different colors have been used in the graphs and charts. How does the text engage its reader/viewer? What do you notice about its interpersonal meanings? The text engages the reader by its use of colorful textual presentation and step by step How are messages logically structured in each text? (Consider sentence messages in verbal texts and related messages in visual/multimodal texts. This being a visual text with a heading which represents the theme has two relevant parts which are carried by the goal of the text as, “to understand how various factors influence the rooting ability of Franser Fir cuttings in order to develop an economically feasible clonal propagation system”. By dealing with each subtopic separately, the text has been logically and clearly presented. Step 3: Now do a detailed analysis of the 100 word extracts in your two verbal texts. Divide the sentences into ranking clauses. What types of sentences predominate (simple, compound or complex?) Highlight the verb groups an underline the noun groups. Double underline the prepositional phrases. Complex clauses: 1. The importance of this contextual role of discourse cues has been a main focus of the conversation analysis tradition. 2. Mother had meant her first utterance as a REQUEST. 3. But Russ misinterprets it as a PRE-ANNOUNCEMENT, and gives an appropriate response to such preannouncements, by asking the question word which was included in the pre-announcement. Clauses: 1.The importance of this contextual role of discourse cues (minor clause) 2.has been a main focus of the conversation analysis tradition (major clause). 3.For example … 4.on the way that the changing discourse context 5.and the changing understanding of the hearer 6.affects their interpretation of the discourse function of the utterance. … 7.example utterance: 8.Do you know who’s going to that meeting? 9.which occurs in the following dialogue: 10.Mother: 11.Do you know who’s going to that meeting? 12.Russ: 13.Who? 14.Mother: 15.I don’t kno:w 16.Russ: 17.Oh:: Prob’ly Missiz McOwen. . . 18.Mother had meant her first utterance as a REQUEST. 19.But Russ misinterprets it as a PRE-ANNOUNCEMENT, 20.and gives an appropriate response to such preannouncements, 21.by asking the question word which was included 22.in the pre-announcement (minor clause). In this text, simple sentences predominate. The importance of this contextual role of discourse cues has been a main focus of the conversation analysis tradition. For example … on the way that the changing discourse context and the changing understanding of the hearer affects their interpretation of the discourse function of the utterance. … example utterance: (14) Do you know who’s going to that meeting? which occurs in the following dialogue: Mother: Do you know who’s going to that meeting? Russ: Who? Mother: I don’t kno:w Russ: Oh:: Prob’ly Missiz McOwen. . . Mother had meant her first utterance as a REQUEST. But Russ misinterprets it as a PRE-ANNOUNCEMENT, and gives an appropriate response to such preannouncements, by asking the question word which was included in the pre-announcement. Complex clauses: 1. Language-specific phonetic environment for a given sound change was satisfied, the change took place; otherwise it did not 2. The change of voiceless stops to voiceless fricatives in Germanic 3. The global claim that “sound change is regular… has been accepted in some form ever since Clauses: 1.As more and more sound changes were studied, 2.an important generalization emerged: 3.if the statable, language-specific phonetic environment for a given sound change was satisfied, 4.the change took place; 5.otherwise it did not. 6.The change of voiceless stops to voiceless fricatives in Germanic, 7.for example, 8.always applied word-initially 9.and after vowels and sonants, 10.but never after stops or fricatives (Skt. star- : Eng. strew, not **sthrew). 12.The global claim that “sound change is regular,” 13.or that “sound laws have no exceptions,” 14.was first made by the German “Neogrammarian” (Junggrammatiker) school 15.in the late 1870’s 16.and has been accepted in some form ever since In this text complex sentences predominate As more and more sound changes were studied, an important generalization emerged: if the statable, language-specific phonetic environment for a given sound change was satisfied, the change took place; otherwise it did not. The change of voiceless stops to voiceless fricatives in Germanic, for example, always applied word-initially and after vowels and sonants, but never after stops or fricatives (Skt. star- : Eng. strew, not **sthrew). The global claim that “sound change is regular,” or that “sound laws have no exceptions,” was first made by the German “Neogrammarian” (Junggrammatiker) school in the late 1870’s and has been accepted in some form ever since. Step 4: Write 2-3 paragraphs on any patterns you identified in your two texts. Comment on whether the close analysis of grammatical choices helped you see patterns more clearly. Did it bring out any contrasts in the two texts? Did your analyses confirm or deepen your initial impressions of the texts? What insights did your analysis leave out of the picture? After analyzing the two texts it is clear that the two texts contain complex clauses and minor clauses even if they are not similar. Secondly they have Prepositional phrases, verbal groups and noun groups. This means that there are some grammatical patter characteristics which can not lack in texts (Malcolm, 1994). The analyses of the given grammatical choices really helped me to note more patterns clearly than before. After the analysis it is clear that deeper understanding of the grammatical patterns come out. One contrast which is clear is the tenor and mode of the texts where by for the first text, the readers are expected to be less knowledgeable than the second text (Gregory, & Carroll, 1978). There is also use of symbols in the second text unlike in the first one. All these could not have come without the deeper analysis. There is also no doubt that the rhetorical purposes of the two texts are different. However the analysis left out some elements of grammar analysis such as nominal group, words and morphemes, conjunction group and adverbial group which could have brought up more details on the texts (Coulthard, 1994). Step 5: Write a concluding paragraph on how you might use the texts and your analyses in preparing a unit of work in English (or another subject)? The texts can be used in the class of linguistics especially in the analysis lesson. The poster can well fit in the teaching of multimodal lessons in linguistics and the others can be useful in understanding how sentences and parts of speech are used to communicate meaning, purpose and rhetoric (Blue, 1993). A critical analysis of texts as we have seen can reveal much about the many meanings which it may be carrying (Bex, 1996). This is what is used in understanding discourses by use of analytical lenses such as feminism, post-modernism, Marxism, Russian formalism and others which can reveal details hidden in every text (Bhatia, 1993). Therefore the texts can be used to teach text interpretation, contrasting, analysis and drawing of meaning using the many theories like the ones mentioned. Therefore, learners will be in a good position to appreciate the reading act than before. References A poster. (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters/examples/example10.htm Bex, T. (1996).Variety in Written English: Texts in Society: Societies in Text. London: Routledge. Bhatia, V.K. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman. Blue, G.M. (1993). Language, Learning and Success: Studying Through English. London: Macmillan. Coulthard, M. (1994). Advances in Written Text Analysis. London: Routledge. Gregory, M., & Carroll, S. (1978). Language and Situation: Language Varieties and their Social Contexts. London: Routledge. Halliday, M.A.K., McIntosh, A. and Strevens, P. (1964). The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching. London: Longmans. Halliday, M.A.K., & Hasan, R. (1985). Language, Context and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective. Victoria: Deakin University Press. Jasanoff, J. (2010). Historical Linguistics. Retrieved from http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~jasanoff/pdf/historical_linguistics.pdf ... Jan-Philipp, S. (2007). Introduction to Computational Linguistics General Introduction, History of CL. Retrieved from www.soehn.net/work/icl/intro.pdf Jurafsky, D. (2000). Pragmatics and Computational Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Malcolm, C. (1994). Advances in Written Text Analysis. London: Routledge. Oshima, A., & Hogue, A. (1981). Writing Academic English (2nd ed.).Menlo Park, California: Addison-Wesley. Pullum, G.K. (2004). Ideology, Power, and Linguistic Theory. Retrieved from htpp://people.ucsc.edu/~pullum/MLA2004.pdf Read More