Cyber article

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35765276

This article from The Voacabualrist is about how the word cyber is used and within this article there are a variety of opinions and theories expressed. The title implies that there are many ways and contexts in which the word cyber is used.

One of these views are that the Latin translation of the word 'kubertnetes' changes to 'cybernetes'. Kubernetika means skill in steering as was used by Plato, American mathematician Norbert Weiner (1940) believed that this word originated from 'cybernetics' which means control and communication theory. 

Another view/theory about the word cyber is that is has become associated with robots - for example cyber-men from Dr Who. This implies that the meaning of the word has changed dramatically over time. 

From ancient helmsman to robots, the word cyber has the modern meaning due to the term 'cyberspace' which is the virtual electronic word where we explore, play, learn and share information. A theorist of cyberspace Howard Rheingold believed that the word 'cyber' comes from William Gibson's science fiction writing especially Neuromancer novel 1984. 


From this article it is clear to see that the meaning of the word 'cyber' has changed throughout time from meaning skill in steering to meaning robots. It is common nowadays that the term 'cyber' is associated with bullying -  cyber-bulling which is a type of bulling which happens online through messaging, social media, this is a negative connotation which shows how the meanings of words have changed over and how it could have gone from positive to negative. 

Occupational Jargon - Dentistry

Jargon
Within dentistry, there is a variety of Jargon used by dentists in order to deliver care too patients. The dentist and dental nurse will communciate with eachother using this Jargon. People from other occupations and maybe even the patients won't know what this Jargon means as it is only used in the dentistry discourse community.  

Some examples of this Jargon are:

Alveolar Bone – the bone that surrounds and supports the tooth and associated structures

Cementum – calcified connective tissue that covers the outside surface of a tooth’s root.

Edema – swelling

Gingiva – that part of the oral masticatory mucosa that surrounds the necks of the teeth and is attached to the teeth and the alveolar bone (the gum)

Interdental Papilla – Gingiva (gum tissue) that fills the space between two adjacent teeth (the space is called interproximal). Papilla is usually pointed or pyramidal in anterior teeth and somewhat flatter between posterior teeth. If teeth overlap papilla, it may be tapered and narrow; if teeth do not touch, the papilla may be flat or saddle-shaped.

Maxilla – top jaw

Periodontal Ligament – the fibrous connective tissue that supports, surrounds, and attaches the roots of the teeth to alveolar bone.

Sulcus – the space or crevice between the surface of a tooth and the epithelium lining the unattached or free gingival.

Abbreviations

Many abbreviations for patient treatment records are used in dentistry in order to decrease the amount of time spent on paperwork. Records are legal documents meaning that the abbreviations and their meanings should be the same in every record. So that everyone uses the same abbreviations and understands what they mean, it’s good to have a key to the abbreviations so anyone reading or writing a record can understand exactly what is being said. Patients can also look over their medical records and understand the various notations if they have a key of the abbreviations available.

Some examples of these abbreviations are:

ant – Anterior

D – Distal

EIE – Extraoral intraoral examination

imp – Impression

LR – Lower right quadrant

PSA – Posterior superior alveolar

STAT – Immediately

WNL – Within normal limits

 

 

Root Words, Prefixes and Suffixes Used in Dental Terms

There are specific rules for combining words and for the order of the root words within a word, so it’s good to study further to really understand how dental/medical terms are put together and read. When words are combined, they often acquire an “o” to make the word flow better and be more pronounceable. A prefix is a word, letter, or number placed before another and a suffix is a morpheme added at the end of a word to form a derivative.

Examples of prefixes and suffixes used are:

Prefix/Suffix	Definition	Example
-algia	pain	odontALGIA = tooth pain
-emia	blood	hyperEMIA = above normal amount of blood in a tissue
-hyper	over, excessive, above	HYPERmobility = more mobility than normal
-inter	between	INTERcellular = between cells
-neo	new	NEOplasm = new growth
-peri	around	PERIoral = around the mouth
-supra	above	SUPRAgingival = above the margin of the gums

Colours

The list of word parts and the colour associated with the word:

alb, albin, leuk – white

chlor – green

cyan – blue

eryth – red

melan – black

Spoken/written interactions

Dentists would be constantly involved in spoken interactions as they have to communicate with the nurse to ask for equipment and get them to write down the patient’s problem and notes. The dentists would need to also communicate with the patients to tell them what treatment they will need etc. They would also use written interactions as they have to write letters to patients for appointments and referrals. They may also need to email across notes to the other members of staff. Other written texts include filling out forms and claims for patients.

Word meanings

 The first record of this word was 1297, first appearing in R. Gloucester’s Chron. This word comes from France and has been mainly associated with men as it includes the word knight which is usually a man. The primary meaning has changed over time as the word ‘bachelor’ first meant a young knight not old enough to display his own banner, however nowadays a bachelor is known as someone who has a degree in a certain course/subject – e.g. Bachelor of Arts. The meaning has become more positive. The spelling of the word has stayed the same and this word exists only as a noun. The dictionary definition does match my understanding of the word as I thought it was someone who has got a degree.

                                                                                     
The OED first recorded the appearance of this word in printed text in 1886 appearing in Sir Tristrem. This word comes from France and at first it was associated with women, however in time it has been associated with a man. So it hasn’t always been gender specific. The primary of this word has changed as at first it was known as a woman having control or authority and then over time it has meant an unmarried man, a size of roofing slate and the wife of a member of a community – as a farmer, minister etc. The spelling of the word hasn’t changed at all and this word exists as a noun, adjective and verb. This implies that it can be used in several ways – as an object, describing word and doing word. The dictionary definition matches my understanding of the word as I thought it was someone who is in control and head of a household.                                                         

 The OED first recorded the appearance of the word in 1134 in Gower Confessio Amantis. The word master comes from Latin and has always been associated with a male; however in the latter half of the 20^th century it extended to include women. The primary meaning of this word hasn’t really changed although it means different things. The main meaning of this word is that is a male who is in control or head of a household. The spelling of the word hasn’t changed at all and exists as an adjective noun and verb. So like the word mistress this word can be used in several ways – as an object, describing word and doing word. The dictionary definition does match my understanding of the word as I thought it was a male and someone incharge of the household. 

Ochs and Taylor 1992

Ochs and Taylor 1992:

Examines how the family is constituted as a political institution through conversational interaction. Families are political bodies in that certain members review, judge, formulate codes of conduct, make decisions and impose sanctions that evaluate and impact the actions, thoughts and feelings of other members.

Dinner-time narratives:

-Usually the first time the whole family can interact with each other

-We give stories and reports from the day

-These stories can draw in the participation of other members

Participant Roles:

Protagonist – hero/report

Introducer –someone who starts the conversation

Primary recipient –who is the story aimed at?

Problematizer –someone who creates a problem or challenge –being unfair, rude etc#

Problematizee –the recipient of the problem –they have to respond

According to Ochs and Taylor:

During family dinnertime stories, the most empowering roles are

1) Introducer

2) Problem identifier

3) Ratified recipient –which shows they are valued

Distribution of Roles:

-Children usually only introduce one third of all the reports/stories. Mothers introduce the most.

-Mothers are introducers for  children, mother selects father as primary recipient

-Fathers were often the problematizers and rarely problematizees.

-Mothers would often try to solve the problems set by the fathers.

For my primary research I recorded a conversation at the dinner and transcribed it. From this transcript I found out that my mum was the most dominant in the conversation as she was the introducer of the conversation. This proves Ochs and Taylors theory because they said that mother introduces the most and this happened. However, my research disproves their theory as they said that dinner time is where the whole family sit down and see each other and tell their stories. However, my primary research disproves this as my parents asked how my day was as soon as I got in from school so at dinner there wasn't really much to talk about. There was no problematizer in this conversation.  From my research, I can disprove Ochs and Taylor’s theory that usually the first time the whole family can interact with each other. We give stories and reports from the day because from my research this isnt the first time we interact with eachother as my parents asked how my day was as soon as I got home from school. We didn’t really have a long conversation at the table as they were only short conversation. My mum introduced all of the conversations, showing that she is the dominant one of the conversation; this subverts gender as it is usually the males who are more dominant in conversation. 

Fairlcough and Critical Discourse Analysis

Norman Fairclough – Language and Power Theory (discourse)

Norman Fairclough shows that many communications are ‘unequal encounters’. This means that language choice is created and controlled by certain social ‘power’ situations or ‘power type’ discourse of kinds accepted as ‘normal’ for that kind of encounter. Fairclough also shows how texts are persuasive due to the ideologies which they rely on to create an effect. For example, when the text makes ‘natural’ assumptions about its reader’s values and beliefs, about what is ‘normal’ or ‘common sense’.

SYNTHETIC PERSONALISATION (only in advertising)

Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis is a discourse analytical research that focuses on the way that social power abuse, dominance and inequality are portrayed, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context.

Critical discourse analysis needs to please a number of requirements in order realize its aims to successfully:

-CDA research has to be ‘better’ than other research in order to be accepted.

-It focuses mainly on social problems and political issues, rather than on current models and fashions.

-Provisionally sufficient critical analysis of social problems is usually combining.

-Rather than just describing discourse structures, it tries to explain them in terms of properties of social interaction and especially social structure.

-More specifically, CDA focuses on the ways in which discourse structures portray, confirm, legitimate, reproduce or challenge relations of power and dominance in society.

Fairclough and Wodak (1997: 271-80) summarize the main views of CDA as the following:

1. CDA addresses social problems

2. Power relations are discursive

3. Discourse constitutes society and culture

4. Discourse does ideological work

5. Discourse is historical

6. The link between text and society is mediated

7. Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory

8. Discourse is a form of social action.

Critical discourse analysis is the use of a collection of techniques of the study of textual practice and language use as social and cultural practices (Fairclough 19992b). This is created from three broad theoretical orientations. First is poststructuralism which is that discourse progresses logical across local institutional sites and also texts have a beneficial function in forming and shaping human identities and actions. Then there is Bourdieu's sociology which is assuming that the real textual practices and interactions with texts become personified forms of cultural capital with substituted value in certain social fields. Finally, there is neomarxist cultural theory which assumes that these discourses are created and used within political economies and they create and articulate wider ideological interests, social stricture and movements within those fields. The practical techniques of CDA are copied from a variety of penalizing fields. Within pragmatics, narratology and speech act theory; this disputes that texts are forms of social action which arise in complex social contexts. 

Advert Analysis

Advert Analysis from Damita D

Standard English Essay

English Language Essay-Standard English

I think that the status of Standard English has changed since the turn of the century to some extent; this is due to advancements in technology (smartphones, text messages etc), social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc). It isn’t just technology that has caused an impact, its abbreviations of words and the use of slang words and social class is also a factor. However, Standard English hasn’t lost its status as it is still accepted and used within the society.

Standard English has changed due to people using word abbreviations, for example using ‘lol’ instead of laugh out loud, ‘brb’ for be right back and ‘l8r’ for later. People may use these words as it saves time and is easier, however is can make people become lazy when using technology. These words wouldn’t be used in everyday speech just in texting or on social media. Some examples of slang words are bee’s knees, quid (money), telly (television), skiving (skipping school), chap (man), dodgy, ace and many more. Aswell as word abbreviations and slang words, new words have been introduced such as bae and selfie, these words are used by mainly teenagers and have become a trend due to the amount of people using them and putting them on social media. These new words and meanings that have been introduced can cause people to make up words and use them or people have used words and made different meanings.

I think that technology has had a major impact on Standard English. Hundreds of years ago there was no technology available so people had to either write or use typewriters. One example of this is text messaging which is a quick and easy way to communicate with friends but it can cause people to become lazy due to using word abbreviations and emojis. Emojis are used in order to express someone emotions through a small picture icon. There are loads of emojis including laughing, crying, kissing, hugging, shocked, angry and many more. This is a simple and easier way to express emotions. These are widely used on texting and social media by millions of people. They have become the latest trend. Text messaging has auto correct which changes the word if it is spelt wrong to the correct spelling. This causes people to just type without actually looking at how the word is spelt, so this may cause them to forget how to spell a word if they haven’t got auto correct, if they are writing. Also in text informal language is often used, for example people shorten words – gonna, tryna, wanna ain’t etc. This causes a decline in Standard English as people are not saying the whole word and not saying it correctly.

Due to the invention of social media such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram etc, Standard English has changed. Social media is another way for people to communicate with their friends. However there are some cons to these, one con is that on twitter many people decided to follow the latest trends which cause them to use informal language because it is easier and more casual when using social media. Hashtags and certain words that friends/famous people use can become a trend causing loads of people to use them. Social media allows users to use swear words which isn’t a good idea because this causes people to get aggressive and make a bad impressions. This also impacts on getting jobs as if your employer wants to look on your social media site and they see this then they may think that this person isn’t right for the job if they say things like that. Many arguments are caused due to social media and informal language is used a lot in these arguments.

Peter Trudgill explored the dialect of Norwich by analysing the –ing e.g. shopping/shoppin’. He found out that working class speaker and men used this non-standard variation. This implies that social class has an impact on the change of Standard English. Standard English is known as the Queens English and is spoken by people of an upper class – they use Received Pronunciation. The features of RP are CURE lowering which is the use of /Ο:/ vs. the diphthong /Υ≅/ in words like sure, cure, pure, tour, Europe, etc, also /r/ is the use of linking and disturbing /r/ in phrases like far/r/ away, India/r/ and China, another feature is withdraw/r/al which is  the use of the affricates /t/ and /d/ for /tj/ and /dj/ in stressed syllables, making Tuesday sound like choose-day and dune like June and finally T voicing - the use of a voiced tap for intervocalic /t/ in e.g. British, a lot of.  Each social class has different ways of saying different words, for example people from middle class would say a tour whereas upper class people would say a towa and people from working class would say an ouse whereas people from middle class would say a house. Furthermore, social class and status has changed the use of Standard English. People that work in manual employment belong to the working class and to work in this employment minimal demands of literacy and educational qualifications are needed and it was not paid very well. Belonging to the middle class are teachers, lawyers, administrators etc, for this occupation a high degree of literacy and educational qualification are needed and this was better paid. Due to increased educational opportunity and economic wealth, more and more young people are exposed to Standard English than ever before.

I think that nowadays, it is common for people to use non-standard forms of English rather than Standard English forms. Some of the examples of non-standard English used is I ‘were’ instead of I was, ‘them’ books instead of those books, he ‘done’ it instead of he did it and he ‘ain’t’ finished instead of he hasn’t finished. This type of speech could have been influenced by upbringing, education or social class. This is proved by Graeme Paton who said that “Many GCSE English students did not realise that phrases such as "get off of" and "she was stood" were grammatically incorrect. Also in the latest study by Cambridge Assessment with more than 2,000 teenagers in 26 English secondary schools surveyed. This survey found out that only 41% of these teenagers realised that an adjective had been used in place of an adverb in the phrase "come quick" and around a quarter of GCSE students failed to spot errors in the phrases "it wasn't me who done it", "couldn't hardly move", "Tom had gotten cold" and "three mile". This means that 59% of teenagers didn’t realise that these sentences were grammatically incorrect – this is a large variety. Peter Trudgill said that people of a lower socio economic status are more likely o use non-Standard linguistic variants than people of a higher socio-economic status.

Finally, Standard English is changing whenever speakers come into contact with each other. People from different geographical places speak differently and there are variations according to a speakers, age, gender, ethnicity and social/education background. Due to interaction with these different speakers, new words, expressions and pronunciations are introduced and these are used into our own speech.

To conclude, Standard English has changed dramatically due to social media - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, texting - using emojis and word abbreviations making people become lazy and social class – this influences the way in which people speak. Standard English may carry on changing in the future as technology may develop further and more people from different countries will interact with eachother.