Preview

Words Haunt Me Summary

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
439 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Words Haunt Me Summary
Comm. Studies reflective analysis

Remember in the analytical you need to analyse: the dialectal variations, registers, communicative behaviours and attitudes to language
ANALYTICAL
In my short story entitled, ‘Words Haunt Me,’ the language registers and variations in the short story as well as attitudes to language and communicative behaviour of the characters will be discussed.
Throughout the story, an intimate register was used between Romain and Rae-Ann. This is because they are very comfortable with each other. Additionally, it is the language marked by specialized words and expressions as seen when Rae-Ann says “It’s going to be alright babe.” However, a more formal tone is exchanged between Romain and Mr. and Mrs. Carmino. This is level of formality may have been adopted because Romain was meeting them for the first time. This is apparent as Romain declares “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. Carmino, a pleasure to meet
you!”
…show more content…
and Mrs. Carmino spoke Standard English using theacrolect variation as seen in this example “So what are your intentions with my daughter young man.” Their choice of language may have been because of their ‘upper class status’. However, Romain spokecreole at intervals throughout the passage and at some intervals even exclaiming inbas ilect as he was emotionally aroused. The comfort at which he spokebas ilect leads one to believe that this is his first language of choice and he is very comfortable with it as evident in the many features of the creole structuring such as the use of ‘mi’ as a subject adjective and the replacement of the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    “It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with” (Tan 634). Family talk is the language she grew up talking to her mother in that sounds perfect to her, but imperfect to others.…

    • 307 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Shoe Horn Sonata Essay

    • 1354 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Language helps us share other people’s experience. In the play the Shoe Horn Sonata by John Misto, the use of symbolism, stage directions and dialogue enables the audience to feel empathy for the character as does the language used in the film Apocolyto and in the painting “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” by Holly Wong.…

    • 1354 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Teaching Theology and Religion Journal published a peer-reviewed article in April 2014 entitled “Teaching Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.” The author of the article is Jonathan Malesic (2014), an associate professor of theology at King’s College in Pennsylvania. The article discusses Professor Malesic’s attempt to teach his students about Kierkegaard’s very influential work, Fear and Trembling (Malesic, 2012).…

    • 944 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Repose to "ARIA"

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “Aria” by Richard Rodriquez is an autobiography of his childhood, which basically shows how English affected his life, and how it brought him closer to the community but further from his family. As he states in the article, “Once I learned public language, it would never again be easy for me to hear intimate family voices.”…

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In other words, the text incorporates both the Standard English used by Rochester and Mr. Mason and the English, French, and Patois used by the Caribbean islanders such as Creoles and Blacks, it aims to celebrate hybridity that decentralizes the universality of her Rochester’s mother tongue. The novel, thus, incorporates many Creole’s songs like Christophine’s lullaby “Ma belle ka di maman li” meaning “my beautiful girl said to her mother,” that represents the mother’s voice. Other childish words are also used by Christophine when she talks to Antoinette such as “doudou,” meaning “little darling,” “doudou ché” meaning “dear little darling,” and others as “béké” meaning a white person (Rhys 70-71-70, Sumillera 29). Rhys’s embedment of these terms in a text written in English aims at showing the linguistic diversities of the West Indian society. She goes beyond that to display “that Creole can have a vitality and impact that Standard English lacks” (Rhys 151). It is a subversive strategy to create a heterogeneous space where she celebrates Bertha’s cultural specificities. The Caribbean novelist struggles to show the linguistic complexity of the post-emancipation Jamaican society. She rejects Brontë’s imperialist ideology that presents her Creole heroine as a voiceless beast that “growled like some strange wild animal” (Brontë…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Amy Tan’s story “Mother Tongue” starts by the affirmation that she is not a scholar of English or literature. She is just a writer and the person who understand the power of language. From Tan’s observations from her daily life, she realizes that there are different types of English that she uses. The first time Tan notices the difference is when she gives a speech on her book “The Joy Luck Club” using academic English, the one that she never uses to talk with her mother. The second time is when Tan talked using “fractured” English unconsciously with her mother when walking down the street. After that, Tan recalls her memories from her early age: the phone call for her mother to the stockbroker, the meeting with a doctor in the hospital for her mother’s CAT scan result to demonstrate her mother’s realization of “limited” English. Then Tan agrees with the idea that language spoken in…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Firoozeh Dumas The F Word

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Language is central to every single culture on Earth. Not only is it the human race’s main method of communication, it also is the only truly accurate way to record the human experience with integrity. Therefore, language shows most everything about who we are, from one’s homeland to education and everything in between. For instance, in Firoozeh Dumas’ The ‘F Word,’ a young Iranian girl is judged for who she is without any of her contemporaries taking a moment to figure out why.…

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Anzaldua

    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages

    She also vividly recounts the damage that can be done by the dominant culture through its attempts at copying and the centralizing the language to this process. She discusses the pain she has experienced because of being prohibited from, or ridiculed for, using her own language. She says, “if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language” (27). What…

    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Language, in itself, is exceptionally powerful. Language has the power to stop wars, to solve conflicts; however, perhaps one of the most important forces of language is the power to create emotion, to create meaning. The words an author elects to use can effectively impact one’s own reality. In the event that language is effectively utilized, it can evoke deep emotion from the reader and induce extensive thought in order to connect the words to the meaning. An author can manipulate language to convey their message by their choice of diction throughout a passage or by further applying various forms of figurative language to create imagery.…

    • 573 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Throughout our lives we communicate to a vast array of people on a daily basis from teachers to friends to family. Each time we speak to these individuals there tends to be a different “slang” that is used with each yet at the same time still portraying the same message. In groups of different cultures they have a similar voice through language. Even though the languages they speak are different the meanings can be the same. Through this everyone has the ability to show love, anger, sadness, and the ability to teach right from wrong. Two authors from different ethnic backgrounds show how language affects them personally and the ones around them. Kingston, a Chinese author, writes about stories based on the things she heard from her mother and…

    • 1999 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    a rage in harlem

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages

    When reading the book a Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes it brought me to the realization how language is not just a way to communicate with people. But rather it can be used in harmful ways where people can be deceived, cheated on, pushed away, hurt, and etc. language and communication is the strong connection it brings about between two people. Communication between person to person can either make a person’s day or it can kill them inside where what was said and done to them will never be forgotten.…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    American Dream

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Essential Question: “How is our understanding of culture and society constructed through and by language?”…

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Coming Into Language

    • 1071 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “There is more pleasure to building castles in the air than on the ground.” This quote by Edward Gibbon illustrates the intensity of writing and what gratification it can hold. When one writes, they are not confined to one certain formula. A person is able to express their thoughts and feelings in any way they choose. Language is a border for many people in that some cannot comprehend a certain language, understand how to use it, or recognize what is being said to them. On the other side of the border, they are not viewed as equals or as important compared to those who are not competing with this barrier. In his essay “Coming into Language,” Jimmy Santiago Baca uses his personal experiences to demonstrate how much crossing the border of language can change a person and show them new ways of expressing themselves.…

    • 1071 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    My Files

    • 3349 Words
    • 14 Pages

    Learning other forms of a word can help you expand your vocabulary. There’s a lot of fun in learning new words and you’ll discover a store of treasures with those.…

    • 3349 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The way you speak to a person depends on the language form you choose to speak in. At the same time, it also depends whom you are speaking to. There are a variety of ways of saying a particular sentence to a person. Let us take the sentence ”Hello, how are you,” if you are greeting a very important person, you would say it in a very sophisticated and well-mannered way, such as ” Good afternoon Mr. Ahmed, how are you feeling today?” Whereas if you are meeting your bestfriend, the language you speak turns more into slang, such as ”Hey bro, what’s up?” Therefore the way language reflects me is that when I have to have a conversation with a person, I carefuly choose the style I am going to speak in depending on who the person is and in which environment I am in while speaking to the person. Therefore, I also have various ways and different languages to say a particular sentence in.…

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays