Main Assignment: Workshop
Guidelines
You are required to:
Undertake some research (concepts, explanations in literature and/or ‘real world’ examples of use)
Demonstrate understanding of relevant terms in description of language
Undertake some analysis/discussion (related to your option and particular topic, case, phenomena, text … )
Follow in-text citation and referencing guidelines (as per MA handbook)
Draw from as many scholarly references as you require (aim for a minimum of 4/5?) – not (grammar) textbooks!
Address all points requested in the instructions (read carefully)
2000 words
Submission through e-assignment
Unusual aspects of English use
Option 2: Identify one or two aspects of English language that you have noted and find surprising, unusual, unexpected, or considered to be non-standard. This may involve syntactic constructions, morphological processes, lexis, phonology or semantics. Using appropriate terminology, describe these phenomena and the unusual aspects in detail, providing examples and including the contexts in which you have heard/seen them. Demonstrate what has been said about them in the literature and identify what syntactic, morphological, semantic, phonological or lexical properties underlie the phenomena.
Objective: think about an interesting, unusual, non-standard/non-native example of current English usage and tell us about it
Describe the phenomena applying terminology seen in the course
Provide examples of use and the contexts where these phenomena are found
Explain what has been said about such phenomena in the literature (i.e. search for studies that focus on the use and see how they are explained).
Explain grammatical properties underlying phenomena
Different types of explanations/positions by scholars? What’s yours?
Examples of interesting phenomena seen in class
Morphological properties of prefix ‘un-’
‘I’m loving it…’
Descriptions of ‘interrogative structures’ in Indian English
Epenthesis
Gowaway
‘Macdonaldo’ – Japanese speakers?
‘Espain’ – Spanish speakers of English?
– If you look back through the slides and workshop activities you might find more
-Or.. think of a context you know or a feature or type of use you know
– Search for literature by understanding or figuring out the terminology used to describe it or to name it.
