NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

Department of English Language and literature

Examination for the Degree of BA

Semester II: 1999/2000

EL1102: Studying English in Context

April/May 2000 Time Allowed: 3 hours

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

1. This paper contains SIX (6) questions and comprises FOUR (4) pages. Check that your paper is complete.

2. There are THREE SECTIONS (A, B and C) in this question paper.

3. Answer FOUR (4) questions; choose at least ONE (1) from EACH SECTION.

4. 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 in length.

(a) register

(b) the glottal stop

(d) convergence

(e) language contact between Old English and Old Norse

(f) fulguration

(g) Americanisms

(h) conversationalisation

SECTION B (REWRITING AND ANALYSIS: 25 marks per question)

Answer at least ONE (1) question from this section.

2. Examine the opening paragraph of Peter Grundy’s textbook, Doing Pragmatics (London: Arnold, 1995), p. 3.

I am not going to try and define pragmatics in this first chapter, although by the

end of it you should have a much better idea of what we mean by pragmatics than

you probably have now. Instead, I am going to write about some of the aspects of

language use that are of particular interest to pragmaticists such as you and me.

Let’s begin by eavesdropping on a fragment of conversation I overheard in the

corridor between two freshers queuing up to register at the beginning of the

academic year:

P: What’s your name by the way

S: Stephen

P: You haven’t asked my name back

S: What’s your name

P: It’s Pat

I don’t know if they are still together, but they each frighten me in their own

different ways. Look at some of the pragmatic effects of their utterances.

(a) Does the language employed here sound typical to you of the kind employed in other academic textbooks? Rewrite lines 1–7 in a more academic style. You may begin your rewritten version with: ‘The aim of this chapter is not …’

(b) In what sense is the language employed by Peter Grundy conversational sounding? What grammatical, lexical and other features are there in the passage that are shared with informal, conversational English? How is it different from your rewritten version in (a)? (Please do not focus on lines 8–12.)

3. The text below is from an essay entitled ‘The Threat of Population Movements’. In it, the writer, Sadako Ogata, comments on the dramatic rise in world refugee population today, and cites statistical figures showing that one in every hundred world citizens has been forced to leave home. He then provides an explanation for this trend.

One immediate cause of flight is internal conflict, kindled by resurgent nationalism

and ethnic and religious tensions. The massive proliferation of arms has increased

prospects for continuous violence. Political causes are linked with socio-economic

ones, as environmental degradation, population growth, and poverty increase

migratory pressures and exacerbate ethnic and communal tensions.

(a) In what ways is the language of the text representative of academic writing?

(b) Provide a rewritten version of the text which attempts to express what it says in the everyday conversational English you might use with friends in a fairly informal context.

(c) Discuss the differences between the lexical, grammatical and other devices used by the two versions you now have of the passage. Show how the devices of the original text help to present its writer’s viewpoint as neutral and objective, while the devices of your rewritten version help to reveal it clearly as just another opinion.

SECTION C (ESSAY: 25 marks per question)

Answer at least ONE (1) question from this section.

4. ‘A language is like an organism or any living creature. It needs to adapt to changing conditions. Any creature that ceases to adapt will just die.’

How appropriate is the above comparison? Do you agree with the point made? Support your answer by closely analysing any episodes in the development of the English language (in Britain or beyond Britain).

5. Either

(a) Many people consider that variation in English hinders co-operation and intelligibility. Do you think that there are other things that are as important as, or more important than, co-operation and intelligibility? Substantiate your answer by reference to instances of variation in English alluded to in the module (or other instances that you are aware of).

(b) ‘The need for intelligibility and the need for identity often pull people – and countries – in opposing directions. The former motivates the learning of an international language, with English the first choice in most cases; the latter motivates the promotion of ethnic language and culture.’ (David Crystal, 1997)

Discuss the relevance of this statement with reference to either (i) the emergence of Standard English in Britain, or (ii) the current move in Singapore to promote this Standard variety vis-à-vis Colloquial Singapore English.

6. The global spread of English has been described as the ultimate act of intellectual colonisation by some, raising the fear of ‘a new divide into some sort of haves and have nots’. State your own position with regard to this claim about the dominance, control and power of English. Support your arguments with convincing evidence and suitable examples.

– End of Paper –