Find out about poverty myths, learn the social, political and economic reasons that trap people in poverty, and discover both texts that perpetuate false poverty stories, and progressive texts that call for a change in the social narrative about this modern taboo.
Come to understand the conventions of travel writing, learn a bit about the history of the genre, question why people are compelled to travel – and to write about it.
Racial stereotyping is the act of classifying individuals or putting them into imaginary boxes based on their nationality, ethnicity or skin colour. It is the oversimplification of a person of a particular race. The problem of racial stereotyping occurs when one person’s behaviour is ascribed to a group’s tendencies instead of the causes of an immediate situation.Racial stereotyping is the act of classifying individuals or putting them into imaginary boxes based on their nationality, ethnicity or skin colour. It is the oversimplification of a person of a particular race. The problem of racial stereotyping occurs when one person’s behaviour is ascribed to a group’s tendencies instead of the causes of an immediate situation.
Linguistic Economy can be defined as being economical with words/characters/phonemes. It basically means that you can convey meaning using fewer words – so why not do it?! Linguistic economy has become necessary in modern days due to our desire to be more concise and quick in our communications, particularly due to new communication technology.
From the first time we step into an English class, we’re told that the rules matter, that they must be followed, that we must know when it’s appropriate to use a comma and what it means to employ the subjunctive mood. But do these things really matter? Outside of the classroom, what difference does it make if we write “who” instead of “whom” or say “good” instead of “well”? In this section we’ll find out that in the real world it does make a difference.
Explore how changes of space, place and regional variations have created amazing linguistic diversity around the Anglophone world. Discover why people speak English differently by learning about the process of divergence.
Of all the languages in the world, why has English become the world’s lingua franca? Find out how English became the language of the global village.
In this section you’ll see how language has been used to wound, hurt, divide, oppress and dehumanize groups of people, with a particular focus on the way migrant peoples are described.
What makes a word offensive? Perhaps understandably, you may not study the language of insults too much at school! But studying language that cultures find offensive can tell you much about societies.
We have the ancient Greeks to thank for euphemism; to “eupheme” was to speak well of — or use words of good omen. On one hand, euphemisms are simply polite words that allow us to talk about things others may find offensive. But on the other, euphemisms can be used not just to soften the rough edges of life, but to conceal truth.
IB Language and Literature 2.0 