Qn: Write an essay on how linguistics may help in the interpretation or literary analysis of the short story 'The Sisters' from James Joyce's Dubliners.
My advice is to concentrate on the parts of speech or the constituents of the clause from a portion of the story. This means that the relevant lecture notes are 2, 3, and 6. (You will also find the handouts for the second and third discussion sessions [2005-06 academic year] of relevance.)
The text of 'The Sisters' is available on the Internet (you should use this version of the story). There is even an mp3 audio version of the story (slow link). There are several articles or study guides that you can refer to on the WWW in relation to the story, such as:
You have to be selective in what you read, as not every study on Joyce's 'The Sisters' is relevant for your essay. For further reading on the technicalities that you may choose to bring in in your analysis, you may want to refer to the following:
The section on diction, which can be found on the Internet in the document on 'The Study of Style'. You may also be interested to look at the section on sentence length, and grammatical types of sentences (the last item is discretionary, as we will not be dealing with some of the features for our EL3221 module this year, due to time constraints, but if your interested, take a look at lecture notes no. 12).
How will I be judging your essay?: Take a look at the take-home essay guidelines and criteria.
Deadline: 3rd October 2006 (before 12 am, 4th Oct.). As the technicalities involved for
writing up the assignment are dealt with early in the semester (lecture notes
nos. 2 and 3), it is definitely possible
for you to submit your work by the 3rd October 2006 (which is an extension from
the original deadline a week earlier). Also, the earlier date
will prevent you from being overloaded with assignments at the end of the
semester.
No. of Words: 1,500 to 3,000 (including the examples or quoted extracts
from the text).
Referencing: Any systematic method of referencing is allowed.
Among the style sheets you may want to use for your essay (in order of preference) are those of
the American Psychological Association,
the Modern
Language Association or the
Linguistic Society of
America.
Method of submission: Through the IVLE module workbin or to the following
email address: cosibst@nus.edu.sg.
Alternatively, you may want to give the exact URL of your web or blog page if
your essay is posted there: of course, this is an invitation to me to visit your
web or blog page, rather than a 'submission' in the strict sense. Essays should be written in Microsoft Word (any version)
or HTML (if it is on a web or blog page). Hard copies will
not be accepted, unless an explanation is given to me in advance. Students
submitting their essays should scan their files for viruses beforehand.
Percentage of total marks for this module: 15%.