English as a language of power

 

 

Essay Questions ARW 2014 AUT

General instructions

The essay is 1000 words long, plus or minus 10% to include quoted material, and not including the Reference List.

The essay will be marked according to the LG criteria, and marks will be available on vUWS sometime after week 16. Note that raw grades on GradeBook are still subject to moderation by UWS, but they are a good indication of whether a student has passed the subject.

Submission time is 5pm, Friday of Week 14, via the Turnitin link on vUWS, as per the LG. Students can submit earlier than this.

Students are required to address the excerpted textual material as part of their response to the essay question:

That is, the essay question itself must be addressed directly.

In addition, the supplied quote must be integrated into the essay response.

Then the student must further integrate at least some of the reading material suggested in the Reading List, before researching the topic further (as evidenced by integrating other sources not found on the Reading List).

Students are expected to use some or all of the suggested texts on the Reading List (2-3 minimum), but are also expected to find another 2-3 academic texts (not on the Reading List) which they use in their response. Therefore, the essay reference list should have at least 5-6 sources, and these must have been used in the essay explicitly.

Students are expected to show (to their tutor) the reference list and evidence of source text usage within the draft essay by weeks 12-13, prior to submission of the essay itself. 2

 

 

1. English is the only Global Language and other languages cannot compete with it. This means many languages will die out as a result. Is this a good or bad thing?

 

Respond to this question by using the following quotes to frame your answer.

Perhaps a global language willmake all other languages unnecessary. ‘A person needs only one language to talk to someone else”, it is sometimes argued, ‘and once a world language is in place, other languages will simply die away” (Crystal, 2003, p.15. bold in the original).

An indication of English”s international status is the fact that most, if not all, nations around the world have official government policies dealing with the status of English as a domestic issueEnglish is either perceived as a threat, for example, to a nation”s language(s) or cultural identity, or it is considered to be an asset, economically (for instance (Hale & Basides, 2013, p.7).

Reading List:

Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language (2nd Edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Evans, N. (2009). Dying Words: Endangered languages and what they have to tell us. Maldon & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Graddol, D. (2000). The Future of English. Retrieved from http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-elt-future.pdf

Hale, A. & Basides, H. (2013). The Keys to Academic English. South Yarra (Melb.): Macmillan.

Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). World Englishes: Implications for international communication and English language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mair, C. (2003). The politics of English as a world language: New horizons in postcolonial cultural studies. New York: Rodopi. 3

 

 

2. English is a language of great power. One effect of this situation, is that people with inadequate skills in English, have little social power. Using the Tan article supplied, decide if this is true?

 

Respond to this question by using the following quotes to frame your answer.

My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointmentShe said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no mistakes. Still, she said, the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothingAnd when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English ” lo and behold ” we had assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake (Tan, 1990, p.317).

If a person makes basic errors in communication, in any register, there is a real chance that they will be misunderstood. This misunderstanding extends well beyond the message they are trying to communicate: it extends to being the subject of value judgments by other peopleOf course the people making this assessment probably won”t say it that way. They will assume that the person [is] lazy, ignorant, stupid, illiterate, or just socially inept. They will then act accordingly, and treat the person as if it were true (Hale & Basides, 2013, pp. 92-93).

Reading List:

Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language (2nd Edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hale, A. & Basides, H. (2013). The Keys to Academic English. South Yarra (Melb.): Macmillan.

Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). World Englishes: Implications for international communication and English language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schneider, E. W. (2007). Postcolonial English: Varieties around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tan, A. (1990). Mother Tongue, originally published as Under Western Eyes in Threepenny Review, pp. 315″320. This article is supplied, in full, in the Final Essay folder, on vUWS.

Tsurutani, C. (2012). Evaluation of speakers with foreign accented speech in Japan: the effect of accent produced by English native speakers. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Vol. 33 (6), pp. 589-603. 4

 

 

3. Does Political Correctness (in English language use) empower, or disempower, people?

 

Respond to this question by using the following quotes to frame your answer.

The most powerful mental tyranny in what we call the free worldPolitical Correctness is the natural continuum of the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others (Doris Lessing, as cited in Hughes, 2010, pp. ix, 4).

Perhaps the best way of viewing PC is to regard it as a system of language where the power over lexical items is returned to the people who are most likely to suffer loss of power from the existing forms of reference (Hale & Basides, 2013, p.77).

Reading List:

Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language (2nd Edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fish, S. E. (1994). There”s No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It”s a Good Thing, Too. Cary (NC):Oxford University Press.

Hale, A. & Basides, H. (2013). The Keys to Academic English. South Yarra (Melb.): Macmillan.

Halmari, H. (2011) Political correctness, euphemism, and language change: The case of ‘people first”. Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 43, pp. 828″840.

Hughes, R. (2010). Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture. Chichester (UK): Wiley-Blackwell.

Rassool, N. (1998). Postmodernity, Cultural Pluralism and the Nation-State: Problems of Language Rights, Human Rights, Identity and Power. Language Sciences, Vol. 20, (1), pp. 89-99. 5

 

 

4. Language choices are both personal and conventional. Is this true for the language choices made when someone becomes abusive?

 

Respond to this question by using the following quotes to frame your answer.

Freedom of speech is clearly written into the [Racial Discrimination Act] that we have. The fear now is for peoplewho are part of minoritieswho are facing this type of abuse. It”s so true that emotional violence and words can be damaging (Adam Goodes, indigenous AFL athlete, as quoted in Murphy, 2014).

there are many ways in which [language] choices are already made for usWe consciously select, and avoid, specific patterns of language use, so that our communication can be not only what we intend, but also so that we can have the social effect we are seekingpeople control other people, through an immense variety of social tools, and language is only one of these tools (Hale & Basides, 2013, pp. 86-87).

Reading List:

Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language (2nd Edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Guerin. B. (2003). Combating Prejudice and Racism: New Interventions from a Functional Analysis of Racist Language. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, Vol.13, pp. 29″45.

Hale, A. & Basides, H. (2013). The Keys to Academic English. South Yarra (Melb.): Macmillan.

Hill, J. H. (2009). Everyday Language of White Racism. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley-Blackwell.

Hughes, R. (2010). Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture. Chichester (UK): Wiley-Blackwell.

Murphy, D. (April 13, 2014). Race act changes hurt vulnerable: Goodes. The Sun-Herald, News, p.9. 6

 

 

5. Choosing a language variety to represent yourself is very important. What language variety best serves the interests of Indigenous Australians: an Aboriginal language, Aboriginal English or Standard English?

 

Respond to this question by using the following quotes to frame your answer.

If an argument or theory is not based on reasonable evidence or logic, it is essential that we investigate the claims made. So, for example, I have researched traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous Protected Areas, and it is clear to me that many green campaigners and theorists are wrong in fact, do not know the body of scholarship and blindly repeat cant and ideology. This is damaging to the work of hundreds of Aboriginal conservation projects and should not be allowed to go unquestioned (Langton, 2012).

Australia is, and has always been, a natureculture. Just as English was introduced as the dominant language of education with European colonisation, so arrived an ontological premise that linguistically divides a categorised nature from culture and human from the environmentthis paper employs a socionature approach to make a philosophical argument for a more nuanced understanding of language, the cultural interface and contemporary moves towards interculture in Australian environmental education practice (Whitehouse, 2011, p.56).

Reading List:

Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language (2nd Edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Evans, N. (2009). Dying Words: Endangered languages and what they have to tell us. Maldon & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Hale, A. & Basides, H. (2013). The Keys to Academic English. South Yarra (Melb.): Macmillan.

Langton, M. (2012). The Quiet Revolution: Indigenous People and the Resources Boom. abc.net.au. 2012 Boyer Lectures: Sunday 18 November 2012 ” Sunday 2 December 2012. Available from: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/2012-boyer lectures/4305696

Meadows, M. & Avison, S. (2000). Speaking and hearing: aboriginal newspapers and the public sphere in Canada and Australia. Canadian Journal of Communication, vol. 25 (3).

Whitehouse, H. (2011). Talking Up Country: Language, Natureculture and Interculture in Australian Environmental Education Research. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, vol. 27(1), pp. 56-67.