NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE
Department of English Language and Literature
Examination for the Degree of BA
Semester I: 1999/2000
EL1102 Studying English in Context
November 1999 Time Allowed: 3 hours
INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES
1. This paper contains THREE SECTIONS (A, B and C).
2. Answer FOUR (4) questions; choose at least ONE (1) from EACH SECTION.
3. Each question is worth 25 marks. Try to spend roughly the same amount of time for each question - we recommend that this should be 45 minutes.
SECTION A (SHORT ANSWERS: 25 MARKS)
1. Provide short, encyclopaedic entries to all the terms below which have been introduced in the module. Your entries should
· say what the terms mean or refer to, and
· suggest why they are significant, useful or necessary
Please use complete, grammatical sentences in your entries. Each entry should be about 50 words long.
(a) genre
(b) rhoticity
(c) ‘appraisal’ or ‘attitudinal colouring’ in conversation
(d) codification (in the process of standardisation)
(e) pidgins
(f) endonormative standards in the New Varieties of English
(g) English in Norman England
(h) the use of ‘inclusive language’
SECTION B (REWRITING AND ANALYSIS: 25 marks per question)
Answer at least ONE (1) question from this section.
2. Examine the transcript of a quarrel between an unmarried Singaporean
couple. They boyfriend (B) is unhappy that the girlfriend (G) is not wearing
the watch he gave her, a Guess watch. (A ‘dress watch’ is like a ‘dress shirt’
- to be worn on formal occasions.)
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G: Why are you sulking? B: I like to sulk. G: No? There was a reason why you are sulking? B: I told you right? Don’t wear other watch right? G: Sorry? Don’t wear what? B: Other watch - other than MINE right? G: This is not OTHER watch. This is a watch my
auntie gave me. B: From where? G: I don’t know. How am I - it’s from where ... B: Pasar malam1 right? G: So what if it’s from pasar malam B: So you prefer a FAKE watch than my GUESS watch
ah? G: No. I like ALL kinds of watches as long as they
are gifts from people. I’ll just wear - I don’t care what BRAND they are B: So the GIFT that I purposely bought for you,
that I hope that you’ll wear it, G: I DO wear it, it’s not that *I don’t wear it at all* B: *You don’t, you don’t* understand what I’m
trying to say G: **No! I do wear it!** B: **The watch is** like part of you, you don’t
take it out and you know try on and things like that, and it’s a ... G: NO! A watch must go with my dressing, it *so happened* B: *WHAT YOU* MEAN go with you dressing? G: It so happened that the watch B: What do you mean go with your dressing, I don’t
understand, it’s a DRESS watch right what I gave you. G: EXACTLY. But I’m not wearing a dress now, see? |
1Note: a pasar malam
or night market is a ‘temporary market set up in the open at night at
which popular and usually inexpensive items are sold’ (Times-Chambers
Essential English Dictionary, 2nd edition).
(a) Imagine a change of mode and tenor: imagine you are the boyfriend who has to write to a counsellor to give his point of view in the quarrel. Keep this to about half a page in length; feel free to insert made-up details as you see fit.
(b) Now analyse the original text, and compare it with your rewritten version. What are the differences in terms of organisation, lexis and grammar? Can you give some reasons for the differences?
3. Following a series of mass shootings around the US, serious proposals are currently being pushed to enforce federal gun-control laws there. However, this move is being strongly resisted by gun advocates who claims that the possession of guns is a fundamental individual right of the American people. In the boxed passage below, which may be considered a fairly representative example of academic writing, psychologist Robert Jay Layton deplores the gun lobby for its resistance to the introduction of gun-control laws and argues that over the years the gun has become so entrenched as an essential aspect of American identity as to create what he calls ‘The Psyche of “Gunocracy” ’.
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The sources of ‘gunocracy’ date back to the Revolutionary War and our romanticised version of citizen militias, which place the gun at the centre of our national creation myth .... Through the influx of people and ideas, the gun remained entrenched as an essential aspect of our identity - the icon of freedom, power and the rights of the individual .... The contemporary resurgence of parliamentary groups has been accompanied by fierce resistance to political efforts to impose the mildest kind of gun control. And this is not surprising, since even God, as envisaged by these groups, is gun-centred. (‘Our God is not a wimp’ is one popular slogan.) The violence committed in his name is likely to be performed on behalf of a ‘white race’ supposedly endangered by Jews, blacks and homosexuals. Whatever the social dislocations that fuel such racist ideology, the gun is always available to provide an absolute solution. |
(a) Provide a brief rewritten version of the passage in which you set down its argument in everyday colloquial English of the kind you might use in casual conversation among friends when trying to get them to accept your viewpoint.
(b) Discuss the lexical, grammatical and other such linguistic differences between the two version you now have of the passage. In doing so show how the linguistic features of the original passage help to present its writer’s viewpoint as neutral and objective, while the features of your rewritten version help to reveal it as just another opinion.
SECTION C (ESSAYS: 25 marks per question)
Answer at least ONE (1) question from this section.
4. ‘Changes in the perspective of speakers must lead to changes in the language, because humankind needs to be master over language rather than be mastered by it.’ Discuss this statement by focusing on a particular instance of social change, such as the Norman conquest, or the new perspectives as a result of the rise of science, or the British settlement in North America.
5. Would you agree that the evolution of Standard English is something of a paradox in that with reference to the different complex factors that led to its emergence, on the one hand, it can be seen as inclusive, while on the other, it can be considered exclusive, based on the usage of a select élite. Explain how this situation came to be.
6. ‘Singlish is a handicap we must not wish on Singaporeans.’ (Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew speaking at the Tanjong Pagar National Day Dinner on 14 August ’99).
‘I would like to suggest that ... Singlish as a place in Singaporean identity .... Rather than pushing aside what may be considered by some as undesirable influences, we should accept the realities of 1999 and the new millennium ...’ (extract from a reader’s letter to the Editor, The Straits Times, 31 July ’99).
State your own views on the current debate raging in the media concerning the acceptability and continuance of Singapore English (SE) as a legitimate, autonomous variety of English. Use linguistic, social and historical evidence to show how this controversy about the role and status of SE represents the conflicting forces of language contact and language planning (or gate-keeping) working at cross-purposes. (If you prefer, you can discuss, instead of SE, another New Variety of English.)
7. This module has highlighted variation in the English language in terms of its accents, its lexis and its grammar. Is this variation a problem? Should we work towards minimising variation? Answer this question by discussing a few of the examples referred to in the module (eg Norwich, New York, Martha’s Vineyard, the Anglo-Saxon period, Norman English, the New Englishes) or other examples that you are familiar with.
- End of Paper –
© P Tan, R Rubdy, 1999