Khamis, 25 September 2008

A Brief History of Gender Studies
Initial quantitative sociolinguistic studies, or variationist studies, investigated the use of ‘variants’ such as pronunciation or grammar structure (Labov, 1972) according to the influences of factors such as class, education and sex. With the evolution of feminist sociolinguistics, assertions, such as those of (Labov, 1972) that women produce language closer to the standard form than men, were challenged as being biased and reinforcing over-simplistic stereotypical generalisations. Tightness of social networks and increasing employment opportunities for women can be seen as being as much of an influence as gender in Lesley Milroy’s (1980) study of Belfast working class communities where women with tight social networks use vernacular forms more than men. Beth Thomas (1989) found that a combination of age and tight-knit networks corresponded with more use of the vernacular for women in a study of a Welsh community. In this way quantitative sociolinguistics has been criticised for neglecting societal power structures or frameworks underlying and ultimately controlling language production.

Gender and Language: Challenging the Stereotypes
by
BRENDA WRIGHT

selamat menyambut hari raya puasa

masa berlalu dengan cepat. sudah sebulan. usia kian meningkat. apa yang sedang dilakukan masih belum ketemu jawapan.apa pun selamat hari raya kepada semua warga kota,desa,dan di mana jua anda berada.

birthday cakes...yummy

wow... sedapnyeee. happy birthday my boy..

Rabu, 17 September 2008

A Short History of the Weblog

A Short History of the Weblog
To me, the blog concept is about three things: Frequency, Brevity, and
Personality. (..) This clarification has evolved over time, but I realized early on
that what was significant about blogs was the format -- not the content. (Evan
Williams, creator of Pyra and blogger.com)
The Weblog is as old as the Web itself (see Blood 2002). It began when computer savvy web
designers and energetic web enthusiasts wanted to record their wanderings though
Cyberspace. These individuals collected links and posted them on frequently updated sites
that resemble what most know as a home web page, or its cousin the What's New page.
Linked were pages that the web savvy thought others may be interested in, but had not found
in their own on-line travels. Originally, pages were kept by those that knew how to design
websites. Weblogs were somewhat difficult to maintain as one needed to code or use HTML
each time the site was updated. These pages often contained links with little to no
commentary. These pages were used to filter the web, and were especially useful as the nowpopular
on-line search engines had not yet been developed.

research about blog

Blogging: personal participation in public knowledgebuilding
on the web
Chimera Working Paper Number: 2005, 02
Mark Brady
mbrady@essex.ac.uk
Blogs have emerged from a humble beginning to become a highly networked mass of online
knowledge and communication. All kinds of research, from searching for the best price of the latest
mobile phone, to more rigorous forms, are conducted through the blog medium. The mechanisms
that provide the possibility for blogs to link to each other provide possibilities for collaboration and
knowledge sharing in a fast, public and convenient manner. This working paper discusses the
lessons that can be learned from collaboration and research in the blogosphere with a view to how
they can be applied to academic and commercial research.

Rabu, 10 September 2008

http://www.meaning.ca/archives/archive/art_how_to_write_P_Wong.htm

sambungan

Modal tags request information or confirmation of information of which the speaker is uncertain (speaker oriented)

(4) a. You were missing last week, weren't you?
b. But you've been in Reading longer than that, haven't you?

Affective tags are used to indicate concern for the addressee

Negative politeness: softeners:

(5) Open the door for me, could you?

Positive politeness: positive interest, solidarity, facilitative

(6) a. His portraits are quite static by comparison, aren't they?
b. Quite a nice room to sit in actually, isn't it?

Facilitative tags have an interactional function

2 types of politeness

What is politeness? A brief summary of Brown & Levinson's theory

Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness; Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The basic strategy of politeness is to minimize the threat to an addressee's 'negative face' and enhance their 'positive face' as much as possible.

Positive face: a person's desire to be liked and understood

Negative face: a person's desire to act freely

Positive politeness strategy: a strategy that seeks to create a positive relationship with the hearer

  • Dear Mary, could you open the window?
  • You’re so strong. Could you open the window?

Negative politeness strategy: a strategy that seeks to minimise the threat to the hearer's face

  • Excuse me, could you open the window?
  • Sir, could you open the window?
  • Could you open the window?

rujukan bahan

Lakoff’s “Women Language”

Lakoff's original study

Lakoff, Robin. 1975. Language and Woman's Place. New York: Harper & Row. (Reprinted in 1989)

Lakoff, Robin Tolmach. 2004. Language and Woman's Place; Text and Commentaries. Revised and expanded edition. Edited by Mary Bucholtz. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Typical feminine speech style marked by the use of linguistic features which allegedly weaken or mitigate the force of an utterance:

  1. hedges: sort of, kind of, I guess...
  2. (super) polite forms: would you please, I'd really appreciate it if...
  3. tag questions: don't you, isn't it
  4. "speaking in italics": emphatic so and very, intonational emphasis
  5. "empty adjectives": divine, charming, sweet, adorable
  6. hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation
  7. lack of a sense of humor
  8. direct quotations
  9. special vocabulary (specialized color terms, sewing, fashion)
  10. rising intonation on declaratives

Problems with Lakoff's study (or its interpretation by many scholars)

  • no empirical basis: based on anecdotal evidence & intuition
  • one form = one function
  • her analysis is circular
  • androcentric bias
  • interpretation: sex or power?

Stereotype: a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment (Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed.)

Anecdotal evidence: based on or consisting of reports or observations of usually unscientific observers

Empirical evidence: based on systematic observation and/or experiment and capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment

Investigations on “women’s language”

Dubois & Crouch 1975

Dubois, Betty Lou & Isabel M. Crouch. 1975. The question of tag questions in women’s speech: they don’t really use more of them, do they?. Language in Society 4:289-294.

• academic conference
• men used more tag questions than women

O'Barr & Atkins' 1980 courtroom study

O'Barr, W. & B. Atkins. 1980. "Women's language" or "powerless language" In S. McConnell-Ginet, R. Borker, & N. Furman (eds.), Women and Language in Literature and Society. NY: Praeger.

(1) Lawyer: What was the nature of your acquaintance with the late Mrs. E.D.?
Witness: Well, we were, uh, very close friends. Uh, she was even sort of like a mother to me.

(2) Lawyer: And had the heart not been functioning, in other words, had the heart been stopped, there would have been no blood to have come from that region?
Witness: It may leak down depending on the position of the body after death. But the presence of blood in the alveoli indicates that some active respiratory action had to take place

(3) Lawyer: And you saw, you observed what?
Witness: Well, after I heard -- I can't really, I can't definitely state whether the brakes or the lights came first, but I rotated my head slightly to the right, and directly behind Mr Z, and I saw reflections of lights, and uh, very, very, very instantaneously after that, I heard a very, very loud explosion -- from my standpoint of view it would have been an implosion because everything was forced outward like this, like a grenade thrown into a room. And, uh, it was, it was terrifically loud.

What does this study show?

Features of “women language” correlate with:

  • the speaker's social status
  • the speaker's previous courtroom experience

Janet Holmes' 1984 study of tag questions

Holmes, Janet. 1984. Hedging your bets and sitting on the fence: Some evidence for hedges as support structures. Te Reo 27:47-62.

Tag questions have different functions

Modal tags request information or confirmation of inform

bacalah dengan hati

Rabbani - Apa Yang Kau Tahu
Bacalah..sebutlah dengan nama
tuhan yang menciptakan
segala kejadian didunia

bacalah ..tulislah dengan pena
wahyu yang diutuskan
risalah kebenaran untuk insan

Seluruh kasihnya telah dia curahkan
tulus suci mengisi ruang hati
bagai dalam dingin
rindu berdakapan
dengan kata syahdu
kasih mesra bersatu
Apa yang kau tahu

Bacalah..lihatlah dengan mata
selami sanubari
putaran panorama hidup ini

Bacalah...tipuan mata hati
bisikan penuh mimpi
melamar kelalaian tidak henti

suruhan larangan telah dia sampaikan
jangan pilih haluan di murka
kelak rebah diri
duka menangisi
tanpa belas kasih
disiksa saban waktu
apa yang kau tahu

gua hira menggamit kisah silam
satu peristiwa nabi bersendiri
iqra` diturunkan muhammad ditabalkan
tersuratlah sudah kalam dari tuhan

sekian kalinya detik waktu berlalu
apa terus berbakti untuk dia
membalasi kasih
syukur dengan nikmat
amal yang bertambah
hikmahnya kan ketemu
apa yang kau tahu