Roman Jakobson was a Russian American literary theorist and linguist, renowned for the structuralist approach to studying literature and linguistics. He is also known for his concept of literariness, which aims at differentiating literary and poetic language from everyday diction. As far as his structuralist approach is concerned, Jacobson believed that literary and poetic devices such as metaphors, rhymes, and rhythms overall serve as a structure. For formalism, he asserted that poetic language drew its inspiration from everyday language, but the aesthetic element within poetry was necessary ..read more

Qualitative Research Before discussing qualitative research design in detail, we have to familiarize ourselves with the differences between causal, explanatory and descriptive research methods. The causal method draws its results from cause and effect; explanatory is mainly concerned with the "why" of a research problem (people's personal opinions) and descriptive focuses on the "how" of a research problem (on statistical grounds). Explanatory research is qualitative in nature. Qualitative research method takes into account the subjective responses of the participants and an overall insight of ..read more

Introductory "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou is a poem deeply rooted in the historical struggles of African Americans, so a formalist analysis of this poem may only focus on the "birds" and the singing of the caged bird. Though the formalists were mainly concerned about the text in a poem, the very historical allusion of the struggle of the blacks to express with "freedom" stems from the text, through symbols, personification, and other literary devices used within the text. In this formalist analysis, we will see how the poetic text and the contrast it shows between the free bird and the caged b ..read more

The Fractional View of Bilingualism The fractional view (aka monolingual view) of bilingualism suggests that the knowledge and linguistic competence of two languages are separate monolingual entities of that particular person. The followers of the fractional view look at a bilingual as two monolinguals within that person, and his language competency will be compared to that of the native monolinguals. For example, the proficiency of English language of a bilingual, who is from India, will be compared to the English proficiency of a native from the US or the UK. Such a comparison is extremely u ..read more

Introductory A research process is an established framework that not only helps in the identification of a problem but also in how to approach the solution to that problem from the lens of a researcher. The journey begins from observation to search for the problems, generation of hypotheses (a problem statement that needs to be proven or disproven) when the problem is identified, testing of that hypothesis through the accumulation of relevant data, and an objective analysis of that data to draw a conclusion from it and that conclusion results in proving or disapproving of the previously genera ..read more

Introductory Censuses and self assessments are widely used tools to calculate bilingualism in an area, but these tools carry a bunch of limitations. For example, censuses may avoid division of bilingulism based on different regions, and self assessments may contain exaggerated responses from individuals. We previously learned that it was difficult to define bilingualism because it is affected by different factors, and different geographical regions will have different concentrations of bilingualism. The issues in defining bilingualism further complicate how we ought to measure it. Though the c ..read more

Introductory What is "research"? Is it about discovering something, or is it about trying to discover something. This is a simple, layman's interpretation of this often quoted word, but academia has a different but comprehensive definition for this word. Research is a systematic investigation to solve problems. Problems such as global warming, inflation, war, etc. But since we are studying language, the solutions we will have to seek for problems will mainly revolve around language. Types of Research Academic research is divided into the following: Application Pure Research: Does not solve a ..read more

Introductory Criticism in literature has been going around the text, and the author who wrote it. But criticism isn't limited to the author or his text, the era he belonged to and historical, political and economic contexts are equally important to it. Though the critics behind formalism ignored everything except text, similar to the New Critics. (Actually, formalists came before new critics. And New Criticism was itself a formalist movement in criticism.) Formalism was a movement in literary criticism that originated in Russia during Russian Revolution in 1910s. Formalism had two distinct gro ..read more

Disclaimer: My choice for optional subjects was Literary Essays and I am NOT an expert in Linguistics. Please use these questions at your own risk. But all of these questions are answered after extensive research.  2022 IIA Q1: Give one definition of language given by any linguist.  "A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates." (Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager) Q2: What makes Linguistics Science? Linguistics, by its nature, revolves around the study of a language but that study is carried out through scientific methods of observat ..read more

 Plays augmented through Ibsen's pen strike the prevalent stereotypes in a society without presenting a one-sided picture. Hedda Gabler, a play included in our course outline of UoS, showcased the exquisite psychological trauma of a woman whose "time was up". Nora in "A Doll's House" is someone who, at the beginning is someone "less than Hedda" but when she goes through few realizations throughout the play, she becomes "more than Hedda" as our teacher puts it.  Similarity between the Plays "Hedda Gabler" and "A Doll's House" share the traits of a few common characters and themes with ..read more