Tampilkan postingan dengan label Sociolinguistics. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Sociolinguistics. Tampilkan semua postingan

Jumat, 23 November 2012

Women's Language


The distinctive language style that appears in male and female speech mostly covers three basic points. They are the use of vocabularies, the most common topics, and the linguistic style of language itself. In language, women are said to have their own vocabulary for emphasizing certain effects on them, words and expressions such as so good, such fun, exquisite, lovely, divine, precious, adorable, darling, and fantastic (Wardaugh: 2006).

According to Tannen (1990), women and men have some particular different habits in conversation. Women like to talk about connection and intimacy while men speak more about status and independence. Through her approach, she encourages the idea of equality in which the differences that happen between men and women are just simply because of their different culture that is introduced to their social life. Her study resulted that men tend to use a report style which refers to communicate factual information, while women tend to use a rapport style which concerns more about how to build and maintain the relationships.

Senin, 05 November 2012

Language and Gender


The most obvious function of language is probably to communicate information. However, language also can contribute to at least two other equally important. As stated by Sims (2004), language also can function to establish and maintain social relationships, and to express and create the social identity of the speaker. Sociolinguists, as it is said by Speer (2005:5), view that variations in patterns of language use are not random but are conditioned by social identity variables such as a person’s gender or class, and the situation or context in which they find themselves.
Among those social variables, gender is a term that refers to the way man and woman interact in their daily life. This behavior is constructed by the social values they have. The general usage of the term gender began in the late 1960s and 1970s, This term is used to help the sociolinguists in distinguishing the aspects of life that were more easily attributed or understood to be of social rather than biological origin (Unger and Crawford, as cited in Speer, 2005).

Selasa, 12 Juli 2011

System in Politeness and Culutural Diversity in Language Use

Cross-cultural diversity in language use
Although such theories of the universality of language use clearly contain a certain degree of truth, many sociolinguists have expressed reservations. Saville-Troike (1982) suggests that while many functions of language are indeed universal, the way language operates in any one society to serve these functions is culture-specific.
Loveday (1982) says much the same thing in his observation that cross-cultural differences reside, not in what we do, but in how, we do it. Like others, such as Varonis (1981), Schmidt and Richards (1985), Fasold (1990), Odlin (1990), he stresses the part played by cross-cultural transfer, for example in the ways ritual formulae are used.
Different systems of politeness
Most of those who disagree with theories of politeness systems focus their arguments on the work of Brown and Levinson (1987), since this is the most comprehensive statement of the universal case.

Kamis, 07 Juli 2011

How to Write Problem Statement Hot News June 2011


    In this step, we look for problem as many as possible. This problem statement is based on primer problem on background problem. The problems which be told in this section are stated in short and simple question sentences

    Problem statement is provided shortly in term of question sentence, whose content shows the problem which need to be solved and answered. Problem statement is the core of research, so that it can be used to consider the arranging of title and hypothesis.

    Problem limitation has very close relation with problem statement. Not all problems can be researched. The restrictiveness of student enables the identified problem cannot be researched all. If you have restrictiveness on time, thought, data and expense, so limit your research problem. It can make you able to speak a lot on that limitation. Another benefit of limiting research problem is that your explanation will be very clear so it will not be difficult to defend it in front of examiner.

Before deciding problems, researcher has to pay attention these things:
·    Problems must be manageable. Don’t research problems which are out of our ability.
·    Problems must be obtainable, easy to find the data and be analyzed.
·    Problems must be significance, important.
·    Problems must be interesting for researcher and other people.

Stating problem is divided into 4:
§    Descriptive problem is problem which doesn’t compare and connect with other variable, only describe the variable. E.g: bagaimana sikap masyarakat terhadap KB mandiri.

§    Associative problem is problem which connects between two variables or more.
Based on the connection, it consists of 3 kinds:

§    Symmetrical connection
The relation between two variables or more which conduct togetherness.
E. g: adakah hubungan antara banyaknya semut di pohon  dengan tingkat manisnya buah.

§    Cause-effect connection
e.g: adakah pengaruh motivasi belajar dan prestasi belajar.

§    Interactive connection
The relation between variable which influence each other.
e. g: adakah hubungan kepandaian dan kekayaan.

§    Comparative problem
 Connection between two variables or more which influence each other. E.g: adakah perbedaaan prestasi belajar antara anak petani dan pegewai negeri

Selasa, 05 Juli 2011

Euphemism Definition and Examples

Language is a power used to make one’s statement stronger. Someone uses language to influence people. Moreover, it can hide the fact to avoid misunderstanding between the speaker and the hearer or the writer and the reader. This is the same things with euphemism that implying the use of polite expression.

In language use, there is common way that is used by people to speak in polite expression, it is usually called euphemism. Euphemistic words and expressions allow us to talk about unpleasant things and neutralize the unpleasantness, e.g. the subject of death and dying, unemployment, and criminality (Wardhaugh, 1986:231).

Senin, 04 Juli 2011

Hymes' SPEAKING in Ethnography

Hymes' SPEAKING in Ethnography

Hymes, a sociolinguist, anthropologist, a folklorist of languages of the Pacific Northwest, and the founder of linguistic anthropology, in 1974 proposed an ethnographic framework which takes into account the various factors that are involved in speaking. An ethnography of a communicative event is best described as all of the factors that are relevant in understanding how that particular communicative event achieves its objectives.
There is a strong connection betweenspeech, human relations, and human understandings of the world. Hymes is particularly interested in how different language patterns shape different patterns of thought. He created what we call as “Dell Hymes Model of Speaking” and coined the term “communicative competence within language education"

Jumat, 17 Juni 2011

Types of Language Style


According to McCrimmon (1963:135-142), language styles are divided into three general types:
1. Formal Style
Formal English is primarily a written style. The characteristics of formal style are: the sentence is relatively long; avoid abbreviations, colloquialisms and slang; conservative grammatical usage which tends to observe distinctions often ignored at a less formal level; a serious and dignified attitude toward the subject and the reader.
 2. Informal Style
The informal style tries to follow the broad middle way between formal and colloquial styles. The characteristics of informal style are: the sentence is medium length, chiefly standard sentence, avoids the requirement of formal grammar, fragments rare but occasional, prefers idiomatic expressions and words which are easy rather than impressive, and the last characteristics is it usually addressed to the readers directly as “you”. In the informal range come much narration and description, and usually many reports of events.
3. Colloquial Style
The characteristics of colloquial style are: relatively short simple sentences, often grammatically incomplete; a generous use of contractions (I’ll, we’ve, didn’t, can’t), clipped words (cab, exams, ads, phone), and the omission of relative pronouns (who, which, that); a simplified grammatical structures; a personal or familiar tone which tries to create the impression of speaking intimately to the reader; and usually use slang. For example: brass (army), ham (theatre), on the beam (radio), southpaw (baseball), and behind the eight ball (pool).

Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Concept of Politeness In Face Threatening Acts


Sometimes in our daily lives, we can find acts that do not satisfy the “face wants” of the speaker and the hearer. The acts that threaten either positive or negative face of the hearer are called ‘Face Threatening Acts’ (Brown and Levinson). In other words, those acts infringe on the hearer’s need to maintain his/her self-esteem and are respected. Those acts that primarily threaten the addressee’s or Hearer (H’s) negative face want, by indicating (potentially) that the speaker (S) does not intend to avoid impeding H’s freedom of action, include orders, requests, suggestions, advice, reminding, threat, warning, offer, promise, compliment, and expression of negative emotion.
In contrast, there are acts that threaten H’s positive face such as expression of dissatisfaction, disagreement, criticisms, complaints, accusation, insults, out of control, irrelevance, bringing bad news about H or boasting about S, raising divisive topics, and blatant non-cooperation in an activity. All these acts indicate that the speaker does not care about the addressee’s feeling or want. For example, disagreeing with someone’s opinion also causes threat to his positive face, as it means that you indicate that he is wrong about something.

Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Concept of Politeness In Face


Brown and Levinson (1987) define politeness as behaving a way that attempts to take into account the feeling of people being addressed. In other words, being polite means that we try to keep our manners or behaviors and our language not to hurt other people’s feelings. Moreover, they proposed the concept of politeness strategies which are developed to save hearer’s face. Face refers to the respect that an individual has for him or herself and maintaining that ‘self esteem’ in public or in private situations.
Face
Brown and Levinson (1987)22 state their notion of “face” is derived from that of Goffman (1967) and English people which is related to the idea of being embarrassed, humiliated, or losing face. Thus, face is something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, and enhanced. In general, a person has to pay attention to his interlocutor’s face. In other words, the speaker and the hearer must cooperate in maintaining each other’s face in interaction based on the mutual vulnerability of face.
There are two kinds of face as divided by Brown and Levinson that everyone possesses. They are positive face and negative face. Positive face is defined as the desire of every member that his selfimage, wants, and opinion be liked and approved. Take for the example, a woman who spends most of her time gardening and takes care of her roses. She is proud of her and expects people admires her. Second, negative face is defined as the desire of every member that he has Freedom of Action as well as Freedom of Imposition. For example, there is a boy who loves watching TV but at the same time he has problem with his eyes’ health. Therefore, the mother warns him not to watch TV too much since it is not good for his eyes. Here, the boys has freedom to watch TV as much as he likes (Freedom of Action), but considering his eyes’ health, the mother forbids it which means the mother disturbs the boy’s freedom of watching TV.

Senin, 13 Juni 2011

Classifications of Taboo


Taboos objects classified into animals, excretion, name of God and person, swearing, ominous expressions, part of human body, and certain function of the part of human body and supernatural beings (Wardaugh, 1986:230). In certain communities, name of God and persons are tabooed, for example the male Indian does not call the names of his sisters and of some other female relatives. Taboo language is also related to activity in toilet, sex and religion (Claire in Rahardjo, 2002:33).
Rahardjo (2002:34) also say that the English has rich taboo words. Such as; fuck, damn, shit, bitch, bloody, bullshit, piss turd, farther, feces, lust, erection, ass, prostate, bang, balls, buttocks, penis butter, arse, ass hole, ass peddler, bastard, blow, bone, clap, bugger, clit, cunt, and many others. These words had been familiar in English speaker, and they must know that words.

Taboo


Under the terms of language, taboo is one of scientific phenomenon, which is interesting to discuss, because every society has its own way to express their  taboo. Wardhaugh, (1986:230) noted that linguistics taboo violated on occasion  to draw attention to one self, to show contempt, to be aggressive or provocative, or to mock authority. The penalty for breaking a linguistics taboo can be served, for blasphemy and obscenity are still crimes in many jurisdictions.

 In additions, the degree of violating the taboo is bigger among close or intimate relationship of breakers. For example, close friends have wider opportunity in expressing it. Social class and degree of education also affects the violating of the taboo. Linguistic taboo is an important matter, as the implementation of the things-words, phrases and sentences etc. by a language user will raise annoyances and disrespect. We learn taboo in term to know and to avoid of using it, not to know and utilize it. Taboo exist not only in the terms of words but also in the terms of gestures, pictures, attitudes, behavior etc.

Taboo words occur in most of all languages, morever failure to adhere because often-strict rules governing and using them can lead to punishment or public shame. Many people will never employ words of this type and most other will only use them in restricted set of situations. However, there are always those who are prepared to break taboos as irrational and unjustified, as in certain movements for free speech Wardhaugh, (1986:230).
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Kamis, 09 Juni 2011

Characteristics of Slang Language

Some of slang expressions are acceptable and the others are a rude and impolite. Words or phrases may be considered as slang if they fulfill one or more these characteristics (Slang of Duke.http://www.epinions.com):
1. Creative
Slang is created from a new term, so it needs the creativity of the creator. The creator is encouraged to produce new terms, which are imaginative, innovative, productive, even shocking, and amusing. The example of teenagers’ creativity is creating slang terms from the existing words. In this case, teenagers still use the original words, but acquire a new meaning, which is different from its original meaning. Some of them is constructed from the kind of colors, animals, and numbers,
2. Flippant
It means, slang produced has irrelevant meaning with the context. That makes this term considered as a rude, for instance, fucking chicken, bitch, motherfucker, and shit.

Slang Language


Definition

Slang is a specific word, phrase, or utterance, which is commonly used by young people in their community. It refers to unconventional words, so it is not appropriate to be spoken in a formal situation, such as in the school, university, or in the office. Frommer and Finegan (2004) wrote “Slang terms are often found in movies and music reviews, lifestyle pieces, and people columns” (p.243). While Anderson and Trudgill in Ulfa (2003) wrote that actually, slang is not language ordialect, it can be said as a code that produced by changing the existing language to the common one. Every language has a vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, whereas slang has not. It just has vocabulary which is not profanity and ungrammatical. Dialect refers to the different language caused by geographical area, whereas slang is not restricted to one region or country (p. 24)

Slang that was widely used in the early twentieth century, firstly appeared in 1800’s when it was used by criminal classes in London (Maurer:2003). It was produced largely by social group, such as criminal classes, narcotic addicts, sexual deviant community, racial minority community, political organization, armed forces, rapper, etc, rather than by individual speakers. The first reason why they used slang was to make the expressions secret. Nowadays, teenagers often use it

in their daily communication with their community. By using slang, teenagers feel free in conversation with their community, every time and everywhere without anyone who understands the meaning.

Recently, slang is not only used by certain communities as secret expressions but also used commonly by teenagers. It is considered as a simple word or phrase which is not profanity and ungrammatical. Goodword (2006) stated that slang is a crucial part of a young person “coming of age,” one of the first detectable signs of their breaking away from their parents and their parents’

values. It is a cheap second language that express as the differences between young people who are about to enter adulthood from his or her parents’ generation (p.1). On the other hand, Mulyana (2001) said that “slang are words or phrases, which have specific, meaning, unique, deviate, even opposite with the real meaning used by certain community” (p. 280). However, some slang may be accepted as a standard speech, although in its original meaning, for example, bus from omnibus, jazz, which originally had sexual connotation, and VIP (Very Important Person).

Whereas some expressions of Indonesian slang are makan gengsi, (obstinate), udah (finish), PDKT (aprroach), naksir (love) as Faruq (2004) examined in his research A Study of Play of Words and Slang on “The ABG Problem” Section in Jawa Pos daily newspaper


Minggu, 05 Juni 2011

Politeness, Face, and Apologies


Apology occurs when someone recognizes that he has performed an action or an utterance which has insulted other person, such as offending someone else, neglecting his or her duty, or causing trouble. That will damage one's relationship. In social interaction, someone may hurt other person's feeling unintentionally. This incident may cause understanding.

It is said an apology is often used to serve different purpose ranging from maintaining polite rituals that could vary from one society to another, to the acknowledgement of serious offences. In spoken and written interactions and in effect of intercultural interactions it becomes relevant to determine what condition must be present for the adequate performance of apology.

An apology is a speech act that is used to restore relationships between a speaker (S) and a hearer (H) after S has offended H intentionally or unintentionally. Olshtain and Cohen (in Wolfson &  Judd, 1983) state that the act of apologizing is called for when some behaviors violated social norms. When an action or utterance (or the lack of other one) has resulted in the fact that one or more persons perceives themselves as offended, the culpable person (s) needs to apologize.

Minggu, 22 Mei 2011

Ethnography


         People speak differently because they have presumably different language variation. They use different way in uttering the notion from the speaker to the hearer. The reason is because each people or even group has its own norms of linguistic behavior. The way how people express their idea is different among others. It is due to the fact that there is ethnographical factor which takes a part in this case.

            Hymes facilitate the theory of analyzing this problem. The SPEAKING theory provided by Hymes can effort to understand the language use by particular people with their own way. Indeed, variety of speaking somewhat encourage further attention.

Sabtu, 14 Mei 2011

Language Planning

Based on the Weinstein idea, language planning is a government authorized long-term, sustained, and conscious effort to alter a language function in a society for the purpose of solving communications problems. Language planning has become a part of nation-building since a noticeable trend in the world is to make language and nations synonymous.
Some basic issues
Language planning is an effort to interfere deliberately about the status or the internal conditions of a language or one of the varieties. The first focus results in status planning and the second focus is the corpus planning. Status planning changes the status of language of variety and the rights of the language users while the corpus planning seeks to develop a variety of a language or a language, to standardize it or to provide it with the means for serving every possible language in society. As a result of planning decisions, a language may be recognized a sole official language,
Two other issues that appear are important to discuss. The first is about the language rights of immigrants to a country should have an era widespread immigrations motivated by a variety of concerns but often equates the nationhood or statehood with a language or ethnicity. The second issue concerns about how to identify the right kinds of data that must go into planning decisions while the information that comes is not always reliable.

Language and Disadvantages


There is an agreement among the linguists that there is no variety of language as inherently much better than the any other. All languages and varieties are equal. A standard of a variety is ‘better ‘ only in a social sense; it has a preferred status. It gives the users a certain social benefits, and it increases their life chances.

Bernstein and Codes

Bernstein is interested in the process of socialization, on how the children acquires  and responds a particular cultural identity. He views of the relationship between language and cultures appear to have been heavily influenced by the Whorf hypothesis. According to him, there is a serious effect for the children of the lower working class who go to the school because the elaborated code is the medium of the interaction in schooling while a child from the middle class is oriented through to language to principles as these deals with objects and persons, and accessible to the system through which knowledge is acquired.

This British sociologist believes that the English social class system does not allow the low working class easy access to the elaborated codes. Members of that class restrictedly use the code that limits the intellectual horizons of the speakers.

Black English

Black English has certain characteristics in terms of phonology, morphology and syntax. Phonologically, there are likely to be far more homophones in Black English rather than in standard varieties of the languages. In morphology, because t and d are often unpronounced, there is no clear signal of past tense. While in syntactical area, Black English has special use of be or lack of be.

One of the most interesting characteristics of Black English is above-mentioned used of the zero copula while zero copula os rarely found in the White speeches, even poor White Southerners. There is such a variety of English as Black English in the US. Those who speak it recognize that what they speak is something different from the varieties employed by most non-blacks. What is an interesting topic for sociolinguists is children from Black English are usually perceived to bring with them to school a problem that appears directly from speaking such a variety.

Some Consequences for Educations

There is a misunderstanding about Black English, in the characteristics and how it is used. Many educators interprets that Black English, especially children, are deficient in language ability. They lack ability to use language as device to acquire and process the information. In this view, Black English children suffer a verbal deprivation and it was the duty and responsibilities of educators to supply them with one.


(Further Reading: Introduction to Sociolinguistics by Ronald Wardaugh,)

Minggu, 08 Mei 2011

Pembangunan Pertanian dan Pedesaan



1.      Pertanian di Negara berkembang
Pada umumnya Negara berkembang adalah Negara pertanian, dalam arti bahwa bagian terbesar Produk Domestik Brutonya (PDB) Negara yang bersangkutan, pada umumnya berasal dari sektor pertanian ini. Untuk kelompok negara-negara berkembang berpendapatan rendah pada tahun 1988 persentase bagian sector pertaniannya adalah rata-rata sebesar 33%, di mana pada beberapa Negara diantaranya jauh lebih tinggi lagi, seperti Tanzania 66%, Somalia 62% dan Uganda 72%. Untuk kelompok Negara berkembang berpendapatan menengah adalah rata-rata 12%, padahal pada Negara-negara industry barat adalah rata-rata hanya 5%.
Pertumbuhan sektor pertanian ini di Negara-neraga berkembang selama kurun waktu 1980-1988 adalah relative lambat jika dibandingkan dengan sektor-sektor ekonomi lainnya, seperti pada Negara berkembang berpendapatan rendah pertumbuhan sektor pertanian hanya 4.4% sedangkan sektor industri 8,7%. Dan pada Negara berkembang berpendapatan menengah pertumbuhan sector pertaniannya hanya 2,7% sedangkan sektor industry 3,5%. Pada dasarnya rendahnya pertumbuhan sektor pertanian terutama disebabkan oleh rendahnya produktivitas pada sektor ini.
Karena produktivitas yang rendah dari sector pertanian di Negara-negara berkembang pada umumnya, maka penduduk yang tergolong miskin di sector ini pada umumnya terdapat di daerah pedesaan. Mereka ini pada umumnya berjuang untuk sekedar dapat bertahan hidup dan dalam kondisi keterbelakangan. Karena itu, apabila tujuan pembangunan pada tahap-tahap awal pembangunan adalah untuk menghapuskan atau memerangi kemiskinan, maka pembangunan harus dimulai dan difokuskan pada daerah pedesaan ini.
Produktivitas yang rendah di sector pertanian ini menurut Todaro terutama disebabkan oleh :
a.    Peralatan yang dipergunakan masih sangat sederhana, sedangkan dibeberapa daerah binatang sebagai tenaga kerja tidak dapat dikerahkan karena merajalelanya hama tanaman di musim panas yang panjang sehingga pekerjaan di lapangan harus dikerjakan secara berhati-hati oleh tenaga manusia.
b.    Cara bercocok tanamnya masih banyak yang berupa peladangan berpindah dan pada lahan yang kurang stabil. Namun cara ini sekarang sudah tidak mungkin dilakukan lagi karena jumlah penduduk yang telah meningkat dengan relative cepat, sedangkan lahan yang tersedia semakin terbatas.
c.    Factor juga yang membatasi peningkatan produktivitas pertanian adalah kekurangan tenaga kerja pada saat-saat sibuk, yakni pada waktu musim tanam dan musim panen.
2.      Peranan Sektor Pertanian Dalam Pembangunan
Peranan sektor pertanian dalam pembangunan yang utama diantaranya adalah sehubungan dengan pertimbangan-pertimbangan yang berikut :
a.       Sebagian besar penduduk di Negara-negara berkembang memiliki usaha dan menggantungkan hidupnya pada sector pertanian.
b.      Sector pertanian di Negara berkembang merupakan sumber utama untuk pemenuhan kebutuhan pokok terutama pangan.
c.       Sector pertanian merupakan sumber atau penyedia input tenaga kerja yang sangat besar untuk menunjang pembangunan sektor-sektor lainnya terutama industry.
d.      Sector pertanian dapat juga berperan sebagai sumber dana dan daya yang utama dalam menggerakkan dan memacu pertumbuhan ekonomi di sebagian besar Negara berkembang.
Sector pertanian merupakan pasar yang potensial bagi hasil output sector modern di perkotaan yang ditumbuhkembangkan

Sabtu, 07 Mei 2011

Structuralism and Claude Levi Strauss


Claude Lévi-Strauss is the best known and most influential structuralist. Because of his influence, Lévi-Strauss is an excellent example of structuralist approaches. The main influence on the work Lévi-Strauss' work is multifaceted and that he was influenced not only by other anthropologists but also by linguists, geologists and others. Lévi-Strauss brings into anthropology these and other influences which have shaped his thinking and anthropological thought through his work. The main aspects of Lévi-Strauss' work can be summarized under three headings, they are:

a)    Alliance Theory
Lévi-Strauss' theoretical contributions to social anthropology are numerous and significant. The best known of these is "alliance theory." Alliance theory stresses the importance of marriage in society as opposed to the importance of descent. Its basic supposition is that the exchange of women between groups of related men results in greater social solidarity, and that the result of this cohesion is better chances of survival for all members of the resultant kin group. Lévi-Strauss' claims that the regulating of marriages through prescription and preference and the proscription of other types of marriage creates a "exchange" of women in simple societies. This interchange, accompanied by exchanges of gifts, ensures the cooperation of the members of these groups.

His analysis of the incest taboo is fascinating. For Lévi-Strauss the link between nature and culture in humankind comes from this universal proscription. In the incest taboo nature transcends itself and creates culture as the controlling element of human behavior. Sex and other drives are regulated by culture, man has become a cultural entity.
b)    Human Mental Processes

There is unity in the way the human mind functions. Lévi-Strauss claims that, although the manifestations may be very different, the human mental processes are the same in all cultures. The unity of the mental processes results from the biology of the human brain and the way it works. As a result of this unity, e.g. the classification of the universe by "primitive man" has the same basis as when it is done by any group, it is done through models. The fact that resultant models of this classification may be different is irrelevant for him. The analysis of myth in Lévi-Strauss is also based on the premise about the unity of the human mind.

c)    Structural Analysis of Myth
Lévi-Strauss' work on myth parallels his interest in mental processes. He attempts to discover unconscious the regularities of the human mind. The use of the structuralist models of myth allows for the reduction of material studied to manageable levels. The dominant manner to accomplish this goal is based on the use of the following concepts:

1.    Surface and Deep Structure
To discover the model/structure of a myth one must explore the deep structure of a myth. The surface structure provides us with the narrative, the deep structure with an explication of the myth. This is accomplished by discovering the major binary opposition(s) in the deep structure.

2.    Binary oppositions
These occur in nature and naturally in the human mind. They are such things as night and day, left and right or nature and culture. Nature and culture often functions as a binary opposition in tales. However, depending on the tale or myth the binary opposition changes. For example, the binary opposition life and death is a useful one to explicate "Sleeping Beauty." Here, the deep structure of the story suggests that when the thirteenth fairy declares that Sleeping Beauty is to die at her fifteenth birthday that a life versus death binary opposition is posited. A mediation to solution the problem is now necessary.

3.    Mediation
A binary opposition can be mediated by finding a solution to the opposition created by the binary. The mediation to the culture/nature binary opposition is that culture transcends nature. In the case of "Sleeping Beauty" the nature of the mediation is quite different but equally embedded in within the subject matter. Here the life versus death binary opposition is mediated by the twelve fairy's action: death is transformed into one hundred years sleep.

Jumat, 06 Mei 2011

Choosing a Code


There are several important points to discuss in this chapter: diglossia, bilingualism and multilingualism, code choice, code switching, and code mixing.  First of all, a diglossia situation is exist in a society when it has two distinct codes which show a clear functional separation.; that is, one is adopted in one set of circumstances and the other in entirely different set. A key defining characteristics of diglossia is that the two varieties kept quite apart functionally. One is used in a set of circumstances and the other in an entirely different set. For example, The H variety is the prestige variety, the L variety lacks prestige. On occasion, one may teach in an H variety but answer questions about its concerns or explain part of it in an L variety to strengthen the understanding.

The next is about bilingualism and multilingualism. When talking about these two points, it has a a relation to monolingualism. Monolingualism is the ability to use but a single language code. When it is as a widely accepted norm to the most Western countries, it is assumed that bilingual and multilingual individuals appear not ‘usual’. However, in this time, monolingual individual may be considered as lacking an important skill in society, a skill to build a free interaction with the speaker of other language.