This study explores the semiotic aspects of American slang, specifically focusing on the phenomenon of reduplicative expressions in informal speech. Despite the extensive research on American slang, limited attention has been given to the cultural and mythical meanings embedded within reduplicative expressions. To address this gap, the study investigates how these expressions convey denotative, connotative, and mythical meanings within casual American discourse. The objectives of the study include: 1. To what extent does Barthes’ semiotic model hold potential for application in this study? 2. How are reduplicative slang expressions widely used in everyday American life? 3. To what extent do qualitative and quantitative methods have significance for this study? The methodology combines qualitative analysis, involving an in-depth examination of selected reduplicative expressions, with quantitative analysis to measure their prevalence and usage in informal speech. Barthes’ semiotic framework encompassing denotation, connotation, and myth forms the theoretical foundation of the study. The findings reveal that reduplicative slang expressions not only carry literal meanings but also embody rich cultural and social connotations, reflecting key aspects of everyday American life. These expressions enhance interpersonal communication and serve as markers of cultural identity within informal discourse. The implications of this study lie in its contribution to understanding the intersection between language and culture, providing insights for future research on semiotics and its application in linguistic studies.
War as a human phenomenon, has its own literature. Poetry is a major genre in this literature. This paper is an attempt to investigate and analyse some stylistic features in two selected, English and Arabic, war poems. These poems share the same theme.Both promote the principle of sacrificing one’s own life for the sake of homeland. This paper limits itself to analyse, thecontent words, tenses, semantic grouping of vocabulary and foregrounding in the two poems. The areas of analysis show great similarities in distributing the general content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs). In the analysis of the semantic areas of each content word, these poems reveal some similarities and some differences in their frequency rates.
... Show MoreThis paper deals with the ideological positioning of the English poet John Donne in a selected poems of his i.e Holy Sonnet X, as regards the theme of death found therein. The researchers adopt an emerging branch of stylistics, called Critical Stylistics, as proposed by Jeffries (2010) in order to uncover the ideologies of the author regarding the topic concerned and how linguistic choices are used to slant ideas. The model is comprised of ten tools of analysis which, upon being applied to the selected data, have shown how the poet exploits language resources in order to pass his ideology and influence his readers. In this paper, the workings of only one tool are presented as applied to a certain portion of the data.
In addition to its basic communicative function, language can be used to imply information that is not actually stated, i.e. addressers do not always state exactly (or directly) what they mean. Such instances fall within the domain of pragmatics in that they have to do with how addressers use language to communicate in a particular situation by implication rather than by direct statement. The researcher attempts to demonstrate that the beauty and the multiple layers of meaning in poetry can be better explored if the addressee looks at the lines from a pragmatic perspective in search for implied meaning. There are many devices that can convey implied meaning in poetry, among which are 'rhetorical', 'figurative' or 'literary' devices. But
... Show MoreLinguistic taboos exist in most cultures. Tabooed words are generally being culturespecific
and relating to bodily functions or aspects of a culture that are sacred. Such words are
avoided, considered inappropriate and loaded with affective meaning and failing to adhere to.
Strict rules, often, governing their use and lead to punishment or public shame. These taboo
words can be used as a way of violating social deixis represented by four types of honorifics;
addressee, referent, bystander, and finally setting honorifics. This paper shows how these
taboo words are used in Kenneth Bernard's play La Justice or The Cock that Crew from the
theatre of the Ridiculous as means of violating social deixis in its four types. Th
Although the term' tautology' predicts negative connotation, it is often employed by poets and lyric writers to communicate more implied meanings. Through the use of tautological expressions, they exchange ideas, give more possibilities to readers to detect the meaning behind the tautological words and thus suggest details not openly communicated in the poem. Ten American song lyrics and ten American poems have been selected to be the data for the study. Data analysis is conducted on the basis of three steps:(i) identifying the type of tautology used ,(ii) detecting the syntactic realization of the tautology and (iii) finding the functions of the use of tautology in these lyrics and poems. The study concludes that song lyrics and p
... Show MoreThis research deals with the color bias and its effect on maids in Mississippi in Kathryn Stockett''s (2003) The Help. The ill-treatment and negligence of Afro-American maids received from the white women who employed them in Mississippi that must have affected directly or indirectly on their personality and may eventually lead to suffering. They live in an atmosphere of struggle to free themselves from the complicated relationships between black and white. Afro-American maids pledged to liberate themselves from social oppression by protesting through writing a book which chronicles their stories in slave masters’ homes to make their presence felt as human being equal to their white masters.
BN Rashid…, Special Education, 2022
With their strategic and geographical positions, Japan and Iraq are one of the major
countries in the world, especially to the United States. Japan lies near the two American
Continents, separated only by the Pacific and it is only normal to have the interests of both
countries crossed and joined in the Far East region. This made the occupation of Japan an
inventible matter in the second half of the 20th century. Iraq, on the other hand, has strategic
position in the Middle East, being surrounded by many active countries like Turkey, Iran, and
Gulf countries, besides Iraq’s oil wealth which is needed by such industrial country like the
United States.