Essay topics

[jemmarose]

Did anyone do question 11(first essay topic) about taboos? If so what were your paragraph topics?

[val0002]

yeah i did, mine were:
1) war and death are still taboo - we use euphemisms to cover them up
2) we use political correctness to make discriminatory language more accurate thus that is still clearly taboo
and 3) not too relevant, but language can be taboo or not depending on the context, so if its between friends itssometimes not really, but if its like tony abbott it is..
what did you do?and how did you get the two subsystems in?

[seikowatch]

I did.
I said that taboo is dying out.
1) Changes in attitudes of australian. Most of our humour comes from rebelling from taboo..so it's slowly becoming more acceptable.
2) Americanisation of language, influence of songs,tv shows movies
3) not sure on this paragraph...but this was more focussed on racism and that it is becoming less "hypersensitive" to use racial slurs because as australians we are becoming more aware and comfortable of our identity as a multicultural society and so it is gradually becoming more acceptable... I'm not sure on this one, but I did have an article to back it up ad I didnt have time to do a full discussion so yeah...

[Geepers]

I did the taboo question too... i didn't even read the others!

i did
1) sex / religion taboo may be weakening
2) these areas still hold taboo in more public contexts
3-6) political correctness (sexism, racism, disability, appearance)

[seikowatch]

you had 6 body paragraphs?

[Geepers]

yeh i did... massive time struggle i finished with about two seconds on the clock...
at the expense of terrible spelling and handwriting!

[seikowatch]

that's heaps! How long did it take you to do the transcripts? How big were your paragraphs?

[Geepers]

ummm... i think around 35-40 on each... i had around 43 mins for the essay. some were bigger than others... not too extreme though

[ashyy05]

I did taboo too!

1) how attitudes are relaxing towards swearing
2) how discriminatory languages are being used often (esp. amongst younger generations)
3) how we still have restrictions agaisnt discriminatory language (Racial Discrimination Act and media examples such as Majak Daw)
4) how we have restrictions for swearing (Swearing fine in Victoria and protests against "Angry Boys")

Unfortunatley i dont think i mentioned 2 subsystems :S so thats gonna screw me over

[val0002]

yeah the two subsystem thing was stupid, what else could you put in? is context pragmatics?

[thushan]

Hmm. Perhaps you could do morphology in a discussion of non-discriminatory language. Stuff like 'students with Asian backgrounds" (where a qualifier replaces the pre-modifier - a front-focus mechanism) is morphological.

[val0002]

Oh, I did for one example - in chairperson/firefighter/police officer instead of chairman fireman policeman the derivational morpheme man is ellipted, but i'm not sure they'd accept just one example.
yours sounds a lot better, i'm sure you'll get over 25!

[thushan]

LOL! I didnt do that essay topic. I did the Aussie English one.

[val0002]

hahaha why? I couldn't think of three paragraphs for that one..

[thushan]

My understanding of taboo wasn't strong.

Oh -

1) SAE --> Anglo
2) Ethnolects --> Immigrant
3) Indigenous Aus English --> Aboriginal.