Essays on Colloquial

The preliminary title of the proposed research project is “A contrastive study of transitivity and intransitivity in formal and colloquial Arabic and English”. The final title of the research project is not carved in stone and will likely be subject to change, if some nuanced corrections are suggested.

Background

In the languages that are widely spoken in the world today, all verbs can be categorized as transitive, intransitive or ambitransitive. Historically, linguists have understood transitivity as a “transfer of energy from one entity to another” (Hoche, 2009, p. 148). It appears from this definition that transitive verbs presume the transfer ...

Catcher in the rye brings out the anguish and confinement in a teenage boy called Holden, in the mid-1950 (Bratož 95). Holden is faced with disparities in life, which makes him to reconsider the meaning of life. Similarly, Charlie, in perks of being a wallflower is faced with problems that Holden encounters in life. Despite living in different social, economic and cultural confinement, ideologies represented in the two pieces of literature are uncanny. Holden was a victim of the World War 2 post-war trauma in the United States of America. The post-war conditions had forced Holden to give up ...

The concepts of loanwords and globalization support the idea that English is absorbing words from other languages and incorporating them into its own. The present day world has increasingly become interconnected through what is known as globalization. According to Odegova and Zabulionite (475), “this interconnection, “has spelled the need for people to adopt words used by different languages.” For instance, Spanish words such as “tortilla” and “Desperado” are now common among the English speaking people. This discourse might be viewed in a negative light. However, as a matter of fact, the loanwords evidence the degree to which culture is ...

Citizen by Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine, a Jamaican born poet, is the author of several popular poems which were recognized widely across America. She also writes essays and has written two plays to her credit. She holds the high position of Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets. Her latest title winning works include, “Citizen: An American Lyric” which brought her to the finals of the National Book Award. It also made her the winner of National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and two more awards. She won several other awards for her other works as well. The poem “Citizen” is the ...

Zora Neale Hurston and Marita Bonner are often associated with Harlem Renaissance of 1920s. Their views on the race problem differ greatly from the views of male African American writers, and sometimes even contradict them, as the ideas of female writers of those times also incorporate the ideas of gender and being a colored woman. The movement for the rights of colored people and the rights of women has inspired the appearance of the whole range of works concerning the perspectives on the issue. The two essays, “How It Feels Like to Be a Colored Me” written by Zora ...

Source: Vervroegen

The image above is dubbed “Before it is too late.” It is sponsored by the World Wide Fund for Nature as an avenue of communicating some of the issues that are pertinent to its cause and issues with which everyone should be concerned. The image shows two sections of the earth on either side of a divide that is covered with tree vegetation. When perceived wholesomely, the two sections resemble the human lungs with the divide in the middle mimicking the trachea. However, the section on the right-hand side of the image shows depleted vegetation, which mimics a damaged ...

John Updike’s ‘A&P’ and Tillie Olsen’s ‘I Stand Here Ironing’ are two short stories that seemingly do not have anything similar, yet share some themes that form the central core of the stories. Although there are more differences between the two short stories the themes of conflict, feminism and self-analysis runs through both the stories.

Updike is multifaceted and was a novelist, an art and literary critic and a poet. He was a proliferate writer and is one of the very few writers who won the Pulitzer Prize more than once. Most characters in his works go through a personal ...

Kaufman’s first two sentences capture the attention of the reader since they give a shallow depth of the significant title the author has used. After reading the title of a book the first statements of the piece should reflect the motive of the author in creating the book. In this case the author achieved this objective and it captured my attention to get to read the whole piece.

In the title of the book by Kaufman, the highlighting of Hector and Achilles was significant in this piece (Rosa & Eschholz, 103). The author of the book and hector were best ...

John Updike’s ‘A&P’ and Tillie Olsen’s ‘I Stand Here Ironing’ are two short stories that seemingly do not have anything similar, yet they share some themes that form the central core of the stories. Although there are distinct differences between the two short stories, the themes of conflict, feminism, and self-analysis run through both the stories. Updike is multifaceted, being a novelist, a literary critic, and a poet. He was a prolific writer and is one of the very few writers who won the Pulitzer Prize more than once. Most characters in his works go through a personal conflict and have ...

Yahya Hakki’s The Lamp of Umm Hashim is a tale embedded in colonialism where the Egyptian protagonist Ismail goes to Europe for higher studies. It is a quintessential tale of ‘colonized meets colonizer.’ Egypt was under colonial rule and throughout the text, there are strong current of stereotypical representations f differences that had come to characterize the dichotomy of East vs. West. While in Europe, Ismail is exposed to the scientific way of thinking as he goes about learning ophthalmology. As scientific enlightenment piles on, his traditional and religious beliefs begin to wean away. Alienation in a foreign country notwithstanding, when Ismail ...

In everyday life, in trains, buses and in the streets, we can often see the deaf people. They always attract the attention of the public: people strenuously pretending that they have absolutely no interest, yet are secretly watching deaf. What do at that moment people with disabilities to communicate feel? Is it difficult? How is it to live life not hearing a word? What a person feels, whose life lies within his inner world? For a deaf person the world around is perceived in another way. For example, if parents teach a deaf child to talk, to do it, they need to ...

When Arabic speaking three year old children are introduced to English as a second language how does this affect the “use” of both Arabic and English?

Introduction

The subject of research in this paper is Emergent Literacy Inquiry. The main objective of this paper is to explore the difficulties and challenges faced by Arabic children, when they are exposed to using both Arabic and English language together. Young children face difficulties in learning languages, when they are exposed to more than one language at their initial stages of learning to speak. They tend to get confused with the languages and suffer ...

Introduction

This paper has discussed the relationship between slangs and the society The paper is based on the argument that people use slangs in order to demonstrate their membership with a particular class or a culture. Slang can be defined as the information language, which is created for a specific purpose. However, slang is not used by all people in a society (Moore, Bindler & Pandich, 2010). Slang is made by people, themselves. Once slang becomes a trend, it is also introduced to other societies. In the modern society, slang is used to express ideas and feelings. It is also used to make a conversation more interesting ...

Introduction

A general notion that transcends through generations connotes that the source of an egalitarian society, in Australia, is in people’s refusal to accept malevolent classifications that tend to showcase some people as being superior to others. Nonetheless, this fight has been fruitful and Australia is an egalitarian society.

Australia the Fiercely Egalitarian Society

Argy (2005) starts by addressing issues that are currently threatening the egalitarian attitude in Australia noting that decreased mobility, rather than unequal income gap is a potential danger to the egalitarian society. Argy (2005) goes ahead to define an egalitarian society as a society that takes care of the poor among them ...

In this context, Bop is a dialogue excerpt between simple and an unknown writer. Be-bop is defined as the opposite of Re-Bop. The present application of Be Bop in real life is referred to as the black boys play. On the contrary, Re Bop is the white boys play. Additionally, Bop was an expression of the sound produced when a police hit a Negro using his old club (Langston 76). The club produced an entertaining sound Bop, Bop. Langston was a black boy whose parents lived as slaves in a white family. Therefore, he was very conversant with slave beating using clubs. Bop ...

1. Egyptian culture

There is an immense cultural mix in Egypt. The major cities follow the traditions that existed during the Pharaohs time while other parts of the country follow pure tribal customs which found themselves in the country courtesy of invaders. Visitors and foreigners are welcomed with the warmth of the customs and mentality of Egyptians though they are warned of being too generous, smart, patronizing and arrogant (Cunningham & Reich, 2009). The local Egyptians local nature can be felt by travelers making Egypt to be considered as a country in the region that is most attractive due to the hospitality shown. ...

John Updike’s short story ‘A & P’ was first published in ‘The New Yorker’ on July 22, 1961. Even now, fifty years on, it still, despite its brevity, or perhaps because of it, his most frequently anthologized short story and, one would assume, one of his most widely enjoyed and read. This essay will analyze the popular appeal of ‘A &P’ and reach a justified conclusion about why it carries on being read so widely and with such apparent gusto and interest. The ways in which Updike writes the story are important, as is Updike’s presentation of ...

The story ‘A & P’ by John Updike was first published in The New Yorker on July 22, 1961. Even now, fifty years on, it remains, for all its brevity, his most widely anthologized short story and, because of that, one of his most widely read. This paper will attempt to analyze the appeal of ‘A &P’ and reach a conclusion about why it continues to be read with such interest and so widely. Aspects of the way the story is written are important, but equally important, as we shall see, is the date of publication. The story ...

David Hernandez’s poem Pigeons is a comparison piece. Hernandez compares the activities and treatment of pigeons to those of Hispanics. He uses symbolism, imagery and tone as techniques in conveying his theme of racism. Overall, it is an accessible poem with a clear subject matter.

Hernandez uses the first line of the poem as a statement: “Pigeons are the spiks of Birdland” (Hernandez 1023). This provides a sound introduction to the theme and the tone of the rest of the poem that is to come. Hernandez was Hispanicwhich somehow makes the word ‘spiks’ even more shocking; this was, no doubt, intentional. He ...