Hays Views on Gatsby Essay

Hays, Peter L. â€Å"Oxymoron in The Great Gatsby.† Papers on Language & Literature 47.3 (2011): 318+. General OneFile. Web. 19 Oct. 2012. There are significant paradoxes throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s (life and) work frequently represented by oxymorons, of which Wolfsheim’s eating with â€Å"ferocious delicacy† (75) is only one of the most apparent and, as such, very possibly a clue to the paradoxes in the novel. Kirk Curnutt in a review of Fitzgerald’s short stories remarks that the titles Flappers and Philosophers and Taps at Reveille â€Å"are clever conceits whose effectiveness depends upon one’s fondness for oxymoron† (157). Keith Gandal, in a recent book, writes of â€Å"Gatsby’s famous doubleness †¦ as chivalrous lover and cold-blooded killer.† Gandal continues, though I am using his words for a different purpose than his: â€Å"His doubleness may have a mainstream enough historical correlative† (119 ).(1) One prominent instance of doubleness is evident in his approach to Daisy in the novel. Could a man who â€Å"knew women early†Ã¢â‚¬â€œI presume knew them in the Biblical sense–â€Å"and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them† (104), be so intimidated by Daisy, especially since he’s already slept with her (156)? Could someone so ruthless in both the army and business be so timid in dating? Gatsby is plainly not a sexual innocent afraid of sex, another nearly 40-year-old virgin. Far from it. He has had five years of tutelage under Dan Cody, sailing three times around the continent, having women rub champagne in his hair, and visiting the Barbary Coast (106-07), which Matthew J. Bruccoli glosses in his notes to the novel as San Francisco’s â€Å"honky tonk district† (213), plainly a euphemism. We don’t know what Gatsby did for the next five years (from Cody’s death in 1912 until America’s entrance into the war in 1917 [106]), but thereafter he rose through officer ranks to become a major in the army during World War I and then briefly attended Oxford. Are we to expect that he led a celibate life all those years except for his one brief affair with Daisy? There is, of course, a social gap between him and Daisy, and this causes him insecurity in approaching her and proposing that they start their life over. But he did date her before and successfully seduced her. And at Oxford he must have met women of a social status comparable to Daisy’s. In addition, he now foolishly believes that the money he has earned erases much of that social gap so that no one will think, as he tells Nick, that â€Å"I was just some nobody† (71), â€Å"some kind of cheap sharper† (145). He also believes, erroneously, that in social situations, as opposed to business ones, he must not do â€Å"anything out of the way† (84). That being the case, one has to wonder what he and Daisy do on their afternoons together at his house. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald has established him both as â€Å"a regular tough† (84), someone who looked like he had killed a man, and a very proper and timid individual on social and sexual matters, or as Fitzgerald himself phrases it, â€Å"an elegant †¦ roughneck† (53), another oxymoron. What constrains Gatsby is his extreme romanticism, his beli ef in the American myth that one, through hard work, can achieve anything, whether reliving the past or marrying Daisy in proper social splendor in Louisville so as to confirm his rise in American society (see the paraphrase of Poor Richard’s Almanac and Horatio Alger at the end of the novel). He wants nothing to tarnish his ideal of marrying Daisy in society, the perfect couple on top of the wedding cake, and he wants the social acceptance and respect denied him at St. Olaf College (105) and by the Sloanes and Buchanans of the world. What has happened, of course, is that following his seduction of Daisy and one special kiss, he â€Å"wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath †¦ and the incarnation was complete (117). The religious language, particularly for one raised as a Catholic, as Fitzgerald was, is telling. Daisy embodies the idea of perfection for Gatsby, an almost unapproachable ideal of social success and self-realization. Thus his Grail is â€Å"the unreality of reality† (105), another paradox, and as Tom attacks him in the suite of the Plaza Hotel, â€Å"only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away† (142). But there are other contradictions as well, such as the characterization of Wolfsheim as a sentimental crook (7 7), and Gatsby’s facial expression, â€Å"definitely unfamiliar and vaguely recognizable† (127). Throughout there is Gatsby’s real criminal corruption fronting his romantic â€Å"incorruptible dream† (162). Nick, too, has his doublenesses. Initially Nick’s father tells him that â€Å"all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had† (5), presumably material advantages. But Nick interprets the statement to mean â€Å"a sense of fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth†(6), something very different, and a belief that qualifies Nick very much as a snob. Nick praises himself for honesty after writing the woman others believe him engaged to, because of his affair with Jordan Baker (63), but he doesn’t bother writing her two pages earlier while he’s conducting a relationship with a girl from the accounting division of his bank, incongruously named Probity Trust; the reason is obvious: the girl from accounting is clearly not from his social station and thus not marriageable, as Jordan is, and thus the putative fiancee need not be bothered by a mere summer romance while Nick takes his pleasure with the girl from New Jersey. Nick also assures Daisy and Jordan that the telephone call Tom receives from Wilson, after Wilson has discovered Myrtle’s infidelity, is â€Å"a bona fide deal† (122); the deal Tom has offered Wilson, however, is anything but in good faith: he has used the potential sale of the car as a way to approach Wilson’s garage to talk with Myrtle. His actions, car for woman, are repeated when he takes Gatsby’s car to drive to New York City in exchange for Daisy. And Nick describes Tom oxymoronically as a priggish libertine (137). We also have Fitzgerald’s assault through Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker on the remnants of muscular Christianity and the Frank Merriwell novels he grew up with. The 20s were the era of Babe Ruth’s carousings and infidelities, missing games due to what sports writers reported euphemistically as stomach aches, due to the Babe’s prodigious eating, which they may have been, in conjunction with massive hangovers, or possibl y alcohol poisoning or even venereal disease.(2) His two daughters were born out of wedlock, not reported by the papers. Nor was Ty Cobb’s racism, not that most Americans at the time would have cared. Sports writers protected athletes to preserve the image of them as role models. The book jacket from a Frank Merriwell reprint says Frank’s â€Å"deeds will appeal to every boy and girl who strives for fair play and seeks to improve or to excel.† The inside copy calls the series of novels â€Å"Fascinating stories of athletics. †¦ They are extremely high in moral tone and cannot fail to be of immense benefit to every boy who reads them† (251).(3) Merriwell was an All-American football player at Yale, linking him to Tom Buchanan, who was a â€Å"national figure† at Yale (10), and who is not of high moral tone, cheating on his wife during their stay at Santa Barbara (82), in Chicago (139), and again on Long Island. But unlike the Merriwell book copy that calls the book beneficial only to boys, Fitzgerald is an equal-opportunity employer, allowing Jordan Baker to be bo th a sportswoman and an incorrigible liar and cheat at golf (62). Why write about national figures in sport only to tear them down? Why pepper the novel with paradoxes and oxymorons? Fitzgerald saw contradictions in the national psyche. Malcolm Cowley’s image of Fitzgerald as the man at a dance and also the poor boy outside with his nose pressed to the glass admiring and wondering how much everything cost is apropos (xv): Fitzgerald saw both sides and recorded both. His statement in The Crack Up that â€Å"the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at once, and still retain the ability to function† (69) speaks to his awareness of doublenesses and contradictions in America, and he strove to record them, even as one reality denied another dream. His awareness of his own self-contradictions–realistic romantic, spoiled priest–created a style incorporating contradictions. The country was changing in many ways. It was still ostensibly a Puritan nation, yet sex was everywhere. A production-mode economy was shifting to a consumer economy. The automobile had changed living, travel, dating, and business in the United States (subject of other books, not this paper), and Fitzgerald emphasizes this change with his frequent mention of cars–Nick’s, Tom’s, Gatsby’s several, Wilson’s–and â€Å"wayside garages [with] new red gas-pumps† (25). The middle classes were rising on the post-war prosperity that, until 1929, seemed as if it could not end. Nick is a bond salesman, and â€Å"Young Englishmen †¦ were all selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were †¦ agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced it was theirs for a few words in the right key† (46). Myrtle dreams of marrying Tom and improving her station, and Mr. McKee needs only an introduction to Tom’s East Egg friends to move up the social and financial ladder, figured by that Jacob’s ladder, the blocks of the sidewalk that â€Å"mounted to a secret place above the trees† (117). Fitzgerald’s allusion to Lothrop Stoddard by way of Tom points to the fervent eugenics movement of the day (208), and Tom fear’s that his aristocratic position is challenged by non-Nordic races and by nobodies from nowhere (137) is seconded by Mr. Sloane from East Egg who is â€Å"haughtily† determined that Gatsby should not attend his dinner party (109). And their fears have some justification, as the guest list from Gatsby’s party reveals, with its intermingling of old money and nouveaux riches, of elegant and coarse: Homeric Ulysses linked to common Swett, Southern nobility Stonewall Jackson married to Jewish Abrams, a menagerie of Civets, Hornbeams, Blackbucks, and Leeches together with such obvious immigrants as Mulready, Cohen, Da Fontano, and Rot-Gut Ferret, along with Belchers, Smirkes, and a Hip (66-67). The old established order, figured by Daisy’s and Jordan’s privileged white girlhood in segregated Louisville, is under assault, as indicated by the incursion into society of recent immigrants and by the Negroes driven by a white chauffeur (73). Gandal states that Gatsby’s officership was another such sign of change, promotion by meritocracy rather than by family or education alone. But these changes in reality were not accompanied by corresponding changes in the national myths. Athletes were heroes, reality be damned. African-Americans could hire white chauffeurs, but their opportunities, even in the non-segregated North, were limited, and they were still subject to prejudice, as Nick’s reaction to them makes clear. Despite our myth of a classless society, classes were still very distinct in 1925, as Fitzgerald knew all too well from his experience as a poor boy at Princeton and in his courtship of Ginevra King, (4) and as Nick points out in his distinction between West Egg and East Egg (9). Mr. Sloan and Tom Buchanan insist on their own social superiority to Gatsby, just as Nick does to Wolfsheim and to the girl from the accounting department of his bank. Even Daisy finally realizes the safety of staying â€Å"with her own kind,† those of her social class, however repellent her husband is. Despite our national myth of equal opportunity, it does not exist, as we know but Gatsby doesn’t. He thinks that he can do anything, even repeat the past (116). Not being a sports hero, like the aforementioned Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb (who retired wealthy with Coca Cola and GE stock), Gatsby’s opportunities for the quick cash to win Daisy are limited, so he turns to crime, as did many during Prohibition. Corruption was pandemic, from Al Capone to Teapot Dome, the sale of national oil reserves by the Secretary of the Interior. Fitzgerald mentions two so-called robber barons, men who built huge industries through monopolization, John D. Rockefeller (31) and James J. Hill (176) (whose mansion was up the street from the Fitzgeralds’ St. Paul home), men who â€Å"saw the opportunity† (78), just as Wolfsheim did in fixing th e World Series. The line between sharp business practice and criminal activity was thin and almost invisible then (and recently as well), as Fitzgerald has Gatsby imply when talking to Tom about Walter Chase (141), a friend of Tom’s who came to Gatsby looking for money. One day selling alcohol was legal; the next it wasn’t. One day monopolies were good business; then they were declared illegal. Getting a card from the pplice commissioner to fix traffic violations is simply a courtesy; fixing the World Series is criminal. Tom, Myrtle, Jay, and Daisy all commit adultery. Some students may think Tom and Myrtle’s affair is cheap and disgusting, Jay’s and Daisy’s romantic, but both are the same morally and legally, yet we still have the myth of family values preached to us, despite the behavior of our legislators. Nick feels himself morally superior to Tom’s infidelities, Jordan’s lies, to Wolfsheim’s and Gatsby’s criminal acts, yet he’s an accessory after the fact of murder, concealing vital evidence from the police. Myrtle’s sister Katherine lies at her sister’s inquest, a loyal act of perjury that Nick praises as showing a â€Å"surprising amount of character† (171). Lovely Daisy is a hit-and-run killer. Appearances are deceiving. The America that Fitzgerald portrays is riddled with corruption, yet we still maintain the myth of the city on the hill, â€Å"the green breast of the new world† (189), the beacon to the world for democracy and opportunity. I have difficulty crediting Gatsby as a coherent human being, but as a symbol of the elusive American dream, I find him perfect. He consummately embodies the contradictory qualities of this country, our saying one thing while doing another, our clinging to myths that have little basis in reality. As a well-behaved, socially conscious crook, he is a paradox, an oxymoron, and an exemplary American.

Graduate School

I have had many dreams about my future and where I would go in life. In all my dreams I do in fact attend graduate school. This is so because I would like to attain a job that requires more than just a four year degree, so that I may receive a high paying salary. The benefits from an advanced degree are numerous. I would like to obtain an advanced degree because unlike undergraduate school, graduate school is more of a narrower field of study. The schooling may be more difficult and more work but I do think it will pay off in the end. As a graduate student I will develop clearer goals as to what I want for my future.As a graduate student I will create many opportunities for myself to receive practical experience in my field of study. Learning in an atmosphere where the professors and other students love my field of study just as much as I do will be truly refreshing. It is also no secret that most companies look for advanced education beyond a bachelor’s degree because a gradu ate degree is more prominent. With a graduate degree I will most likely earn a considerably higher salary than if I just settle with a bachelor’s degree. I would like to succeed in my lifetime to become wealthy.With an advanced degree I will have opportunities for advancement over than I solely had my bachelor’s degree. I would like to be one day be a hospital administrator or a manager of my branch. Having an advanced education will help me achieve this goal. I have a dream of becoming a successful person that will have financial stability. I would love to eventually earn a graduate degree that will help me further my career. I would love to earn a degree that will give me more mobility in my career. There will be more hard work and effort put forth in an advanced degree but after all the time is put in the rewards will be great.

Research Critique Part 1 Essay

This paper will critique a qualitative research study published in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 2004, By Dr Helen Aveyard, about how nurses manage patients who refuse nursing care procedures. The article explains how nurses view informed consent as not being essential to nursing care procedures. Problem Statement The clinical problem being examined in the research study is the way in which nurses obtain consent prior to administering nursing care procedures, and the way nurses manage patients who refuse any nursing care procedures. By stating that nurses â€Å"do not regard obtaining consent as an absolute requirement† also stating that â€Å"consent is preferred but no considered essential† the significance is established and a clinical problem identified.(Aveyard, 2004, p. 346) The author identifies the need for further education of nurses on the need to obtain informed consent for nursing care procedures, and the need for more research of this topic. Purpose and Research Questions The study clearly identifies the aim of the study as â€Å"to examine the way in which nurses manage patients who refuse nursing care procedures.†(Aveyard, 2004, p. 346) The study identifies two main purposes for the research study as: 1- To examine how consent is obtained prior to nursing care procedures, 2- To explore the ways in which consent could be approached by clinical nurses.†(Aveyard, 2004, p. 347) The author provided clear purpose or aim of the research problem, â€Å"the way in which nurses manage patients who refuse nursing care procedures.†(Aveyard, 2004, p. 346) And related the problem to the questions of how consent is obtained, how obtaining consent can be approached, and at the extent to which consent remains voluntary. The qualitative method is appropriate for this study as the information needed was obtained through interviews, observations and focus groups to answer the question of how nurses obtain consent and for exploring ways consent could be approached in the future, due to the lack of discussion in nursing literature on obtaining consent prior to nursing care procedures.(Aveyard, 2004, p. 346) Literature Review The author cites qualitative research articles and nursing education manuals and training manuals from many different authors and time periods. There were no quantitative studies cited. All research article referenced were relevant to the study, most were greater than seven years old and older. No evaluations of strengths or weaknesses were available for referenced material. The limitations of this study were named as: â€Å"data was exploratory, It was not the specific intention to explore the management of the patient who refuses care; the topic came from the inductive data analysis.(Aveyard, 2004, p. 349) It is relevant as this is a previously unexplored area of nursing.(Aveyard, 2004, p. 349) The author builds a logical argument through discussion of nursing education, and the fact that nursing education and the focus of informed consent in nursing education is on the nurse’s role in obtaining consent prior to medical procedures and research procedures, and not prior to nursing care procedures. The author uses the argument that the lack of discussion on informed consent does not negate its importance and it purpose which is to protect a patients autonomy .(Aveyard, 2004, p. 346) Conceptual/ Theoretical Framework. There is no specific perspective identified within this study. There was no diagram or conceptual framework in the study. The results are clearly defined and sample was described as being purposive sample of qualified nurses from two teaching hospitals in England. (Aveyard, 2004, p. 647) The author used a grounded theory type of qualitative research study. Through observation of how consent is obtained, nurses’ interpretations of why consent is obtained, six focus groups, and in depth interviews, data was collected and analyzed. (Aveyard, 2004, p. 347) The sampling was purposive, and was said to consist of qualified nurses who were â€Å"willing-and able- to recall and discuss critical incidents. (Aveyard, 2004, p. 347) The interviews were tape recorded and transcribed focus group and interview data were combined in data analysis and transcripts were analyzed using a constant comparison.(Aveyard, 2004, p. 347)

Was Andrew Carnegie a good man Research Proposal

Was Andrew Carnegie a good man - Research Proposal Example He also worked with three presidents to create peace. It is important to note that in America a person has to "have money to make money" and having money created opportunity for Carnegie to get into circles that he would have been shut out of in other circumstances. He used his money to fund programs and buildings for the working class because it was his hope to "uplift them"(Krass 55). Carnegie was born in Dumferline Scotland in 1863. He quickly understood the plight of the laborer because his father was one. His father was a weaver in the linen industry that lost his job when the linen industry upgraded to use machines for weaving and the hand weavers lost their jobs (PBS, par. 2). It is believed by this writer than at that point, Andrew understood that he would need to do something better if he were to help his family. The family left Scotland when Carnegies mother insisted and they moved to Pittsburg, PA in America. Andrew was paid $1.20 a week with 12 hour days to be a "bobbin boy" which meant that he would supply bobbins new bobbins and take away the ones that were full (PBS, par. 6, Krass 29). This was hard work but it gave Andrew an understanding that this wasnt the type of work he wanted. He also received a real taste of poverty which he didnt like. He eventually moved to another bobbin job where he received $2 an hour to do the work and became a major breadwinner for his family (Krass 29). This may have been the place that Andrew learned to control his emotions because he was afraid of the boilers. However, this is also a trait for a good businessman. Carnegie did several things to rise in business. It seemed that he could look forward and see the bigger picture and he was always open to opportunity. For instance, he walked two miles to Pittsburg with his father to inquire about a job at a Telegraph office. This job was told to him by his uncle. He went and

Air pollution in Al Ain Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Air pollution in Al Ain - Essay Example The most recent secondary data indicates that air pollution in Al Ain is the leading at 66.67% followed by drinking water pollution at 25%. This has to be established and a way to reduce such extraneous impacts be suggested. Air is an important resources God given free and human beings would only do well by protecting it and its use for the future generation (Book, 2009). This forms my basis of the research I intend to conduct in Al Ain. Al Ain is a city within the United Arab Emirates and this is the region that I intend to conduct my research. My respondents in this research will be the general population within Al Ain. I intend to sample a considerable number across all the gender and ages within the region (Lomborg, 2001). I believe that this region and the selected participants will help in establishing the exact impact of air pollution in this area (Book, 2009). In addition, it is highly anticipated that from the analysis of the data provided by these participants a clear way f orward will be established on how to handle the menace. This will be within Al Ain as well as the other regions of the UAE affected by pollution due to industrialization and human activity (Currie & Neidell, 2004). Through secondary research, I have found the following information to be of much importance in formulating my research. First, Air pollution is a big part of pollution affecting major cities in the world apart from just Al Ain. Such a form of pollution is composed of a mixture of solid particles and gases in the air. We also have car emissions, chemicals from factories and pollen as other causative agents of air pollution (Apling, 2000). Secondly, air pollution is irrespective of whether it is indoors or outdoors exposes individuals in millions throughout the world to huge health risks (Sastry, 2000). As a result, such individuals have recorded acute conditions of asthma, emphysema, lethal heart diseases, and other numerous conditions (Lomborg, 2001). In Al Ain alone, mil lions get infected everyday due to the bad air condition in which they are exposed. Next, humanity is not protected well by the laws formulated to handle air pollution menace. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency set in 1979 has done little and this necessitates for major changes and restructuring to be done to enable the rules and guidance on air pollution to be effective (Sales & Folkman, 2000). Research has it that the most polluted countries are the developed due to industrialization. This leaves the developing countries, which are at times even more industrialized and hence air pollutants unmonitored. Consequently, such countries proceed with the evil act leading to the deterioration of the atmospheres and the air that we breathe (Apling, 2000). Al Ain id not quite a big city in terms of geographical size while it is quite intense in terms of industrial activity most so in the construction sector. As a result, the city has high impacts on air pollution from the chem icals produced by such industries to the immense dust due to the nature of production rampant within the region (Miller, 2007). Governments have tried and taken initiatives to limit emissions into the air such as carbon dioxide and any other greenhouse gases (Simioni, 2004). For example, through the Kyoto protocol and putting of taxes on carbon emissions and other causative agents like gas. On the contrary, this is not enough hence the need for a collective activity to curb the menace (Browning, 2010). In conclusion, all parties and

What Part Does Cultural Compatibility Play in Determining The Success Essay

What Part Does Cultural Compatibility Play in Determining The Success of Cross-Border Mergers & Acquisitions - Essay Example Most often, considerations in relation to financing and strategies have become the main concern in obtaining the acquisition targets or merger partners that are most suitable for a company’s purpose. Usually, decisions are made depending on certain issues such as availability, price and probable earnings. When their activity fails, the analysis of merger failure or weak performance is often focused on the re-examination of certain factors that initiated the decision for selection (Schweiger & Goulet 2005). Often, poor selection decisions for mergers and acquisitions are associated with an overly high purchase price, incompetence of managers in achieving goals, or that the companies simply do not match each other. These factors have been continuously examined yet M & A activity has not obtained the necessary improvements (Teerikangas 2007; Seo & Hill 2005). Because of this, international acquisitions make up inconsistencies: despite the fact that business practice and academic research have reported that many of these activities fail to achieve their objectives, cross-cultural acquisitions still remain to be a popular strategy for multinational companies. Therefore, it is necessary that the causes of international merger and acquisition failure are examined as well as the strategies for addressing such problems. As reported by Galpin & Herndon (2007), in a study of 190 top executives who were involved in the global acquisition, it was believed that cultural incompatibility was viewed as the greatest barrier to the success of their M & A activities. Furthermore, the 1996 British Institute of Management survey reported that when merging two cultures is underestimated, it becomes a significant factor for failure (Carleton and Lineberry 2004).

A Human Disorder, Involving Dysregulation of Epigenetic Mechanisms Essay

A Human Disorder, Involving Dysregulation of Epigenetic Mechanisms - Essay Example A lot of people having this condition are born with an aperture in the abdomen wall that facilitates the protrusion of the abdominal organs through the navel. Many infants with BWS have tongues that are abnormally long (macroglossia) which can interfere with swallowing, breathing, and speaking. BWS’s other features include abdominal organs that are abnormally large (viscreromegaly), pits or creases in the skin near the ears, kidney abnormalities, and low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) in infant (Baum, et al, 2007 pg 78). The genetic causes of BWS are complex. It results from regulation of genes that is abnormal in a given region of chromosome 11. People usually inherit a single copy of this chromosome from each parent. In many genes of chromosome 11, each of the two copies of the genes is expressed (turned on) in the cells. However, for some genes, only the gene inherited from the father (paternal copy) is expressed while for some, the copy inherited from the mother (maternal copy) is the only one expressed. These parent specific differences in the expression of the gene are caused by genomic imprinting phenomenon. Abnormalities which involve genes on chromosome 11 that experience genomic imprinting are the cause of many cases of BWS. Typically, half of the cases are at least caused by changes in the methylation process. In genes that experience genomic imprinting, methylation is among the ways that parents of the gene of the origin are marked at the time of the creation of the egg and sperm cells.

Rape Myths and Rape Prevention Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Rape Myths and Rape Prevention - Essay Example The double standard essentially holds that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander. In the context of rape myths and prevention, the double standard applies when a person believes they do not owe to somebody else the same consideration they themselves expect to receive. That sentiment can become dangerous when a man or woman believes that they can take what they want from another person, including sex, regardless of what they would allow someone else to do to them. Media portrayals can have both positive and negative repercussions, and can be hugely influential on people of all ages and stations in life. In particular, young people can be easily swayed and molded by what they witness in the media, be it magazines, internet, or other outlets. For example, young women are constantly accosted by pictures of skinny, pretty supermodels and may be led to believe that they need to look and act the same way in order to be accepted.

Write what you want Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Write what you want - Essay Example At the same time, the college student looks for opportunities to maintain their social connections, which further complicates the process of time management. Stress is created by missing out on certain social activities in favor of being a more responsible and conscientious academic and by no longer being able to rely on more lenient instructors. The college experience, though extremely important for future career success, continues to exert pressure related to personal accountability for sensible and dependable schoolwork. These are activities common in the college experience. Because of this, the student must develop more effective coping skills to deal with these pressures. The student must also schedule their personal activities in a way that makes them secondary to more desirable social gatherings, which is not always easy for self-satisfaction. Failure to achieve timely deadlines for work submission can also create anxiety which only enhances the stress responses. A college stu dent needs to start acting like an adult and realizing the importance of education. Having a mature-minded attitude will assist in reducing these stresses even when social needs cannot be immediately fulfilled. Is this difficult? It definitely is, however, college demands it. It has been said that money is the root of all evil. People who strive to attain large amounts of money, such as drug dealers or stock investors, often build their entire lives around the receipt of money. However, in order to receive these funds, they often have to harm others in society. Laws about prohibiting drug use make dealers seek opportunities through the black market which is often littered with crime rings that applaud negative behavior. Dealers often get rich so quickly that it goes to their head and they rapidly believe that they are better than others in society. This egotism creates a desire to treat others like

Chirchill Response Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Chirchill Response Paper - Essay Example The reader debates the categorical use of such superlatives. Johnson is sometimes too kind to his subject: Churchill’s being a â€Å"Conservative, Liberal, Coalition, Constitutionalist, Unionist, and National Conservative† (15), is definitely the sign of a political opportunist and the author’s terming this â€Å"Churchill’s courage in crossing the floor† (15), is a little mild! Churchill’s foresight is remarkable. His â€Å"prophetic words --- spoken more than a dozen years before the catastrophe† (Johnson, 14) of World War I, show him to be a man of awesome intellect. Another instance of Churchill’s remarkable judgment is the case of communist Russia, when he attempts to reverse Lenin’s Bolshevik coup in 1917, and nip communism in the bud. Again, his failed attempts to convince FDR to decisively combat communism in the final stages of World War II, show that he is the only senior statesman of that time to fully appreciate the dangers of communism. Johnson provokes the reader to wonder whether the Cold War, and the atrocities of the Gulag, could have been avoided if Churchill had his way. Churchill is one of the first to realize the threat posed by Hitler. Churchill’s early investment in Middle East oil, through BP, is another case which demonstrates his prescience. Churchill is so completely identified with Britain in the period of war that it is a revelation to know that he was also an excellent peace time administrator. His welfare measures as President of the Board of Trade, and his prison reforms as Home Secretary, add to his stature. He is obviously an administrator par excellence. Britain definitely would not have had the navy and air force she did, if not for Churchill. Johnson’s inclusion of many of Churchill’s witticisms adds to the appeal of the book and ensures that the heavy parts are enlivened and the reader is never bored. Some gems: â€Å"I trod on the Prince of Wales’s toe,† he recorded complacently, â€Å"and

Linguistics and Interjections Essay Example for Free

Linguistics and Interjections Essay In Western philosophy and linguistic theory, interjections—that is, words like oof, ouch, and bleah—have traditionally been understood to indicate emotional states. This article offers an account of interjections in Q’eqchi’ Maya that illuminates their social and discursive functions. In particular, it discusses the grammatical form of interjections, both in Q’eqchi’ and across languages, and characterizes the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections in Q’eqchi’ in terms of a semiotic framework that may be generalized for other languages. With these grammatical forms, indexical objects, and pragmatic functions in hand, it details the various social and discursive ends that interjections serve in one Q’eqchi’ community, thereby shedding light on local values, norms, ontological classes, and social relations. In short, this article argues against interpretations of interjections that focus on internal emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. p a u l k o c k e l m a n is McKennan Post-Doctoral Fellow in Linguistic Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College (Hanover, N. H. 03755, U. S. A. [paul. [emailprotected] edu]). Born in 1970, he was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B. A. , 1992) and the University of Chicago (M. S. , 1994; Ph. D. , 2002). His publications include â€Å"The Collection of Copal among the Q’eqchi’-Maya† (Research in Economic Anthropology 20:163–94), â€Å"Factive and Counterfactive Clitics in Q’eqchi’-Maya: Stance, Status, and Subjectivity,† in Papers from the Thirty-eighth Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (Chicago: Linguistics Society, in press), and â€Å"The Interclausal Relations Hierarchy in Q’eqchi’ Maya† (International Journal of American Linguistics 69:25–48). The present paper was submitted 1 vi 01 and accepted 27 xii 02. 1. A longer version of this article was presented at the workshop â€Å"Semiotics: Culture in Context† at the University of Chicago in January 2001. Chris Ball, Anya Bernstein, John Lucy, and Michael Silverstein all provided very helpful commentary. This article also greatly bene? ted from suggestions made by Benjamin S. Orlove and several anonymous referees. Western philosophy and linguistic theory have traditionally considered interjections at the periphery of language and primordially related to emotion. For example, the Latin grammarian Priscian de? ned interjections as â€Å"a part of speech signifying an emotion by means of an unformed word† (Padley 1976:266). Muller (1862) ? thought that interjections were at the limit of what might be called language. Sapir (1921:6–7) said that they were â€Å"the nearest of all language sounds to instinctive utterance. † Bloom? eld (1984[1933]:177) said that they â€Å"occur under a violent stimulus,† and Jakobson (1960: 354) considered them exemplars of the â€Å"purely emotive stratum of language. † While interjections are no longer considered peripheral to linguistics and are now carefully de? ned with respect to their grammatical form, their meanings remain vague and elusive. In particular, although interjections are no longer characterized purely in terms of emotion, they are still characterized in terms of â€Å"mental states. † For example, Wierzbicka (1992:164) characterizes interjections as â€Å"[referring] to the speaker’s current mental state or mental act. † Ameka (1992a:107) says that â€Å"from a pragmatic point of view, interjections may be de?ned as a subset of items that encode speaker attitudes and communicative intentions and are contextbound,† and Montes (1999:1289) notes that many interjections â€Å"[focus] on the internal reaction of affectedness of the speaker with respect to the referent. † Philosophers have offered similar interpretations. For example, Herder thought that interjections were the human equivalent of animal sounds, being both a â€Å"language of feeling† and a â€Å"law of nature† (1966:88), and Rousseau, pursuing the origins of language, theorized that protolanguage was â€Å"entirely interjectional† (1990:71). Indeed, such philosophers have posited a historical transition from interjections to language in which the latter allows us not only to index pain and express passion but also to denote values and exercise reason (D’Atri 1995). 2 Thus interjections have been understood as a semiotic artifact of our natural origins and the most transparent index of our emotions. Such an understanding of interjections is deeply rooted in Western thought. Aristotle (1984), for example, posited a contrastive relationship between voice, proper only to humans as instantiated in language, and sound, shared by humans and animals as instantiated in cries. This contrastive relation was then compared with other analogous contrastive relations, in particular, value and pleasure/pain, polis and household, and bios (the good life, or political life proper to humans) and zoe (pure life, shared by all living things). Such a contrast is so pervasive that modern philosophers such as Agamben (1995) have devoted much of their scholarly work to the thinking out of this tradition and others built on it such as id versus ego in the Freudian paradigm. In short, the folk distinction made between interjections and language 2. D’Atri (1995:124) argues that, for Rousseau, â€Å"interjections . . . are sounds and not voices: they are passive registerings and as such do not presuppose the intervention of will, which is what characterizes human acts of speech. † 467 468 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 4, August–October 2003 proper maps onto a larger set of distinctions in Western thought: emotion and cognition, animality and humanity, nature and culture, female and male, passion and reason, bare life and the good life, pain and value, private and public, and so on (see, e.g. , Lutz 1988, Strathern 1988). In this article I avoid such abstracting and dichotomizing traps by going straight to the heart of interjections: their everyday usage in actual discourse when seen in the context of local culture and grounded in a semiotic framework. I begin by characterizing the linguistic and ethnographic context in which I carried out my research and go on to relate interjections to other linguistic forms, showing how they are both similar to and distinct from other classes of words in natural languages. Next I provide and exemplify a semiotic framework, generalizable across languages, in terms of which the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections can best be characterized. Then I detail the local usage of the 12 most commonly used interjections in Q’eqchi’ and show the way in which they are tied into all things cultural: values, norms, ontological classes, social relations, and so on. I conclude by discussing the relative frequency with which the various forms and functions of interjections are used. In short, I argue against interpretations of interjections that focus on emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. Linguistic and Ethnographic Context While I am attempting to provide as wide a theoretical account of interjections as I can, thereby providing a metalanguage for speaking about similar sign phenomena in other languages, I am also trying to capture the grammatical niceties of Q’eqchi’ Maya and the discursive and social particularities of one Q’eqchi’-speaking village in particular. Before I begin my analysis, then, I want to sketch the linguistic and ethnographic context in which I worked. Q’eqchi’ is a language in the Kichean branch of the Mayan family, spoken by some 360,000 speakers in Guatemala (in the departments of Alta Verapaz, Izabel, and Peten) and Belize (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980). 3 Lin? guistically, Q’eqchi’ is relatively well described: scholars such as Berinstein (1985), Sedat (1955), Stewart (1980), Stoll (1896), and Chen Cao et al. (1997) have discussed its syntax, morphology, phonology, and lexicon, and I have detailed various morphosyntactic forms (encoding grammatical categories such as mood, status, evidentiality, taxis, and inalienable possession) as they intersect with sociocultural values and contextual features and as they illuminate local modes of personhood (Kockelman 3. Typologically, Q’eqchi’ is a morphologically ergative, head-marking language. In Q’eqchi’, vowel length (signaled by doubling letters) is phonemic; /k/ and /q/ are velar and uvular plosives, respectively, and /x/ and /j/ are palato-alveolar and velar fricatives, respectively. All other phonemes have their standard IPA values. 2002, 2003a, b). This article is therefore part of a larger project in which I examine how intentional and evaluative stances are encoded in natural languages and the relations that such stances bear to local modes of subjectivity. Alta Verapaz, the original center of the Q’eqchi’-speaking people who still make up the majority of its population, has had a unusual history even by Guatemalan standards. In 1537, after the Spanish crown had failed to conquer the indigenous peoples living there, the Dominican Friar Bartolome de Las Casas was permitted to ?pacify the area through religious methods. Having succeeded, he changed the name of the area from Tezulutlan (Land of War) to Verapaz (True Peace), and the Dominicans were granted full control over the area—the state banning secular immigration, removing all military colonies, and nullifying previous land grants. In this way, for almost 300 years the area remained an isolated enclave, relatively protected by the paternalism of the church in comparison with other parts of Guatemala (King 1974, Sapper 1985). This ended abruptly in the late 1800s, however, with the advent of coffee growing, liberal reforms, and the in? ux of Europeans (Cambranes 1985, Wagner 1996). Divested of their land and forced to work on coffee plantations, the Q’eqchi’ began migrating north into the unpopulated lowland forests of the Peten ? and Belize (Adams 1965, Carter 1969, Howard 1975, Kockelman 1999, Pedroni 1991, Saa Vidal 1979, Schwartz 1990, Wilk 1991). In the past 40 years this migration has been fueled by a civil war that has ravaged the Guatemalan countryside, with the Q’eqchi’ ? eeing not just scarce resources and labor quotas but also their own nation’s soldiers—often forcibly conscripted speakers of other Mayan languages (Carmack 1988, IWGIA 1978, Wilson 1995). As a consequence, the past century has seen the Q’eqchi’ population spread from Alta Verapaz to the Peten and ? nally to Belize, Mexico, and even the ? United States. Indeed, although only the fourth largest of some 24 Mayan languages, Q’eqchi’ is thought to have the largest percentage of monolinguals, and the ethnic group is Guatemala’s fastest-growing and most geographically extensive (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980). The two key ethnographies of Q’eqchi’-speakers have been written by Wilk (1991) and Wilson (1995), the former treating household ecology in Belize and the latter upheavals in village life and identity at the height of the civil war in highland Guatemala during the 1980s. In addition to these monographs, there are also a number of dissertations and articles on the history (King 1974, Sapper 1985, Wagner 1996), ecology (Carter 1969, Secaira 1992, Wilson 1972), and migration (Adams 1965, Howard 1975, Pedroni 1991) of Q’eqchi’-speaking  people. The data for this article are based on almost two years of ethnographic and linguistic ? eldwork among speakers of Q’eqchi’, most of it in Ch’inahab, a village of some 80 families (around 650 people) in the municipality of San Juan Chamelco, in the department of Alta Verapaz. At an altitude of approximately 2,400 m, Ch’inahab is one of the highest villages in this area, with an annual precipitation of more than 2,000 mm. It is also one of k o c k e l m a n The Meanings of Interjections in Q’eqchi’ Maya F 469  the most remote, access to the closest road requiring a three-hour hike down a steep and muddy single-track trail. Its relatively high altitude and remote location provide the perfect setting for cloud forest, and such a cloud forest provides the perfect setting for the resplendent quetzal, being home to what is thought to be the highest density of such birds in the world. Because of the existence of the quetzal and the cloud forest in which it makes its home, Ch’inahab has been the site of a successful eco-tourism project the conditions and consequences of which are detailed in my dissertation (Kockelman 2002). While the majority of villagers in Ch’inahab are monolingual speakers of Q’eqchi’, some men who have served time in the army or worked as itinerant traders speak some Spanish. All the villagers are Catholic. Ch’inahab is divided by a mountain peak with dwellings on both of its sides and in the surrounding valleys. It takes about 45 minutes to hike across the village. At one end there is a biological station kept by the eco-tourism project and used sporadically by European ecologists, and at the other there is a Catholic church and a cemetery. In the center there is a small store, a school for primary and secondary grades, and a soccer ? eld. The surrounding landscape is cloud forest giving way to scattered house sites, agricultural parcels, pasture, and ? elds now fallow. All villagers engage in corn-based, or milpa, agriculture, but very few have enough land to ful? ll all of their subsistence needs. 4 For this reason, many women in the village are dedicated to chicken husbandry, most men in the village engage in seasonal labor on plantations (up to ?ve months a year in some cases), and many families engage in itinerant trade (women weaving baskets and textiles for the men to sell) and eco-tourism (the women hosting tourists and the men guiding them). Dwelling sites often contain a scattering of houses in which reside an older couple and their married sons, all of whom share a water source and a pasture. The individual families themselves often have two houses, a relatively traditional thatched-roof house in which the family cooks and sleeps and a relatively new house with a tin roof in which they host festivals and in which older children and ecotourists may sleep. Because of eco-tourism and the in? ux of money and strangers that it brings, there has been an increase in the construction of such tin-roofed houses, and, as will be seen, many of my examples of interjections come from such construction contexts. My data on the use of interjections among villagers in Ch’inahab comes from 14 months of ? eldwork carried out between 1998 and 2001. The data collection con4. Before 1968, what is now Ch’inahab was owned by the owner of a plantation. Q’eqchi’-speakers who lived in the village of Popobaj (located to the south of and lower than Ch’inahab) were permitted to make their milpa in this area in exchange for two weeks of labor per month on the ? nca (Secaira 1992:20). Only in 1968, when a group of villagers got together to form a land acquisition committee, were some 15 caballer? as (678 ha) of land purchased from the owner ? for 4,200 quetzals (US$4,200). This land, while legally owned by the entire community, was divided among the original 33 villagers as a function of their original contributions.  sisted in part of characterizing tokens of usage when I heard them and in part of tracking tokens of usage through recordings of naturally occurring conversations. 5 In particular, given the fact that many interjections occur in relatively nonconversational, task-engaged situations (house building, planting, playing, cooking, etc. ), trying to record them in such contexts was futile. Luckily, as will be seen, they often occur in modes of disruption (when some goal-directed action goes awry), which makes them relatively easy to notice in real-time context and their contextual regularities relatively easy to stipulate. In addition, I tape-recorded naturally occurring conversations in the households of three families once a week over several months, usually at dinnertime. 6 After I describe the forms and meanings of the interjections I will discuss the relative frequency of the various tokens collected and thereby illuminate which forms and meanings are most often used by whom. The Grammatical Form of Interjections There are four criteria by which interjections may be differentiated from other linguistic forms within a particular language and generalized as a form class across languages (Ameka 1992, Bloom?eld 1984[1933], Jespersen 1965, Wilkins 1992). First, all interjections are conventional lexical forms, or words, that can constitute utterances on their own (Wilkins 1992). They are conventional in that their sign carriers have relatively standardized and arbitrary phonological forms, and they can constitute utterances on their own because their only syntagmatic relation with other linguistic forms is parataxis—in which two forms are â€Å"united by the use of only one sentence pitch† (Bloom? eld 1984[1933]:171). They can therefore stand alone as perfectly sensible stretches of talk before and after which there is silence. Second, with few exceptions, no interjection is simultaneously a member of another word class (Ameka 1992a, Wilkins 1992). Almost all of them are what Ameka (1992a:105), following Bloom? eld (1984[1933]), calls primary interjections: â€Å"little words or non-words which . . . can constitute an utterance by themselves and do not normally enter into constructions with other word classes. † In Q’eqchi’, the main exceptions are interjections built, through lexical extension, from the primary interjection ay. In the case of ay dios, the additional 5. I also include several examples of interjection usage that occurred in the context of ethnographic interviews about topics other than interjections, for these often indicated that an ethnographic question was poorly posed or inappropriate in the local context. I also carried out extensive interviews about the meanings of interjections with native speakers (see Kockelman 2002 for an extended discussion of the relationship between form, usage, and speakers’ re? ections). 6.  Indeed, the best two accounts of interjection-like things— â€Å"response cries† in Goffman (1978) and â€Å"emblematic gestures† in Sherzer (1993)—explicitly take into account social interaction and ethnographic description. Good accounts of the discursive use of interjections are offered by De Bruyn (1998), Ehlich (1986), Gardner (1998), and Meng and Schrabback (1999). 470 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 4, August–October 2003 element, dios, is a loan noun from Spanish, meaning â€Å"god. † In the case of ay dios atinyuwa’, besides the Spanish loanword there is a Q’eqchi’ expression, at-in-yuwa’ (you [are] my father). Interjections of this latter kind, which are or involve forms that belong to other word classes, will be called secondary interjections (again following Ameka and Bloom? eld). Similarly, the English secondary interjections damn and heavens may be used as both interjections and verbs or nouns. Third, with few exceptions, an interjection consists of a single morpheme and undergoes neither in? ectional nor derivational processes (Wilkins 1992). Interjections cannot be in? ectionally marked for grammatical categories such as tense or number, and they cannot be further derived into another form class such as noun or verb. Such forms are often classi? ed as a subclass of â€Å"particles† or discourse markers (see Ameka 1992a, Fraser 1999, Jespersen 1965, Schiffrin 1987, Wilkins 1992, and Zwicky 1985). In Q’eqchi’ there are three exceptions to this characterization. First, uyaluy is what I will call a reduplicative interjection, being composed, through syllabic reduplication, from the interjection uy. Second, ay dios and ay dios atinyuwa’ are what I will call extended interjections, being composed, through lexical extension, from the interjection ay. And lastly, the interjection ay may undergo further derivation into a delocutionary verb (becoming ayaynak, â€Å"to cry or yell continually,† often said of dogs howling), which may then undergo normal verbal in? ection for grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, person, and number. Lastly, although it is not a criterial feature, many of these forms are phonologically or morphologically anomalous, having features which mark them as odd or unique relative to the standard lexical forms of a language. For example, unlike most Q’eqchi’ words, in which stress falls on the last syllable (Stewart 1980), the interjection uyaluy has syllable-initial stress. Similarly, while reduplication is a common morphological process in Q’eqchi’ (Stewart 1980), the reduplicative interjection uyaluy is derived through a nonstandard morphological form. While many Q’eqchi’ words involve a glottalized alveolar stop, the interjection t’ is also implosive. 7 Whereas the Spanish loanword dios is usually phonetically assimilated in Q’eqchi’ as tiox when used as a noun, in the interjection ay dios there is no devoicing of the initial consonant of this noun (i.e. , /d/ does not become /t/) or palatization of its ? nal consonant (i. e. , /s/ does not become /x/). And the interjection sht differs from ordinary Q’eqchi’ words in using /sh/, rather than a vowel, as a syllabic (see Bloom? eld 1984[1933]:121). In short, it is clear from the number of quali? cations that interjections, like most linguistic forms, are dif? cult to characterize with necessary and suf? cient conditions (see Taylor 1995, Zwicky 1985). Nevertheless, they may simultaneously be differentiated from other form classes within a particular language and generalized as a form class across languages. 7. Often called a â€Å"dental click† (Wilkins 1992) or a â€Å"suction stop† (Jespersen 1965:90). Readers who speak some Spanish may have noticed that many Q’eqchi’ interjections look similar to Spanish interjections—ay (dios), uy, ah, eh, sht—and even to English interjections (sh[t] and t’). While I have no historical data that would attest to such a claim, given the history of sustained linguistic contact between speakers of Spanish and Q’eqchi’ via the colonial encounter and between speakers of Spanish and English this should come as no surprise. The one good account of interjections in Spanish (Montes 1999) discusses only a small range of the discursive functions of interjections and focuses on the internal state of the speaker. As I will show, however, the meanings of some of these interjections in Q’eqchi’ seem to bear a resemblance to their meanings in Spanish, as far as can be discerned from the comparative data. In this way, these â€Å"loan interjections† show that almost any linguistic form may be borrowed (see Brody 1995) with some maintenance of its meaning. The Meanings of Q’eqchi’ Interjections  Although interjections are relatively easy to characterize from the standpoint of grammatical form, there is no framework in terms of which one may order and compare their meanings—that is, the classes of objects and signs that they index (and thereby stand in a relationship of contiguity with) and the types of pragmatic functions they serve (and thereby may be used as a means to achieve). In what follows, I frame their use in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. I will begin with an extended example through which the framework will become clear. The Q’eqchi’ interjection chix indexes loathsome objects in the situational context. For example, when picking up his bowl of food from the ground, a man notices that he has set it in chicken feces. â€Å"Chix,† he says, scraping the bowl on the dirt to wipe off the feces. His wife, herself responsible for the chicken, then takes his bowl for herself and gives him a new one. Similarly, when opening the door to her house early one morning, a woman notices that the dog has vomited right outside the doorway. â€Å"Chix,† she says, and her ? ve-year-old son comes over to look. She tells him to scrape it away with a machete. Like most interjections that have indexical objects in the situational context, this interjection serves to call another’s attention to the object. 8 Relatedly, and as a function of responsibility assessment (husband 1 wife 1 child), it directs another’s attention to what must be cleaned up, avoided, etc. The interjection chix may also be transposed to index a sign denoting or characterizing a loathsome object (see Buhler 1990). In such cases of sign-based transposition, ? the interjection is in a relationship of contiguity with a 8. Montes (1999:1293) notes that most of the Spanish interjections she examined â€Å"seem to be associated with seeing. We ? nd that a large number of the interjections [ah, oh, uh, ay, oy, uy] used in the conversations examined co-occur with directives to ‘see’ or ‘look at’ or as a response to these directives. † k o c k e l m a n The Meanings of Interjections in Q’eqchi’ Maya F 471 sign that denotes or characterizes the object or event in question (rather than being in contiguity with the actual object or event, as in the usage of chix just discussed). In other words, it is as if the speaker were inhabiting the frame of the narrated event (Buhler 1990). In this way, ? the interjection chix indexes not just loathsomeness but also signs that refer to or predicate qualities of loathsome objects. Insofar as the denotatum of such a sign has the same qualities and values as the object itself, the modality of contiguity (being able to taste, touch, see, or smell the object in question) is suspended while the ontological class of the object (loathsomeness) is maintained. For example, in telling a story to a group of  men about a friend who was bitten by a poisonous spider while working on a plantation in the lowland area of Guatemala, the speaker describes the pus blisters that rose up on his friend’s arm. â€Å"Chix,† says one of the men listening. The other men laugh, and before continuing his story the speaker adds that the pus blisters took two weeks to heal. Like most interjections that undergo signbased transposition, such usage often serves as a backchannel cue, indicating that the speaker is listening but cannot or does not want to contribute to the topic at hand (Brown and Yule 1983:90–94; Duncan 1973; compare the usage of mmm or jeez in English). Lastly, the interjection chix may be transposed to index an addressee’s relation of contiguity with a loathsome object. In such cases of addressee-based transposition, the situational indexical object is transposed to a person other than the speaker. The speaker’s sign is audible (a relation of contiguity) to the addressee, who is in a relationship of contiguity with the object. In other words, it is as if the speaker were inhabiting the ad? dressee’s current corporal?  eld (see Buhler 1990, Hanks 1990), and, again, the modality of contiguity is suspended while the ontological class is maintained. For example, a mother watching her three-year-old son approach a dog that is defecating wormy stool calls out to him â€Å"Chix. † The child stops his advance and watches from a distance. In this most addressee-focused way, the sign is used by a parent to index that a child is within reach (typically tactile) of a disgusting object and serves as an imperative not to touch the object. Interjections are primarily indexical (see Peirce 1955) in that they stand for their objects by a relationship of contiguity rather than by a relationship of convention (as in the case of symbols) or similarity (as in the case of icons). 9 Although the indexical modality of interjections is emphasized in this article, the symbolic modality is always present in at least two interrelated ways. First, and trivially, the interjection itself has a standard9. If interjections were iconic, then they would be expected to resemble their objects. The problem with this, as exempli?  ed by Kryk-Kastovsky’s (1997) argument that interjections are the most iconic of all linguistic elements expressing surprise, is that one needs to know what â€Å"surprise† looks like when usually our only indication of surprise is the interjection or behavior itself. However, interjections as indexical of situational and discursive objects do in certain cases have iconic modalities of meaning (see, e. g. , the discussion of ay, ay dios, and ay dios atinyuwa’ below). ized but relatively arbitrary form that is conventionally used by members of a given linguistic community. Second, interjections conventionally stand in a relation of contiguity with particular classes of objects. These conventional classes of indexical objects are present in two ways. First, across interjections, one may characterize what semiotic class of objects is being indexed. Second, in the case of any particular interjection, one may characterize what ontological class of objects is being indexed. Besides indexing objects or signs in the immediate context, interjections have pragmatic functions: they serve as a means to achieve certain ends. For example, chix variously serves as an attentative (when nontransposed), a back-channel cue (when undergoing sign-based transposition), and an imperative (when undergoing addressee-based transposition). Both the objects indexed and the pragmatic functions served (see Silverstein 1987) are integral aspects of the meanings of interjections. Finally, interjections may index more than one object at once. In particular, they may index objects, signs, internal states, and social relations. In what follows, I will refer to these distinct types of indexical objects as situational, discursive, expressive, and social, respectively. Situational indexical objects are the objects or events in the immediate context of the speech event. Discursive indexical objects are the signs that occur in the speech event. 10 Together, situational and discursive indexical objects are the most stable co-occurrence regularities that interjections possess and therefore the only ones that are easy to tabulate. Expressive indexical objects are the intentional stances of the speaker—the putative mental states, whether construed as â€Å"cognitive† or â€Å"emotive. †11 Lastly, social indexical objects are the various social roles inhabited by the speaker or addressee (gender, ethnicity, age, etc. ) or the social relations that exist between the two (status, deference, politeness, etc. ). For example, chix may index not only a loathsome object in the situational context but a social relation (parentchild, husband-wife, raconteur–appreciative listener) and, in many cases, an internal state (â€Å"disgust†). And the interjection ay not only indexes a painful object in the situational context or an unexpected answer in the dis10. This is not quite the standard distinction between â€Å"text† and â€Å"context† (Montes 1999 and Wilkins 1992). For example, while it is tempting to put sign-based transposition into the discursive context for the purposes of schematizing the data, sign-based transpositions make sense only in terms of the qualities of the objects referred to by the sign indexed by the interjection. In contrast, an unsolicited response such as a dubitive is directed at the truth of another’s assertion rather than at any particular quality of the state of affairs predicated by that assertion. For this reason, dubitives belong to the discursive context and sign-based transpositions to the situational context. 11. Whereas interjections creatively index expressive indexical objects in that the interjection is often the only sign of the internal state in question, they presupposedly index situational and discursive indexical objects in that both interjection and indexical object are simultaneously present in context (see Silverstein 1976 for this distinction). This difference in semiotic status (presupposing/creative) maps onto a putative difference in ontological status (world/mind). 472 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 4, August–October 2003 cursive context but also an internal state (pain) in the expressive context and a role in the social context (in particular, female gender). Many interjections index signs in the discursive context in that they co-occur with (or serve as) a response to an addressee’s previous utterance or a nonresponse. In the case of a response, the use of an interjection occurs after and makes sense only relative to the addressee’s previous utterance. For example, the interjection ih indexes an addressee’s previous statement and serves as a registerative, indicating that the speaker has heard and understood the statement. In the case of a nonresponse, the interjection may either elicit an addressee’s utterance (and thereby occur before it) or occur in the midst of the speaker.

Technology Development Essay Example for Free

Technology Development Essay The causal link between development and historical time is often contested, although there is persuasive evidence of this link. Therefore, this essay will have the following structure: first of all, theoretical justification of the claim that historical time is connected with development will be given; secondly, several case studies will be analyzed; and finally, the counterarguments will be discussed and refuted. Starting with the theoretical explication of the link between historical time and development, it is necessary to admit that power in international relations has been defined differently in different historical eras. For example, once military capabilities were the only measure of a state’s power; nowadays, a variety of economic, social, and cultural indicators contribute to a country’s position on the international arena. Power, in turn, is associated with development, being its cause and consequence at the same time: only developed countries can attain power, which later accelerates their economic development through providing access to resources and capabilities of other countries. As concerns case studies that prove this point, American involvement in World War I and World War II will be analyzed. These wars have had a significant impact on the economic conditions of the United States, although they were not started or incited by America, therefore can be regarded as external historical influences. Different war involvements have had different influence on the U. S. economy. The legacy of the World War I is associated with the Great Depression; on the contrary, US entry in the World War II boosted economic growth. The World War I was not the main reason for the Great Depression, but almost all causes of this economic disaster are directly or indirectly connected with the war. For instance, if we speak about agricultural sector, during the war the government was subsidizing farms and paid absurdly high prices for wheat and other grains, but when the World War I was over, the federal government abruptly stopped their policies to protect farmers. As the result, agriculture suffered from such an unbalanced approach. Moreover, foreign trade suffered significantly. The Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922, Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 and a number of other lawsuits increased import tariffs without any economically sound reason. The result of the abovementioned tariff changes was that European businesses, devastated by the war, could not sell their products on the U. S. market in necessary quantities. It is possible to perceive the American entry into the World War II as an event that has actually ended the Great Depression in this country. Due to large numbers of citizens enlisted in the army, unemployment rates fell to record low levels during the war. Soldiers received decent salaries and were eagerly spending their money after the return from the battlefield. Strengthened consumer spending fueled growth and was a sign of restored consumer confidence. Large sums of defense spending pulled the U. S. economy out of the Depression for the ample reason that such fields as defense and security are very labor-intensive and created thousands of jobs to further decrease unemployment. The necessity to manufacture war supplies had given rise to a powerful military-industrial complex. While wars have had varying overall effects on the U. S. economy, they definitely fueled the development of the military-industrial complex. Wartime production of the military-industrial complex has been soaring throughout the American history. The military-industrial complex came to play a significant role in the overall structure of the economy. It is quite self-evident that the complex’s raison d’etre is the production of arms and equipment for subsequent use in military operations. Thus, military operations following the World War II have only strengthened the America’s leading position on the international arena, which in turn provided for beneficial trade agreements, migration of skilled labor to the U. S. , and a voice in international institutions. All the aforementioned factors are directly linked to economic development. Coming back to the link between the World War II and economic development, several other factors have to be mentioned. War machine demanded scientific innovations, so the war stimulated many important fields (Ruttan, 2006). The Marshall Plan was introduced after the war and helped to secure markets for numerous American products by providing financial help to devastated European countries. International monetary arrangements were reconsidered. Due to the spurt of economic growth and economic devastation of Europe, America became the world’s superpower. War is not necessarily an economic stimulus to the victor, but there was no destruction on American soil, so the U. S. was prosperous in the post-war era. The U. S. got involved in the World War II only at the closing stages of the conflict, when the victory over fascism was secured by its European allies. The U. S. entry in the World War II boosted the growth of the military-industrial complex, and that was one of the major reasons behind the decision to engage in it. This is an example of how a state can take advantage of historical circumstances to boosts its development. There are several strands of counterargument to the statement that development is connected with historical time. The most important strand argues that the development is associated solely with the country’s internal resources and capabilities: for example, natural resources are of greater importance for development than global historical conditions. However, there are examples that disprove this theory. For instance, Japan has very limited range of available natural resources, and their dependency on foreign energy sources is almost total. However, due to historic factors such as defeat in the World War II and Japan’s occupation by the Allied Powers, Japan adopted Western principles of state-building and social organization. Despite lack of natural resources, rapid westernization and modernization following the World War II allowed Japan to develop the most cutting-edge high-tech industry and become the second largest economy in the world. Therefore, the claim that internal resources are more important than historical time with regard to development does not hold. While the claim might have had some credibility in the past, when all important processes were confined to the borders of nation state, globalization changes the nature of those processes by reshaping all fields of human activity ranging from manufacture to governance. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that there is a strong link between development of a given state and global historical conditions. References Ruttan, V. W. (2006). Is War Necessary for Economic Growth? Military Procurement and Technology Development. New York: Oxford University Press.

Values Practice Issues Within Mental Health Nursing Practice

Values Practice Issues Within Mental Health Nursing Practice Using the values identified in the attached book (empathy and importance of self expression) review prepare a 2000 word discussion and analysis of values practice issues within mental health nursing practice. Introduction This essay aims to explore some issues around values and practice in mental health nursing. The essay builds upon a previous piece of work undertaken as a formative assignment, a review of a book read by the author, which raised some key points which may be important in mental health nursing practice. The process of uncovering these issues, in response to reviewing and reading a work of fiction, was one which led to a connection of ideas, from what the book presented, and from the author’s personal experience, life experience, and clinical experience and learning to date. The identified issues are to do with compassion, empathy and the importance of self-expression. These are all issues which the author believes are very much taken for granted in everyday life, but which become very significant for users of mental health services, and for mental health service providers, because they affect many areas of the person, their experience, and the therapeutic relationship. This essay will explore these issues in the light of some of the published theory and debate on these topics, and the author’s own point of view and experiences. Discussion It would seem that within mental health nursing, the relationship between the mental health nurse and the client is very important, but this relationship is based on certain values which must underpin nursing care (Eagger et al, 2005), and certain needs or requirements that the client might feel in relation to the nurse. Nurses working within a framework of values is no new thing, and values (and ethics) have always underpinned medicine and healthcare (Eagger et al, 2005). According to Svedberg et al (2003), â€Å"Mental health is created by the interwoven process of one’s relationship to oneself and to others†, which would suggest that the relationships the client forms with anyone involved in supporting mental health are doubly important. The client may find self-expression important for themselves, but also they will require compassion from the mental health nurse. The nurse, in turn, may be challenged by the client’s self-expression, and may find it hard to feel compassion or to empathise with the client at times. One of the challenges of providing compassionate care and even for the mental health nurse to experience compassion is the supposed relationship which some authors have found between perceived suffering and caregiver compassion. Schulz et al (2007) suggest that there are links between perceived suffering and the level of caregiver compassion. If this is the case, then it could be argued that some mental health nurses who do not feel or display compassion are doing so because on some level they do not perceive or believe the client to be truly suffering, or to be worthy of compassion. This would raise an ethical issue, because all the patient’s needs should be met, no matter what the ‘personal’ response to the client. However, this could be a lack of perception on the part of the mental health nurse. Akerjordet and Severinsson (2004) discuss the issue of emotional intelligence in nursing, a concept which affects the nurse-patient relationship, particularly within mental health nursing. Salovey and Mayer (1990) define emotional intelligence as â€Å"the ability to monitor ones own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide ones thinking and actions† (p 185). In their qualitative study, Akerjordet and Severinsson (2004) found four dominant themes about emotional intelligence in mental health nursing â€Å"relationship with the patient; the substance of supervision; motivation; and responsibility.† This would suggest that emotional intelligence on the part of the nurse is important within mental health nursing. Akerjordet and Severinsson (2004) suggest that emotional intelligence â€Å"stimulates the search for a deeper understanding of a professional mental health nursing identity† and that â€Å"emotional learning and maturation processes are central to professional competence, that is, personal growth and development.† (p 164). Therefore, the mental health nurse would need to develop the emotional intelligence to understand why they are finding it hard to feel compassion for the client, and to take action to remedy this, and to act in a sensitive and supportive way towards the client, even if they do not truly feel compassionate towards them. Shattell et al (2007) carried out research on the therapeutic relationship within mental health services, and found that clients expressed experiences of the therapeutic relationship under the following themes: relate to me, know me as a person, and get to the solution. â€Å"A therapeutic relationship for persons with mental illness requires in-depth personal knowledge, which is acquired only with time, understanding, and skill. Knowing the whole person, rather than knowing the person only as a service recipient.† (Shattell et al, 2007 p 274). This would suggest that the mental health nurse should be motivated to develop an empathy with the client through this knowledge, and should actively engage in seeking out ways to know and to understand the client. This may relate back to the issue of emotional intelligence, because the mental health nurse needs to know themselves very well, and to understand themselves and their professional persona (Akerjordet and Severinsson, 2004) b efore they can then go on to get to know and understand, and empathise with, the client. Hamilton and Roper (2007) discuss the concept of insight, looking at its theoretical underpinnings, and the fact that it is problematic in mental health nursing because it can be difficult to have insight into patient’s experiences of mental illness. Insight is seen as part of the process of getting to know and understand the client, and from this, developing a knowledge of their mental illness, including diagnosing their particular mental illness (Hamilton and Roper, 2007). However, developing this insight is made difficult by problems such as the perceived difference in power between caregiver and client, and the expectations of ‘patient behaviours’ (Hamilton and Roper, 2007). This would suggest that the mental health nurse needs to see each patient as an individual, as unique, and to take the time to truly get to know the person and their experience of mental illness. Definitions of mental illness, and labels, can make this harder, for the nurse, and for the cl ient as well, who fears being reduced to his or her disease rather than being seen as a person who is ill (Hamilton and Roper, 2007; Shattell et al, 2007). Research by Shatell et al (2006) emphasises this point. In their study, clients raised a number of issues around being understood by mental health caregivers, and it was this concept of being understood which seemed most important in developing an effective therapeutic relationship. Some of these concepts include: feeling important; establishing connections, and being on the same level (Shatell et al, 2006). Research by Svedberg et al (2003) found similar results, and in their study â€Å"the patients described how the feeling of mutuality in the relationship with the nurse was important for the promotion of health processes. Mutuality was achieved by doing things together and by having a dialogue with each other.† (p 451). This author feels that these ideals can be properly achieved by mental health nurses who take time to get to know the client and who develop empathy with the client through focusing attention on them. The patients wanted to feel understood in Shatell et alà ¢â‚¬â„¢s (2006) study. â€Å" Feeling important was a major consequence of being understood. Being understood made patients feel like human beings rather than being treated like a number or being treated like in a factory. Participants wanted to be treated like human beings, not as sick, mentally ill persons; like persons, not a set of diagnoses â€Å" (Shatell et al, 2006 p 237). This could be viewed as a consequence of the compassion and self-awareness of the nurse as a professional, and of their ability to see the client as an individual, to not be prejudiced by anything about them, especially not their illness. This is very important. This author believes that compassion and empathy develop through getting to know the client properly, and that these all enhance the therapeutic relationship. Shatell et al (2006) also suggest that clients feel important when they know the nurse has been thinking of them at times other than face to face contact, and this is something to think of for practice, particularly in relation to the conversations that nurses have with patients. It is also important that mental health nurses develop proper listening skills, which would also allow them to develop compassionate understanding, and support the client in expressing themselves (Freshwater, 2006). Encouraging self-expression is an important part of nurses getting to know their patients, it would seem, but self-expression is not easy for many people. People with mental illness are often negotiating a range of different sense of what constitutes their ‘self’ (Meehan and Machlachlan, 2008). â€Å" For example, a professional woman becomes a mother and wife or ‘homemaker’ when she leaves the office for home. In changing from one self to another type, her multiple self voices renegotiate their hierarchy and positions and create a coherent self story consistent with the role of mother and wife.† (Meehan and Machlachlan, 2008). These negotiations can be problematic for the person with mental illness, and this just provides one example of how complex understanding the self can be, which makes self-expression similarly challenging. Yet it would be worthwhile to develop activities and actions which would sup port this. It may be that there are ways that mental health nurses can encourage or support self-expression and the development of caregiver understanding of the client. For example, Raingruber (2004) discusses the use of poetry in child and adolescent mental health, as a means of self-expression, arguing that poetry has the power to allow clients to develop self awareness and to express their feelings. Raingruber (2004) suggests that â€Å"The complexity, power, and beauty of language within poetry allow the expression of intense human experiences† (p 14). While there are drawbacks and limitations to the therapeutic use of poetry, it might be that this offers one kind of opportunity for self-expression, on the part of the client, and empathy, on the part of the mental health nurse. â€Å" When an appropriate moment arises, poetry should be used to help clinicians, nursing students, and clients become more aware of and open to possibilities.† (Raingruber, 2004 p 16). However, this author believes that the mental health nurse would need some skills in this area, or to be someone who is perhaps comfortable with using or writing poetry themselves, if they were to use it to any great extent with clients. Feen-Calligan et al (2008) make similar assertions about using visual art in supporting mental health users who are substance misusers. Feen Calligan et al (2008) found that â€Å"As the women learned to verbalize their feelings and reflect on their situations through interpretative interactions with visual art, they gained insight into their feelings and issues they faced in their recovery from chemical dependency.† (p 287). This research seems to show that using visual art and image processing allowed the women to fully express their feelings in ways they had not been able to before (Feen-Calligan et al, 2008). Again, some kind of knowledge or skill on the part of the nurse would be necessary. Both of these examples are of arts-related activities, and relate strongly back to the formative assessment and book review. It might be that there is great scope within mental health nursing to encourage self-knowledge, self-expression and mutuality through the use of creative arts an d fiction. Certainly this would provide a way for nurses to relate to clients more readily, to be on their level, and to talk in terms and metaphors that they are familiar with. Conclusion It would seem that underpinning mental health nursing are a number of core values which need to be more explicit in the discourses around the profession and in the practices of those within it. Svedberg et al (2003) state: â€Å"The most important goal of nursing care is to promote the subjective experience of health. The health promoting efforts of mental health care nurses must be aimed at creating encounters where the patient will be confirmed both existentially and as an individual worthy of dignity.† (p 448). The core values of mental health nursing should orientate towards this kind of confirmation of worth on the part of the healthcare provider for the client. Eagger et al (2005) state: â€Å"Organisations, too, would benefit from a clear, values-based statement that staff at all levels can identify with. Institutions encouraging a culture of care can contribute significantly towards creating a healing environment for staff as well as patients.† ( p 28). This would be particularly relevant for mental health nursing and mental health services, and might signify and important area for future practice development. Undertaking this exploration has shown to the author the need for self-awareness and emotional intelligence on the part of mental health nurses, as a prerequisite for developing true compassion and empathy. Fostering self-expression amongst mental health services users, providing opportunities for this, and supporting them by paying attention and understanding them, is also important. While some experiences so far might suggest that in certain contexts and situations, this might be difficult to achieve, it should be the goal that we all strive for, and these are core values which should underpin all of our practice. References 214727 Akerjordet, K. and Severinsson, E. (2004) Emotional intelligence in mental health nurses talking about practice International Journal of Mental Health Nursing 13 (3) 164-170 Benner, P. 2000. The wisdom of our practice: thoughts on the art and intangibility of caring practice. American Journal of Nursing. 100(10):99-105 Busfield, J. 2000 Rethinking the Sociology of Mental Health, Blackwell, London Castledine, G. 2005. Recognizing care and compassion in nursing. British Journal of Nursing. 14(18):1001 Eagger, S., Desser, A. and Brown, C. (2005) Learning values in healthcare? Journal of Holistic Healthcare 2 (3) Feen-Calligan, H., Washington, O. and Moxley, D.P. (2008) Use of artwork as a visual processing modality in group treatment of chemically dependent minority women. The Arts in Psychotherapy 25 287-295. Freshwater, D. (2006) The art of listening in the therapeutic relationship. Mental Health Practice 9 (5). Hamilton, B. and Roper, C. (2006) Troubling ‘insight’: power and possibilities in mental health care. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 13 416-422. Meehan, T. and MacLachlan, M. (2008) Self construction in schizophrenia: a discourse analysis. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory Research and Practice 81 131-142. Pilgrim, A. Rogers, D. 2005 Sociology of mental health and illness 3rd edition. OUP, Buckingham Salovey, P. Mayer, J.D. (1990) Emotional intelligence Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, 185-211 Schulz, R., Hebert, R.S. and Dew, M.A. (2007) Patient Suffering and Caregiver Compassion: New Opportunities for Research, Practice, and Policy. Gerontologist, v47 n1 p4-13 2007 Raingruber, B. (2004) Using poetry to discover and share significant meanings in child and adolescent mental health nursing. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing 17 (1) 13-20. Shattell, M., Starr, S. and Thomas, S.P. (2007) Take my hand, help me out: Mental health service recipients experience of the therapeutic relationship. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing. 16(4):274-284. Shattell, M., McAllister,S., Hogan, B. and Thomas, S.P. (2006) â€Å"She took the time to make sure she understood.† Mental Health Patients’ Experiences of Being Understood. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing 20 (5) 234-241. Svedberg, P., Jormfeldt, H. and Arvidsson, B. (2003) Patient’s conceptions of how health processes are promoted in mental health nursing. A qualitative study. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 10 448-456.

Profiling and Police/Community Relations Essay -- Profiling and Police

Scientific Methods Scientifically, profiling and police-community relations are comprised of a two-fold focus. The first focal point concentrates on attitudes members of a community have about profiling in accordance to actions conducted by police officers upon them in the course of their duties. The second focal point concentrates on the profiling of police officers, as completed by early intervention systems, in an effort to reduce complaints from members of the community. The literature on the attitudes which community members have about profiling states that race, personal experience, and media framing influence the public’s perception (Graziano, Schuck, & Martin, 2010; Weitzer & Tuch, 2002). The literature on early intervention systems is demonstrative of how such systems can become critical management tools, tailor-made for addressing behavioral and management issues, within both the individual officer and in the locations where they work, to reduce complaints by residents of the community (Macintyre et al., 2008). A review of the literature establishes multiple components of each focal point. Hypothesis Profiling of community residents by law enforcement officials and profiling of police officers by early intervention systems impacts police-community relations. The research will be best conducive employing a time-series, quasi-experimental design. The researcher is choosing to conduct an exploratory research experiment utilizing an interrupted time-series, quasi-experimental design. Data will be collected from a comparison group through pretests and posttests, from surveys, interviews, and statistical analysis. There will be a fixed time frame in order to calculate and analyze the findings. Pro... ...., Prenzler, T., & Chapman, J. (2008). Early intervention to reduce complaints: An Australian Victoria Police initiative. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 10(2), 238-250. doi: 10.1350/ijps.2008.10.2.77 Murphy, K. (2009). Public satisfaction with police: The importance of procedural justice and police performance in police-citizen encounters. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 42(2), 159-178. doi: 10.1375/acri.42.2.159 Tyler, T. R., & Wakslak, C. J. (2004). Profiling and police legitimacy: Procedural justice, attributions of motive, and acceptance of police authority [Abstract]. Criminology, 42(2), 253-282. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-9125.2004.tb00520.x Weitzer, R., & Tuch, S. A. (2002). Perceptions of racial profiling: Race, class, and personal experience [Abstract]. Criminology, 40(2), 435-456. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-9125.2002.tb00962.x

Reflections on Our Wounded Identities in Law :: Free Essays Online

Reflections on Our Wounded Identities in Law Inspired strongly by Nietzsche’s thesis of the thwarted will to power and ressentiment, Wendy Brown claims in her book, States of Injury, that a variety of feminist projects, despite their good intention, reflect and reinforce inadvertently the sexualized and masculinist character of the states, politics, and cultures. The inscription of the gendered identities in legal and political discourses reaffirms the historical injuries constitutive of those identities. Influenced by postmodern feminism, Brown seeks a non-binary, non-oppositional alternative discourse for sharing power instead of being protected from the power or seeking revenge and punishment. The author’s suggestion to stay away from the identity politics and self-victimization seems timely and well-addressed especially when social conservatives sharply capture this aspect and label it as â€Å"victim feminism.† Then the question is, how should we translate the author’s recognition into legal ref orms for gender equality? How do we at the same time avoid undermining the previous achievements in gender equality made by the efforts of liberal, radical, and socialist feminists? To discuss this issue, we may start by examining the area of feminist jurisprudence and looking into several Supreme Court cases, in which we can find the unfortunate side effects of relying on the state. Law has been one of the most critical fields to which feminist theorists have paid a great deal of attention. Law’s relation to women and its role in advancing feminist agenda have been fiercely discussed and debated by many prominent feminists. Among them, Catharine MacKinnon is well known for her radical perspectives on the law. Assuming inequality rather than equality between individuals, MacKinnon argues that women are not equal to men due to the unequal power distribution. According to MacKinnon, since â€Å"law is male,† it will reinforce existing distributions of power â€Å"when it most closely adheres to its own highest ideal of fairness.†[1] Her critics, however, point out that her radical theories tend to over-privilege the power of law and such power would be reinforced â€Å"when it is targeted as the main site for feminist politics to raise women to the male standard.†[2] This criticism seems precisely in line with Brown’s theme in Sta tes of Injury. It is the male position that MacKinnon desires. The desire is the thwarted will to power, or ressentiment, in the words of Nietzsche. By articulating their grievances in terms of equal rights and confining their struggle to litigation and lobbying, according to Diane Polan, women are giving an approval to the basic social order and giving up the battle for more radical challenges to society.

American Revolution Essay -- Essays on American Revolution

American Revolution One of the most important facets of any revolution is violence. This is often a response to the heightened repression or other intolerable demands from the government against its people. The American Revolution is no exception. Following the Seven Years War, England need to recover some of their finances which were lost due to the war. Parliament achieved this by the taxation of the American colonies; the Stamp Act of 1765 is an example of this. This act resulted in outrage from the Colonies and led to rioting, rhetoric, and the formation of the Stamp Act Congress. These actions quickly led to the repel of the Stamp Act; however, there were numerous new taxes levied to take their place. The Americans continued to object strongly to these new measures and formed organized political groups such as the Committee of Corresponding and the Sons of Liberty. These groups not only demanded less severe taxes, but Colonial representation in Parliament. When England denied them representation, the Colonists decided to fight their colonizer for political freedom. Making the American Revolution the first anti-colonial, democratic revolution in history. With the battle cry of â€Å" No taxation without representation†, Americans went to war and it is from this violent uproar that the United States of America was born. The â€Å"thirteen† colonies which would later become the Unites States of America were originally colonies of Great Britain. By the time that the American Revolution took place, the citizens of these colonies were beginning to grow weary with Britain’s rule. Rebellion and discontent were rampant.. The main reason for their revolt against England was the taxation issue. The reaction against taxation was often violent and the most powerful and articulate groups in population rose against the taxation. Then in October of 1765, colonial representatives met on their own for the first time and decided to mobilize forces against their Mother country. From this point on, events reached the point of no return for the colonies. In December of 1773, the Boston Tea Party occurred as a direct response to the much-hated Tea Act. In 1774, the First Continental Congress met and formed and began to raise issues which would later stimulant local organizations to end their fidelity for England. However, not everyone favored the revolutionary moveme... ... to using arms after a decade of fighting verbally, was because both sides finally became aware that force alone would decide on the issues which divided the empire. In April 1775, the battle of Lexington occurred, closely followed by the battle of Concord. â€Å"These two very important bloodshed served to evoke the sprit of the American patriotism†. The Second Continental Congress met on May 10, 1775 and George Washington was elected commander of the patriotic forces. He along with several other generals would led their men for the defense of America and the freedom she stood for. By early 1776, Americans were ready to denounce any allegiance to the British crown. By spring of the same year, all royal governors had been relieved of office and replaced by America’s makeshift government. The Congress itself expressed sovereign powers. In July 1776, Congress met and adopted the Articles of Confederation. Under the articles, the central government was very weak and the states held most of the power, but it was a solid beginning. After Shay’s Rebellion, the Articles were disowned and the Federal Constitution was written, 1787. It is still the basic law of the United States of America.