End of Academic Year 2007/08 Semester 1Here’s the list of comments for the modules that I had taken for the semester:
Lexicology and LexicographyBasically lexicology is the theory or linguistic concepts behind the art of making dictionaries whereas lexicography is the practical approach or the actual steps that go into the making of dictionaries itself that includes the types of information to be included in dictionaries, the arrangement of definitions given in the dictionaries, etc. This module is interesting because it helps undergraduates expand their understanding of how ordinary people organize the lexemes or lexical units in their mental lexicon which in a sense is not haphazardly organized but organized according to their relations to other similar lexical units such as within the same lexical semantic fields – synonyms, antonyms, etc. Thus, the mental knowledge of ordinary people’s linguistic repertoire is never independently developed in isolation to other lexical units or their contexts. Concepts or frameworks covered in this module include John Sinclair’s multi-word lexical model which involves the semantic prosodies, semantic preference, colligation and collocations of the core lexeme; the use of 3 types of evidences which are the introspective knowledge of ourselves or informants, the citational evidence gathered from various sources that include newspaper articles, google search, forum search and corpus evidence that is systematically gathered for a specific purpose in order to prove or disprove a hypothesis(corpus based), or to create a hypothesis based on the corpus evidence(corpus driven), in order to triangulate to produce for a more concrete conclusion for the hypothesis; Fillmore’s frame semantics; Ooi’s concentric circles model of Singapore English; Wierzbicka’s semantic primitives or the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach; Lexical Semantics and Mel’cuk’s theory of word relations; the WordNet database in simulating the mental lexicon for a closer representation of linguistic categorization in the brain for the linguist’s dictionary; the notion of bilingual and multilingual dictionaries and the difficulties in translating cultural concepts from one language to another especially with regards to metaphorical translations; and finally the new lexicons or the new online electronic dictionaries such as Urban dictionary that favours a more democractic and descriptive approach to the given definitions to new linguistic terms in electronic dictionaries to more rapidly record the rate of linguistic change around the world as opposed to the more prescriptive approach that is favoured in our more traditional dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
The group project consisted of critiquing some articles that were taken from the Journal of Lexicography. From this exercise, I learnt to critically assess what the background of the author of the article is and from that is able to more properly gauge his position or what the author values in order to understand his argument better. I also learnt that the lexicographer has to take into account the needs of the audience or the users of the dictionary that it is intended for so that the dictionary will be useful to the targeted audience and not solely based on the assumptions of the lexicographer. Not merely providing the meanings or definitions of the words but it is also important to provide pragmatic information to the users such as the discoursal features of words and the politeness that is associated with using certain words and finally the importance of including context of use for the words.
The individual project is one of the most fulfilling because it is a more hands on exercise in which I get to gather the 3 types of evidences – introspective, citational and corpus data to support my given hypothesis. The topic I chose was the Lexis of Shmups which is a type of 2D scrolling arcade game. For the website/software review, I chose to compare the OALD’s 3D search with the Visual Thesaurus. I especially like the visual component of these softwares because they can serve to simulate the visual imagination of the user and also because these 2 softwares are different in their own right and shows that we cannot only rely on 1 dictionary for our expansion of the mental lexicon but through complementing both dictionaries and others could we achieve a more comprehensive knowledge for the advancing of our pre-existing linguistic repertoire. The Visual Thesaurus is of course based on the popular WordNet database.
The final exam compulsory question includes the question asking the rationale for the structuring of the dictionary entries in the WordNet database as well as the organization of example sentences given in the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s dictionary. The answer I gave was the paradigmatic or ontological organization of the entries in WordNet as opposed to the sytagmatic organization of the example sentences given in the CALD which can allow users to understand what is the typical usage of the core lexeme and thus is able to infer when the core lexeme is used untypically if it is used in other contexts through extension of the typical meaning. The other question that I chose for the paper was the question that asked me to state my position as to the question on whether I agree with the view that online electronic dictionaries such as Freesearch should not be allowed to exist. I had prepared for this question and I argued that this view is not sustainable because this is the future where dictionaries are to go in the digital age where online dictionaries would be recording everyone’s use and creation of new lexicons at a much rapid pace, i.e. the tendency towards the descriptive stance of dictionaries. From a purely prescriptive point of view, advocates of this statement are merely trying to maintain the status quo, i.e., the division between the formal and the informal; and the educated and the uneducated, but the advent of these online dictionaries would only further contribute to the blurring between these divisions due to the ease of spreading due to the technological advancement of the world wide web that basically makes everyone a lexicographer who can enter his own dictionary entries into such online dictionaries, though of course a certain amount of prescriptivism would still exist where definitions that are deemed to be nonsensical or offensive would be edited and removed by the moderators and administrators of the online dictionaries. I ended off my argument by returning to the prescriptive stance that it is nevertheless important and we should not disregard it because to adhere to rules we would allow a more wider audience to understand us instead of using idiosyncratic words that none understands and hence the usage of words should be based on the context itself.
Discourse StructureThis module deals with the linguistic structure that is above the unit of a sentence. Concepts covered include Longacre’s 4 text types: narrative, procedural, behavioural and expository; Labov’s model of narrative structure: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, resolution and coda; various evaluative devices that signals to the reader what the author of the texts understand it by and why he considers it significant which includes external evaluation, embedded evaluation, evaluative action, evaluative lexicon, evaluative grammar(intensifiers, comparators, correlative, explicatives); Hoey’s Problem-solution pattern(Situation, problem, response, evalution); ideational relations – Mann and Thompson’s Rhetorical Structural Theory (condition, reason, elaboration, purpose, result, solutionhood, circumstance, evidence, motivation, concession, antithesis); action sequences(adjacency pairs, sequence expansions); discourse markers; Prince’s seven information types; Chafe’s one new idea per Intonation Unit constraint, Preferred argument structure, light starting point constraint; and cohesive ties.
The topics set for the tests and exams are predictable in the sense that test 1 consist of the topics for Labov’s narrative structure, evaluative devices, Longacre’s text types. Test 2 consists of the topic for ideational relations, action sequences and discourse markers. The final exam consists of the topic for Hoey’s Problem-solution pattern, Chafe’s one new idea per IU constraint, preferred argument structure, light starting point constraint and cohesive ties. Even though I did not do well for this module, I learnt the importance of structuring the points in support of my argument in answering the main question to give a more focused answer.
Interactional DiscourseThis module emphasized on analyzing spoken discourse instead of written discourse, i.e the interactional aspects as opposed to the transactional contents of spoken discourse. The frameworks that were taught in this module include Hasan’s Generic Structure Potential(for genre of text types); Wilson’s Speaker Rights Theory(for conversation); Francis and Hunston’s Exchange Structure; Martin and Rose’s Exchange Structure(derived from Systemic Functional Grammar); Gricean pragmatics that include face and politeness. The first test consists of analyzing a given short transcript and several short questions were asked in order to test on concepts taken from Generic Structure Potential, Speaker Rights Theory, exchange structure and transcription methods. This test can be scorable in the sense that the concepts covered and the questions asked guide the students in giving the corresponding answers to the questions so it would not be rather complicated test to attempt as compared to the open type questions given in the final exams. For the presentation, my group did on the exchange structure(Francis and Hunston analysis) and politeness analysis on the Ali G interview with Noam Chomsky. My essay was done on the adaptation of Francis and Hunston’s Exchange structure to the genre of interview with Noam Chomsky. I understand that I did not do well for the essay because I had not provided a focused thesis statement at the beginning of the essay and structure the rest of the essay accordingly in support of the thesis statement under a common umbrella. The final exam is basically either comparing or identifying the similarity between 2 or 3 given transcripts of conversations/interviews based on exchange structure framework and politeness strategies. I should have done well for this module, but for the deficient nature of the essay which I have learnt is important for the module on the whole.
Language, Ideology and PowerThis is one of the more interesting modules that I had wanted to take all along because this module touches on issues that affect us in the real world. Concepts or issues touched on in this module include in chronological order: language and reality(man made language), ideology, political correctness, representational issues which include the sexist representation – linguistic and graphical of women; and the Benneton Culture which is a rather controversial marketing campaign because it mixes commercial interests and at the same time championing human rights by showing controversial images such as a man dying of AIDs to instill awareness of such issues on the consumers of this culture. The controversial issue and question is: “how can one reconcile the commercial interests of Benneton with its self-proclaimed slogan of championing for human rights through the showing of such controversial images through the media and without the company itself engaged more actively in eradicating stereotyped representations of people in the campaigns.” Other topics covered include institutional control(oracular reasoning; politics of ESL classroom) – the tension between the authoritative and democratic approach between the experts and the ordinary people, feminine self-identity through other-centredness and male heterosexuality, Singapore’s Speak Mandarin Campaign, Gender, language and the politics of literacy, critical language awareness and emancipatory discourse, anti-languages and finally issues of empowerment. For the class presentation on ideology, I was in charge of providing the case study portion for the presentation and I showed the case study of the muti-racial ideology in Singapore because this issue is closer to our hearts and therefore could serve to allow the class for a better understanding of the concepts in the reading by applying Van Dijk’s reading of ideology to the multiracial ideology. The term paper was done in groups of 2 and my topic was on the linguistic analysis of the newspaper article that appeared in September 2007 on the AWOL case of CPL Dave Teo. Lessons learnt from writing the term paper is to provide at the outset a proper background behind the Straits Times (by applying the calibrated coercion that I raised in the class presentation) to better explain why the report is linguistically written in this way. Secondly, to separate the authorities and show when it is clear that the sentence is talking about the police, when the SAF and when it is not clear and finally structuring the paper thematically to provide a stronger focus for specific points raised. The final exam’s compulsory question is on a 2006 article that talks about the issue of race and politics and asked us to critically unpack the concepts of ideology, empowerment and identity as regards to the article given for analysis. The second question I chose was on this quote from the Thomas Theorem, “all people define situations as real; but when powerful people define situations as real, then they are real for everybody else in their consequences.” The question asked us to consider how institutional power can be discursively negotiated and not simply imposed top-down. The basic argument that I provided was for a more middle approach, when institutional authorities have to be aware of their limitations of their authoritative knowledge in the educational and medical contexts and hence include a mixture of social and medical model when dealing with the other people in order for a more holistic analysis or approach of the situation at hand.
