English Language @ LSFC

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

I Love English Language

Or should that be i love english language? This isn't a personal confession, but a link to a site with some useful resources

http://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/

The Revolution Will be Televised (or Twittered)

There is a possibility that Thursday's exam could include social networking as a focus (this is pure speculation and not based on any insider knowledge, so it could quite easily be child language, representation, variation, etc.). The prescriptivist angle might be that social networks dumb down interaction, or encourage laziness (think 'damp spoon' and other Aitcheson metaphors).

Social networking sites are driving the reporting of the unfolding events in Iran, especially as the Iranian authorities are imposing reporting restrictions on foreign journalists and broadcasters. It would be useful research to look at twitter, youtube and other sites to see how information is being disseminated by the protestors and consider this in light of arguments about prescriptivism/descriptivism and the validity of social networking . Take a look at the channel 4 report on a British web designer whose invention is (unwittingly) playing a part.

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/briton+caught+up+in+iran+internet+wars/3215337

There is also this article on Mashable

http://mashable.com/2009/06/15/twitter-iran-election/

A Postscript to Prison Slang

Follow this link to read the Guardian's take on prison slang. Try and find articles that address one of the unit 6 topics and post them to the comments section.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/jun/09/criminal-slang-tut-polari

Monday, 15 June 2009

ENA6 Possible Topic

In his post of 07 May, Dan Clayton (http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-05-12T20%3A32%3A00%2B01%3A00) suggests that the language of social networking might be a possible topic. There is a good article in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/07/luv-is-all-around-myspace

Try and find other articles/editorials and post these to the comments section, with a short note explaining what you found important about the text(s) that you have submitted. Question 1c will ask you to evalaute a popular text about a language issue.

Friday, 12 June 2009

The Language of the Internet

Can you identify the word formation of the following internet based terms. Are there any other examples that you can add to the list?

keylogging (often called keystroke logging) is the practice of noting (or logging) the keys struck on a keyboard, typically in a covert manner so that the person using the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitored. There are numerous keylogging methods, ranging from hardware- and software-based to electromagnetic and acoustic analysis.

Spyware is computer software that is installed surreptitiously on a personal computer to collect information about a user, their computer or browsing habits without the user's informed consent.

A Trojan horse, or trojan for short, is a term used to describe malware that appears, to the user, to perform a desirable function but, in fact, facilitates unauthorized access to the user's computer system

A website (or web site) is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address in an Internet Protocol-based network

FAQ: ([fæk] or F A Q) frequently asked questions that often appear on the help pages of company websites.