LINGUISTICA APLICADA

GRADE TEST CONTENTS 2019

Defining Literature

Literature, in its broadest sense, is any written work. Etymologically, the term derives

from Latin litaritura/litteratura “writing formed with letters,” although some definitions

include spoken or sung texts. More restrictively, it is writing that possesses literary

merit. Literature can be classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction and

whether it is poetry or prose.

It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short story

or drama, and works are often categorized according to historical periods or their

adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (genre).

Taken to mean only written works, literature was first produced by some of the world’s

earliest civilizations—those of Ancient Egypt and Sumeria—as early as the 4th

millennium BC; taken to include spoken or sung texts, it originated even earlier, and

some of the first written works may have been based on a pre-existing oral tradition. As

urban cultures and societies developed, there was a proliferation in the forms of

literature. Developments in print technology allowed for literature to be distributed and

experienced on an unprecedented scale, which has culminated in the twenty-first

century in electronic literature.

Definitions of literature have varied over time.  In Western Europe prior to the

eighteenth century, literature as a term indicated all books and writing. A more

restricted sense of the term emerged during the Romantic period, in which it began to

demarcate “imaginative” literature.

 Contemporary debates over what constitutes literature can be seen as returning to the

older, more inclusive notion of what constitutes literature. Cultural studies, for instance,

takes as its subject of analysis both popular and minority genres, in addition to

canonical works

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to

evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, prosaic ostensible meaning (ordinary

intended meaning). Poetry has traditionally been distinguished from prose by its being

set in verse prose is cast in sentences, poetry in lines; the syntax of prose is dictated

by meaning, whereas that of poetry is held across metre or the visual aspects of the

poem

Prior to the nineteenth century, poetry was commonly understood to be something set

in metrical lines; accordingly, in 1658 a definition of poetry is “any kind of subject

consisting of Rythm or Verses Possibly as a result of Aristotle’s influence (his Poetics),

“poetry” before the nineteenth century was usually less a technical designation for

verse than a normative category of fictive or rhetorical art As a form it may pre-date

literacy, with the earliest works being composed within and sustained by an oral

tradition hence it constitutes the earliest example of literature.

Prose

Prose is a form of language that possesses ordinary syntax and natural speech rather

than rhythmic structure; in which regard, along with its measurement in sentences

rather than lines, it differs from poetry On the historical development of prose, Richard

Graff notes that”

Novel: a long fictional prose narrative.

Novella: The novella exists between the novel and short story; the

publisher Melville House classifies it as “too short to be a novel, too long to be a

short story.

Short story: a dilemma in defining the “short story” as a literary form is how to,

or whether one should, distinguish it from any short narrative. Apart from its

distinct size, various theorists have suggested that the short story has a

characteristic subject matter or structure these discussions often position the

form in some relation to the novel

DENOTATIVE AND CONNOTATIVE LANGUAGE. -

Denotation refers to the literal meaning of a word, the "dictionary definition."¨ For

example, if you look up the word snake in a dictionary, you will discover that one of

its denotative meanings is "any of numerous scaly, legless, sometimes venomous

reptiles¡ having a long, tapering, cylindrical body and found in most tropical and

temperate regions."

Connotation, on the other hand, refers to the associations that are connected to a

certain word or the emotional suggestions related to that word.

The connotative meanings of a word exist together with the denotative meanings. The

connotations for the word snake could include evil or danger

Drama. - Drama is literature intended for performance.

American literature

American literature is literature written or produced in the United States and

its preceding colonies Before the founding of the United States, the British colonies on

the eastern coast of the present-day United States were heavily influenced by English

literature. The American literary tradition thus began as part of the broader tradition

of English literature.

The First American NovelIn the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the first American novels were published.

These fictions were too lengthy to be printed as manuscript or public reading.

Publishers took a chance on these works in hopes they would become steady sellers

and need to be reprinted. This scheme was ultimately successful because male and

female literacy rates were increasing at the time. Among the first American novels

are Thomas Attwood Digges' "Adventures of Alonso", published in London in 1775

and William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy published in 1791. Brown's novel

depicts a tragic love story between siblings who fell in love without knowing they were

related.

Nathaniel Hawthorne  (1804  -1864)

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a novelist and short story writer. Hawthorne’s works have

been labeled ‘dark romanticism,’ dominated as they are by cautionary tales that

suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humankind.

His novels and stories, set in a past New England, are versions of historical fiction used

as a vehicle to express themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution.

Although his natural inclination was to express himself through the short story form, he

is best known for his novels, and particularly his most famous, The Scarlet Letter, a

romance in an historical setting – puritan Boston, Massachusetts, in the 17th century.

It is the story of the unfortunate Hester Prynne, who gives birth to a child as a result of

an affair with a preacher, and struggles to create a new life of repentance. The novel

explores the themes of sin, guilt and legalism.  D.H. Lawrence wrote that there could

be no more perfect work of the American imagination.

Hawthorne is ranked among the top American writers. He is admired by other writers,

particularly, as a skilful craftsman with an admirable sense of form, which is highly

architectural. The structure of his novels, The Scarlet Letter being a striking example, is

so tightly integrated that it would be impossible to omit any paragraph without doing

damage to the whole. The book’s four characters are inextricably bound together in a

complex situation that seems to be insoluble, and the tightly woven plot has a unity of

action that rises slowly but inexorably to a highly dramatic climactic scene. In the short

stories, too, there is that tight construction. Hawthorne is admired, too for the

directness of his writing, and its clarity

Hawthorne’s greatness is due partly to his moral insight. He was deeply concerned with

original sin and guilt and the claims of law and conscience. He delved deeply and

honestly into life, in which he saw much suffering and conflict but also the redeeming

power of love. He is uncompromising in his presentation of those things, firmly and

resolutely scrutinizing the psychological and moral facts of the human condition. His

greatest short stories and The Scarlet Letter are characterized by a depth of

psychological and moral insight unequalled by any other American writer.

Hawthorne is also admired for his mastery of allegory and symbolism. His characters’

dilemmas and their response to them express larger generalizations about the

problems of human existence. The power and gravity with which he deals with that

results in true tragedy.

And now, in the 21st century Hawthorne holds a pre-eminent place in American letters.

He was a major influence in the artistic development of such writers as Herman Melville, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mary Jane Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor – members of the so-called

Hawthorne School. His focus on the past of the nation, especially the Puritan era, his

delving into the social and psychological forces underlying human behavior, his

reliance on symbols to convey rich and ambivalent value to his stories and romances,

his insistence on finding and understanding the sources of humanity ‘s darker side, and

his exploration of such themes as isolation, guilt, concealment, social reform, and

redemption not only created a following among aspiring writers but also brought him

into the nation’s classrooms, where The Scarlet Letter still holds a firm place.

In 1837, the young Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) collected some of his stories

as Twice-Told Tales, a volume rich in symbolism and occult incidents. Hawthorne went

on to write full-length "romances", quasi-allegorical novels that explore the themes of

guilt, pride, and emotional repression in New England. His masterpiece, The Scarlet

Letter, is a drama about a woman cast out of her community for committing adultery.

Hawthorne's fiction had a profound impact on his friend Herman Melville (1819–1891),

who first made a name for himself by turning material from his seafaring days into

exotic sea narrative novels. Inspired by Hawthorne's focus on allegories and

psychology, Melville went on to write romances replete with philosophical speculation.

In Moby-Dick, an adventurous whaling voyage becomes the vehicle for examining such

themes as obsession, the nature of evil, and human struggle against the elements.

In the short novel Billy Budd, Melville dramatizes the conflicting claims of duty and

compassion on board a ship in time of war. His more profound books sold poorly, and

he had been long forgotten by the time of his death. He was rediscovered in the early

20th century.

Anti-transcendental works from Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe all comprise the Dark

Romanticism sub-genre of popular literature at this time.

American dramatic literature, by contrast, remained dependent on European models,

although many playwrights did attempt to apply these forms to American topics and

themes, such as immigrants, westward expansion, temperance, etc. At the same time,

American playwrights created several long-lasting American character types, especially

the "Yankee", the "Negro" and the "Indian", exemplified by the characters

of Jonathan, Sambo and Metamora. In addition, new dramatic forms were created in

the Tom Shows, the showboat theater and the minstrel show. Among the best plays of

the period are James Nelson Barker's Superstition; or, the Fanatic Father, Anna Cora

Mowatt's Fashion; or, Life in New York, Nathaniel Bannister's Putnam, the Iron Son of

'76, Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana, and Cornelius

Mathews's Witchcraft; or, the Martyrs of Salem.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 –1849)Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. He is best known for

his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and suspense. He is

generally considered the inventor of detective fiction.

Poe’s work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on American and

international literature. In addition to his detective stories he is one of the originators of

horror and science fiction. He is often credited as the architect of the modern short

story. He also focused on the effect of style and structure in a literary work: as such, he

has been seen. French Symbolists such as Mallarmé and Rimbaud claimed him as

their literary model. Baudelaire translated is works into French. Today, Poe is regarded

as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature. He was

unusual in that he strived to earn his living through writing alone, which resulted in a life

of financial hardship and near poverty.

The work that catapulted Poe onto the New York literary scene in January 1845

was The Raven, a poem that was immediately copied, parodied, and anthologized. He

is now one of the most widely read American writers of the 19th century. His appeal

extends from young readers who enjoy being terrified by the macabre tales of mystery

and imagination, such as The Tell-Tale Heart, to literary critics who appreciate his

pioneering analysis in The Philosophy of Composition of how poetry creates its effect

on the reader. Poe’s poems, notably The Raven and The Bells, are among the most

memorable in the English language, and his stories, among them The Pit and the

Pendulum and The Masque of the Red Death, still terrify readers. Poe lives on, not only

in American culture but European as well, in drama, film and television, and music.

 

Adaptations of Poe’s works for film began from the time when films first appeared. And

when television emerged that accelerated, so that generations of viewers have

watched his stories on screen, and continue to do so. Actors Bela Lugosi and Boris

Karloff became typecast as a result of their association with Poe adaptations and those

actors can’t be thought of in any other context than horror films. The 2004 release of

Hellboy on DVD contained a special 10-minute adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart. More

recently, The Cask of Amontillado starring David JM Bielewicz and Frank Tirio, Jr.

Directed by Thad Ciechanowski, won an Emmy Award in 2013 and The Raven starring

David JM Bielewicz, Dave Pettit and Nicole Beattie won one in 2015. Adaptations of

particularly the more macabre stories appear regularly on television.

Music of the 20th century is infused with the works of Poe

Herman Melville (1819 – 1891)Herman Melville was an American writer of novels, short stories and poems. He is best

known for the novel Moby-Dick and a romantic account of his experiences in

Polynesian life, Type. His whaling novel, Moby-Dick is often spoken of as ‘the great

American novel’ ’vying with Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Mark

Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for that title.

 Melville was the master of dense and complex prose, rich in mystical imagery and

packed with allusions to philosophy, myth, scripture, visual arts and other literary

works. His themes go deep into the human condition: he explores such things as the

impossibility of finding enough common ground for human communication. His

characters are all preoccupied with the quest for that; his plots describe that pursuit

and all his themes and ideas are related to it.

His preoccupation with the limits of knowledge led him to the question of God’s

existence in his writing, to the indifference of nature and the problem of evil. It is

in Moby-Dick that all his thematic obsessions meet, resulting in a great book that goes

to the very heart of all those preoccupations. An emerging field of American legal

scholarship known as ‘law and literature’ uses Melville’s novel Billy Budd as one of its

central texts. In the novel the popular young sailor, Billy, accused of spurious crimes,

including mutiny, accidentally kills the ship’s master-at-arms and the Captain, Edward

Vere, convenes a court martial. He urges the court to convict and sentence Billy to

death. That fictional court martial has become the focus of scholarly controversy. What

kind of man was Captain Vere? Was he a good man caught up in bad law or did he

deliberately distort and misrepresent the law to bring about Billy’s death? There is no

answer to that and so the novel has become a clear example of Melville’s quest for the

impossible, which we see in all his work.

Melville spent twice as many years devoting himself to writing poetry as he did to

writing prose and although he wasn’t highly rated as a poet during his lifetime he is

now. Some critics now regard him as the first American modernist poet. Robert Penn

Warren championed Melville as a ‘great American poet.’ The critic, Helen Vendler,

writing about the poem, Clarel, commented: ‘What it cost Melville to write this poem

makes us pause, reading it. Alone, it is enough to win him, as a poet, what he called 

“the belated funeral flower of fame”.

In 2010 a species of extinct giant sperm whale, Livyatan Melville, was named in honor

of Melville. The paleontologists who discovered the fossil were fans of Moby-Dick and

dedicated their discovery to its author.

Beginning of the 20th century

Ernest Hemmingway (1899 – 1961)

Ernest Hemingway was a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. He published

seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works, and won the Nobel

Prize for Literature in 1954. More works, including three novels, four short story

collections, and three non-fiction works, were published posthumously. Several of his

works are now classics of American literature. In 1961, like his father, a brother and a

sister, Hemingway committed suicide. A niece, Margaux Hemingway, the Holywood

star, also committed suicide.

What places Hemingway among the twenty top American writers is the style he

developed, that set the benchmark for 20th century prose writing in the whole of the

English speaking world. He changed the nature of American writing by reacting against

the elaborate style of 19th century writers and by creating a style, in the words of

literary critic, Henry Louis Gates, of Harvard, ‘in which meaning is established through

dialogue, through action, and silences—a fiction in which nothing crucial—or at least

very little—is stated explicitly.’

When Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize, the citation commented that it was for

his ‘mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the

Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.’ His first

novel, The Sun Also Rises is written in the minimal, lean, muscular, stripped-down

prose for which he became famous and which influenced the writers who came after

him.

Perhaps most famous for his war novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, he began his fiction

writing with short stories, in which he taught himself how to edit his prose, stripping it to

the bone and creating a greater intensity by the omission rather than the inclusion of

detail. The result is to create significant connections and meaning beneath the surface

of a sparse, apparently simple, almost monosyllabic narrative, using the simple

sentences that a child might use. He also employs cinematic techniques such as

cutting quickly from one scene to the next and of splicing one scene into another.

Intentional scene omissions allow the reader to fill in the gap, creating for herself a

three dimensional prose. As a result of that example it became almost impossible for

20th Century fiction writers to revert to the kind of prose that preceded Hemingway’s.

It wasn’t just writers and critics that showed enthusiasm for Hemingway’s works: he

had a huge following among general fiction readers. His universal themes of love,

death, war and loss permeate his writings in the same way that they did that of

Shakespeare and many other great writers, as well as being recurring themes in

American literature.  The critic, Susan Beegel, in spite of an objection to what she sees

as an anti-semitic, homophobic thread in his works, sums it up thus: ‘Throughout his

remarkable body of fiction, he tells the truth about human fear, guilt, betrayal, violence,

cruelty, drunkenness, hunger, greed, apathy, ecstasy, tenderness, love and lust.’

The extent of Hemingway’s presence in the popular culture is testament to his

significance as a 20th century literary figure. There are several bars named ‘Harry’s

Bar’ around the world, in recognition of the bar in the novel Across the River and Into

the Trees. There are also many restaurants’ called ‘Hemingway’s.’ A line of furniture

includes ‘the Kilimanjaro bedside table’ and a ‘Catherine’ sofa; a line of

Hemingway safari clothes has been created and there is an expensive Hemingway

fountain pen. His novels have been made into films, sometimes more than once, and

several short stories have been adapted for film and television.

John Steinbeck (1902-1968), born in Salinas, California, came from a family

of moderate means. He worked his way through college at Stanford University but

never graduated. In 1925 he went to New York, where he tried for a few years to

establish himself as a free-lance writer, but he failed and returned to California. After

publishing some novels and short stories, Steinbeck first became widely known

with Tortilla Flat (1935), a series of humorous stories about Monterey paisanos.

Steinbeck’s novels can all be classified as social novels dealing with the economic

problems of rural labour, but there is also a streak of worship of the soil in his books,

which does not always agree with his matter-of-fact sociological approach. After the

rough and earthy humour of Tortilla Flat, he moved on to more serious fiction, often

aggressive in its social criticism, to In Dubious Battle (1936), which deals with the

strikes of the migratory fruit pickers on California plantations. This was followed by Of

Mice and Men (1937), the story of the imbecile giant Lennie, and a series of admirable

short stories collected in the volume The Long Valley(1938). In 1939 he published what

is considered his best work, The Grapes of Wrath, the story of Oklahoma tenant

farmers who, unable to earn a living from the land, moved to California where they

became migratory workers.

Among his later works should be mentioned East of Eden (1952), The Winter of Our

Discontent(1961), and Travels with Charley (1962), a travelogue in which Steinbeck

wrote about his impressions during a three-month tour in a truck that led him through

forty American states. He died in New York City in 1968. John Steinbeck died on

December 20, 1968

LYTERARY ANALISIS.-

Literary analysis is a practice of looking closely at small parts to understand how they

affect the whole, as well as examining and sometimes evaluating a piece of literature. It

focuses on how the author uses characters, plot and structure, setting and a lot of other

techniques to create a meaning. You have to remember that the point of literary

analysis is not about getting to the end of the essay quickly, but rather about the

process that makes you understand the work of art as a whole and appreciate it more.

How to write a Literary Analysis?

Before you start writing, take a few moments to read the task very carefully. Usually,

teachers will point out certain aspects that you have to pay attention to, like specific

characters, figurative speech and a subject of discussion. While reading a text, take a

pen and make small annotations to analyze what you are reading right away. This will

help you to remember everything you think about while reading so you don’t have to

read the text once again. Make bullet points of the most important events, place of

action, characters, antagonist, protagonist, subject, figurative language and system of

images. Also, you can add the number of pages to find your annotations fast.

How to start a Literary Analysis?

Look through your notes once again before you finish working with the material.

Make sure you know what you have to write about. Sometimes, a teacher can ask you to analyze the text in general form, sometimes – make an analysis of the certain aspect of the text.

Decide on the topics that you want to discuss in the analysis.

1. Analyze the narrative and style of writing. If you analyze a scientific essay, you can analyze the author’s style.

2. Discuss the setting. Determine the time and place of the event, the geographical location and other details that are given to the reader for the better understanding of the work.

3. Discuss the author’s writing style. You can refer to the same audience as the author did himself. It will be more reliable.

4. Discuss the characters of the work; the presence of a protagonist and antagonist. Think about whether they are imitating other literary characters, how stereotyped they are and their dynamics along the way.

5. Select several topics or a thesis statement for discussion. Pick some quotes to insert into your analysis.

6. Add counter-arguments. Discuss the controversial aspects of the work.

7. Determine the relationship between the work and the readership.

Formulate a thesis statement. This sentence (or sentences) reveal the main ideas of your essay and answers the question or questions posed in your work. To write the correct thesis, think about these things:

1. What am I trying to prove?

2. What arguments do I have?

3. How to arrange my arguments/evidence?

Literary Analysis Outline.

Introduction:

1. Hook,or attention-catcher. A question, quote or statement that will grab reader’s attention.

2. Include the name of the author, title of the book/text you are analyzing, and any other information that you think is important.

3. Background information. Tell why the prompts are relevant or important.

4. Context. Here you need to write about how the essay prompt relates to the piece of literature you are reading.

5. Claim. This is the answer to the question that is being asked in your essay.

Body Paragraphs (usually at least 2):

1. Topic Sentence. In each paragraph identify reasons why your claim is true.

2. Support it with two or three quotes that will be presented as evidence from the text.

3. Add your own commentary to each quote, which will explain how the text supports your topic sentence.

4. Each paragraph should have a conclusion, which will sum up your argument and explain how it connects back to the thesis.

CONCLUSION:

1. Restate your thesis using different words. It must convey all the main statements you made in the previous parts of your literary analysis, but also touch on the implied provisions of your arguments.

2. Do not repeat what you have already said.

3. Suggest the next step.

4. Draw parallels between genre and context. Why do you think what you’ve read is important today?

GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS.

Choose a catchy, interesting name. You should not do this in the beginning of your writing. You can wait until your essay is fully written and the argument is formed and clear.

Write in the present tense. Even if the text is written in different time.

Write in the third person. Avoid pronouns “I” or “you”. Although, sometimes teachers

allow students the use of the first or second person. In this case, you can discuss the

characteristics of the text that most impressed you, or the reasons why the actions of

the main characters seem plausible to you or not.

Use literary terms. With their help, your work will look well-prepared, balanced and

thoughtful. Here are some examples: allusion – indirect or superficial references to

famous characters or events; irony – a contradiction in a person, a situation or

circumstances that are not really what they seem; metaphor – a kind of figurative

language that states that a certain thing is something else, something that, in fact, is

not.

Use secondary sources. But keep in mind that they are called secondary for a reason.

This is your work and it should not consist of some other person’s thoughts. Just use

them as a support for your arguments. Some of them you can find here: MLA

International Bibliography, Dictionary of Literary Biography, or ask your teacher.

WHAT NOT TO DO.

Do not summarize. Your work should be an analysis, not a summary of the text.

Do not confuse the words of the characters with the author’s position. These are two

mutually exclusive things – your statements should concern only one of them.

Stay away from plagiarism .Plagiarizing somebody else’s work will be a complete fail of

the task. Use your own head.

Tips

1. Be concise and make sure you have connected all your arguments and everything you

have written with a thesis proposal.

2. Make sure you understand the essay correctly before you start writing the analysis.

Your first priority is to follow the instructions and recommendations of your teacher.

3. Before submitting your essay you’d better carefully and slowly review your work to

make sure that you do not inadvertently use other people’s thoughts. In other words,

check for plagiarism.

4. Stay away from using the same words and statements over and over again. Because it

will seem like you do not have much to say and your argument will seem weak.

Literary Analysis FAQ

o What should my paper’s title be?

It depends on what you are writing about, but it is definitely not supposed to be a title of

the book you are writing about or “English Paper”. It should represent the idea of your

essay to the reader.

o How much plot should I include?

Almost none. Imagine that everyone knows what the book is about but does not know

its meaning.

How many quotations should I use in my paper?

Use one or two quotations in each body paragraph.

INTRODUCTION TO FICTION

Literary fiction is a term used in the book-trade to distinguish fiction that is regarded as

having literary merit from most commercial or "genre" fiction. All the same, a number of

major literary figures have also written genre fiction, for example, John

Banville publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black, and both Doris Lessing and Margaret

Atwood have written science fiction. Furthermore, Nobel laureate André Gide stated

that Georges Simenon, best known as the creator of the fictional detective Jules Maigret,

was "the most novelistic of novelists in French literature"

Definition

Neal Stephenson has suggested that, while any definition will be simplistic, there is

today a general cultural difference between literary and genre fiction. On the one hand,

literary authors are frequently supported by patronage, with employment at a university

or a similar institution, and with the continuation of such positions determined not by

book sales but by critical acclaim by other established literary authors and critics. On

the other hand, Stephenson suggests, genre fiction writers tend to support themselves

by book sales

However, the distinction is becoming blurred with major writers of literary fiction, like

Nobel laureate Doris Lessing, as well as Margaret Atwood, writing science fiction. Doris

Lessing described science fiction as "some of the best social fiction of our time", and

called Greg Bear, author of Blood Music, "a great writer". Also Georges Simenon, the

creator of the Maigret detective novels, has been described by American composer

and writer Ned Rorem as "one of the five greatest French writers of our century".

Rorem placed Simenon in the company of Proust, Gide, Cocteau, and Sartre.

In an interview, John Updike lamented that "the category of 'literary fiction' has sprung

up recently to torment people like me who just set out to write books, and if anybody

wanted to read them, terrific, the more the merrier. ... I'm a genre writer of a sort. I write

literary fiction, which is like spy fiction or chick lit". Likewise, on The Charlie Rose Show,

Updike argued that this term, when applied to his work, greatly limited him and his

expectations of what might come of his writing, so he does not really like it. He

suggested that all his works are literary, simply because "they are written in words".

CHARACTERISTICS.-Characteristics of literary fiction generally include one or more of

the following:A concern with social commentary, political criticism, or reflection on

the human condition.

A focus on "introspective, in-depth character studies" of "interesting, complex and

developed" characters, whose "inner stories" drive the plot, with detailed motivations to

elicit "emotional involvement" in the reader.

A slower pace than popular fiction. As Terrence Rafferty notes, "literary fiction, by its

nature, allows itself to dawdle, to linger on stray beauties even at the risk of losing its

way".

A concern with the style and complexity of the writing: Saricks describes literary fiction as "elegantly written, lyrical, and ... layered".

Unlike genre fiction plot is not the central concern.

The tone of literary fiction can be darker than genre fiction.

TYPES OF LITERATURE

Literature is a broad term that encompasses almost everything we read, see, and hear.

It helps to be able to break it down into categories, for ease of understanding and

analysis. Here are 5 genres of literature commonly taught in the classroom, with

explanations and examples.

Categorizing Literature

Back in ancient Greece, literature was divided into two main categories:

tragedy and comedy. Nowadays the list of possible types and genres of literature can

seem endless. But it is still possible to narrow down the vast amount of literature

available into a few basic groups.

The five genres of literature students should be familiar with are Poetry, Drama, Prose, Nonfiction, and Media—each of which is explained in more detail below. You’ll

see some overlap between genres; for example prose is a broader term that includes

both drama and non-fiction. At the end of this article we’ll also touch on a couple of

narrower but still important literary categories.

PoetryThis is often considered the oldest form of literature. Before writing was invented, oral

stories were commonly put into some sort of poetic form to make them easier to

remember and recite. Poetry today is usually written down, but is still sometimes

performed.

A lot of people think of rhymes and counting syllables and lines when they think of

poetry, and some poems certainly follow strict forms. But other types of poetry are so

free-form that they lack any rhymes or common patterns. There are even kinds of

poetry that cross genre lines, such as prose poetry. In general, though, a text is a poem

when it has some sort of meter or rhythm, and when it focuses on the way the

syllables, words, and phrases sound when put together. Poems are heavy in imagery

and metaphor, and are often made up of fragments and phrases rather than complete,

grammatically correct sentences. And poetry is nearly always written in stanzas and

lines, creating a unique look on the page.

Poetry as experienced in the classroom is usually one of three types. There are the

shorter, more modern poems, spanning anything from a few lines to a few pages. Often

these are collected in books of poems by a single author or by a variety of writers.

Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven," is one of the most commonly taught poems of this

type. Then there are the classical, formulaic poems of Shakespeare’s time, such as the

blank verse and the sonnet. And finally there are the ancient, epic poems transcribed

from oral stories. These long, complex poems resemble novels, such as Homer’s The

Iliad and The Odyssey.

PROSEOnce you know what poetry is, it’s easy to define prose. Prose can be defined as any

kind of written text that isn’t poetry (which means drama, discussed below, is

technically a type of prose). The most typical varieties of prose are novels and short

stories, while other types include letters, diaries, journals, and non-fiction (also

discussed below). Prose is written in complete sentences and organized in paragraphs.

Instead of focusing on sound, which is what poetry does, prose tends to focus on plot

and characters.

Prose is the type of literature read most often in English classrooms. Any novel or short

story falls into this category, from Jane Eyre to Twilight and from “A Sound of Thunder"

to “The Crucible." Like poetry, prose is broken down into a large number of other sub-

genres. Some of these genres revolve around the structure of the text, such as

novellas, biographies, and memoirs, and others are based on the subject matter, like

romances, fantasies, and mysteries.

DRAMAAny text meant to be performed rather than read can be considered drama (unless it’s

a poem meant to be performed, of course). In layman’s terms, dramas are usually

called plays. When written down the bulk of a drama is dialogue, with periodic stage

directions such as “he looks away angrily." Of all the genres of literature discussed in

this article, drama is the one given the least time in most classrooms. And often

when drama is taught, it’s only read the same way you might read a novel. Since

dramas are meant to be acted out in front of an audience, it’s hard to fully appreciate

them when looking only at pages of text. Students respond best to dramas, and grasp

their mechanics more fully, when exposed to film or theater versions or encouraged to

read aloud or act out scenes during class.

The dramas most commonly taught in classrooms are definitely those written by the

bard. Shakespeare’s plays are challenging, but rewarding when approached with a little

effort and a critical mindset. Popular choices from his repertoire

include Hamlet, Taming of the Shrew, and Romeo and Juliet, among others. Older

Greek plays are also taught fairly often, especially Sophocles’ Antigone. And any good

drama unit should include more modern plays for comparison, such as Arthur

Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

NON-FICTION

Poetry and drama both belong to the broader category of fiction—texts that feature

events and characters that have been made up. Then there is non-fiction, a vast

category that is a type of prose and includes many different sub-genres. Non-fiction

can be creative, such as the personal essay, or factual, such as the scientific paper.

Sometimes the purpose of non-fiction is to tell a story (hence the autobiography), but

most of the time the purpose is to pass on information and educate the reader about

certain facts, ideas, and/or issues.

Some genres of non-fiction include histories, textbooks, travel books, newspapers, self-

help books, and literary criticism. A full list of non-fiction types would be at least as long

as this entire article. But the varieties most often used in the classroom are textbooks,

literary criticism, and essays of various sorts. Most of what students practice writing in

the classroom is the non-fiction essay, from factual to personal to persuasive. And non-

fiction is often used to support and expand students’ understanding of fiction texts—

after reading Hamlet students might read critical articles about the play and historical

information about the time period and/or the life of Shakespeare.

MEDIAThe newest type of literature that has been defined as a distinct genre is media. This

categorization was created to encompass the many new and important kinds of texts in

our society today, such as movies and films, websites, commercials, billboards, and

radio programs. Any work that doesn’t exist primarily as a written text can probably be

considered media, particularly if it relies on recently developed technologies. Media

literature can serve a wide variety of purposes—among other things it can educate,

entertain, advertise, and/or persuade.

More and more educators are coming to recognize the importance of teaching media in

the classroom. Students are likely to be exposed to far more of this type of literature

than anything else throughout their lives, so it makes sense to teach them how to be

critical and active consumers of media. Internet literacy is a growing field, for example,

since the skills required to understand and use online information differ in important

ways from the skills required to analyze printed information. Teaching media literacy is

also a great way for educators to help students become participants in their own

culture, through lessons on creating their own websites or home movies or

commercials.

OTHER TYPES OF LITERATUREThese are far from the only important genres of literature. Here are a few more that are

sometimes used in classrooms:

Oral Literature: The oldest type of literature, and the foundation on which culture was

built. Now most oral texts have been written down, of course, and are usually taught in

the form of epic poems or plays or folk tales.

Folklore/Folk Tales/Fables: A distinction is often made between regular prose and

folklore. Most folk tales were originally oral literature, and are short stories meant to

pass on a particular lesson or moral. They often have a timeless quality, dealing with

common human concerns that are just as relevant to us today, while still being

products of a very specific culture and time period.

Graphic Novels and Comic Books: It used to be that most educators saw comic

books as the lowest form of literature, not suitable or valuable for children. But times

have changed, and many teachers have come to realize that comic books and the

more modern graphic novels are both appealing to kids and are a valid form of

literature in their own right

NARRATIVE ELEMENTS.-A narrative is a literary work that involves the retelling of a story. To develop an

effective narrative essay, paper, poem or book, you need to include several common

narrative elements. These elements include a main theme of the story, characters, a

plot and the setting.

NARRATIVE ELEMENT EXAMPLESA theme is the central premise in the story. A main character's coming of age is a

common theme, for instance. Characters include main characters, subordinate or

supporting characters and minor characters. The plot is the way in which the story

develops and includes goals of the characters, obstacles they face and significant

turning points. The setting includes geographical location and other facets about where

the story occurs, such as in the forest or in a small town.

ENGLISH SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society,

including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and

society's effect on language. It differs from sociology of language, which focuses on the

effect of language on society. Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics. It

is historically closely related to linguistic anthropology, and the distinction between the

two fields has been questioned.

It also studies how language varieties differ between groups separated by certain

social variables (e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc.)

and how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals

in social or socioeconomic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to

place, language usage also varies among social classes, and it is these sociolects that

sociolinguistics studies.

The social aspects of language were in the modern sense first studied by Indian and

Japanese linguists in the 1930s, and also by Louis Gauchat in Switzerland in the early

1900s, but none received much attention in the West until much later. The study of the

social motivation of language change, on the other hand, has its foundation in the wave

model of the late 19th century. The first attested use of the term sociolinguistics was

by Thomas Callan Hodson in the title of his 1939 article "Sociolinguistics in India"

published in Man in India. Sociolinguistics in the West first appeared in the 1960s and

was pioneered by linguists such as William Labov in the US and Basil Bernstein in the

UK. In the 1960s, William Stewart[4] and Heinz Kloss introduced the basic concepts for

the sociolinguistic theory of pluricentric languages, which describes how standard

language varieties differ between nations

Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society.

Sociolinguistics is concerned with how language use interacts with, or is affected by,

social factors such as gender, ethnicity, age or social class, for instance. As Coulmas

defines, it is the study of choice and “the principal task of Sociolinguistics is to uncover,

describe and interpret the socially motivated” choices an individual makes.

Sociolinguists are interested in how we speak differently in varying social contexts, and

how we may also use specific functions of language to convey social meaning or

aspects of our identity. Sociolinguistics teaches us about real-life attitudes and social

situations.

LANGUAJE VARIATION AND CHANGE.-

Language Variation

Everyone speaks at least one language, and probably most people in the world speak

more than one. Even Americans, most of whom speak only English, usually know more

than one dialect. Certainly no one talks exactly the same way at all times: You are

unlikely to speak to your boss in the style (or vocabulary) that you'd use in talking to the

idiot who just rammed your car from behind. All dialects start with the same system,

and their partly independent histories leave different parts of the parent system intact.

This gives rise to some of the most persistent myths about language, such as the claim

that the people of Appalachia speak pure Elizabethan English. Non-Appalachians

notice features of Shakespeare's English that have been preserved in Appalachia but

lost in (for instance) Standard English, but only Appalachian fans of Shakespeare

would be likely to notice the features of Shakespeare's English that have been

preserved in Standard English but lost in the Appalachian dialect.

Types of Language Change

What kinds of language change are there? First, there's vocabulary change. Slang

terms, in particular, come and go every few years. In a 1990 Beetle Bailey cartoon, for

instance, Sarge chews Beetle out with a string of symbols ending in #!!, and Beetle

laughs, "#?? Nobody says # anymore!" Sarge, deflated, sighs, "Gee, I always thought #

was all-time classic cussing." Sarge is embarrassed because with a very few

exceptions—notably the genuinely classic four-letter English words, at least one of

which has a pedigree that includes a Latin obscenity written on the walls of ancient

Pompeii—using last year's slang spells social disaster. Meanings of words change, too.

English and German both inherited a word that refers to a person of high rank in

English ('knight') but to a servant or even a slave in German ('Knecht'). (Thanks to

evidence from other Germanic languages, we know that the German meaning is closer

to the original.)

Grammatical constructions also change. A passage in the Old English Lord's Prayer

reads, in literal translation, 'not lead thou us into temptation', in sharp contrast to

Modern English 'don't lead us into temptation'. Nowadays, 'not' must follow an auxiliary

verb 'do' (often contracted to 'don't'), there is no pronoun subject in the sentence, and if

there were one it would be 'you'--'thou' has entirely disappeared from the modern

language.

Last but not least, sounds change. Everyone realizes this, in a way, when dialect

variation causes communication breakdown. If you go into a Chicago store and ask for

'sacks' in an East Coast accent you may get socks instead, and Bostonians sometimes

have trouble understanding Alabamans even when both are using Standard English

grammar. People are usually surprised, though, to discover that sound change is highly

regular: if a sound 'x' changes to a sound 'y' in one word, 'x' will change to 'y' in

comparable contexts in every word it appears in. As a result, the form of a word often

reveals part of its history. Consider French 'coup' and English 'coup': They look alike,

sound alike, and have similar meanings, but they can't both have been inherited

independently from the same Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word, because the sound [k]

doesn't come from the same PIE source in French and English. PIE (and, later, Latin)

[k] did give rise to French [k], but original PIE [k] ended up as [h] in English. So there

are pairs of words inherited from PIE in which French [k] corresponds to English [h],

e.g. French 'coeur' and English 'heart', or French 'canevas' and English 'hemp'; but the

reason the English words 'coup' and 'canvas' look like their French counterparts is that

they were borrowed into English from French.

Change and Language Values

Language change inevitably leads to variation, and variation within a speech

community often leads to social valuation of particular features as 'good' or 'bad'.

'Good' variants are typically believed to be characterized by logical superiority or

venerability, or both; 'bad' variants must then be illogical and/or recent inventions by

the vulgar.

But neither logic nor great age plays a significant role in the labeling of variants.

Consider 'ain't', which may be the English word most despised by schoolteachers and

pundits. Far from being illogical or recent, 'ain't' is a legitimate phonological descendant

of 'amn't', which was the original contraction of 'am not'. It isn't clear how 'ain't' fell into

disrepute, but once there, it left an awkward gap in the system of negative contractions:

We have "You're going, aren't you?", "She's going, isn't she?", and so on, but surely no

real person actually says "I'm going, am I not?". Instead, people say "I'm going, aren't

I?", in part because they have been taught to avoid 'ain't' like the plague; and here logic

shudders, because while "You are going, She is going," etc., are fine, "I are going" is

impossible for native speakers of English. The point of this example is not to urge

rehabilitation of ain't'—legislating language change is generally a losing proposition—

but to illustrate the linguistically arbitrary nature of social valuation of the results of

language change

LANGUAJE VARIATIES.-

In sociolinguistics, language variety—also called lect—is a general term for any

distinctive form of a language or linguistic expression. Linguists commonly

use language variety (or simply variety) as a cover term for any of the overlapping

subcategories of a language, including dialect, register, jargon, and idiolect.

Background

To understand the meaning of language varieties, it's important to consider how lects

differ from standard English. Even what constitutes standard English is a topic of hot

debate among linguists.

Standard English is a controversial term for a form of the English language that is

written and spoken by educated users. For some linguists, standard English is a

synonym for good or correct English usage. Others use the term to refer to a specific

geographical dialect of English or a dialect favored by the most powerful and

prestigious social group.

Varieties of language develop for a number of reasons: differences can come about for

geographical reasons; people who live in different geographic areas often develop

distinct dialects—variations of standard English. Those who belong to a specific group,

often academic or professional, tend to adopt jargon that is known to and understood

by only members of that select group. Even individuals develop idiolects, their own

specific ways of speaking.

Dialect

The word dialect—which contains "lect" within the term—derives from the Greek

words dia- meaning “across, between" and legein "speak." A dialect is a regional or

social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar,

and/or vocabulary.

The term dialect is often used to characterize a way of speaking that differs from

the standard variety of the language. Sarah Thomason of the Linguistic Society of

America notes:

"All dialects start with the same system, and their partly independent histories leave

different parts of the parent system intact. This gives rise to some of the most

persistent myths about language, such as the claim that the people of Appalachia

speak pure Elizabethan English."

Certain dialects have gained negative connotations in the U.S. as well as in other

countries. Indeed, the term dialect prejudice refers to discrimination based on a

person's dialect or way of speaking. Dialect prejudice is a type of linguicism—

discrimination based on dialect. In their article "Applied Social Dialectology," published

in "Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and

Society," Carolyn Temple and Donna Christian observe:

"...dialect prejudice is endemic in public life, widely tolerated, and institutionalized in

social enterprises that affect almost everyone, such as education and the media. There

is limited knowledge about and little regard for linguistic study showing that all varieties

of a language display systematicity and that the elevated social position of standard

varieties has no scientific linguistic basis."

REGISTER

Register is defined as the way a speaker uses language differently in different

circumstances. Think about the words you choose, your tone of voice, even your body

language.

You probably behave very differently chatting with a friend than you would at a formal

dinner party or during a job interview. These variations in formality, also called stylistic

variation, are known as registers in linguistics.

They are determined by such factors as social occasion, context, purpose,

and audience. Registers are marked by a variety of specialized vocabulary and turns of

phrases, colloquialisms, the use of jargon, and a difference in intonation and pace.

Registers are used in all forms of communication, including written, spoken, and

signed. Depending on grammar, syntax, and tone, the register may be extremely rigid

or very intimate. You don't even need to use an actual word to communicate

effectively. A huff of exasperation during a debate or a grin while signing "hello" speaks

volumes.

JARGON

Jargon refers to the specialized language of a professional or occupational group. Such

language is often meaningless to outsiders. American poet David Lehman has

described jargon as "the verbal sleight of hand that makes the old hat seem newly

fashionable; it gives an air of novelty and specious profundity to ideas that, if stated

directly, would seem superficial, stale, frivolous, or false."

In other words, jargon is a faux method of creating a sort of dialect that only those on

this inside group can understand. Jargon has social implications similar to

dialect prejudice but in reverse: It is a way of making those who understand this

particular variety of language more erudite and learned; those who are members of the

group that understands the particular jargon are considered smart, while those on the

outside are simply not bright enough to comprehend this kind of language.

Types of Lects

In addition to the distinctions discussed previously, different types of lects also echo the

types of language varieties:

Regional dialect: A variety spoken in a particular region.

Sociolect: Also known as a social dialect, a variety of language (or register)

used by a socioeconomic class, a profession, an age group, or any other social

group.

Ethnolect: A lect spoken by a specific ethnic group. For example, Ebonics, the

vernacular spoken by some African-Americans, is a type of ethnolect, notes a

language-translation firm.

Idiolect: According to e2f, the language or languages spoken by each

individual. For example, if you are multilingual and can speak in different

registers and styles, your idiolect comprises several languages, each with

multiple registers and styles.

In the end, language varieties come down to judgments, often "illogical," that are,

according to Edward Finegan in "Language: Its Structure and Use":

".imported from outside the realm of language and represent attitudes to particular

varieties or to forms of expression within particular varieties."

The language varieties, or lects, that people speak often serve as the basis for

judgment, and even exclusion, from certain social groups, professions, and business

organizations. As you study language varieties, keep in mind that they are often based

on judgments one group is making in regard

THE STORY OF OUR LANGUAJE

English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects

brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon settlers from what

is now northwest Germany, west Denmark and the Netherlands, displacing the Celtic

languages that previously predominated.

The Old English of the Anglo-Saxon era developed into Middle English, which was

spoken from the Norman Conquestera to the late 15th century. A significant influence

on the shaping of Middle English came from contact with the North Germanic

languages spoken by the Scandinavians who conquered and colonized parts of Britain

during the 8th and 9th centuries; this contact led to much lexical borrowing and

grammatical simplification. Another important influence came from the conquering

Normans, who spoke a Romance langue d'oïl called Old Norman, which in Britain

developed into Anglo-Norman. Many Norman and French loanwords entered the

language in this period, especially in vocabulary related to the church, the court system

and the government. The system of orthography that was established during the Middle

English period is largely still in use today – later changes in pronunciation, however,

combined with the adoption of various foreign spellings, mean that the spelling of

modern English words appears highly irregular.

Early Modern English – the language used by Shakespeare – is dated from around

1500. It incorporated many Renaissance-era loans from Latin and Ancient Greek, as

well as borrowings from other European languages, including

French, German and Dutch. Significant pronunciation changes in this period included

the ongoing Great Vowel Shift, which affected the qualities of most long

vowels. Modern English proper, similar in most respects to that spoken today, was in

place by the late 17th century. The English language came to be exported to other

parts of the world through British colonisation, and is now the dominant language in

Britain and Ireland, the United States and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many

smaller former colonies, as well as being widely spoken in India, parts of Africa, and

elsewhere. Partially due to United States influence, English gradually took on the status

of a global lingua franca in the second half of the 20th century. This is especially true in

Europe, where English has largely taken over the former roles of French and (much

earlier) Latin as a common language used to conduct business and diplomacy, share

scientific and technological information, and otherwise communicate across national

boundaries. The efforts of English-speaking Christian missionaries have resulted in

English becoming a second language for many other groups.

Old English consisted of a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of

the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West

Saxon dialect eventually became dominant; however, a greater input to Middle English

came from the Anglian dialects. Global variation among different English dialects

and accents remains significant today. Scots, a form of English traditionally spoken in

parts of Scotland and the north of Ireland, is sometimes treated as a separate

language.

HOW NEW WORDS ARE ADDED TO OUR LANGUAJE

• Completely new words?• Compounding• Blends• Old words, new uses• Abbreviations and acronyms• Affixation• Borrowing• Survival of the fittest• In the next issue

Language is a dynamic phenomenon. Although English has a basic core of words

which are fundamental to sentence construction and have remained consistent over

centuries, there are also a great number of words which both enter and leave the

language as the years go by, a direct reflection of the preoccupations of society in any

particular era. Some new words are ephemeral, tied to cultural or technical concepts

which fade in significance. Others stay the course, usually because they represent

concepts which have become permanent features of society.

But just where do all these new words that pass through or infiltrate the English

language come from? In this article we take a closer look at the processes by which

new words are formed, showing that new words and expressions are far more about

reinvention than actual creation.

COMPLETELY NEW WORDS

Surprisingly perhaps, very few new words in the English language are actually

completely 'new'. In fact, completely new words account for less than 1% of all English

neologisms.

Those completely new words which do appear are often based on proper nouns. One

of the most famous historical examples is the noun sandwich, taken from the name of

the 18th-century Earl of Sandwich (who devised a convenient way of eating bread and

meat which would allow him to continue sitting at a gaming table!). Brand names in

particular, have led to the formation of completely new words, and continue to do so.

The verb/noun hoover, used as a generic term for (the action of using) an electric

vacuum cleaner, was based on the name of the 19th-century American

industrialist William Henry Hoover. With increased evidence of forms

like dysoning and dysoned following the same model, lexicographers today are

debating formal recognition of a verb/noun dyson, based on the famous vacuum

cleaner designed by the 20th-century British designer James Dyson. In the online

world, a new verb google, based on the trademarked name of the popular Internet

search engine, is now used as a generic reference to the action of 'doing a search on

the Internet'.

Completely new words like dyson and google are, however, more unusual. The vast

majority of new words and expressions in English usually include at least one lexical

component which is already familiar to us. If we look carefully at the new words that

have entered the English language during the last few decades, we can identify several

linguistic processes which are regularly involved in the creation of new words and

expressions.

COMPOUNDING

New words and phrases emerge as a direct response to the need to refer to new

concepts, and one of the most straightforward ways of doing this is to simply combine

existing words, which together make a sensible representation of a new idea. Many

neologisms are therefore compound nouns. For example, it's strange to think that in

the 1970s, the concept of a phone which could be carried or used anywhere without

the need for wires or cables was an amazing prospect, but by the late 80s the

word mobile phone was part of everyday language, even if not everybody could afford

one! By the 1990s, we weren't just using mobile phones to communicate orally, but

also to send text messages. New compound nouns are not always confined to the

domain of new technology. For instance, in the noughties, those searching for romance

might consider speed-dating, someone who was struggling to remember something

might confess to having had a senior moment, and those of us with a sweet tooth might

be worried about the prospect of a fat tax. Creative combinations of words like these

stick when they fill lexical gaps for new concepts, spread into popular usage, and

thereby gradually push their way into the dictionary.

New compound nouns are not always open compounds. Examples of recently coined

solid compounds include furkid (a pet which is a substitute child) and health span (the

period of life during which a person is healthy). New compounds are however often

based on existing patterns of structure and meaning. Health span, for instance, follows

the model of its earlier counterpart lifespan. In the latter part of the 20th century, a face-

lift became a fashionable operation in cosmetic surgery designed to remove the effects

of facial aging. In the 21st century, people can have a more complete makeover in the

form of a body lift, and those concerned about how they sound rather than how they

look can consider a voice lift. In the 1980s there was a revolution in the market for fast

food. In the noughties, by contrast, amid growing concern about dietary health and a

stressful pace of life, slow food is taking a stand. Like established compounds, new

compounds sometimes also occur in productive patterns, so for instance as well

as spinach cinema, a term coined in the nineties to refer to films that are not very

exciting but informative or educational (i.e.: a play on the idea of spinach being 'good

for you'), we also now have spinach television and spinach books.

BLENDS

As well as combinations of existing words to form new compounds, the combination

of parts of existing words is another common process in the formation of neologisms.

This phenomenon, often referred to by linguists as blending, is an established word

formation process which has been in evidence in English throughout the centuries. For

instance the word brunch, referring to a large mid-morning meal, is a combination of

parts of the words breakfast and lunch which was coined in the late 19th century. In

2003, the same word formation process gave birth to a term which was voted most

useful new word of the year by the American Dialect Society: flexitarian, a combination

of the words flexible and vegetarian used to refer to a vegetarian who occasionally eats

meat.

Though blending has been evident over many decades, it has been particularly

prominent as a source of neologisms over the last few years, with a growing tendency

towards cannibalising chunks of existing words with increasing ingenuity and

inventiveness. There are no regular strategies for blending, the only consistent criterion

is that at least one of the words involved in the fusion has something chopped off it. In

practice, the formation of blends is moulded by such factors as ease of pronunciation

and catchiness. Among the many recent examples are movieoke (a blend

of movie and karaoke) referring to a karaoke-style activity involving acting in front of a

movie screen, nouse (a blend of nose and mouse), a computer mouse which is

controlled by the nose, edutainment (a blend of educational and entertainment), used

to refer to forms of entertainment i.e.: TV programmes, games software, which are

educational, globesity (a blend of global and obesity) describing the worldwide

epidemic of obesity, and freegan (a blend of free and vegan) referring to a person who

consumes food that has been thrown away.

OLD WORDS, NEW USES

Of course even easier than combining or blending existing words is simply to find new

ways of using words that already exist. The widespread use of computers and the

Internet has been a major breeding ground for this process, with new senses for words

such as window, mouse, bug, virus, surf, net and web now being part of everyday

English. Some words can continue to accumulate new senses over a long period of

time, especially if their meaning particularly lends itself to figurative extension. For

instance, the word zombie started life in the late 19th century as a description of a dead

person revived by voodoo witchcraft. By the 1940s, the word was being used with its

familiar sense of a lifeless, apathetic person, (the idea being that such an individual

resembled a revived corpse). Since the advent of the World Wide Web, the same word

has appeared as a reference to an insecure web server, an out-of-date website, and

more recently a PC which has unwittingly been affected by a virus causing it to send

out large amounts of spam. By analogy with the original sense (the actions of a zombie

were said to be under the control of the person who had performed the resurrection)

this recent use of zombie conveys the idea of control of someone else's computer.

Sometimes the new use of the word involves not just a change in meaning but a shift in

word class, a process technically referred to as conversion. An obvious example is the

word text, which quite clearly started its life in English as a noun but now occurs as a

verb in relation to the sending of text messages, e.g.: I've texted him but got no

reply. Conversions from verb to noun sometimes also occur. A prominent example in

2003 was the verb embed, which in the context of the Gulf War acquired a topical

sense referring to the placing of journalists in military units. The hundreds of journalists,

reporters and photographers involved were subsequently described as embeds,

journalists who join military forces in a conflict and report from the front line. Adjectives

too, can be adopted into a new word class. A recent example is vague, which, largely

due to the cult TV programme 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', has now morphed into the

phrasal verb vague up, meaning 'to make something less clear or detailed', as

in I vagued up certain parts of the story.

Using an existing word to describe a new concept can sometimes be tied up with

euphemism. Unpleasant concepts can often seem more palatable if they are wrapped

up in a familiar word. An example from 2005 was the word rendition, which, a long way

from its familiar sense relating to performance of music or drama, came to represent

the practice of extradition of suspected terrorists, also converting to a related verb

to rendition.

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

Abbreviations are another area which over the years has been a rich source of new

lexical items. Often abbreviations enter the dictionary as new 'words' in their own right,

words which we understand and associate with particular concepts without necessarily

knowing what the initial letters represent. For instance, we all now know what a DVD is,

but would the average man on the street definitely be able to tell you that this stands

for digital videodisc? Gadget lovers may be interested in mobile phones which are

equipped withWAP, but would they necessarily know that this is short

for wireless application protocol? The point is that they don't need to know, because

such abbreviations function perfectly well on their own as representations of particular

concepts. New abbreviations are often associated with new technology and devices, as

illustrated by recent examples such as IM (instant messaging)

and PSP (playstation portable).

This is not their only domain however. For instance, WMD has frequently occurred

over the last couple of years in place of the full term Weapons of Mass Destruction,

and DWY, standing for driving while yakking, refers to the now illegal practice of driving

while talking on a mobile phone.

Those abbreviations which really thrive as new words are often the ones which roll off

the tongue easily, or in other words, function as acronyms, abbreviations consisting of

letters that combine as a plausible sequence of phonemes to form a word. One area

that has been a particularly fruitful source of acronyms over the last few decades is

popular demographics, from 1980s DINKY (young, upwardly mobile professionals,

standing for double income no kids yet) through to noughties SKI-er's (older folks who

enjoy their retirement by spending their savings, standing for spend

the kids' inheritance).

Acronyms are even more likely than other abbreviations to be understood as

meaningful lexical units in their own right, so much so that they are frequently

decapitalised. Take the word tardis/TARDIS for example, which started life in the cult

series 'Dr Who' as the name of a time-travel machine (an acronym

of Time and Relative Dimensions in Space) and over the last three decades has

entered mainstream use in the UK as a description of an 'unexpectedly large space'.

Some more recent examples are asbo, (from ASBO: anti-social behaviour order), the

civil order introduced by the British government in 1999, and bogof,

(from BOGOF: buy one get one free), regularly seen in the context of supermarket

shopping. Sometimes acronyms combine with inflectional processes to produce other

new verbs, nouns and adjectives. A recent example is the acronym RIF, standing

for reduction inforce and used as a euphemism for termination of employment (usually

due to the financial concerns of the employer). RIF now occurs as a transitive verb as

in 365 workers were RIFed …, and also as a participle adjective as

in RIFed employees.

The 21st century has witnessed an explosion of abbreviated forms in English due to

the enormous influence of chat rooms, interactive message boards, text messaging,

and e-mail, underlying all of which is the need to communicate effectively but

economically. These forms of communication often try to simulate real time

conversation, so speed and ease of typing is of the essence. There may be other

considerations too, such as the fact that providers of mobile phone networks usually

restrict users to about 160 characters per message. These factors make abbreviated

forms an integral part of electronic communication, but often these forms creep into

general use. For instance, informal abbreviations such as LOL (lots of love), TTFN ('ta

ta' for now), FYI (for your information) and BTW (by the way) are now generally

understood in all forms of written communication. In the business world, abbreviations

such as B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) are now

universally recognised.

AFFIXATION

We've already shown that new words are often formed by cannibalising existing words

in inventive ways. A related approach is to find new ways of using recognised affixes,

creatively attaching them to established words as a means of expressing a new idea. A

recent example is use of the prefix re- in the new verb regift, which refers to the action

of giving something as a gift that you yourself originally received as a gift. Re- of course

means 'again', as occurring in verbs such as rewrite or reinvent. The prefix de- is often

used to mean 'opposite' or 'reverse'. The new noun deshopper therefore refers to the

opposite of a shopper, describing a person who buys something, uses it, but then

returns it to the shop for a full refund. Established suffixes too, are often used

creatively. For instance the suffix -ology refers to the scientific study of a particular

subject. In the late 90s the term trolleyology was coined by American anthropologists to

refer to the study of how the contents of a person's shopping trolley show something

about that person's behavior or personality.

Occasionally, the processes of affixation and blending overlap. Sometimes a

component of a word used in a blend starts to behave productively, applying itself to

other words and looking like a new kind of productive affix. For example, earlier in this

article we talked about the new blend edutainment, a combination of the

words educational and entertainment used to describe TV programmes and games

software that are educational. In fact, the suffix -tainment has recently appeared in a

whole range of coinages, including irritainment, referring to broadcasting which is

annoying but at the same time rather compulsive, advertainment, which is advertising

that entertains, and militainment, referring to news coverage of war. Similarly the

prefix franken-, which started life in the term frankenfood (a blend

of Frankenstein and food used to refer to genetically modified products), has become

associated with the idea of being freakish and unnatural, subsequently appearing in

words such as frankenfruit, frankenpet and even, appropriately enough, frankenword, a

tongue in cheek expression coined in the mid-nineties as it was observed that a

growing number of neologisms were being formed from creative combination of

existing words.

BORROWING

Of course more straightforward than any of the processes outlined above is simply to

grab words from other languages, process linguists refer to as borrowing. Borrowing

has been a feature of English vocabulary development for centuries. French, Latin and

Greek are obvious influences, but also Asian languages such as Hindi, which for

instance in the 18th century gave us shampoo (from the Hindi word 

c mpo, meaning 'massage') and is a popular influence in the 21st century. For

example, when the Essex-born celebrity chef Jamie Oliver uses the catchy

expression pukka to describe one of his culinary creations, he is in fact speaking Hindi.

Examples of popular loanwords in the 21st century include Sudoku, referring to the

famous number puzzle (from the Japanese words su, "number"

and doku "single"), latte, an espresso coffee with frothy steamed milk (from the Italian

word for milk), Ostalgie, nostalgia for former East Germany (from the German blend

of Ost, "East" and Nostalgie, "nostalgia"), chuddies, slang for underpants (from

Hindi), wiki, a website which can be modified by its users (from Hawaiian wiki wiki,

"quick") and tsunami, a huge destructive wave (from Japanese tsu, "harbour"

and nami, "waves").

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Thousands of new words are coined every year, the majority of which will fall into the

patterns of word formation which we have outlined above. There are occasional wild

cards, such as the recent term bling-bling (which refers to large pieces of expensive,

eye-catching jewellery, and is thought to have originated from the Jamaican slang for

the imaginary "sound" in cartoons when light reflects off a diamond), but the majority of

new words are based on creative manipulation of the lexical building blocks already

present in English.

The key to survival for all these new words is usage. With the advent of the World Wide

Web, language has a bigger platform for usage and propagation than ever before.

21st-century English vocabulary therefore has the potential to expand at a faster rate

than in previous generations. Real longevity however is not just based on usage -

words stay in our language only if they represent concepts which continue to exist over

the passage of time. It remains to be seen whether a hundred years on people will

still google for information, go speed-dating, become flexitarians, get RIFed, regift their

unwanted presents, and spend time doing a sudoku.

BUILDING YOUR VOCABULARY

1. Read, read, and read. The more you read -- especially novels and literary works,

but also magazines and newspapers -- the more words you'll be exposed to. As you

read and uncover new words, use a combination of attempting to derive meaning from

the context of the sentence as well as from looking up the definition in a dictionary.

2. Keep a dictionary and thesaurus handy. Use whatever versions you prefer -- in

print, software, or online. When you uncover a new word, look it up in the dictionary to

get both its pronunciation and its meaning(s). Next, go to the thesaurus and find similar

words and phrases -- and their opposites (synonyms and antonyms, respectively) --

and learn the nuances among the words.

3. Use a journal. It's a good idea to keep a running list of the new words you discover

so that you can refer back to the list and slowly build them into your everyday

vocabulary. Plus, keeping a journal of all your new words can provide positive

reinforcement for learning even more words -- especially when you can see how many

new words you've already learned.

4. Learn a word a day. Using a word-a-day calendar or Website -- or developing your

own list of words to learn -- is a great technique many people use to learn new words.

This approach may be too rigid for some, so even if you do use this method, don't feel

you must learn a new word every day. (Find some word-a-day Websites at the end of

this article.)

5. Go back to your roots. One of the most powerful tools for learning new words --

and for deciphering the meaning of other new words -- is studying Latin and Greek

roots. Latin and Greek elements (prefixes, roots, and suffixes) are a significant part of

the English language and a great tool for learning new words. (Follow these links for

the sections of this site that provide English Vocabulary Derived from Latin and English

Vocabulary Derived from Greek.)

6. Play some games. Word games that challenge you and help you discover new

meanings and new words are a great and fun tool in your quest for expanding your

vocabulary. Examples include crossword puzzles, anagrams, word jumble, Scrabble,

and Boggle. (Find some word-game Websites at the end of this article.)

7. Engage in conversations. Simply talking with other people can help you learn

discover new words. As with reading, once you hear a new word, remember to jot it

down so that you can study it later -- and then slowly add the new word to your

vocabulary.

IMPORTANT ADD

Read the work ANIMAL FARM from JAMES ORWELL