An Ordinary Boy

Example of Alphabetic Poem : A Boy Named Alexander

Speech Analysis: "Look For Me In The Whirlwind or A Storm" by late Marcus Mosiah Garvey, in Harlem, New York in the year of 1924

THE 5 CANONS OF RHETORIC

In order to discuss the five canons of rhetoric, we must first define what it is mean by rhetoric. Generally, rhetoric can be defined as the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. This includes the five canons of rhetoric. As stated by the Roman philosopher Cicero and the unknown author of Rhetorica ad Herennium, the canons of rhetoric are the five overlapping divisions of the rhetorical process which are invention, arrangement, style, delivery as well as memory. These five canons of rhetoric constitute a system and guide on crafting powerful speeches and writing. More than that, it is also a template by which can be used by the others to judge how effective rhetoric it is for one speech.

INVENTION

By knowing the definition of rhetoric, it is time for us to discuss the five canons of rhetoric in a more precise elaboration by analysing it using the chosen speech. As for the first canon of rhetoric which is invention, it concerns with the finding something to say in the speech. Similarly, it also means discovering of valid or seemingly valid arguments in the speech. As concerns with the chosen speech, Invention can be traced by saying that, the speaker was intended to raise up the issue of black people who were being enslaved for years. Not only that, he was also deliberately promoted the idea of black people is actually also a great creature on earth who deserves a better life conditions. This can be proven by looking at the following lines.

I unequivocally rejected the racist assumption of much white American Christianity. Namely, that God had created the Black man inferior, and that he'd intended Negroes to be a servant class, heavers of wood and drawers of water. Well, I predicated my view of man on the Doctrine of Imago Dei, "All men, regardless of color, are created in the image of God".

Now, from this premise comes the equality of all men and brotherhood of all men. The Biblical injunction of Acts 17:26 reminds us that he created, of one blood, all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and is most interested in brotherhood within his own race. Because if Negroes are created in God's image, and Negroes are Black, then God must, in some sense, be Black!

Apart from raising certain issues to be the central point of the speech, Invention also can looked in the perspective of selecting who is going to be our audience. This can be understood by looking at the relationships between the central point of the speech and the targeted audience. This is because, by selecting the right audience is actually can give a huge impact in the outcomes of the effectiveness of one speech. Regarding the selected speech, we can assume that, the speech was intended to be delivered to a targeted group which was Black people as the issues being raised up were relating to the Black people’s life. Therefore, this had gradually contributed to a better outcomes of the speech which was creating the awareness of Black people’s rights among them.

ARRANGEMENT

Moving on to the next canon of rhetoric which is arrangement, it is mainly about how we organise the ideas within the speech’s structure so that it will have a maximum effect on the audience. Usually, most of the speeches are using the same rhetorical orders and appeals which are introduction to the speech, body of the speech along with the conclusion of the speech. Based on the Garvey’s speech, he arranged his speech in a well manner rhetorical appeals. He started his speech by drawing his audience’s attention towards the history of Black people which included racist assumptions towards them as well as Black people slavery. This somehow managed to attract the audience’s attentions as i`t close enough for them to feel the graveness and severity of what White people had done to their life. Intended for this point, Garvey did a great job at getting his audience’s attentions by using several rhetorical appeals such as giving historic background along with some of quotes from the bible. This can be proven by looking throughout the speech. For instance, the following except really informs us regarding the historic background of Black people.

For two hundred and fifty years we have struggled under the burden and rigors of slavery. We were maimed, we were brutalized, we were ravaged in every way. We are men. We have hopes, we have passions, we have feelings, we have desires, just like any other race.

The cry is raised all over the world of Canada for the Canadians, of America for the Americans, of England for the English, of France for the French, of Germany for the Germans. Do you think it unreasonable that we, the Blacks of the world, should raise a cry of Africa for the Africans?

Apart from stating the historic background, we also can identified several quotations from the bible that Garvey cited in order to proof his statements. For your information, by quoting several bible’s verses, Garvey gradually influenced his audiences to believe whatever he was saying as most of Black people at that time greatly had faith in their God as it gave them endless strengths for a brighter future. One of the examples of bible’s quotations is as below.

The Biblical injunction of Acts 17:26 reminds us that he created, of one blood, all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and is most interested in brotherhood within his own race.

From this premise, he was consciously convincing his audiences that being a black person was not a wrong doing and instead of blaming God for creating them in black colour, they should be proud of who they are. He then proceeded his speech’s arrangement by provoking his audiences to stand up and fight for their freedom and their rights. In order to provoke his audience, he most of time used the rhetoric logical statements to let and encourage his audience to think about whatever he was saying. For instance, the following sentences really caught his audience’s attention and somehow enhanced their understanding on Garvey’s speech.

We are not going to be a race without a country. God never intended it, and we are not going to abuse God's confidence in us as men. We are men, human beings, capable of the same acts as any other race, possessing under fair circumstances, the same INTELLIGENCE as any other race.

Now, Africa's been sleeping, not dead, only sleeping. Today, Africa's walking around not only on her feet, but on her brains.

You can enslave, as was done for 300 years, the bodies of men. You can shackle the hands of men. You can shackle the feet of men. You can imprison the bodies of men. BUT YOU CANNOT SHACKLE OR IMPRISON THE MINDS OF MEN!

Apart from using this type of logical statements, he also most of the time asked his audiences by using the rhetorical questions as he wanted to spark the right emotion among them. The reason why he used rhetorical questions in his speech was mainly because he wanted his audiences be cognitively motivated as well as spiritually motivated for striving a better future. One of the rhetorical questions that had been asked by Garvey in his speech is as stated below.

“The cry is raised all over the world of Canada for the Canadians, of America for the Americans, of England for the English, of France for the French, of Germany for the Germans. Do you think it unreasonable that we, the Blacks of the world, should raise a cry of Africa for the Africans?”

“Because Africa's created millions and countless millions of Black men and women, in war and peace, whose luster and bravery outshine that of any other people, so why not see good and perfection in ourselves?”

Referring to this example, we can assume that it is undoubtedly had affected the audience’s understanding and feeling towards Garvey’s speech, as it significantly stimulated and persuaded the audience to think about the rational of Garvey’s speech and further accepting it. While Garvey was trying to conquer the audience’s attentions, acceptance and trust, he then deliberately progressed his speech’s arrangement by stating his real intentions throughout the speech. These intentions were actually the body of the speech. As mentioned earlier in the speech summary section in this paper, one of the main ideas of this speech was promoting “Black Nationalism” among black people not only in America but all around the world. This can be proven when he repeatedly mentioned about the supremacy and hegemony of Negro regarding their right for their own land namely Africa as well as the needs for black people to unite. The following excerpt is one of the best example of evidences of Garvey’s intention in encouraging Black people nationalism.

We love the white race, not for social fellowship, but for the common brotherhood that God intended we should live. What satisfaction can anyone get in being happy and see his brother wallowing in filth, dirt and disease? How can you be happy living in luxury and your brother's living in disease, and then when you try to help the one out of the disease, the subtle culprit talks about disloyalty?

Black men at Carthage, Black men of Ethiopia, of Timbuktu, of Alexandria, gave the likes of civilization to this world. Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto God, and Princes shall come out of Egypt.

Those classes, nations, races, have been quite quiet for over four centuries... who have merely born abuse, insult, humiliation,... whose forbearance can only be compared to the Prophet Job as likewise lifted his bowed head and raised it up to God's skies, and likewise cried out, "I am a man and demand a man's chance, and a man's treatment in this world!"

Similarly, this speech was also intended to provoke all Black people to support Africa redemption from the invader. As we go through the biography section earlier in this paper, we already got a glimpse of idea about who Garvey was during his glory years. Therefore, alike his political movements in the real life, he purposely included the idea of Africa redemption in his speech. This can be proven by looking at the following excerpts.

“Well, the Belgians have control over the Belgian Congo which they cannot use. They have not the resources to develop, nor the intelligence. The French have more territory than they can develop. There's certain parts of Africa in which you cannot live at all, so it is for YOU to come together and give us a United States of Africa.

“Our critics say that the race problem will be solved through higher education, through better education, then Black and white will come together. That day will never happen until Africa is redeemed. Because if those who, like W.E.B. du Bois, believe that the race problem will be solved in America through higher education, they will walk between now and eternity and never see the problem solved.”

Last but not least, this speech was also intended to encourage Black people to embrace the world of knowledge to be part of their culture in order to strive for a better future. Garvey believed that Black people would be honoured and credited if only if their true embracement towards knowledge was depicted and illustrated by achieving various achievements. Being described and illustrated as this far, we must bear in our mind that intention and invention is slightly different. As mentioned earlier, invention is about discovering the “idea” of what we want to say throughout the speech while intention is concerning to something regarding the idea but in a “well-defined” and “achievable” just like the Garvey’s intentions in the body part of the speech.

As any other speeches, Garvey’s speech also has its own conclusion. At the end of his speech, he once again was restating his three main ideas from the body part of the speech which were promoting Black Nationalism, stimulating Black people to support for the Africa redemption as well encouraging Black people to put knowledge at the first place in their life. This can be proven by looking at the following excerpts.

“Let no voice but your own speak to you from the depths. Let no influence but your own rouse you in time of peace and time of war. Hear all, but attend only to that which concerns you. Your allegiance shall be to your God, your race, your country.”

“Remember that the Jew in his political and economic urge is always first a Jew. The white man is first a white man under ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. So you can do no less, BE BLACK, BUY BLACK, THINK BLACK, AND ALL ELSE WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF!”

“There is no height to which you cannot climb without the active intelligence of your own mind. Mind creates, and as much as we desire in nature, we can have through the creation of our own minds. And today being scientifically the weaker race, you shall treat others only as they treat you.”

As overall, Garvey had brilliantly arranged his speech to a maximum level in ensuring his speech had a value and was persuasive enough to persuade his audiences. The speech maintained its ability to gain the attention from the audience by feeding continuous amount of information that was sought from the audience.

STYLE

Apart from invention and arrangement, style is also one of the five canons of the rhetoric. For this term, it can be explained as the art of idea’s expression. In other words, style addresses how ideas will be said throughout the speech by using language. Usually, a speaker will have to deal with various rhetorical appeals in this perspective which includes ethos, logos, and pathos. The reason why it is said so is mainly because, in order to appear as a good speaker, he has to confirm that his words in the entire speech are well addressed. Pathos is often aligned with style is because figurative words are often employed to persuade others through emotional appeals. Apart from that, style also can be related to the usage of ethos as one’s style often establishes one’s authority and credibility. Not to forget, Logos also is usually being used in style as it is used to give a perfect reasoning towards whatever statements in the speech.

Regarding the Garvey’s speech, it can be assumed that he managed to use all the modes of persuasion (ethos, logos, pathos). This is because, from the beginning of the speech till the end of it, he most of the time managed to capture the audience’s attentions as he really brilliant in coming up with great and persuasive sentences throughout the speech. This will be explained deeply in the later section of this paper.

DELIVERY

Once the speech is ready to be said out loud, a speaker must focus on how to deliver it in a very effective way. This somehow bring us to the fourth canon of rhetoric which is delivery. Delivery means the way we deliver the speech orally. For your information, the way a speech is delivered is considered as a crucial factor of its meaning or effect. Delivery also can be understood as the usage of voice and gesture in the presentation of the speech.

Therefore, based on the Garvey’s speech audio, we can hear that he was actually using various intonation of voices especially when he want to emphasize something. For example, most of the time, he projected his voice out loud in various tones and accentuations. On the hand, when he was praying in the middle of giving his speech, we can clearly notice the changes in the intonation of his voice. More than that, we also can say that, his voice was projected clearly, loud and in confident manner. Hence, we can assume that these changes of voice or delivery pattern is important for a speaker to be mastered as it also contributes a major factor in giving a better impact towards his audiences.

MEMORY

Memory is the last canon of rhetoric. As it name, it suggests the need for a speaker to memorize a complete speech for delivery. This is because, memory back in times was a sign of intelligence in oral cultures. However, it is no longer to be perceived as it was. Concerning the Garvey’s speech, it is sadly to inform that we are unable to affirm whether he memorized or not his speech as it requires us to watch the video format. Unfortunately, there is no video of him delivering this speech. There is only the audio format of this speech. Therefore, we can only assume that, he managed to deliver his speech in a smooth arrangement without leaving any part of the speech. On the other hand, we can also assume that he already had the memory of whatever information that he put in his speech. It is said so as memory is not only focusing how one memorise his speech, but also how he put the information into the speech. This is because, we can assure that he clearly knew what he was going to say throughout his speech as a great of information like historic backgrounds and bible’s quotations were cited in his speech.

*Sorry if there is any wrong with my explanations*

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, by Nazirul Ikram

Denotation

Semantic: Denotation & Referential

Before I start writing this note, I humbly admit that before I enroll this course, I never thought a language can be this precisely examined. This includes those branches of a language’s knowledge which are phonology, morphology or even from the perspective of semantic. With the guidance and some examples from the video that I have watched, I personally believe that this video can be a great medium for us to get an overview of what semantic is actually. Therefore, I would like to share some of the interesting facts and knowledge that I acquire from it.

First of all, we have to know that, semantic is about how people organize and attribute meaning to words. More than that, semantic also means the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions. For your information, semantic can be categorized into three types which are word semantic, sentence semantic as well as utterance semantic. As for this video, it only explains to us concerning the word semantic. This type of semantic discuss about the phenomenon of meaning in nature language by means of defining the nature of word’s meaning.

In every language, there are words like “tree”, “run” and “red” which seem to have an obvious relationship to objects and events as well as descriptions of things in the world around us. For example, a child who learns his native language is actually learning it in association with observable items and situations as well as events. This simple analogy and fact can give rise to an overly simple idea about what “meaning” is. A language is consisting of a large number of words and each of these words has a direct correlation with something outside of language, which is its meaning.

For your information, there is a definable relationship between a word and an object which is denotation. Denotation identifies the central aspect of word meaning, which everybody generally agrees about. For instance, words that are listed in the dictionary are actually universally defined so that people will agree on certain words. Let’s use the word “home” as an example.

What do you think when someone said “home”? Is it a bungalow? A house? A flat? A condominium? These might be yours answer but the truth is that, all of us know that “home” is actually “a place where one lives”. Thus, if we want to communicate with one another through a language, it must be that all of us have the same “idea” or “concept” associated with each word. To be clearer, we must first identify and understand what relationship between “words”, “concept’ and “meaning” is. This can be done by referring to the triangle below.

Figure 1: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "WORD", "CONCEPT" & "OBJECT"

From Figure 1, we are now know that there is a bond between word and concept as well as object. Those bonds are specifically known as “association”, “reference”, and “meaning”. Referring back to the video that I have watched, it primarily explains to us about what “reference” and “concept” are. Therefore, in this note, we are going to explore the relationship of “reference” first before we move to the “concept” relationship.

“Reference” or “referential” discusses the relationships between a word and an object. It defines how people assign meaning to the relevant entities. For example, when we hear someone said a sentence:

“Look at that magician, he is weird”

We undoubtedly can identify or recognize which “magician” that person is talking about without given a hint or a pointed finger. Based on this example, it shows us that we can actually refer or attribute meaning to the main entity that expressed by the linguistic expression by using certain properties.

This example actually represents one of the three types of references which is definite reference. This type of reference is an act of identifying entities through linguistic expressions which is categorized by certain properties. Some of the properties include:

Definite Determiner	The, our
Pronoun	They, I
Name	John
Adverb-Location	There, here
Adverb-Temporal	Yesterday, tomorrow

As for the case of “that magician”, the word “that” is actually the property of the linguistic expression which allows us to identify which magician that person is talking about. In this case, the property belongs to definite determiner.

Moving on to the second type of reference, it is known as indefinite reference. This type of reference informs us how people indicate the word’s meaning without depending or focusing on the individual features of the reference, but only on the features of the class to which the reference belongs are relevant. This might be a bit difficult for us to understand what indefinite reference is. Thus, let’s look at this example.

“Many of us do not understand what indefinite reference is all about.”

From this example, we know that some of us cannot digest what indefinite reference is about. However, do we know the exact person? No, we do not. We just assume there is someone among us who do not understand this subject. That’s it. Not more than that. Therefore, by using the property “many” which is indefinite determiner, we are actually able to identify the relevant of reference or entity. But still, we do not know the exact person as we only focus on the features of the class to which the reference is belonging is relevant. Here are some properties of indefinite reference.

Indefinite Determiner	A, many
Pronoun Indefinite	Everyone, someone
Adverb-Location	Anywhere
Adverb-Temporal	Sometime, anytime

Apart from definite and indefinite reference, there is one more reference which is called as generic reference. This type of reference occurs when there is potentially referring elements such as nouns do not pick out a particular entity but refer to a class of reference. Most of the time, this reference is indicated by the absence of the definite or indefinite properties. Let’s take a look at this example.

I like flowers.

I like your flowers.

I like some flowers.

These three sentences represent for each type of references. For the first sentence, it is completely generic reference as the referring noun “flowers” does not indicate a particular type of flower. It solely implies flowers. As for the second and third sentence, these two sentences on the other hand have its own property that allows hearer or speaker to refer to a relevant entity. For example, the noun phrase of “your flowers” and “some flowers” indicates different denotations. This can be understood by viewing in the perspective of definite reference and indefinite reference. Take “your flowers” for example, which it is included with a definite determiner. Thus, it is surely categorized as a definite reference as it informs us which flowers that person likes. While for the “some flowers” case, even though it indicates a certain entity of reference, it still does not focus on individual feature. It only states the class of which the reference is belongs to.

Having discussed the type of references, the central question that arises here is how to define these various types of references. One of the definable ways is known as the “naming” view. This view takes a position that the word is a name for an object which its meaning is reference. For instance, Shila Amzah is a name for herself and its meaning can be referred as a reference in a real life.

However, this view seems to be lacking as there are words that do not have a particular object or reference to be referred in a real life such as happy, hungry or pure. Hence, we need a more sophisticated view that relates words and entities that able to explain those abstract words. For your information, reference is only one dimensional meaning. The other dimension is referred as sense or concept.

Knowing the fact that we already go through what “reference” relationship is all about, we must now know that not all words can be associated with a particular object or mental image as some words have a range of meaning greater than any single association. This is because, “reference” relationship alone cannot fully describe the word’s meaning as it is a complex thing.

This is the time where “sense” or “concept” comes to play an important role in explaining to us the complexity of meaning association process that takes place in our mind. For example, when we hear or read a word, we often form a mental picture of what the word represents and so we are able to associate “concept” with a mental picture. It is easier for us to form a mental picture for words such as “DOOR” and “CAT”. For instance, what mental picture do we form when we hear or read a word of’ DOOR’? We might think of a folding door, a sliding door or a revolving door but still, does our image associated with what others talked?

We can picture all of these pictures in sequence but not simultaneously especially when we are in a conversation. This example informs us that the meaning of “door” is more than what is included in a single image. Apart from that, it also indicates us that our knowledge of this word is much more than the ability to relate them to single objects. One of the direct relationships and definable ways on how concept and sense happens in our mind is by looking at the onomatopoeia perspective. Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it represents. For examples, “buzz” word comes from the sound made by bees. However, not all onomatopoeia words in this world same. Another perspective to be viewed is iconicity perspective. It uses the imagery in linguistic science. To be more precise, it refers to the properties of some linguistic symbols.

Though word’s meanings are said to be designed via concepts in our mind or sense, still we conscious based on what forms these concept and sense take. Concepts have the status of mental categories because they classified experiences and provide knowledge about entities which falling to them. But what is the best way of characterizing the conceptual categories. One of the answers would be the condition. For example, human and animal are happen to be important to us. Thus, we identify them with full significant in our concept. Next answer would be the prototypes. Prototypes explain to us how our mind categorizing various entities but under one class. The best example would be “cat”. Lion, tiger, and leopard are also examples of cats. But why our mind directly choose domestic cat as our mental picture. This is what it means by prototypes. We, ourselves pick the most suitable entity to be matched with the word used.

*Sorry is there any wrong with my explanations*

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, by Nazirul Ikram

The Enlightenment Era 1660-1789

1.1 ABOUT THE ENLIGHTENMENT ERA 1660-1789

One of the significant eras in English literary history is known as The Enlightenment era. This era happened in the year of 1660 until 1798. For your information, this era is also referred with other names such as The Augustan Age, The Neoclassical Period as well as The Age of Reason. All these names are given to this era for some specific reasons. The Enlightenment era began right after the Renaissance era in the region of Europe, England as well as America. The Enlightenment was a time in literary history when people became much more interested in trying to understand the world through rational thought and scientific observation. In other words, this was a time when some people started to demand that the world should make sense to their rational minds. They were no longer willing to accept ideas because those ideas were propounded by the Church or by ancient authorities such as Aristotle. All these explanations show us the reasons on why this era was labeled as The Age of Reason. To be clearer, people during this era had stopped asking “why” and they started to ask “how” which showed us a great shift in the way of thinking from magical and superstitious to science.

Apart from The Age of Reason, this era was also marked as The Neoclassical Period. “Neoclassical” means the new classical literature. It refers to the increased influence of classical literature upon these centuries. During this time, Neoclassical writers believed that the writers of ancient Greece and Rome had discovered the universal truths or ‘rules’ informing about life and literature. They modeled their works on the classics, imitating their restraint, rationality, and dignity. Like classical writing, neoclassical prose and poetry was orderly, clear, concise, unified, and well proportioned. Reflecting the Enlightenment era which emphasis on the society and on the human intellect, neoclassical writers chose public rather than private themes and avoided emotionalism, imaginative speculation, and expression of personal feelings.

The Augustan Age was the other name given to the Enlightenment Era. This was due to the self-conscious imitation of the original Augustan writers, Virgil and Horace, by many of the writers during this period. Specifically, the Augustan Age was the period after the Restoration era to the death of Alexander Pope. “Augustan” was applied as a term of high praise, because the Age of Augustus was the golden age of Latin literature

2. LITERATURE DEVELOPMENT DURING THE ENLIGHTENMENT ERA

From the history that we have discussed above, we could see the way of people thinking during the Enlightenment era were principally based on scientific rationalism and exemplified by the scientific method. This can be proved with the existence of an astronomer who named Edmond Halley who took the terror out of space phenomena by calculating when the comets were going to occur. He predicted it would appear in 1758, 1834, 1910, and 1986 and it did. Strangely, how did he know it would reappear at seventy-six-year intervals? Because that was the time it took to complete its orbit. From this example, we could notice that, it was such a reasonable prediction with some help from the mathematical explanation that could be accepted. Starting from this incident, people had started to change their mindset from accepting all the ideas to challenging and proving it based on scientific approaches. Apart from changing the society’s mindset, the Enlightenment era had also changed the literature history too.

2.1 CHARACTERISTICS OF LITERATURE DURING THE ENLIGHTENMENT ERA.

As mentioned above, the Enlightenment era somehow had changed the literature history which had been called as the Augustan Age or the Neoclassical period. The literature in this era could be summed up as “From the Head, Not the Heart”. This was because most of the literature texts during this period were governed by reasons and no longer seen from the point of imagination. The founder of Neoclassical movement was Alexander Pope (1688- 1744). He was the master who wrote a couple of lines that were rhymed (Heroic Couple). One of his poems was “The Rape of Lock” (1712) which informed us about the humorous condemnation of the vanities and idleness of 18^th century’s high society. From a literary standpoint, Pope was an innovator on several fronts. For one, he popularized the heroic couplet, a sophisticated rhyme scheme that suited his subject matter well. He took ordinary settings and events and made them grandiose, a kind of irony that anticipated Modernism by two centuries. He blended formal criticism into his poetry, a diffusion of generic boundaries that also strikes one as an entirely modern practice. In his own day, Pope was possibly most admired for his capable and effective translations of classic literature.

Besides that, John Dryden (1631-1700) who was also one of the pioneers during the Enlightenment era had wrote “Aureng- Zebe” which based on a contemporary account of the struggle between the four sons of Shah Jehan for the succession to the throne. Apart from that, the work of John Dryden “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” (1668) exhibited qualities of order, clarity and stylistic decorum that were formulated in the major critical documents of the age. All these examples showed us the differences between the literature from the past and the literature during the Enlightenment era. One thing for sure was the literature from the past were more passionate and consisted with a lot of imaginations while the literature during the Enlightenment era were more reasonable and pointed out the truth of the society.

Another important event during in this era was the rise of the novel. One of the best writers or novelists is Henry Fielding (1707- 1754). He wrote humour and comic novels like “Tom Jones” (1749), “Joseph Andrews” (1742) and “Shamela” (1741). Moreover, they also had Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). Most of his works are sentimental like “Pamela” (1740). Furthermore, Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768) wrote comic and meta-fictional novel like “Tristram Shandy” (1759). The book was the narration of his life story. The Gothic novel also lived at this time. All these novels involved various themes such medieval tale of love, knights as well as horror and curses.

Last but not least, the existence of the prose also was one of the important literary events during this era. For instance, Samuel Johnson was a “Man of letters”, which means a man whose personality dominates the century. He had written various proses during this era.

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, by Nazirul Ikram

International Summer University Programme

Last few months ago, I got a call from my lecturer named Madam Mahani Bt Mohd who told me about this international university programme and the best part was she had selected me to be one of the nominees before the final decision was made. Obviously at that particular time, I was extremely happy yet grateful for having this opportunity. Basically, my name is Nazirul Ikram Bin Sirozi and I have been studying in University of Sultan Zainal Abidin taking Bachelor of English Language with Communication. I am very optimistic person and looking for a better life in the future. When I got this news, I always imagine in my mind about what could this programme do with me since I am studying English language with communication. Since then, I realised that there are numerous benefits that I will get from this programme if I was one of the participants in that programme. Among the benefits that I will get from this programme are widening my knowledge and perspective, gaining independence and maturity along with gaining better appreciation of other cultures as well as my own culture.

For the first benefit which is widening my knowledge and perspective, it is mainly because of the exposure of new learning environment which is a great advantage for me to learn new things. With a new learning environment and some sort of different educational format and philosophies, I will definitely broadening my perspective on English language by looking at different angels and views on how not only the native speakers communication style but also the international English speaker communication style. There is one saying by Johan Wolfgan Von Goethe that sounds “those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own” which means that by joining this programme, I will be able to relate with what I have learned in lecture with a real-life experiences at there which I hopefully will get it through this program. For instance, in Sociolinguistics subject, I have learned about language repertoire, standard language versus vernacular language as well as how someone could express his or her ethnicity using the language. This is going to be super fantastic if I get a chance to observe these things with my own eyes during this programme so that I can share the inputs with my classmates. Thus, I strongly believe that by joining this programme, it will benefit me in terms of widening my knowledge and perspective especially on language study field.

Apart from widening my knowledge and perspective, this programme will also make me achieve better appreciation of other cultures as well as my own culture. In my perspective, I believe that by joining this programme, it will give me an opportunity to share my culture as a Malaysian among the others. This is mainly because, it is going to be completely different environment as we know eastern culture is very contrasts with western culture. This will make me acquainted with different country’s customs, people as well as region. One best thing about this programme is that, it will teach me on how to be a cultural-aware person who is able to accept others culture and be an open-minded person but still within our culture values and religion views. Besides, I will also be able to interpret what I have learned theoretically in Human Communication subject into something practical such as intercultural communication which means that when I am speaking the language of a certain culture, I will form a bridge that connects my cultural backgrounds with theirs. This unconsciously will improve my inter-cultural communication skills. Overall, by learning more about others culture will make me able to discover the differences that will help me to learn and identify more about myself. Thus, it is obviously shows us that, this programme will benefits me in terms of better appreciation of others culture as well as my own culture.

Last but not least, this programme will also make me become more independence and matured person. Living and studying abroad approximately for 3 weeks and becoming far away from my home and my parental guidance will certainly teach me to be an independence and matured person. Obviously, when I got to be there, I need to be full responsible towards myself in any decision making process. For example, if I want to do something at there, it is all about my own decision whether it is going to be good or bad to myself. From this decision-making process, it will increase my self-esteem along with my self-awareness so that any decision that has been made is not harm for me. Hence, it is obviously shows us that all these things are about survival skills that can be polished and I really think that this programme is going to benefit me in terms of independence and maturity.

As a conclusion, although there are many more benefits that I will get from this programme, I believe that the most important thing is that how this programme will give me such a strong sense of myself and understanding of things around the world. I do really hope that I will be selected to be one of the participants in this programme since this is one of what I wanted to do in my life. In general, I have to admit that this programme is so beneficial for me and others.

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, by Nazirul Ikram

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Example of Alphabetic Poem : A Boy Named Alexander

Speech Analysis: "Look For Me In The Whirlwind or A Storm" by late Marcus Mosiah Garvey, in Harlem, New York in the year of 1924

Semantic: Denotation & Referential

The Enlightenment Era 1660-1789

International Summer University Programme

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