ENGL 4010
Computer Applications in Language Studies
Assignment 2
by:
Liyana Harun (0622196)
Khairul Amin Abd. Rashid (0726731)
Siti Fatimah Md Yusof (0714658)
Ainaa Murni Abu Bakar (0729442)
Section: 1
Research objective
The objectives of this research are mainly to discover the frequent use of linguistic features in facebook as a computer mediated communication. The linguistic features that will be analysed are violation of maxims in cooperatives principles and the use of the demonstratives in written version. This research will discover why violation of maxims occurs and how and the reasons of demonstratives being used.
Literature Review
Cooperative Principle by Mai Zhou, published in August 2009 wrote about a brief concept of Grice’s Cooperative Principle and its four maxims. He applied Grice’s study to his research on Chinese college students in the past decades whereby they lack of oral communication skills.
In his research Mai explained about current style of teaching spoken English and the reasons for poor spoken English students. There is poverty of practice for students, less attention being paid to the teaching of pragmatics, and lack of interactions between teachers and students, and students among themselves. Then he exposed how Cooperative Principle could guide these spoken English teaching problems. Mai last point of his context is the enlightenment to spoken English teaching explained exposes steps in making oral skills more affective in educational system.
As Mai conclude his research with briefly explain his points as well as steps that educational system could take into consideration to make communicative skills in students more affective. Although Mai’s research paper is more into comparing Grice’s Cooperative Principle with oral skills, but it exposes the points where problem occurs in conversations.
In the second article that was used is Grice’s Cooperative Principle: Getting the Meaning Across written by Bethan Davies. Discussions in this article deals with the issues of Cooperative Principle and its conflicts with the term itself, the background of his work, Grice’s philosophy in understanding Cooperative Principle, the study of sentence-meaning and speaker-meaning, stages of developing Cooperative Principle, conventional and conversational, the Gricean program, the Gricean motivation, rationality and Grice, and how he defined rationality.
Davies explained about Grice’s Cooperative Principle based on several Grice’s books. Davies explain the term Cooperative Principle and what differentiate it from the word ‘cooperation’ that is used regularly by language speakers which is to show the relationship of human behaviour.
In this research Davies talked about setting the scene and background of Grice’s works. Davies summarise that by understanding the background of Grice, one would be able to understand Cooperative Principle easily. Davies wrote on the Gricean Program, refers to the style that Grice proposed on the sentence-meaning and speaker-meaning structure, conventional and conversational, Gricean motivation, and more about Grice rationality in understanding sentences.
In September 2005, another research was done with the title ‘A Preliminary Study of Mandarin Filled Pauses’ by Yuan Zhao and Dan Jurafsky. This research done generally to discover the frequent use of the aspects that contributed to filled pauses (FPs) in Mandarin. Those aspects were demonstratives like this/that and back channel like uh/mm.
Throughout the work, the researchers found that the demonstratives were more frequently used than back channel. The research was done bbased on the data drawn from LDC 98-HUB5 Mandarin corpuses of telephone conversations, in which FPs such as uh and mm are hand-labeled by LDC. There are 37 conversations in the corpus, which have complete speaker information. Then the results were identified and categorized based on different variables of information of dialect, age, gender and educational background.
Analysis
The Violation of Maxims:
The violation of maxims are; violation of maxim of Quantity, violation of maxim of Quality, violation of maxim of Relation, and violation of maxim of Manner. Violation of Quantity refers to the amount of information provided by the subjects more than needed. Violation of Quality refers to the honesty of the subjects in telling their stories. Violation of Relation indicates whether subjects contributed to the relevant or not. And lastly violation of Manner concerns with either the text is understood or the text is ambiguous.
Violations of maxims | Quantity |
1. Quantity | 4 |
2. Quality | 2 |
3. Relevant | 3 |
4. Manner | 11 |
Cooperative Principle deals with maxims. When a language user violates them, there will be a failure in understanding. Based on the research that we have done, users violate the maxims without realising them. So, we assume that there might be possibilities and explanations to why language users violate maxims and the principle.
These possibilities are, the use of facebook notes basically deals with one’s own experience and he tends to express it in his own way and style. The user also tends to use ambiguity mainly due to the fact that the user of facebook knows what he is talking about but others don’t. And this creates a problem to the other user of facebook because when they read the notes they could not comprehend and reply to the notes effectively. Misunderstanding can also occur in this situation.
In terms of violation of Quantity, the client of facebook likes to say more than is required. For example, “A wayfarer I am, the city loses its relevance as I sat in transit of a solitary dinner while awaiting for my precious daughter to ready herself for our home of seven weeks.”, in this statement he uses “my precious daughter” due to the fact that he is expressing about his love towards his daughter but other facebookers are not likely want to know about this.
Next, in the violation of quality, sometimes the client of facebook produces something that he is lack of adequate evidence with such as in the sentence “Strangely enough I had a dream later today...perhaps a vision.....” In this sentence he cannot decide whether what he experiences is a dream or a vision. Sometimes, there is also violation of relation occurs. This violation occurs, as in example “Strange thing is that I didn’t remember writing the book in the 1st place.....but lets take the credit anyway shall we! :)” which the writer gives further explanation about his dream or vision but basically the explanation is not really relevant to the context.
The Demonstratives:
Demonstratives are deictic words indicate which entities that a speaker refers to and distinguishes from others. Basically, there are four demonstrative devices in English; this, that, these and those. The aspects or areas can be found in the demonstratives include; proximal and distal, demonstrative determiners and pronouns and discourse deixis.
Proximal demonstratives indicate the objects or entities close to the speaker. For example, This bag. These bags. While, distal demonstratives indicate the objects or entities further remove from the speaker. For example, That car. Those cars.
Another area is demonstrative determiners or or demonstrative adjectives or determinative demonstratives which modify a noun. For example, This book is good. I like those houses. While, demonstrative pronoun stands on its own, replacing rather than modifying a noun. For example, This is good. I like those.
Lastly, the discourse deixes which refers to concrete i.e this table and abstract i.e this opinion.
The following are the demonstratives that can be analyzed from the corpus.
In the vivid dream note, “...this story should...”. ‘this’ here refers to proximal as it shows near the object, demonstrative determiner as it modifies noun (story) and abstract as we cannot see the story. Another one is “He knows this.”. ‘this’ here refers to proximal, pronoun as it stands on its won and abstract as it refers to the idea the sentence before.
In the note ‘Coming round to ayah’, the examples of demonstratives are; “That someone had...”.’That ’ refers to distal as it is far, demonsrative determiners as it modify the noun (someone) and concrete as it refers ti person or human. Then, “Ayah had plans for that”. ‘that’ here refers to distal as it is far, to show it happened far in the past, demonstrative pronoun since it replaces the noun and abstract as it refers to action that we cannot see. Next, “...and that knowledge...” . ‘that’ refers to distal, demonstrative determiners the noun (knowledge) and abstract due to the (knowledge) is something intangible.
Finally, in the last note entitled ‘place and person’ , there is a demonstrative; ‘...yet I know this is itself’. ‘this’ here refers to proximal, demonstrative determiner as there exists object or noun (itself) and abstract.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, we can conclude that, the violation of maxims occurs mainly because the facebook is basically deals with one’s way of expression his or her own feelings and thoughts towards anything that he or she like to address. Moreover, violation happen due to the fact that the writer didn’t really know whether the information that he or she produced is sufficient or not to the reader doesn’t explicitly express their thought on the the writer produce. Not exactly knowing what is happening and tries to put in on the screen as a facebook note also creates a violation when the user of facebook didn’t provide clear and precise explanation. Thus, all of this contributes to the violation of maxims and it happens anonymously without the knowledge of the writer.
For the demonstrations, they are frequently used especially in writing and conversation whether in every language whether English, Malay, Mandarin and so on.
Davies, Betthan. (2000). Grice’s Cooperative Principle: Getting The Meaning Across. Retrived 5th October 2010, from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?
Mai Zhou. (2009). Cooperative Principle in Oral English Teaching. Retrived 5th October 2010, from http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ies/article/
Zhao, Y., & Jurafsky, D. (2005). A preliminary study of Mandarin filled pauses.
Yule, George. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Retrieved from http://www.wikipedia.com/demonstratives/ies/article/
place and person
by Danial Yusof on Tuesday, 20 July 2010 at 00:53
Having left the city for about seven weeks now.....and despite the reconciliation that happened a few days ago, I noticed a void in the place formerly called home. I had an opportunity to run some errands prior to picking up my daughter today.
Around dusk.....the stale air of the day and the almost sepia like lens made me feel almost like a stranger. Despite the familiarity of the locations, the memories seemed distant. The hospital where it happened had shifted......the vacant space echoing the memory of a silent sadness to be forgotten once I have breathed my last.
A wayfarer I am, the city loses its relevance as I sat in transit of a solitary dinner while awaiting for my precious daughter to ready herself for our home of seven weeks.
In this home of seven weeks, I realize I am where I am where the anonymity of place is filled by loved ones....yet I know this is itself, another station.
We await your return, fellow wayfarer. Then this rowdy band will set sail for the frontier....
Around dusk.....the stale air of the day and the almost sepia like lens made me feel almost like a stranger. Despite the familiarity of the locations, the memories seemed distant. The hospital where it happened had shifted......the vacant space echoing the memory of a silent sadness to be forgotten once I have breathed my last.
A wayfarer I am, the city loses its relevance as I sat in transit of a solitary dinner while awaiting for my precious daughter to ready herself for our home of seven weeks.
In this home of seven weeks, I realize I am where I am where the anonymity of place is filled by loved ones....yet I know this is itself, another station.
We await your return, fellow wayfarer. Then this rowdy band will set sail for the frontier....
A vivid dream (5/9/09)
by Danial Yusof on Saturday, 05 September 2009 at 18:28
Another vivid dream:
That I wrote a book under a pseudonym and it was well received. I was somewhere abroad when a book award committee found out my identity, were happy about it and invited me into their fold. I remember it being a work of fiction...science fiction . I remember wondering if my future works would be well received as this one. I don't remember the title but it was a single word. I looked at the cover but cudn't read it (u're not able to read in dreams anyway cos ure just using ur left brain). Strange thing is that I didnt remember writing the book in the 1st place.....but lets take the credit anyway shall we! :)
I clearly remember there were various illustrations (water colour) throughout the book. I remember the first 2 illustrations.......1) Of a person in a battle suit (almost a mech suit) walking down a hill in a wasteland with the sun behind him; 2) A first person view through the visor of the suit as he scans the horizon.....he thinks....
I remember thinking about how it begins.......:
Semi-destroyed houses were resting at the foot of the hill....as if they rolled down the hill like tumbleweeds after a gust of strong desert wind. A home is as useless to me as these right now....
The figure scans the horizon and trudges on.
*note......weird....my brain is telling me this story should be about the last man on earth and the mech suit is sustaining him artificially but is running short of power (its a fusion powered suit). He knows this and decides to go on a pilgrimage.
That I wrote a book under a pseudonym and it was well received. I was somewhere abroad when a book award committee found out my identity, were happy about it and invited me into their fold. I remember it being a work of fiction...science fiction . I remember wondering if my future works would be well received as this one. I don't remember the title but it was a single word. I looked at the cover but cudn't read it (u're not able to read in dreams anyway cos ure just using ur left brain). Strange thing is that I didnt remember writing the book in the 1st place.....but lets take the credit anyway shall we! :)
I clearly remember there were various illustrations (water colour) throughout the book. I remember the first 2 illustrations.......1) Of a person in a battle suit (almost a mech suit) walking down a hill in a wasteland with the sun behind him; 2) A first person view through the visor of the suit as he scans the horizon.....he thinks....
I remember thinking about how it begins.......:
Semi-destroyed houses were resting at the foot of the hill....as if they rolled down the hill like tumbleweeds after a gust of strong desert wind. A home is as useless to me as these right now....
The figure scans the horizon and trudges on.
*note......weird....my brain is telling me this story should be about the last man on earth and the mech suit is sustaining him artificially but is running short of power (its a fusion powered suit). He knows this and decides to go on a pilgrimage.
The Evil Kitty
by Danial Yusof on Thursday, 08 October 2009 at 02:15
My fallible abd, Danial,
You have entered into an agreement whereby for every bad thought that materialises in your head, you will contribute a compensation fee of rm10 into the Evil Kitty.
This fund will be used to buy unneeded but highly desirable consumer electronic items and other items such as a ps3, an xbox 360, a tablet netbook, mods for your swifu spo, a brand new acoustic guitar, a fender telecaster, a yamaha acoustic drum kit and so on.
Your Al-Rajhi current account is the desginated Evil Kitty.........
Yours truly,
The owner of your body and soul
You have entered into an agreement whereby for every bad thought that materialises in your head, you will contribute a compensation fee of rm10 into the Evil Kitty.
This fund will be used to buy unneeded but highly desirable consumer electronic items and other items such as a ps3, an xbox 360, a tablet netbook, mods for your swifu spo, a brand new acoustic guitar, a fender telecaster, a yamaha acoustic drum kit and so on.
Your Al-Rajhi current account is the desginated Evil Kitty.........
Yours truly,
The owner of your body and soul
Coming round to ayah
by Danial Yusof on Friday, 30 April 2010 at 01:45
Today, I felt a wholeness in myself when I visited Kuantan to settle some matters with my mama. I felt I was at home in the company of family. I felt that ayah was helping me today. But he passed away in 1994. There was something he did that came round today.
Ayah had bought something from someone in 1989 so that someone could do a good thing. And so that someone did. That someone had subsequently passed away. Ayah had plans for that which he bought but alas, Allah had other plans. We did not know what to exactly do with the thing he had bought afterwards but knew the someone's children had wanted it back and they knew what to do with it. Many years has since passed. It is 2010. And so we returned the something to them today for something else in return. Only that they did not know that in doing so they were helping not just themselves but also us.
Strangely enough I had a dream later today...perhaps a vision.....in the past I would remember being with ayah visiting the someone in the process of helping him. This evening in my vision I saw my ayah visiting to help me.....I felt a connection between his deed of the past with his own family. I felt a connection between him and my family that he never got to meet. I felt a connection between him and my future that he'll never get to see. I felt that despite his lack of physical presence, that there was something in Allah's alignment of fate that connected us from the past, and continue to flow to the present and future...that in the scheme of all things permanent and eternal.....we will always be linked and in the know.....and that knowledge will be manifested when we reunite.
On this same day I visited my brother's grave.....it had been hidden over the years due to the overflow of earth from the slope where the graveyard is located. It took us a while....I almost gave up....then I rediscovered it.
Today I rediscovered the bond of family and its echo through the generations. Today I felt that ayah was with me....smiling, patting me on my back....not cos I've been good...but to remind me not to slouch and straighten my back.....
Ayah had bought something from someone in 1989 so that someone could do a good thing. And so that someone did. That someone had subsequently passed away. Ayah had plans for that which he bought but alas, Allah had other plans. We did not know what to exactly do with the thing he had bought afterwards but knew the someone's children had wanted it back and they knew what to do with it. Many years has since passed. It is 2010. And so we returned the something to them today for something else in return. Only that they did not know that in doing so they were helping not just themselves but also us.
Strangely enough I had a dream later today...perhaps a vision.....in the past I would remember being with ayah visiting the someone in the process of helping him. This evening in my vision I saw my ayah visiting to help me.....I felt a connection between his deed of the past with his own family. I felt a connection between him and my family that he never got to meet. I felt a connection between him and my future that he'll never get to see. I felt that despite his lack of physical presence, that there was something in Allah's alignment of fate that connected us from the past, and continue to flow to the present and future...that in the scheme of all things permanent and eternal.....we will always be linked and in the know.....and that knowledge will be manifested when we reunite.
On this same day I visited my brother's grave.....it had been hidden over the years due to the overflow of earth from the slope where the graveyard is located. It took us a while....I almost gave up....then I rediscovered it.
Today I rediscovered the bond of family and its echo through the generations. Today I felt that ayah was with me....smiling, patting me on my back....not cos I've been good...but to remind me not to slouch and straighten my back.....
My rockin' arwah ayah...
A. Quantity
1. Around dusk...the stale air of the day and the almost sepia like lens made me feel almost like a stranger.
2. I looked at the cover but cudn't read it (u're not able to read in dreams anyway cos ure just using ur left brain).
3. This fund will be used to buy unneeded but highly desirable consumer electronic items and other items such as a ps3, an xbox 360, a tablet netbook, mods for your swifu spo, a brand new acoustic guitar, a fender telecaster, a yamaha acoustic drum kit and so on.
B. Quality
1. *note......weird....my brain is telling me this story should be about the last man on earth and the mech suit is sustaining him artificially but is running short of power (its a fusion powered suit). He knows this and decides to go on a pilgrimage.
2. Strangely enough I had a dream later today...perhaps a vision.....
C. Relevant
1. Despite the familiarity of the locations, the memories seemed distant. The hospital where it happened had shifted
2. A wayfarer I am, the city loses its relevance as I sat in transit of a solitary dinner while awaiting for my precious daughter to ready herself for our home of seven weeks.
3. Strange thing is that I didnt remember writing the book in the 1st place.....but lets take the credit anyway shall we! :)
D. Manner
1. Having left the city for about seven weeks now.
2. ......the vacant space echoing the memory of a silent sadness to be forgotten once I have breathed my last.
3. A wayfarer I am, the city loses its relevance as I sat in transit of a solitary dinner while awaiting for my precious daughter to ready herself for our home of seven weeks.
4. I was somewhere abroad when a book award committee found out my identity, were happy about it and invited me into their fold.
5. You have entered into an agreement whereby for every bad thought that materialises in your head, you will contribute a compensation fee of rm10 into the Evil Kitty.
6. The owner of your body and soul.
7. There was something he did that came round today.
8. Ayah had bought something from someone in 1989 so that someone could do a good thing. And so that someone did. That someone had subsequently passed away.
9. And so we returned the something to them today for something else in return. Only that they did not know that in doing so they were helping not just themselves but also us.
10. Coming round to ayah
11. Place and person
Self-reflection
a) Islamic perspective
• The use of technology to gain knowledge on language use in everyday life.
• The knowledge in language helps in understanding others and create a harmonious society.
• When your Lord said to the angels: "I will place a successor on earth." They said: "Will you place one there who will commit disorder and shed blood, while we praise You, and extol Your holiness." He said: "I know what you do not know."
• And He taught Adam all the names. Then presented them to the angels, saying: "Tell me the names of these if you are truthful."
• They said: "Glory to you, we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. You are Knowing, Wise."
• "O Adam, give them their names." When he told them their names, He said: "Did I not tell you that I know the secrets of the heavens and the earth? I know whatever you reveal and whatever you conceal." Al-Baqarah, 30-33
b) What we gain
· Indepth understanding of the linguistics aspects.
· The assignment was very interesting because we got the chance to analyze actual corpus from facebook, something that we enjoy doing as a teenager.
· Although we are having difficulties at first but later on we managed to encounter the difficulties.
· The difficulties strengthen our relationship as a group. We come to know each other better and understand each other more.
· We learned to tolerate and accept each other stregth and weakness.
