Language Comprehension; The nature of understanding

In understanding the language, there are four level of language processing. Those are:
1.    Perceptual  Level
At the perceptual level, we could describe your processing activities as a series of eye movements that are used to encode the constituent letters of words, including speech sound, written symbols, and signs.
2.    Lexical Level
At the lexical level, we use the identified letters to retrieve the lexical representation of a word from permanent memory. This representation will include the meaning of the word, its spelling, its pronunciation, its part of speech, and related characteristic. In short, the representation is what we know about a word.
3.    Sentential Level
We analyze the sentence structure of the ongoing linguistic message. In this case the sentence contains two clauses, and the subordinate clauses come first. We use working memory to store the contents of the first clause while we process the second, then form some unified representation of the entire sentence.
4.    Discourse Level
We identify the context preceding and following a sentence and integrate the sentence representation with that context.

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,)

Acting and Conversing

Speech Acts     
In speech acts, J.L Austin has a theory about the performative acts in which a person is not just saying something but it is actually doing something if certain real world conditions are met. He pointed out that perforamtives should met felicity conditions in order to be successful. A conventional procedures,  all participants must execute the procedures, and finally the necessary thoughts, feelings, and intentions must be present in all parties. Austin devides performatives into five categories; verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives.

On the other side, Searle argued that we can speak minimally at three kinds of acts. There are utterance acts which refers to the fact that we must utter words and sentences when we want to say anything at all, prepositional acts which refers to those matters that have to do with referring and predicitng, and illocutionary acts which refers to the intents of the speakers. As the additinon, Searle also regulates some rules in governing promise-making. Those are the propositional content, preparatory rules, sincerity rules and the essential rules.
In oppose to Austin, who concentrate his study on how the speakers realize their intentions in speaking, Searle focuses on how listeners respond to the utterances. Both Austin and Searle recognize that the people use language to achieve the variety of objectives.

Cooperation and Face; Grice and Goffman
Based on Grice’s view, it is stated that we are able to converse each other because of the recognition of common goals and the specific ways of achieving them. The acts in conversation should in line with cooperative principle, the general principle in which a mutual engagement happen between listeners and speakers. There are four maxims of cooperative principles (Grice; 1975). Those are quantity which makes the contribution as the required informatives, quality in which the belief should not be falsely said or lack adequate evidence, relation as the simple injunctions, and manner to avoid obscurity of expression and ambiguity.

In the Griece sense, a conversation is a cooperative activity depends on the speakers and listeners sharing a set of assumption. But, it is also cooperative in the sense that speakers and listeners tend to accept each other for what they claim to be, that is, the accepts of ‘face’ that the other offers. Goffman (1955) called ‘face’ as the work of presenting faces to each others, protecting our own’s face and the other’s face. In other word, ‘the affective state of the speaker’ and ‘his profile of identity’ are much the same as the idea of ‘face’.

Keadaan Pertanian di Indonesia

Pertanian merupakan fokus utama dari strategi dan prioritas pengembangan orde baru. Meskipun sektor ini tidak begitu menderita kerusakan di zaman Soekarno, dibandingkan dengan komponen ekonomi yang didasarkan perkotaan, kinerja pertanian pada periode sebelum 1966 tidak begitu mengesankan. Indonesia lamban dalam mengolah kesempatan yang muncul dari varietas panen baru yang dikenal dalam revolusi hijau, sebagian disebabkan input perdagangan sektor modern belum siap.

Sejak awal tahun 1970, paradigma pembangunan pertanian di Indonesia berubah drastis seiring perubahan paradigma pembangunan ekonomi kapitalistis yang bertumpu pada modal besar. Dalam kerangka pembangunan ekonomi saat itu, sektor pertanian tidak lagi ditempatkan sebagai fondasi ekonomi nasional, tetapi dijadikan buffer (penyangga) guna menyukseskan industrialisasi yang dijadikan lokomotif pertumbuhan ekonomi.

Sebagai penyangga, yang terpenting bagi pemerintahan Orba adalah bagaimana mendongkrak produksi pangan dalam negeri tanpa harus berbelit-belit, cepat, dan tidak berisiko secara politik. Pilihan ini sebagai antitesis program land reform di masa Orde Lama (Orla) yang dijadikan landasan utama dalam program pembangunan pertanian semesta. Kebetulan pada saat bersamaan arus global politik-ekonomi dunia memperkenalkan revolusi hijau sebagai lawan dan alternatif revolusi merah.

Orba yang sejak kelahirannya menganut ideologi ekonomi kapitalis cenderung melaksanakan pembangunan pertaniannya melalui by-pass approach (jalan pintas), yaitu revolusi hijau tanpa reformasi agraria (pembaruan agraria). Karena itu, pembangunan di Indonesia oleh Rohman Sobhan (1993) disebut sebagai development without social transition (Wiradi, 1999).

Perubahan paradigma ini menciptakan missing link dalam pelaksanaan pembangunan pertanian dari satu periode ke periode lain. Pertanian tidak lagi dipandang dalam aspek menyeluruh, tetapi direduksi sebagai sekadar persoalan produksi, teknologi, dan harga. Tanah sebagai alas pembangunan pertanian tidak dianggap sebagai faktor amat penting. Persoalan keterbatasan lahan petani yang rata-rata hanya memiliki 0,25 hektar, menurut Syaiful Bahari dari Bimas Ketahanan Pangan, dapat diatasi dengan menempuh non-land based development (Kompas, 17/1/2004), bukan dengan merombak dan menata kembali struktur penguasaan tanah yang lebih adil dan merata melalui reformasi agraria. Cara pandang seperti ini merupakan cermin jalan pintas yang mendominasi kebijakan dan strategi pembangunan pertanian sejak masa Orba hingga sekarang.

Structuralism and Ferdinand De Saussure

These influential theories of the second half of the twentieth century, all of which are focused on language, have their origins in the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), he defines the proper object of linguistic study as the system of signs used by human beings, and the relationships of which can be studied in the abstract, or as he says “synchronicity” rather than “diachronically.” In other words, there is no reference to any particular historical implementation of that language.

According to Saussure, the basic unit of language is a sign.  A sign is composed of signifier (a sound-image, or its graphic equivalent) and a signified (the concept or meaning).  So, for example, a word composed of the letters p-e-a-r functions as a signifier by producing in the mind of English-speakers the concept (signified) of a certain kind of rosaceous fruit that grows on trees, viz., a pear.

Saussure’s way around this obvious objection is to say that his interest is in the structure of  language, not the use of language.  As a scientist, Saussure limited his investigation to the formal structure of language (langue), setting aside or bracketing the way that language is employed in actual speech (parole).  Hence, the term structuralism.  Saussure bracketed out of his investigation any concern with the real, material objects (referents) to which signs are presumably related.  This bracketing of the referent is a move that enabled him to study the way a thing (language and meaning) is experienced in the mind.  In this sense, his motivation was similar to Husserl's.  And in the end, Saussure never offered a method for investigating how language as a system hooks up to the world of objects that lie outside language.  As we shall see, this was to have far-reaching effects.

Pidgin and Creoles

A pidgin is a language with no native speakers; it is no one language but is a contact language. It is the products of a multilingual situation in which a simple code of communication is a need. A pidgin is sometimes regarded as a ‘reduced’ variety of a ‘normal’ language, with the simplification of grammar and vocabulary of that language, considerable phonological variation, etc.  In contrast to a pidgin, a ‘creole’ is just a normal language in just about every sense. Like a normal language, creole has native speaker. But similar to pidgin, a creole has a complex relationship to the usually standardized language to which it is associated.

Pidgin and Creole arises from the basic needs that people who speak different language have to find common system of communication which is often known as lingua franca. UNESCO (1953) defines lingua franca as ‘a language which is used habitually by people whose mother tongue are different in order to facilitate communication between them’. A lingua franca can be spoken in a variety of ways. Not only is it spoken differently in places but also individual speakers vary widely in their ability to use the languages.

Summary of Greek Theatre

Drama represented the peak of Greek civilization and has remained a big influence for the Western tradition. The nature of Greek drama is known a religious ritual that mostly consists of songs by a chorus. The subject matter is about traditional religious myths. This drama is divided into three great tragic plays.
A.    Aeschylus
This person, born near Athens in 528 B.C. is the first playwright who wrote play about satire (comedy about saty). Then he is considered as the founder of Greek tragedy. Also, he is known for introducing individual actors and dramatic dialogue, adopting stage costum and special effects. His themes is grand and solemn, and the language is vivid. To be a lyric poet, his style is unsurpassed.
B.    Sophocles
Sophocles lived in greatest years of Athenian Prosperity and through its defend in the Peloponnesian war. The number of plays he wrote was more than Aeschylus did but there was only seven remaining. Sophocles is regarded as the founder of the ‘tragic hero’ concepts. Oedipus rex is likely the most influential play ever written. The introduction of a third actor and greater exploitation of scenery are the results of his works. He gave up the tradition of compiling plays as part of trilogy. The human will was given a greater chance rather than the God will. Though neither a politician nor a soldier, the fame brought him high office in Athens, and after his death at the age of 90, he was recognized as semi-divine.
C.    Euripides
Euripides, born in 430 B.C. was a less cheerful and more reclusive figure than Sophocles.
His work is at least 80 plays, of which 18 have survive more or less impaired.it is closer to everyday life, more controversial. His lyric verse is morw charming than grand in the manner of Aeschylus. His plays tends to show the grip of powerful and conflicting passions, then his language is more natural, less high flown. More than Aeschylus, Euripides excelled in portraying the women, a heroin or of villains. Like his two great predecessors before, Euripides came in for some amusing mockery in the hands of Aristophanes.