Puritan Society In Hesters Life :: essays research papers

The Godly beliefs and punishments followed by the Puritans stemmed from their English experience and complete involvement in religion. The Puritan society molded itself and created a government based upon the Bible and implemented it with force. Hester’s act of adultery was welcomed with rage and was qualified for serious punishment. Boston became more involved in Hester’s life after her crime was announced than it had ever been before—the religious based, justice system formally punished her and society collectively tortured her. Based upon the religious, governmental, and social design of the society, Hester’s entire existence revolved around her sin and the Puritan perception thereof; this association breaks way to society significantly becoming involved in her life. The importance of a social framework for the new society, where the Church would be all encompassing, developed from the teachings of such religious reformers as John Wycliffe and John Calvin. The Church would be directly involved in the running of the community and its regime. Enforcing such laws established by scripture read from the Bible, the government disciplined Hester for her committed sin. The Puritans considered the Bible as the â€Å"true law of God that provided guidelines for church and government†. They wished to shape the Church of England to meet their ideals, emphasizing Bible reading, prayer, and preaching in worship services. They simplified the ritual of the sacraments and also wanted more personal and fewer prescribed prayers. The Puritans stressed grace, devotion, prayer, and self-examination to achieve religious virtue while including a basic knowledge of unacceptable actions of the time. Obtaining virtue was expected to secure order and peace within the Puritan community. The Church officials, who played a direct role in the government, calculated the penalties for various sins. When sins arose, the government took the role as chief executive of corrective punishment and instituted castigation. Hester found herself very much a part of the local Church and government’s heavy hand. Everyone was aware of her sinful act, for she was placed on a scaffold amidst the entire people for a painful viewing. The religious morals instilled in the Puritan society caused her much pain long after the public humiliation. Permanently â€Å"symbolized as a sinner†, Hester was branded for life with a cloth letter worn on her bosom. For years after the letter was first revealed on the scaffold, Hester was associated with the sin and the scarlet letter. Because the Puritans contoured religion, social life, and government together, each member of the society was involved in the religion, social life, and government—everybody in Boston saw the â€Å"A† on Hester’s chest in the same light.

My Vision of Future Essay

Reimagining India’s Present most of us have a massive psychological barrier against looking seriously at the future. Many nurture the not unnatural, latent fear that any engagement with the future will turn out to be an acknowledgement of their mortality and the transience of their world. Different cultures handle this fear differently. In India’s middle-class culture, attempts to look at the future often end up as tame, defensive litanies of moral platitudes or as overly dramatic, doomsday ‘propheteering’. Even those who avoid these extremes usually view the future either as the future of the past or as a linear projection of the present. If one is a fatalist, one sees no escape from the past; if not, one often desperately tries to live in the instant present. Those who see the future as growing directly out of the present also often narrow their choices. When optimistic, they try to correct for the ills of the present in the future; when pessimistic, they presume that the future will aggravate the ills. If one views the future from within the framework of the past, one arrives at questions like ‘Can we restore the precolonial village republics of India as part of a Gandhian project?’ or ‘Should we revive Nehruvian nonalignment to better negotiate the turbulent waters of India’s inter- national relations in the post-cold-war world?’ If one views the future from within the framework of the present, one asks questions like ‘Will the present fresh water resources or fossil-fuel stock of the world outlast the twenty-first century?’ Important though some of these questions are, they are not the core of future studies. No environmentalist can claim to be a futurist by only estimating, on the basis of existing data, the pollution levels in India in the coming decades. Exactly as no economist can claim to be a futurist by predicting the exchange value of the Indian rupee in the year 2005. The reason is simple. The future—that is, the future that truly intrigues or worries us—is usually disjunctive with its past. Defying popular faith, the future is mostly that which cannot be directly projected from the present. Actually, we should have learnt this from the relationship  between the past and the present. The present has not grown out of the past in the way the technoeconomic or historical determinists believe. I often give the example of a survey done exactly hundred years ago, at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was done mainly as an exercise in technological forecasting during the Paris exposition. The respondents were the best-known scientists of the world then. In retrospect, the most remarkable result of the survey was the total failure of the scientists to anticipate scientific discoveries and changes the world would see in the twentieth century. Thus, for instance, the scientists thought the highest attainable speed in human transportation during the century was 250 miles an hour and among the innovations that they thought would not be viable or popular were the radio and television. Indeed, novelist Jules Verne’s fantasies often anticipated the future of science and technology more imaginatively and accurately. For a novelist’s imagination is not cramped by the demands of any discipline or the expectations of professionals, not even by hard empiricism. The present too is disjunctive with the past, though we love to believe otherwise. The past nowadays is available to us in packaged forms, mainly through the formal, professional narratives of the discipline of history. We feel that we have a grasp on it. History monopolises memories and offers us a tamed, digestible past, reformulated in contemporary terms. It is thus that 17 History monopolises memories and offers us a tamed, digestible past, reformulated in contemporary terms. No. 123 history fulfils its main social and political role—it gives a shared sense of psychological continuity to those living in a disenchanted world. You cannot do the same with the future, for the future has to be anticipated and it is more difficult to turn it into a manageable portfolio. Ultimately, Benedotte Croce’s aphorism—’all history is contemporary history’— can be applied to all genuine futuristic enterprises, too. All visions of the future are interventions in and reconceptualisation of the present. My quick  peep into the future of India, therefore, can only be a comment on India today. I offer it in the spirit in which my work on India’s pasts, too, has all along been an attempt to ‘work through’ or reimagine India’s present. The future of India in my mind is intertwined with the future of diversity and self-reflection, two values that have been central to the Indian worldview, cutting across social strata , religious boundaries and cultural barriers. I believe that during the last two hundred years, there has been a full-scale onslaught on both these values. Even when some have upheld these values during the period, they have mostly done so instrumentally. Thus, even when they have talked of unity in diversity, the emphasis has been on the former; the latter has been seen as an artefact or a hard, somewhat unpleasant, reality with which we shall have to learn to live. A modern nation-state loves order and predictability and its Indian incarnation is no different. Sankaran Krishna’s brilliant study of Indian intervention in Sri Lanka, Postcolonial Insecurities, shows that, even when the Indian state has gone to war in the name of protecting cultural identities and minority rights, its tacit goal has been to advance the hegemonic ambitions 18 of a conventional, centralised, homogenising nation-state. In response to the demands of such a state, modern Indians too have learnt to fear diversity. That fear cuts across the entire ideological spectrum and is ever increasing. Most Gandhians want an India that would conform fully to their idea of a good society, for they have begun to fear their marginalisation. The late Morarji Desai was a good example of such defensive Gandhism. But even some of the more imaginative Gandhians, the ones who cannot be accused of being associated with the fads and foibles of Desai, have not been different. They have absolutised Gandhi the way only ideologues can absolutise their ideologies. The new globalisers also have one solution for the entire world, though they sometimes lazily mouth buzzwords like ‘multiculturalism’, ‘grassroots’ and ‘alternative development’. The goal of their pluralism is to ensure the transparency and predictability of other cultures and strains of dissent. Likewise, I have found to my surprise that attempts to protect religious diversity in diverse ways is not acceptable to most secularists. They want to fight the monocultures of religious fundamentalism and religionbased nationalism, but feel aggrieved if others  do so in other ways. They suspect the tolerance of those who are believers and trust the coercive apparatus of the state. Secularism for In response to the demands of a centralised, homogenising nation-state, modern Indians too have learnt to fear diversity. such secularists serves the same psychological purposes that fundamentalism does for the fundamentalists; it becomes a means of fighting diversity and giving play to their innate authoritarianism and monoculturalism. Things have come to such a pass that we cannot now stand diversity even in the matter of names. Bombay has always been Mumbai, but it has also been Bombay for a long time and acquired a new set of associations through its new name. Bombay films and Bombay ducks cannot have the same ring as Mumbai films and Mumbai ducks. Nor can Chennai substitute Madras in expressions like bleeding Madras and Madras Regiment. Many great cities like London happily live with more than one name. Indeed, in the Charles De Gaulle Airport at Paris, you may miss a plane to London unless you know that London is also Londres. Until recently, we Calcuttans used to live happily with four names of the city— Kolikata, Kolkata, Kalkatta and Calcutta. Indeed, the first name is never used in conversations, yet you have to know it if you are interested in Bengali literature. In recent years, the city has been flirting with a fifth name, thanks to former cricketer and cricket commentator Geoffrey Boycott—Calcootta. But the Bengalis have disappointed me. Many of them now are trying to ensure that there is only one name for the city, Kolkata. The gifted writer Sunil Gangopadhyay has joined them, because he feels that the Bengali language is under siege from deracinated Bengalis, Anglophiles and Bombay—or is it Mumbaiya?—Hindi. I am afraid the change will not provide any additional protection to the Bengali language. It will only fuel our national passion for sameness. MANUSHI It is my belief that the twenty-first century belongs to those who try to see diversity as a value in itself, not as an instrument for resisting new monocultures of the mind or as a compromise necessary for maintaining communal or ethnic harmony. ‘Little cultures’ are in rebellion everywhere and in every sphere of life. Traditional healing systems, agricultural and  ecological practices—things that we rejected contemptuously as repositories of superstitions and retrogression have staged triumphant returns among the young and the intellectually adventurous and posing radical challenges to set ways of thinking and living. More than a year ago, in the backyard of globalised capitalism, the US citizens for the first time spent more money from their pockets on alternative medicine than on conventional healthcare. The idea of the diverse is not merely expanding but acquiring subversive potentialities. India of the future, I hope, will be central to a world where the idea of diversity will itself be diverse and where diversity will be cherished as an end in itself. By its cultural heritage, India—the civilisation, not the nation-state—is particularly well equipped to play a central role in such a world. However, the Indian elite and much of the country’s middle class seem keener to strut around the world stage as representatives of a hollow, regional super-power. They want their country to play-act as a poor man’s America, armed to the teeth and desperate to repeat the success story of nineteenth-century, European, imperial states in the twenty-first century. India is also supposed to be a culture deeply committed to selfreflection. During colonial times, that No. 123 commitment began to look like a liability. Many critics of Indian culture and civilisation in the nineteenth century lamented that the Indians were too engrossed in their inner life. Others argued that Indian philosophy had marginalised the materialist strain within it and become predominantly idealistic. Their tacit assumption was that the Indians were given to too much of self-reflection and too little to action. ‘We are dreamers, not doers’ came to be a popular, simplified version of the same lament. Whether the formulation is correct or not, it is obvious that we have overcorrected for it. We have now become a country of unthinking doers. Certainly in the Indian middle classes, any action is considered better than doing nothing. As a result, mindless action constitutes an important ingredient of the ruling culture of Indian public life. Even the few knowledgeable, nongovernmental hydrologists who support mega-dams, readily admit that most of the 1,500 large dams built in India are useless and counterproductive. Their main contribution has  been to displace millions of people in the last fifty years. And even these supporters are not fully aware that the millions displaced by dams, often without any compensation, now constitute an excellent pool for those active in various forms of social violence and criminality. Veerappan, son of a dam victim, is only the most infamous symbol of them. Likewise, even in the Indian army, many senior officers now openly say that Operation Blue Star at the Golden Temple was worse than doing nothing. The price for that gratuitous intervention was a decade of bloodshed and brutalisation of Punjab. For years, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has been ventured as an excuse for every phoney, useless intervention—in nature, society and culture in India. The last time I saw this ploy was when our bomb-mamas justified the nuclearisation of India in the name of Gandhi. The Indian middle 19 classes have always been uncomfortable with the father of the nation and have always believed him to be romantic, retrogressive, and antimodern. They have also probably all along felt slightly guilty about that belief. As a reparative gesture they have now begun to say, given half a chance, that Gandhi was a great doer; he did not merely talk or theorise. This compliment serves two purposes. It allows one to ignore Gandhi’s uncomfortable, subversive thought as less relevant— ‘Bapu, you are far greater than your little books’, Jawaharlal Nehru once said—and it atones for one’s hidden hostility and contempt towards the unconventional Gandhian vision of India’s future. Occasionally, some like philosopher T. K. Mahadevan have tried to puncture this selfcongratulatory strategy. I remember him once saying in a letter to the editor of The Times of India that Gandhi For years, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has been ventured as an excuse for every phoney, useless intervention—in nature, society and culture in India. went out on the streets only twice in his life; the rest of the time he was thinking. Such interventions are always explained away as esoterica vended by eccentric intellectuals and professional iconoclasts. The dominant tendency in India today is to discount all self-reflection. It has turned India’s ruling culture into an intellectually sterile summation of slogans borrowed from European public culture in the 1930s. Our culture is now dominated by European ideas of the nation-state and nationalism, even  Europeans ideas of ethnic and 20 religious nationalism (mediated by that moth-eaten Bible of the 1930s, V. D. Savarkar’s Hindutva, modelled on the ideas of Mazzini and Herder). Shadow boxing with them for our benefit and entertainment are European ideas of radicalism and progress, smelling to high heavens of Edwardian England. In such a world, it is almost impossible to sustain a culture of diversity, particularly diversity as an end in itself. You learn to pay occasional h omage to diversity as an instrument that buys religious and ethnic peace, but that is mainly to hide one’s eagerness to deploy such ideas of religious, caste and ethnic peace to further homogenise India. I have now learnt to fear the use of any cultural category in the singular. For years, I wrote about ‘Indian civilisation.’ I thought it would be obvious from the contents of my writings that I saw the civilisation as a confederation of cultures and as an entity that coexisted and overlapped with other civilisations. Af ter all, some other civilisations, such as the Iranian and the European, are now very much part of the Indian civilisation. The Islamic and Buddhist civilisations, too, clearly overlap significantly with the Hindu civilisation. However, even the concept of civilisation, it now seems to me, has been hijacked in India by those committed to unipolarity, unidimensionality and unilinearity. Our official policy has been shaped by a vision of India that is pathetically naà ¯ve, if not farcical. It is that of a second-class European nation-state located in South Asia with a bit of Gita, Bharatanatyam, sitar and Mughal cuisine thrown in for fun or entertainment. Those who do not share that idea of earthly paradise are seen as dangerous romantics, Our culture is now dominated by European ideas of the nation-state and nationalism, even Europeans ideas of ethnic and religious nationalism†¦ MANUSHI continuously jeopardising India’s national security. No wonder that even many erstwhile admirers of India have begun to see it as a nucleararmed, permanently enemy-seeking, garrison state. Edward Said will never know that  few Occidentals can be as Orientalist towards India as educated, urban, modern Indians often are. In Indian public life, the standard response to such criticism is to reconceptualise Indian culture as some sort of a grocery store and to recommend that one should take from it the good and reject the bad. This is absurd and smacks of arrogance. Indian culture represents the assessments and experience of millions, acquired over generations. It has its own organising principles. My ideal India †¦ is a bit like a wildlife programme that cannot afford to protect only cuddly pandas and colourful tigers. transparent, because there cannot but be a touch of mystery in the world of cultures. My ideal India celebrates all forms of diversity, including some that are disreputable, lowbrow and unfashionable. It is a bit like a wildlife programme that cannot afford to protect only cuddly pandas and colourful tigers. It is an India where even the idea of majority is confined to political and economic spheres and is seen as shifting, plural and fuzzy, where each and every culture, however modest or humble, not only has a place under the sun but is also celebrated as a vital component of our collective life. That may not turn out to be an empty dream. I see all around me movements and activists unashamedly rooted in the local and the vernacular. They are less defensive about their cultural roots and are working to empower not merely local communities, but also their diverse systems of knowledge, philosophies, art and crafts. Underlying these efforts is a tacit celebration of everyday life and ordinary citizens. Everything in everyday life and ordinariness is not praiseworthy and many of these efforts seem to me harebrained, pigheaded or plain silly. But they represent a generation that is less burdened by nineteenth-century ideologies masquerading as signposts to a new era and at least some of them show the capacity to look at human suffering directly, without the aid of ornate, newly imported social theories. Ashis Nandy is Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. Diversity, to qualify as diversity, must allow those who represent the diversity to be diverse in their own ways, according to their own  categories, not ours. It cannot be used like an array of commodities at the mercy of casual purchasers. Diversity, to qualify as diversity, must allow those who represent the diversity to be diverse in their own ways, according to their own categories, not ours. We shall have to learn to live with the discomfort of seeing people using these categories, even when they are not fully transparent to us. For the true tolerance of diversity is the tolerance of incommensurable multiple worlds of culture and systems of knowledge. In this kind of tolerance, there is always the assumption that all the cultures covered by the idea of plurality are not and need not be entirely No. 123 MANUSHI Handsomely Bound in Maroon Leather in Nine Volumes Price for India, Nepal and Bangladesh : Vol. I Vol. II Vol. III Vol. IV Vol. V Vol. VI Vol. VII Vol. VIII Vol. IX : : : : : : : : : Nos. 1 to 19 (1979 to 1983) Nos. 20 to 37 (1984 to 1986) Nos. 38 to 49 (1987 to 1988) Nos. 50 to 61 (1989 to 1990) Nos. 62 to 73 (1991 to 1992) Nos. 74 to 85 (1993 to 1994) Nos. 86 to 97 (1995 to 1996) Nos. 98 to 109 (1997 to 1998) Nos. 110 to 121 (1999 to 2000) Postage in India : Rs 30 per volume All Other Countries: US$ 60 per volume (including air-mail postage) Send payment by cheque, draft or MO payable to Manushi Trust. : : : : : : : : :

Standard English Definitions and Controversies

Standard English Definitions and Controversies In the entry for Standard English in  The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992), Tom McArthur observes that this widely used term...resists easy definition but is used as if most educated people nonetheless know precisely what it refers to. For some of those people, Standard English (SE) is a synonym for good or correct English usage. Others use the term to refer to a specific geographical dialect of English or a dialect favored by the most powerful and prestigious social group. Some linguists argue that there really is no single standard of English. It may be revealing to examine some of the presumptions that lie behind these various interpretations. The following commentsfrom linguists, lexicographers, grammarians, and journalistsare offered in the spirit of fostering discussion rather than resolving all the many complex issues that surround the term Standard English. Controversies and Observations About Standard English A Highly Elastic and Variable Term [W]hat counts as Standard English will depend on both the locality and the particular varieties that Standard English is being contrasted with. A form that is considered standard in one region may be nonstandard in another, and a form that is standard by contrast with one variety (for example the language of inner-city African Americans) may be considered nonstandard by contrast with the usage of middle-class professionals. No matter how it is interpreted, however, Standard English in this sense shouldnt be regarded as being necessarily correct or unexceptionable, since it will include many kinds of language that could be faulted on various grounds, like the language of corporate memos and television advertisements or the conversations of middle-class high-school students. Thus while the term can serve a useful descriptive purpose providing the context makes its meaning clear, it shouldnt be construed as conferring any absolute positive evaluation. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, 2000) What Standard English Is Not (i) It is not an arbitrary, a priori description of English, or of a form of English, devised by reference to standards of moral value, or literary merit, or supposed linguistic purity, or any other metaphysical yardstickin short, Standard English cannot be defined or described in terms such as the best English, or literary English, or Oxford English, or BBC English.(ii) It is not defined by reference to the usage of any particular group of English-users, and especially not by reference to a social classStandard English is not upper class English and it is encountered across the whole social spectrum, though not necessarily in equivalent use by all members of all classes.(iii) It is not statistically the most frequently occurring form of English, so that standard here does not mean most often heard.(iv) It is not imposed upon those who use it. True, its use by an individual may be largely the result of a long process of education; but Standard English is neither the product of lingui stic planning or philosophy (for example as exists for French in the deliberations of the Academie Francaise, or policies devised in similar terms for Hebrew, Irish, Welsh, Bahasa Malaysia, etc); nor is it a closely-defined norm whose use and maintenance is monitored by some quasi-official body, with penalties imposed for non-use or mis-use. Standard English evolved: it was not produced by conscious design. (Peter Strevens, What Is Standard English? RELC Journal, Singapore, 1981) Written English and Spoken English There are many grammar books, dictionaries and guides to English usage which describe and give advice on the standard English that appears in writing...[T]hese books are widely used for guidance on what constitutes standard English. However, there is often also a tendency to apply these judgments, which are about written English, to spoken English. But the norms of spoken and written language are not the same; people dont talk like books even in the most formal of situations or contexts. If you cant refer to a written norm to describe spoken language, then, as we have seen, you base your judgments on the speech of the best people, the educated or higher social classes. But basing your judgments on the usage of the educated is not without its difficulties. Speakers, even educated ones, use a variety of different forms... (Linda Thomas, Ishtla Singh, Jean Stilwell Peccei, and Jason Jones, Language, Society and Power: An Introduction. Routledge, 2004) Although Standard English is the kind of English in which all native speakers learn to read and write, most people do not actually speak it. (Peter Trudgill and Jean Hannah,  International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English, 5th ed. Routledge, 2013) Standard English Is a Dialect If Standard English is not therefore a language, an accent, a style or a register, then of course we are obliged to say what it actually is. The answer is, as at least most British sociolinguists are agreed, that Standard English is a dialect...Standard English is simply one variety of English among many. It is a sub-variety of English... Historically, we can say that Standard English was selected (though of course, unlike many other languages, not by any overt or conscious decision) as the variety to become the standard variety precisely because it was the variety associated with the social group with the highest degree of power, wealth and prestige. Subsequent developments have reinforced its social character: the fact that it has been employed as the dialect of an education to which pupils, especially in earlier centuries, have had differential access depending on their social class background. (Peter Trudgill, Standard English: What It Isn’t, in Standard English: The Widening Debate, edited by Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts. Routledge, 1999) The Official Dialect In countries where the majority speak English as their first language one dialect is used nationally for official purposes. It is called Standard English. Standard English is the national dialect that generally appears in print. It is taught in schools, and students are expected to use it in their essays. It is the norm for dictionaries and grammars. We expect to find it in official typed communications, such as letters from government officials, solicitors, and accountants. We expect to hear it in national news broadcasts and documentary programmes on radio or television. Within each national variety the standard dialect is relatively homogeneous in grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation (Sidney Greenbaum, An Introduction to English Grammar. Longman, 1991) The Grammar of Standard English The grammar of Standard English is much more stable and uniform than its pronunciation or word stock: there is remarkably little dispute about what is grammatical (in compliance with the rules of grammar) and what isnt. Of course, the small number of controversial points that there aretrouble spots like who versus whomget all the public discussion in language columns and letters to the editor, so it may seem as if there is much turmoil; but the passions evinced over such problematic points should not obscure the fact that for the vast majority of questions about whats allowed in Standard English, the answers are clear. (Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, A Students Introduction to English Grammar. Cambridge University Press, 2006) The Guardians of Standard English The so-called native speakers of standard Englishes are those people who have somehow espoused a particular set of conventions that loosely have to do with the way English has been codified and prescribed in dictionaries, grammar books and guides to good speaking and writing. This group of people includes a large number of those who, having espoused the conventions, nevertheless do not consider themselves to be excellent users of those conventions. For many of these so-called native speakers the English language is a unique entity that exists outside or beyond its users. Rather than considering themselves owners of English, users often think of themselves as guardians of something precious: they wince when they hear or read uses of English that they consider to be sub-standard, and they worry, in their letters to newspapers, that the language is becoming degraded... Those who do feel they have rights and privileges, who have a sense of ownership of the English language and who can make pronouncements about what is or is not acceptable, as well as those to whom these attributes are accorded by others, do not necessarily belong to a speech community whose members learned English in infancy. Native speakers of non-standard varieties of English, in other words, the majority of native speakers of English, have never had any real authority over Standard English and have never owned it. The actual proprietors may, after all, simply be those who have learned thoroughly how to use a standard English to enjoy the sense of empowerment that comes with it. So those who make authoritative pronouncements about a standard English are simply those who, irrespective of accidents of birth, have elevated themselves, or been elevated, to positions of authority in academe or publishing or in other public areas. Whether or not their pronouncements will continue to be accepted is another matter. (Paul Roberts, Set Us Free From Standard English. The Guardian, January 24, 2002) Toward a Definition of SE From the dozens of definitions [of Standard English] available in the literature on English, we may extract five essential characteristics. On this basis, we may define the Standard English of an English-speaking country as a minority variety (identified chiefly by its vocabulary, grammar, and orthography) which carries most prestige and is most widely understood. (David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, 2003) SE is a variety of Englisha distinctive combination of linguistic features with a particular role to play...The linguistic features of SE are chiefly matters of grammar, vocabulary, and orthography (spelling and punctuation). It is important to note that SE is not a matter of pronunciation. . . .SE is the variety of English which carries most prestige within a country... In the words of one US linguist, SE is the English used by the powerful.The prestige attached to SE is recognized by adult members of the community, and this motivates them to recommend SE as a desirable educational target...Although SE is widely understood, it is not widely produced. Only a minority of people within a country...actually use it when they talk...Similarly, when they writeitself a minority activitythe consistent use of SE is required only in certain tasks (such as a letter to a newspaper, but not necessarily to a close friend). More than anywhere else, SE is to be found in print. The Ongoing Debate It is in fact a great pity that the standard English debate is marred by the sort of conceptual confusions and political posturings (no matter how poorly expressed) ...For  I think there are genuine questions to be asked about what we might mean by standards in relation to speech and writing. There is a great deal to be done in this respect and proper arguments to be made, but one thing is clear for sure. The answer does not lie in some simple-minded recourse to the practice of the best authors or the admired literature of the past, valuable though that writing is. Nor does the answer reside in rules for speech laid down by either the educated of any official body held to be able to guarantee spoken correctness. The answers to the real questions will be found to be much more complex, difficult and challenging than those currently on offer. For these reasons they might be more successful. (Tony Crowley, Curiouser and Curiouser: Falling Standards in the Standard English Debate, in Standard English: The Widening Debate, edited by Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts. Routledge, 1999)

The Facts About Cooperative Learning

The Facts About Cooperative Learning Cooperative learning is the use of small groups in the classroom so that students work together to maximize their own and each other's learning (Eggen, 279). The idea is not complicated. Class members are organized into small groups after receiving initial instruction from the teacher (Eggen, 280-281). They then work through the assignment together until all group members totally understand the concept and complete the work (Sadker, 106). Cooperative efforts require that students learn to labor together toward common goals, which develops social skills similar to those needed in the world outside school (Doll, 91-92).Positive interdependence is critical to the success of the cooperative group (Sadker, 106). This relationship helps students learn to give and taketo realize that some people have certain abilities and other people do not, yet still have other skills to offer. No one group member will possess all of the information, skills, or resources necessary for success.Gjermund Egg en etter 3-mila, VM pà ¥ ski i Oslo 196...Each group member has a unique contribution to make to the joint effort. Realizing this creates a commitment to the success of the group members as well as one's self (Eggen, 279). A sense of interconnectedness can help students transcend the gender, racial, cultural, linguistic, and other differences they may sense among themselves (Sadker, 106). Cooperative learning also improves social acceptance of mainstreamed students with learning disabilities (Eggen, 277). Such interactive experiences are particularly valuable for students who are learning English as a second language, who face the challenges of language attainment, academic learning, and social adaptation all at the same time (Eggen, 277).Learning in a group environment does not end individual accountability as one may think. The group must be held responsible for achieving its goals and each member must be liable for contributing his or her share of the work (Eggen, 280). By keepi ng...

Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War essays

Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War essays In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed as a nation state. Although, in retrospect, this seemed the likely outcome after years of economic stagnation, political corruption, and most importantly, the collapse of all pro-Soviet communist regimes in Eastern Europe by 1989, no one expected it (Painter, 108.) The Soviet Union, ever since the death of Stalin in 1953, had experienced economic and nationalistic difficulties, but this had never led to such a drastic change of events. So why did it collapse so unexpectedly, and who or what is responsible for the disintegration? These questions have been the focal point of many debates in the historical and political arena, and this essay will take a closer look at one important issue. The issue at hand is, to what extent is Gorbachev responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union? Gorbachev came to power in March 1985 (Smith, 136) and, dismissing the Brezhnev era as years of stagnation, he announced strong intentions to radically transform the S oviet Union both politically and economically. Economically he aimed to radically restructure management and party through perestroika, and politically he intended to make the system more open to input and criticism through glasnost (Reynolds, 543.) Many historians claim that these two policies, which internationally became the catchwords of the Gorbachev era, caused the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Glasnost fueled dormant nationalistic sentiments throughout Eastern Europe and provoked public criticism of a failing political system, while Perestroika spelled deconstruction, not reconstruction of the economy. Other historians have turned the spotlight away from Gorbachev, focusing it on the hardliner President Reagan of the United States, who came to power after Jimmy Carter in 1981 (Cannon, online, 2001.) They argue that Reagan was the man who ended the Cold War through his national self-confidence, purpose, and optimistic m...

Is there anything we can do to save the environment Essay

Is there anything we can do to save the environment - Essay Example Various aspects of going green can be used in such an initiative. To begin with, the world should start by the initiative of planting trees. Over the last decade, the world has experienced massive deforestation, where many trees are used as a source of energy, raw materials, and other uses. This has had a dire effect on the climate change, especially when looking at the ratio of gases in the air. With massive deforestation, the numbers of trees that purify the air are reduced. As such, there will be excessive carbon in the air. This will pose a danger to environmental conservation, as the initiatives will not be optimized. To rectify such a situation, there is a need to reflect on the positivity of planting trees on large scale (Cook 140). For example, the late Professor Wangari Maathai initiated the Greenbelt movement. This was an initiative to help in conserving the environment from the forecasted climate change. Through the initiative, she was awarded a Nobel Prize. This shows tha t the world is appreciating such initiatives in ensuring the world is conserved to the highest limits. Secondly, there is a need to stop deforestation. Many countries across the globe have initiated strict penalties on deforestation, as it is a threat to the world’s ecosystems. Therefore, this initiative should be enhanced in the whole world, as it will be a prudent approach in conserving the environment. According to research, the population of trees in the world has been drastically reducing.

"Sony Pictures hacked by Russian blackhats, it now emerges Article

"Sony Pictures hacked by Russian blackhats, it now emerges - Article Example Companies require highly sensitive detectors to spot the attackers who get through their private information. The period to begin is before the attack hits: Sony could have managed well its workers well (Qamar, np). Their systems ought to have been under scrutiny of any attacker to keep their data and other third party information private. The worst private invasion in the Sony hack did not occur on to the stars or the executives, but the blameless workers who were used to daily sending and receiving of the system in the company. Consequently, they had their individual love lives, conversations, medical conditions, movie productions, and financial reports on exposure. The media may not have revealed the information but their relatives and colleagues peeked at it. Several personal tragedies unfolded during that period, all being an illustration of the compromised security systems. Information vulnerability can occur to any organization. People should not either reveal their personal details such as intimate conversations on Facebook, text or email to the company. Furthermore, they should not unleash their financial statements to their retailers. It is crucial that every person should be aware of the various crimes that do exist in the internet, and hence respond appropriately to remain safe. Most significantly, the Sony case study was quite a learning experience to both organization and their