Semantics & Pragmatics

In the field of Modern Languages and Linguistics, words are of great importance. A language’s phonology (study of how sounds are organized and used), morphology (study of the form and structure of words), syntax (study of the rules that govern sentence structure), semantics (study of meaning of words, sentences, and expressions), pragmatics (study of aspects of meaning and language use and context), and phonetics (study of human speech sounds) all play an important part in everyday life. These have a major impact in understanding the intent of what is spoken or heard. Due to the importance of communication, literary elements such as metaphors (which are defined as a figure of speech in which a word or phrase

What do you understand by semantics, as a major component of language, and explain denotative and connotative meanings with at least one example.

pragmatics - knowledge that relates to how language is used appropriately within different social contexts.

The second article by Marquis will demonstrate why killing a fetus is a crucial wrong. He will also be including how an anti-abortionist and pro-choicer opinionate in cases like these. The following paragraph’s will go more into depth about each article over abortion.

Denotation is the primary meaning of a word. In contrast connotation is an additional idea to the primary meaning. Hitselberger dislikes the world “fighting” by it’s connotation meaning. The denotation meaning of the word “fighting” is the act of responding with violence to a conflict. In this article, there were two connotation definitions of “fighting” one is fighting against yourself due to something you dislike about who you are, not a physical fight but a mental challenge. The second meaning is fighting against what you believe is wrong. Again not physically but rather with words and actions that will change the thinking and beliefs of others to the benefit of you and/or society. Fighting is not always an act of violence, but rather it

0 Semantics is the study of effect of the arrangement of words in a sentence.

Interpreting and mental processing. Cokely (1992), Taylor (1993), and later Russell (2002) illustrate in their research dissertations that the interpreting process, from the source message to producing an equivalent interpretation in the target language (ASL or English), occurs in nanoseconds. Researchers who assess the impact on message accuracy within an interpretation further support the need for preparation to assist in the production of a dynamic equivalent interpreted message. The less an ASLI/TiE knows about a subject results in more time spent on attempting to understand the content and meaning, thus impacting the target language message. Napier and Barker (2004), explain ASLI/TiE’s “decontextualize each original utterance to a certain extent so that it is a separate unit and can be recontextualized as a new utterance in the ‘flow of talk’” (p. 373) as part of the mental interpreted process. In doing so effectively the

Linguistic: the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics.

Linguistics has been broken down into several sub-categories including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

In this entry for chapter three of, Writing about Writing by Wardle and Downs, the main goal is to introduce ideas of using rhetoric as a research device. Overall, rhetoric is a very broad topic, so to make the topic easier for people to digest, it has been broken down into many different sub terms and criteria’s. One of the first ideas brought up concerning rhetoric is rhetorical theory. Rhetorical Theory help’s people understand different aspects of writing, “how writers, texts, readers, and contexts interacts; how writers come up with what to say; how texts construct knowledge; and how people make up their minds, and change them.” (318) These four concepts are essentially the building blocks of creating “accurate conceptions of writing as

Throughout my educational years, I had only done writings that involves in small research papers, MLA style essays, and summary essays. However, English 101 has given me a new way to look at my writing skills. Most of the writings I have been doing so far in this course were interpretative essays where we interpreted and reflected on other’s writing and then reflecting back to ours own writing. This class also has given me the opportunity to work with my classmates and a chance to discuss about the writing strategy they made in their papers versus the strategy I made in my papers. In addition, I find the in-class activity to be very useful because it allows me to see other’s perspectives and feedbacks. The in-class activities were class discussions, group works, and conference with the instructor. At the end of the semester, the class objective was to pick out two best interpretative essays that we have been working on with a final reflective essay to include in our final portfolio. So for the rest of this essay, I would like to talk about my two best interpretive essays that I have decided to include in my final portfolio: “Death of a Funeral Business”, and “No Time to think” and “Time Ain’t Money”.

The title of the second article is "Abortion is Immoral" by John Paul II. This article objects abortion in the belief that it is a crime which kills an innocent human being and also against all Christian belief that abortion could be of any good regardless of circumstances.

At the beginning of the semester, I thought that linguistics was more so limited to the pronunciations of words and how they were constructed. Throughout the class I learned that linguistics is the students of language as a whole. Linguistics is also about how we perceive and detect

These days gender selection has become one of the controversial topics all around the world. Advanced technologies vastly affected peoples’ lives in order to select their babies’ genders that they hoped. Imagine, is it fair to select the gender of a child that might lead us to the discrimination and gender imbalance? In the article, “Gender Selection of Babies,” the author discusses whether it is good to use the opportunity to select babies’ genders or simply accept the babies the way they are. The article states that the people who support the gender selection should have right to select the gender of their babies without interference by the government or the society. People believe that mature adults should be free to select the gender of their babies to control over their family lives. On the other hand, the article also states that despite the continued use of technology for the gender selection in the medical field, there is no more than 50% chance of producing the desired gender of babies. People against the gender selection also argue that parents need to accept their children in a natural form. Biggest of all, this gender selection can also lead to sex discrimination and gender imbalance. While considering these terms, parents should accept the children the way they are without any interference.

In this research, the researcher discusses the figurative language based on Perrine’s perception. According to Perrine (1977:61-109), figurative language consists of 12 kinds, they are: simile, metaphor, personification, apostrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, symbol, allegory, paradox, hyperbole/overstatement, understatement, and irony.