This blog is an experiment in using blogs in higher education. Most of the experiments done here are the first of their kind at least in India. I wish this trend catches on....
The Blog is dedicated to Anup Dhar and Lawrence Liang whose work has influenced many like me . . . .
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Course: British Literature: Late Victorian to the Present
Total No of Hours (approx) : 29
Framework : Industrialisation, Patriarchal State and Discontents
Total No of Hours (approx) : 42
Course: British Literature: Late Victorian to the Present
Framework: Industrialisation, Patriarchal State and Discontents
Subject: MA in English with Communication Studies Credits: 4
Paper title: Linguistics Total Hours: 60
Paper Code: MEL234Max Marks: 100
The economic globalisation since the early 90s has had a consequent interest in language studies for various socio-political, communicative and technological reasons. With communication - both oral and textual - becoming crucial to widen the global impact of political and economic organisations, and the consequent struggles of resistance to economic imperialism have contributed to the renewed interest in linguistics in multiple domains – Media studies, corporate communication, advertising and marketing, anthropology, and health.In the case of India, in the wake of language becoming a major site of identity politics and the consequent interest of the state through increased funding and establishment of research centres is a testimony for the relevance and need for this paper.
Objectives
To introduce the students to the scientific study of language
oTo expose students to the locate language in a broader socio-political, and economic setting
oTo expose students to the use of scientific study of language in multiple domains
Introduction to Linguistics. Concept of Linguistics. Branches of Linguistics
Language : Definition, nature, properties and functions of language, sub-systems of language
Communication: Definition, nature, requirements and types of communication
Phonetics: Definition and branches. Brief sketch of articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics
Speech: Formation of speech. Speech mechanisms: Air stream, phonatory, articulatory and resonatory mechanisms
Classification of speech sounds: Segmentals and suprasegmentals
Segmentals : Vowels and Consonants
Classification of consonants: Place and manner of articulation, voiceless ad voiced consonants
Classification of vowels: Concept of cardinal vowels
Suprasegmentals: Stress, pitch, tone, and intonation
Semivowels and diphthongs: Formation and classification
Sounds formed using non-pulmonic air stream: Ejectives, implosives and clicks
Phonology: Definitions of phoneme and allophones. Phonemic analysis with reference to Indian languages. Distinctive feature analysis.
Syllable: Types and structure of Syllables
Morphology: Concepts of morph, morpheme, and allomorph and their relationship. Morphemic analysis. Morpheme types-inflectional and derivational. Word: Definition, types, process of word formation
Syntax:Syntactic analysis, I.C. Analysis, Phrase structure grammar, Transformational grammar, components of functions of grammar. Acceptability and grammaticality of sentences.
Semantics: Concept of meaning. Different types of meanings. Concepts of synonyms, homonyms and antonyms. Semantic ambiguity.
Introduction to semiotics: Saussure, Pierce, and Barthes; Discourse analysis and Pragmatics
Psycholinguistics: Introduction to psycholinguistics. Competence and Performance. Language acquisition in children. Major theories
Bansal R. K. and Harrison J. B., Spoken English for India: A Mannual of Speech and Phonetics. Longman.Madras, 1983.
Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. New York : 2002.
Hockett. C.F. A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillian, 1958.
Krishnaswamy, N.and Archana S. Burde. The Politics of Indians' English : Linguistic Colonialism and the Expanding English Empire. New Delhi: OUP, 2004.
Krishnaswamy, N. and SK Verma. Modern Linguistics: An Introduction. New Delhi: OUP, 2005.
Leech G. N. Principles of Pragmatics.London: Longman, 1983.
A National Conference on Changing Fabric of Intimate Relationships - Challenges to Theories and Practices in Mental Health
The Department of Psychology, Christ University, Bangalore is organizing a two-day National Conference on February 13 and 14, 2009.
The last two decades have witnessed rapid transformations in globalization and the ensuing social structure. The advent of technology has strongly impacted intimate relationships – within and without marriage. With an ever-increasing competitive Indian social scenario, one can locate intimate relations on a dynamic continuum. While the end goal of ‘settling down’ still remains a priority among majority of the Indians, the process and nature of marital and familial relations is undergoing a sea-change. Besides the changing conceptualization of ‘normative’ relationships, there is an ever-widening lens to view a variety of intimate relations. The national conference would focus on the challenges thrown up for psychotherapists/counselors/social workers by this evolving dynamics of intimate relations.
Within the broad theme of the conference, (i) an attempt would be made to closely engage with understanding the shifts in the macrosystem which have impacted the family, marital, and couples relations – how changes in the larger social system have percolated to the individuals and rippled to the subsystems of intimate relationships. Changing economies, wide-exposure to Western & technological lifestyle, erratic work-life balance, etc are making in-roads in such a way that the traditional family structure is becoming malleable to adapt itself in order to keep abreast of the times. In continuation with this, (ii) the conference would attempt to capture stories of mental health professionals from the field, who had to re-negotiate their pre-conceived notions of marital/family therapy, and in the process, learnt valuable lessons while engaging with difficult clients/families. These would be stories of experiences of psychologists/ therapist/counselors/social workers who might have had success/failure in terms of outcomes of therapy, but gained insights into renewed ways of conceptualizing intimacies. (iii) The conference would also focus on and give voice to relationships that remain in the margins of social systems, like gay & lesbian intimacies, live-in and cyber relationships. In this context of the social system being in a state of flux, (iv) the conference would also like to address the challenges faced by young mental health professionals in making a radical paradigmatic shift from individual therapy to a systemic framework. In consonance with a systemic framework, a young trainee also needs to grapple with the larger issues of gender, power, and socio-politico-cultural processes. In such a scenario, it becomes important to closely look at psychotherapeutic training in the Indian context, and how it can be garnered to meet the future challenges in this field.
Against this backdrop, this conference will attempt to explore the changing fabric of intimate relationships in order to engage with the challenges that contemporary mental health disciplines face in both the domains of theory and practice.
Conference Themes · Family structures in transition · Culture and Diversity Issues in Intimacy · Challenges to Parenting · Emerging contexts of intimacies –Work and Cyber space · Alternative Sexualities · Current challenges to mental health practice · Evolving training needs in mental health · Intimacies in therapeutic relationship · Information technology and changing human relationships
The conference will include keynote address, various theme symposia, panel discussion, and free paper and poster presentations around the themes of the conference.Deadline for submission of abstracts (500 words) for paper/poster presentation is December 7, 2008.
E mail: cfir2009@psy.christuniversity.in Conference Secretariat CFIR – 2009 Department of Psychology Christ University Hosur Road Bangalore 560029 Tel: +91-80-4012 9316/17/43
Today I woke up to one of the most memorable days of my life - Obama is the next President of the US. I have deeply admired his concern for the less privileged, values he upholds and the way he has risen to the position he is going to hold. It is not so much of his getting elected but the way it is going to inspire millions across nations, races, communites, religions for the time to come that makes me immensely happy. I am sure he is going to be a role model for many young people. Among the youth I have known, the last person i can remember who had significant influence, across demographies in India was Abdul Kalam. Obama is the next one as I see it.
(Photo taken from http://www.barackobama.com/photos/)
Central Sahitya Akademi is organising an international seminar on Raja Rao. It's happening at Senate Hall, Central College Campus on 8th,9th and 10th of November, 2008. (News from the Dean's office)
Deep Focus Film Quarterly welcomes articles, reviews and interviews with film directors. The write-ups can be of any hue, of any persuasion, as long as they are serious reflections on cinema. Manuscripts must be neatly typed in double line spacing. It is very important to include film stills to illustrate your article. Deep Focus hopes to engage in a continuing debate on various aspects of cinema through these write-ups.
About Deep Focus
Deep Focus Film Quarterly is every cinema connoisseur's delight- a film journal born out of a collective effort by a group of the most eminent filmmakers, film academicians and cineastes from India and abroad. The only cinema journal of its kind in India, Deep Focus, since its inception has been internationally acclaimed and noted for publishing some of the most in-depth and definitive articles, interviews and critiques on cinema, both Indian and international. Through essays on cinema it has constantly explored the aesthetics and cultural politics and its impact on contemporary cultural practices, politics and social behavior. Even as it offered, through the years, a platform for fresh, incisive and even radical criticism and debate on cinema and its evolving forms and breakthrough movements, Deep Focus has reflected and located emerging trends in society. By keeping its roots in the present and its eye on the horizon, Deep Focus has always strived and managed to stay ahead of the times and is one of those rare phenomenons in the magazine world, where the older issues acquire substance and vintage with the passing time and are prized and acknowledged as 'collector's items'.
Deep Focus Film Quarterly is for people and institutions who partake in its worldview of cinema as the most potent medium of expression in our times, who believe in the power of cinema- as an instrument of change and revolution, as a mirror of our society and times and as a entity of mystique. Deep Focus has a wide-reaching international subscription base with film schools, media, art, culture and research institutions, libraries and embassies as also among film directors, cinematographers, technicians, academicians, scholars, journalists, artists, persons actively involved in creative fields like theatre and advertising and most importantly, the lovers of film.
These are strange times for cinema and meanings and even, vocabularies are in flux. Even as millions of images are produced and stored every second, the language of cinema is increasingly generic. Information is continuous but all sense and reflection is suspended. In these manic times for the cineaste, Deep Focus endeavors to provide a panoramic view of cinema from across the world- the real and the digital, and cut through the excess, the unnecessary, the superficial, the jargon and provide its readers with a glimpse of the light at the core of so much chaos and a portrait of the world through the flicker of the magic lantern.
The followings are useful CALL-related electronic journals around the world. 1) ReCALL http://www.eurocall-languages.org/recall/index.html ReCALL is a new international journal published by EuroCALL that is the largest European academic association in CALL.
2) Language Learning and Technology Journal http://llt.msu.edu/ LLTJ is an electronic journal on language learning and technology that started publication in July 1997.
3) Educational Technology & Society (ISSN 1436-4522) http://www.ifets.info/ ETS is an electronic journal on educational technology. There are many on-line articles with tecnical suggestions.
4) The Internet TESL Journal http://iteslj.org/ ITESLJ is an electronic journal on Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Japan. There are many on-line articles with practical suggestions.
5) Teaching English with Technology http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/callnl.htm TET is an electronic journal for Teachers of English pulished by IATEFL Poland Computer Special Interest Group.
Formerly known as iJeLLT (Internet Journal of e-Learning & Teaching, since January 2004 until December 2007), MOJeL (Malaysian Online Journal of e-Learning in Institutions of Higher Learning, since January 2008) is devoted to the dissemination of information concerning the application of e-learning in learning and teaching. It is published twice a year on the Web. MOJeL is a fully refereed electronic journal.that publishes articles, research studies, reports, software and book reviews related to online language learning and teaching.PacCALL Journal
7) Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication http://jcmc.indiana.edu/ JCMC is a quarterly electronic journal published by University of Southern California since 1995.
8) The IALL Journal http://iallt.org/iallj.html The IALL Journal is the primary publication of the International Association for Language Learning Technology, and a subscription to the Journal is included with membership in that organization. Established in 1965, IALL is a professional organization dedicated to promoting effective uses of media centers for language teaching, learning, and research. IALL's membership represents hundreds of institutions of varying sizes and educational levels. The majority of the Journal's readers are administrators or technical support staff of language labs, ESL labs, and other centers in which technology is applied to language teaching and learning; the readership also includes language faculty/teachers who use technology. The Journal is a fully refereed professional journal, published twice yearly: in May and in October.
9) ALT Journal http://www.alt.ac.uk/alt_j.html An international journal devoted to research and good practice in the use of learning technologies within tertiary education.
10) JALT CALL Journal http://jaltcall.org/journal/ The JALT CALL Journal (ISSN 1832-4215) is an international refereed journal published from April, 2005. The Journal encompasses and builds upon the SIG newsletter, C@lling Japan, and is committed to excellence in research in all areas within the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning, while at the same time offering teaching ideas and suggestions from teachers' personal experiences. The JALT CALL Journal is published three times a year: April, August and December.
SECOND NATIONAL & SIXTH ELT@I VIDARBHA CONFERENCE ELT@I Vidarbha Chapter is organising the Second National & Sixth ELT@I Vidarbha Conference in collaboration with Dharampeth Arts and Commerce College, Nagpur on 10 - 11 JANUARY 2009
Conference Theme: “New Vistas in Teaching and Learning English”
Sub-Themes: - Integrating Technology with Language Teaching - Innovations in Teaching Of Literature - Using Web Resources for Language Enhancement - Creative Ways of Language and Literature Teaching - Teaching English for Specific Purposes - ELT for Differently Abled People - Innovative Approaches to ELT In Rural Areas - Teacher Training and Development - Current Trends in Evaluation
Call for Proposals: Proposals are invited for 15 minute paper presentations, 45-60 minute workshops and poster presentations related to the conference sub-themes or any other relevant area. The maximum limit for papers is 2000 words. Please submit your full papers, proposals for workshops or plan of posters by 20 December 2008 to any of the contact persons mentioned below. Paper presenters must also submit a soft copy of their papers either on a CD or as an email attachment.
Best Speaker Awards: As every year, this year too the best presentation will be awarded the ‘Best Speaker Award’. Only those papers which are received by 20 December 2008 will be considered for the award. Papers will be evaluated on the basis of innovativeness of idea(s), academic quality, racticability, relevance to the context and overall style.
Delegate Fees: Rs. 250 (Before 20 December 2008) Rs. 350 (After 20 December 2008) Rs. 200 (For PG, M. Phil. and Ph. D. students, Flat rate)
For registration and more details, contact any of the persons mentioned below: 1) Dr. Sandhya Nair Head, Dept of English, Dharampeth Arts and Commerce, Nagpur Mobile: 9422804091,
2) Dr. Urmila Dabir, Programmes Coordinator, ELTAI Vidarbha Chapter & Principal, R. K. Girls’ College, Jaripataka, Nagpur. Tel: (Off) 0712-2630699 Mobile: 9850393939
3) Dr. Amol Padwad Head, Dept of English, J. M. Patel College, Bhandara. 441904. Tel: (Off) 07184-252364 (Res) 07184-254805 Mobile: 9326911033 Email: amolpadwad@rediffmail.com, amolpadwad@gmail.com
