Language and Literature Blog #13 Labov's Department Store Study

Labov's Department Store Study

Labov's research in the Lower East Side of New York City showed that individual speech patterns were part of a highly systematic structure of social and stylistic stratification. He studied how often the final or preconsonantal (r) was sounded in words like guard, bare and beer. Use of this variable has considerable prestige in New York City. It can be measured very precisely, and its high frequency in speech makes it possible to collect data quickly.

One self-contained part of the research has become particularly well known. The speech of sales assistants in three Manhattan stores, drawn from the top (Saks), middle (Macy's) and bottom (Klein's) of the price and fashion scale. Each unwitting informant was approached with a factual enquiry designed to elicit the answer - "Fourth floor" - which may or may not contain the variable final or preconsonantal (r). A pretence not to have heard it obtained a repeat performance in careful, emphatic style.

The findings were that the sales assistants from Saks used it most, those from Klein's used it least and those from Macy's showed the greatest upward shift when they were asked to repeat.









The results from the department store study highlight the main themes of the research. Frequency of use of the prestige variable final or preconsonantal (r) varied with level of formality and social class.

Language and Literature Blogpost #12

Linguistic Imperialism refers to the transfer of a dominant language to other people. Linguistic imperialism can have major impacts on people's lives, identities, and their respective communities. English is Earth's most dominant language and there's no doubt that English linguistic imperialism brings bad effects to the indigenous language and original culture of countries whose first language is not English (Every country except the U.S and the U.K.)

Firstly English linguistic imperialism can lead to language loss or in other words, the indigenous language of a country is/will no longer be used by their own people, for example the Middle East and China are two great examples. Language loss is just the first part of the huge chain-reaction that will eventually lead to the loss of people's culture since language is the key to culture and is also considered to be the main aspect which runs a culture, after that we may even lose our identities, without language and culture a human is just an ordinary person without proper cultural backgrounds speaking a foreign language, and to add insult to injury, in the modern era there is no patriotism which drives someone to be supportive and loyal to one's country; therefore this will just speed up the process of language and cultural loss.

Language and Literature Blog-post #11

This paper one text labelled "Food Crisis in Sahel" falls under the advertisements section due to it's persuasive content, but comes in the shape of an educational article written and published by the widely-recognized charitable confederation known as Oxfam. It's structure follows the ones of an article, it includes 3 parts, an introduction which contains numbers and statistics which would signify to the readers that this is an informative piece right from the start, the situation in the Sahel region, and what the organization is doing to solve this issue. The key advertising claims used in the ad include the problem/solution and the scientific/statistical claims while the advertising technique used is the conflict technique in which the audience and intended viewers of the ad want to see the conflict resolved.


A sad tone and mood runs throughout the entirety of the article with all the gloomy and dreary statistics that people in the Sahel region will be going to face if the problem is not resolved in the upcoming future, the structure of this text helps in emphasizing this sad tone because it begins off with introducing negative statistical information at the beginning then introduces the problem that will and might happen in the future if nothing is done to prevent this; but shines some light on a solution by giving the people hope that if they do certain things this conflict can be completely avoided.


This text takes the perspective of an employee at the Oxfam confederation because of the pronoun "we" that the writer constantly uses throughout the piece. Also, this text was retrieved from the Oxfam website suggesting that the intended audience would be the people who are interested in recent deficits and want to help out in any way possible, while the main purpose of this text is to inform the people about this likely issue and to persuade them to help out and support the confederation by any plausible means possible.


All in all, this text suggests that nations in the Sahel region are under risk of an epidemic while the issue consists of different causes which includes shortages in both food and water supplies, and that approximately twelve million people will be made victims of this dreadful catastrophe if nothing is done to prevent this situation from recurring once again, as it did in 2005 and 2008, and to add insult to injury almost 300,000 people die from mal-nutrition (lack of nutrients) in a "non-crisis year"

Language and Literature Blogpost #9

FOA Reflection:

My main goal for my further oral activity was to analyze 3 Head and Shoulders advertisements from 3 different cultures, and how elaborate on how they are embellished and portrayed depending on each of the advertisements distinct cultural backgrounds, and by accomplishing this, I was able to achieve two major learning outcomes, the first being to answer the unit question “What does advertising reveal to us about our society? “Also, to be able to demonstrate my knowledge and understanding of the unit by conveying the way mass media use language and image to inform, persuade, or entertain based on the advertisements cultural contexts.

I felt content with the way I presented and believe that I was successful in channeling my overall message to the audience, firstly because I briefly introduced my topic as well as my aims and learning outcomes that I strived to achieve throughout conducting my further oral activity, and secondly I displayed and concisely analyzed three Head and Shoulders advertisements from three different countries that are situated in different continents (to minimize common correlations and traditions between the advertisements) in order to delineate the chief aims of these advertisements and how analyzing such advertisements can assist us in answering the question “What does advertising reveal to us about our society?”

On the other hand, there was some room for improvement. For example, while presenting my further oral activity I was slightly nervous which eventually resulted in unclear voice projection towards the class, although I fully memorized my script I kept referring back to my script to make sure of what I was saying; therefore I needed to allocate more time to memorize my script in future FOAs , and finally the time requirements were 8-11 minutes long, but unfortunately I only made it to 7 minutes and 34 seconds primarily due to the fact that I was nervous and was rushing my further oral activity, I know this because when I timed it at home the day before the presentations, I had achieved a time of 9 minutes and 11 seconds.

As for how well I achieved on my further oral activity accordingly to the rubric, I believe I did well on criterion A and B, due to the reason that I conveyed exceptional knowledge and understanding of the advertisements, and also showed a positive and clear awareness of how language is used in the advertisements, For criterion C I believe that I will achieve a moderately good grade such as a 3/5, last but not least the ideas and the advertisements were organized and comprehendible; therefore I hope to achieve a 3-4/5 in criterion D.

Language and Literature of Blog #8

Why gaming is good for you!

Most of the controversial issues that the media is feeding us about video games is COMPLETELY untrue, kids can pick up bad language through online video games, games can confuse a person between reality and fantasy, and games lead to bad grades are all Falsified statements that can fully be dis-proven by scientific reasoning and experiments.

Kids can pick up bad language through online gaming may seem like a reasonable claim; however the child playing video games will eventually grow older to learn these words and will learn whether or not he wants to use them, there is no difference between the kid accumulating these words at a young age or at an old one. Eventually that kid will come up against these words in the future. Also, in the end it is the parents' jobs to take care of the child and send him the right way and away from using these words so if the kid was rightfully brought up there should be no problem with the kid using bad words.

Don't even get me started on the 2nd most common claim! what does that even mean ?! Of-course a normal human being with no mental disabilities would be able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

Just for your info: The following are some studies conducted on gaming and the results were sensational.

1) A study conducted by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory reveal that children with attention-deficit disorder who played Dance Dance Revolution improve their reading scores by helping them concentrate.

2) Action games, according to a Study by University of Rochester, train the player's brain to make faster decisions without losing accuracy. In today’s world, it is important to move quickly without sacrificing accuracy.

3) Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, calls this "telescoping." The gamer must deal with immediate problems while keeping his long-term goals on his horizon.

4) The most well known simulations are flight simulators, which attempt to mimic the reality of flying a plane. All of the controls, including airspeed, wing angles, altimeter, and so on, are displayed for the player, as well as a visual representation of the world, and are updated in real time.  

Note these are just a few scientific studies out of the countless ones conducted, so don't grasp the wrong idea on gaming as it is really helpful and mis-understood.

Language and Literature Blog post #7

Audience and Purpose:

The following text is an autobiography written by Mary Seacole describing her time as a nurse from
Britain, and looking back upon the hardships and adversities some of the people had to face during the rapid spread of the yellow fever in the year 1853. The text doesn't attempt to argue a particular point; however it does offer the readers a first-hand view into what it would feel like to live in Jamaica at that time, the consistent use of anecdotes throughout the text provides sufficient information about the main idea, and therefore; the text is an informative piece, set out to inform the people of all the different aspects and sufferings the people faced in Jamaica.

Content and Theme:

The text mainly focuses on Seacole's experiences in Jamaica during the 19th century where Jamaica was struck with the yellow fever, Seacole was sent to Jamaica in order to provide immediate assistance to the Jamaicans. The anecdotes are filled with her traumatic experiences as she watched countless people die and get amputated to stop the spread of the disease. Seacole mentions the connections between herself and the Jamaicans and describes them as a mother-child connection. She was immensely affected by watching people suffer from the yellow fever and it taught her to face the concept of death with a smile rather than a frown,

Tone and Mood:

The text portrays a depressing and dark tone that runs throughout the whole text as it deals with the suffering and deaths of many people. Seacole begins using words like dreadful, suffering, harrowing, enemy, and vain to emphasize that the situation was a dull and depressing one.

Style and Structure: 

The text was written from the perspective of an author as it is an autobiography. Telling a story about herself, the text uses the voice of the author which is mot commonly seen through the use of pronouns "I". It hooks the reader through it's vivid descriptions of the suffering of the people, which results in emotion being displayed by the reader. The text does not have a particular structure but it mainly consists of collections of correlating anecdotes. 

Language and Literature Blog #6 (Written Task 1)

Written Task 1

Nader Al Ramahi

223 Huningtale Blvd.

Nashville, Tennessee

June 19, 2014

John Rose 

Dear Editor,

My name is John Rose, and I’m an International Baccalaureate DP English teacher. Throughout this letter, I wish to be able to administer some intimate insight and perspective on my behalf to a recent editorial that arose onto PR daily the other day about the “4 ways texting is killing our communication skills.” I would like to provide you with my contradicting mindset with the utmost respect and intimacy while exhibiting reverence towards you and your coherent point of view.

First of all I fully disagree with your first proclamation “Texting reduces the need for in-depth conversations.” Mainly because I feel that you wrote about the topic from one implausible issue which was “Have you ever texted people as a form of avoidance, A few abbreviated words keep people from meaningful dialogue and face-to-face communication.” Which as a statement is completely illegitimate because people don’t include abbreviations only because they intend to avoid a particular person, but instead they implement abbreviations in their texts when they are in a hurry and want to transfer a message to another person as quickly as possible or they would like to remain equivalent texting at the same pace of speech, meaning that a person abbreviates so they would be able to write just as swiftly as they would if they were to speak, you also didn’t incorporate any other clear possible reasons to why text speak could conceivably be a negative impact to “people’s need for in-depth conversation.”

Your 2^nd statement “texting dumbs down spelling and grammar” in my opinion is a very imprecise and general allegation that unrightfully places the blame on texting without the relevant research conducted and referenced in your article. You also came up with a hasty conclusion by stating that because we use shortcuts in spelling, punctuation, and emoticons these factors “are giving way to generations of lazy and sloppy communicators.” I would like of you to think of this issue in a way in which the students or teenagers aren’t trying to avoid spelling a word incorrectly or in an illiterate manner but instead they know that a certain part of a word contains vowels; therefore they would not spell out the vowels. For example a student might want to write to his/her friend: “I really enjoyed the movie today, and because they know that the word really is spelt really they would cut the vowels out of the word in order to keep up with the same pace of speech as I stated in the previous paragraph. The message I’m trying to convey to you is that if the students did not know how to spell the word in the first place they would not know how to abbreviate it and the reason they would like to abbreviate the word in the first place is due to the fact that these teenagers want to maintain and equilibrium between the pace of writing and the pace of speech.

As for the third statement “Texting distracts us from being fully present.” I fully agree with you because I also believe that texting most frequently causes us to place our focus primarily on our phones which results in teens being absent-minded and not fully aware of what’s encircling them at a particular moment; however I don’t see how that would affect our language in any negative way and how that “would kill our communication skills” I see this point as an entirely irrelevant section of the article unless you have an ambiguous interpretation that you didn’t elaborate on well enough.

Finally the 4^th statement “Texting invites ambiguity” because Nokia smartphones only allowed for 160 characters to be included in a single text message and generally that would not assist in getting your message along well enough and would cause disruption in the ways people might think, but nowadays smartphones allow for unlimited character counts such as IPhones and Samsung Galaxy smartphones which help in promoting more comprehensible messages to abolish ambiguity between individuals who use text messaging to communicate.

In conclusion, I believe that all of your statements lack meticulous reasoning and insufficient research backing up your proclamations and allegations towards the negative impacts of texting and how “texting is killing our communication skills.” I hope that throughout this letter I would have modified and adjusted your mindset towards texting as well as its alleged and putative accusations which I believe are highly inaccurate due to the biased majority of adults who dislike text speak because they believe that it affects people’s language in a negative way since that is the most logical take towards this contentious and antagonistic topic.