Where do we see evidence of linguistic imperialism in the Anglophone world?

In today's world, English is continuing to dominate all over the world in several aspects and it continues it's stronghold as being the world's leading language. One major reason why English continues to take over the world is because the language represents a fine and a prestigious level of education in which no other non-English speaking country can match. In my opinion, I feel that education is the main reason that English is becoming more widespread all over the world. The top 10 universities in the world are all in either the United States or United Kingdom in which both countries hold English as their main language.

Studying at a high quality university can definitely boost your chances in the future to live a high quality life after graduating. A great education opens up the doors for people as they have a much higher chance at finding jobs (than people who have an average or below average education) and with further chances of finding employment, the better the chance you have for making money which you can then use for many great things. Universities in United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada (4 of the best countries in the world to study) all want their students to know their native language English to a certain level and a certain degree. Therefore, if you want to get into a good education, the first step is to have a good fluency level of the English language. Education has made  the English language a barrier for people to cross over if they want education at it's best, in order to get into universities in English speaking countries, you must take the IELTS or TOEFL (if you hold passport of a non English speaking country) which are tests to see the level of one's proficiency at the language. If a person let's say doesn't know much English at all but he can find cures for diseases or has the thinking and logic to that of the levels of Albert Einstein! he still will need to take tests and needs to have a good fluency of the language in order to get into the university despite the fact that he is presumably very intelligent.

The majority of the 200 highest rated universities in the world are situated in an English speaking country and therefore English is needed as without a good level of English, you will struggle to survive in living in places like Australia or UK and also all the studies and teaching are in English so basically the knowledge needs to be transmitted in the English language. One can study in their own language but the quality of what they learn in whatever their own main language may be will be nothing compared to what they would learn in English. The countries in which the best universities are located in tend to be the most developed and wealthier nations in the world so therefore after graduating, English will be very helpful as you can get a good quality job in a developed nation which will boost your earnings. The upside of English is that it can get you always a step ahead at getting a great education and future but the downside is that if one learns English and forgets his own culture, then a culture and language both are dying in this world.

Paper 1 Commentary - Text 2

The given text is an article on the internet written by Oxfam International educating us on the food crisis that countries in West and Central Africa are likely to face. This article explains the different ways that Oxfam is trying to help out and solve the likely issue in Africa by reaching out to as many people as they can. The article tries more to publicize Oxfam itself more and show how it is dealing with the issue at hand.

There isn't a certain type of person or a group of people that this article aims at but it could mostly be aimed at people who are rich because since they have a lot of money, it can be easy for them to contribute to a problem like this or people who are have been following the food crises in Africa (as it has happened many times in the past) so that they can also catch their eye and convince them to help out. The purpose of this article is to let Oxfam organization themselves show what they are doing to help out on the issue while also trying to convince and persuade people to take action for this cause and donate since Oxfam is a company that takes in donations. The article is aiming to get very active with whoever they have in mind with their target audience.

This text is about Oxfam talking about the actions that they are taking to make a change with the food crisis that is happening in the Sahel region in West and Central Africa and also trying to convince us people to contribute as in the article they explain what they are doing to take action while also hoping that more people can help out on the situation. Oxfam is trying to convey their messages by bringing up the different ways how the people in Africa are suffering by bringing up the poverty there, how people are starving and all the problems of the supply of food.

The tone in this article is very serious and the article is really trying to play with our emotions here and make us feel very sad about what is going on in Africa currently. They use statistics to make this article very serious e.g. 35% of people in Niger are vulnerable to food insecurity. As this article is explaining about how bad things are in Africa, they are trying to show a very compassionate tone as well by using very dramatic words such as vulnerable or crisis. The mood as well is very sad and sorrowful as we continue to know more about a situation where people are constantly suffering every day but it can also light us up a little bit as Oxfam is showing the contributions they are making to this cause and how they are trying to change the entire landscape of the situation and also make us feel good that someone is taking action towards it and an impact is being made.

The ad uses logos as they are using statistics to let give the readers a more clear insight on the situation. The ad uses pathos as they are trying to appeal to our emotions by telling us how they are suffering and all the negatives that are ongoing and they use ethos as they are trying to tell their audience to contribute to this as it is the right thing to do although I feel the ethos is a little bit hidden in the text but it is certainly transmitted as Oxfam is showing what they are doing so it makes us feel like we should join them and take action.

The paragraph is structure with a title and then a quote in large writing saying "The humanitarian response must tackle the underlying causes of crises like this to prevent them recurring". The article gives a bit of an introduction about how it is a big issue currently and then a little sub heading "The situation in Sahel" where it explains what is going on there and then another sub heading "What Oxfam is doing" and they explain what action they are taking to solve the problem. The structure is like 1. Why we are doing this, 2. What is happening with the situation and 3. What action we are taking towards it. The article uses average size font except for it's major quote at the very start of the article. The article also has a picture of the region just to show us what the Sahel Region of Africa looks like. I feel it is a very well structured article.

I feel like overall this is an article that is trying to show how Oxfam themselves are helping out to the cause and also giving us the feeling that we should help out to the cause as well and not just Oxfam should. I feel this is an excellent article and it can lure in the reader effectively and at the end of the article make them feel like contributing to the cause and it persuades people very well. I feel like Oxfam would probably have been boosted in some way or another after posting this article because it is great at being persuasive.

Generation Like Recap

In language and literature the other day, we watched a documentary called Generation Like which was about how social media plays a huge role in advertainment. Social media today is ever getting so popular and nowadays people are using social media to get through with their identity and basically they are using social media as if it were their passport or their ID card where it displays every single little thing about them from birth place to favourite music to places they have visited.

I don't feel that social media can really empower people, social media is just used to stay in contact with friends, family etc (the only reason why I have facebook and skype accounts). Making friends of facebook or getting retweeted on twitter doesn't really empower you or change your life, sure it can make one feel better in a way but the use of the word "empower" is just overstated in the documentary. Feeling empowered would generally come when you make an impact in this world or achieve some of the highest honours in whichever field you decided to go into, social media just makes people addicted and drifts their life into a completely new world and changes their mindset and basically changes their thinking and who they really are. Social media over the years is consistently dragging along young teenagers into their own planet named Facebook or Instagram etc.
\
Teenagers feeling empowerment are basically just feeling happy and rewarded by social media from earning likes or followers and getting followers and likes will surely make you happy but it does not make a living for you in life and empowerment can possibly come through facebook or twitter because some people may have low self esteem so likes or followers can make them feel better overall and make them happier. I feel that teenagers are addicted to social media and are really basing their life around social media and the apparent love and passion of just using social media just make the people themselves feel empowered and has their self esteem boosted.

Reflecting on the FOA

My Further Oral Activity was about how African-Americans are being stereotyped in the media through the use of advertisements. I showed how the languages of the advertisements are able to stereotype them as well as other key things such as images, facial expressions and colour.

I analyzed 3 advertisements, the first one being an ad from Maxwell House (famous coffee brand) produced in the 1950s, the second a Nivea ad produced in 2011 and the third being an ad from Elliots paint and tarnish promoting white paint which was produced in the 1930s.

In my presentation I feel like I did well in the criteria B which was analyzing how the language is used. As I was preparing for this presentation, I was always focused on this criteria and read the language of the ads word by word as I wanted to take away as much as possible from this criteria and score well in this category. Although overall aside from this criteria I feel pretty disappointed in my FOA performance as I feel like I did not do very well as I hoped for in criteria C and criteria D as I could have spoken with better usage of language and I could have definitely organized my work more, something which I should have done all this time preparing as I didn't structure my FOA much. I felt like my presentation was kind of rushed and I was a little bit nervous, I need to slow down my presentations a little bit more and just take it in easy overall.

I chose my 3 ads because I felt that all of the 3 ads enhanced the stereotyping of African-Americans effectively and they had a lot of little things which could be analyzed and that was something I felt that I did overall a good job in. I feel like I did my best and put in my full effort to analyze the language, advertising techniques, ethos pathos logos, colour, characters looks etc.

What I can take away from this FOA is that I need to spend more time rehearsing this presentation, focusing more on how to structure the presentation and use better quality words in order to improve my grades the next time I do an FOA or IOC. I have learned how to overall be a much better speaker and presenter to this class after this FOA experience.

Changes by Tupac Shakur

Tupac's song Changes really comes out with a very powerful but yet a truthful message to all of the rapper's fellow members in his black community. This song was released in 1998 and the lyrics of the song refer to how African-Americans are constantly harassed and treated badly by the police (even been sent to jail for crimes they have not ever committed) and also all of the negative things that has been occurring in the black community from drugs to murders to poverty.

The song's music video opens up with several different pictures of Tupac himself and then plays to a black man being arrested and harrassed by a white police officer showing how blacks in the United States are treated badly by the police. As the video continues, we continue to see several glimpses of Tupac, just his face alone. We see the man greet his fellow black friends and also see him deliver a quote in an interview from a news reporter. This is the look at the quote. The only way I've been practicing my whole life, to live my life is to be responsible for what I do. I don't know how to be responsible for what every black male did, I don't know. And yes, I am gonna say that I'm a thug, that's because I came from the gutter and I'm still here. Tupac here is showing how proud he is to be a black american and represent a very corrupt, dangerous environment and community and a thug is considered among the media to be one of the worst kinds of people to come across due to the fact that thugs consistently are involved in drugs, violence, gangs etc and Tupac is proud to call himself one despite being one of the biggest music stars in the world. As the music video continues, we constantly see glimpses of black people being thrown into a jail, sitting in a cell which are two stereotypes as it is always assumed in the media that black Americans are always the ones to be criminals and put into jail. We also see the black Americans being targeted by the police and pictures of Tupac growing up. Recapping the music video we see the negative side of black Americans all through the eyes of one man, Tupac Shakur. African Americans are just portrayed in a negative way as thugs and criminals and people always having involvement in violence and Tupac is trying to show the reality in his song on how his community is consistently undermined and how the media will always portray African-Americans in a negative away and times are never going to change.

Looking at the lyrics of the song and parts of the song such as "I see no changes. All I see is racist faces", "The penititiary is packed, and its filled with blacks" are two lines trying to show how whites the opposite ethnic group are continuing to be racist towards African-Americans and that jails are always going to be full of black people even for crimes they did not even commit. Sellin' crack to the kids. "I gotta get paid," is showing how Tupac is not proud of his community and the only way they can make a living is by selling drugs to younger aged people in his community.I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black.
My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch.
Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero.
Here are even more lines referring to how his people are poor and they are all criminals, you can see how in the last line he's referring to how cops continue to harass African Americans.

Overall what we see is how African-Americans are consistently portrayed in the media as poor criminals as we see in the music video that it a lot of the time consistently takes us to a moment where we see a black man being thrown into a jail or be chased or harassed by a cop. The story of his music video is to show us how this is never going to change and forever we will be seeing more and more blacks being thrown into jail and continue to be criminals and always be undermined by the media and be stereotyped by whites. They continue to be excluded and marginalized.

Army Advertisement

The advertisement my group analyzed was of an army company trying to promote the army and hoping that people will join the army. It is the American army and it is a picture of a US troop taking a risky jump from one point to another. The picture looks like it has been set in Iraq considering that is the place where Americans troops are currently in.

This ad was targeting US citizens and hoping for them to join the army, they promote the army by stating in the text at the bottom of the page how the army can develop qualities that can help you wherever you go and whatever you do later on with your life. They use the text to say that joining the army will give you an advantage for the rest of your life and that you will definitely become successful in whatever you do after joining the army. The advertisement is political as they are wanting t have more people fight for their country and there could be a chance that this ad was posted during a time when something important with war was happening so they really needed to get win people over to join the army (there isn't a publishing date written) and it is sociological because the ad is directed to the entire society of the country and they are really pushing hard at the people.

The ad uses ethos and is it is very ethical. They are trying to give the message "You are an American, do the right thing and fight for your country". They are trying to play with the people's feelings and want them to feel as if they need to do something right away and do the correct thing. There is also logos as there is a statistic saying 9 out 10 people prefer certain qualities. The ad creates this certain ambience of determination, bold, brave and striking. It gives the people the feeling that if you join the army, you will be like the soldier in the picture who is jumping in the sun with a facial expression showing determination and carrying a gun in a strange way.

NO SMOKING!

Can you believe in 2012, 1.8 million high school students attempted to smoke?. This is crazy, this is just insane...what is it that a bunch of chemical substances rolled into one attracts the youth and ruins a part of them?. 90 percent of smokers began smoking before they were 21 and smokers can die 13-15 years before non smokers and smoking is also a big cause of depression and it eventually can cause lung cancer which results in death. These students who are smoking at a teenage age are crazy, their lungs are not even fully developed yet and they are just absolutely ruining their lungs even before its full growth. Imagine how badly the growth of a not even fully developed lung would be stunted? and just because of one little cylinder that I can throw out of the window?.

Parents what are you thinking?. You must be able to stop this, you should set a great example for your kids and not tell them to smoke and let them know what smoking causes, we all here know what it can do! that's right it can kill you! which isn't a good thing if you didn't know!. This is not only them but great for you, if you are able to stop your kids from smoking you are able to save plenty of money from it as you will stop spending money on one of the most overrated things that exist on the face of this earth!. Smoking can ruin your hygiene, your kids will smell bad everywhere, it ruins their lungs and their health. Nobody wants their kids to encounter health problems a 70 year old person would encounter when they are 30 right?. All you parents, don't you even think about smoking, its setting a bad example for your children and children always pick up on their habits of their parents and this is extremely bad if they pick this habit up from you. Teenagers who smoke out there, you must STOP immediately and fast. Smoking ruins you physically and mentally, the increase in the amount of smoking can also lead to depression and we all know smoking can cause you lung cancer and thus you can die so stop immediately smoking as it can ruin you both ways big time and start to realize that the cigarette is nothing but a little piece of cylinder with the unhealthiest substances. You must stop right now or else it will be too late and you could be finding yourself on your death bed 50 years too early!. Think about it this way teenagers, you wouldn't eat poop right, its disgusting isn't it? So same way, don't smoke cigarettes because it's disgusting and on top of that eating poop doesn't kill you (it's been proven, believe it or not) but smoking does!. So think of it as in that smoking is worse than eating poop, I am sure you guys don't eat poop right? Then if you don't eat poop then why are you all smoking cigarettes! Stop smoking cigarettes because it's even worse than eating poop!. Some of you teenagers who smoke could even become better than Michael Jordan or Bill Gates in future so you might as well stop smoking right now because you may not ever even reach that point of possible "greatness" in your life.

Say no to smoking, don't even listen to what your friends say. Look at the very top of this page and see all the bad things that could happen if you smoke right, so don't. Just say no, it's that simple, you just have to say one word and that's it. If you all don't listen to me, take a look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVLtNgAhPRg , this could be you one day if you don't listen. This video makes me feel sad, really, I seriously feel like crying. It's absolutely heartbreaking.