by Tai

Macbeth act 1

Witches in the early 17th century

Act 1 scene 1 begins with a dialogue about three witches meeting in an open place. They talk about meeting again an on the heath as witch 1 says “where the place” which 2 replies “Upon the heath” In the early 17 century witches were women thought to be pagans doing the Devil’s work, people believed that witches inherited magical powers from Satan in exchange for the witch’s soul. Some of these magical powers they were thought to have been shapeshifting and cursing bad luck on others. Since Macbeth was written in the 17 century the three witches that are in the first scene are likely to be the evil characters

Scene 2

King Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain and Lenox meet with an injured captain, The Captain speaks about Macbeth’s bravery in the war against the Norwegians, he says ” for brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name)”. The captain then leaves to attend his wounds and Rosse and Angus enter and King Duncan gives Macbeth the Thane of Cawdor’s title “No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive our bosom interest. – Go, pronounce his present death, And with his former title greet Macbeth.

Scene 3

in scene 3 the 3 witches meet on the heath and the first witch relates how she will torment a sailor whose wife has been rude to her which one said “a sailors wife had chestnuts in her lap, and munched, and munched, and munched: “give me” quoth I: ariont thee, witch the rump-fed ronyon cries. her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o the Tiger: But in a sieve, I’ll thither sail, And, like a rat without a tail, I’ll do, I’ll do and I’ll do. The witches then greet Macbeth (who is the thane of Glamis) with the predictions that he will be thane of Cawdor and King. Banquo asks the witches to predict the future and they tell him his descendants will be king but he will not. Angus and Rosse arrive to give news that Macbeth is to be made thane of Cawdor. Macbeth is amazed that the witches predictions have come true. Despite receiving a warning from Banquo that the witches might be leading him to evil Macbeth thinks about killing Duncan ” my thought murder yet is but fantastical”

Scene 4

During this scene, Macbeth conceals his thoughts from Banquo. Duncan’s son Malcolm reports that the rebel Cawdor faced his execution with dignity as Malcolm reports ” that very frankly he confessed his treasons, implored your highness pardon, and set forth a deep repentance”. Duncan thanks Macbeth and Banquo for defeating the rebels and enounces his eldest son Malcolm will be king after he dies “Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter The Prince of Cumberland”.

Scene 5

In Act 1, Scene 5 of William Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, in Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy a language feature she uses is personification. After the messenger leaves Lady Macbeth can not believe her luck as the king is coming to the castle to stay the night during this time she plans to kill Duncan and wishes a blanket of darkness would hide her actions” That my keen knife sees not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, “, this personification is showing she wants the dark night to hide her plans and actions to kill the king by the darkness wrapping around like a ‘blanket’ so she may not see the wound the knife makes and also so the heavens won’t watch and judge when she kills Duncan.

Scene 6

Duncan, the Scottish lords, and their attendants arrive at macbeth’s castle. Lady Macbeth says that it is her duty to be hospitable since she and her husband owe so much to their king. Duncan then asks to be taken inside to Macbeth, whom he professes to love dearly.Duncan’s speech on his arrives at the castle contains dramatic irony as not only is the “seat” (the surroundings) of the castle “pleasant,” but even the air is sweeter than that to which the king is accustomed.

Scene 7

In Macbeth’s soliloquy he thinks about killing Duncan, he is aware of the strong reasons for killing the king but has self doubt coming from his fear rom his fear of retribution both in heaven and on earth and by his likely loss of reputation if he fails. Lady Macbeth later dismiss his fears in the same tone she used earlier on in the play, by teasing her husband about his weakness and the efficiency of her plan convinced Macbeth they should go ahead with the plan. “I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” this is showing he has decided to go ahead with the plan and will work hard to succeed.

by Tai

NCEA 1.5 FORMAL WRITING-SPOKEN LANGUAGE STUDY

Hypothesis: Text messaging has more in common with speech than formal written language.

The world’s first text message was sent almost 30 years ago on the 3rd of December 1992 by engineer Neil Papworth. Since then the number of people sending texts has grown until now, where almost everyone does it. Texting has become the most popular form of communication with over 20 billion texts sent every day, with young people leading the way with this form of communication. This constant use of texting has caused it to grow and evolve from formal written English to something far closer to how we speak. We have done this by adding features previously used only in a speech into our texts such as the use of paralinguistic features, abbreviations and informal language such as slang.

Through written language we are now using paralinguistic features to express our emotions such as Emojis, Emojis were created in 1998 by Shigetaka Kurita, an engineer at the Japanese phone company. He was working on a way for customers to communicate through icons. The result was a set of 176 icons he called emoji. The name combines two Japanese words: “e” (picture) and “moji” (character). Today, more than1800 emojis exist. Emojis are those small icons—smiley faces, winking eyes, hearts of all shapes, sizes and colours made to represent emotions. We use emojis in texting to represent the emotions we are feeling, hence the name ‘emoji’ we use these just as how emotions are displayed on our face when talking face to face, in the text messaging we by using the emojis to show the emotion we are feeling in that moment, for example, one of the most commonly used emoji is The Smiling Face With Smiling Eyes ? It denotes happiness or positivity just like a smile does when talking face to face. Scientific studies have even shown that when people look at a smiley face online, the same parts of the brain get activated as when they look at a real human face. Another emoji used to express happiness is the Face With Tears Of Joy ? it is used to show laughter. We use it just like “LOL” when someone sends a joke, for example.

One reason why text messaging has more in common with speech than formal written language is Slang. Slang is commonly used in speech but never in formal written language, yet it is becoming increasingly popular in our text messages especially among young people. Slang is the use of words that are not considered standard English, it consists of words and expressions which are not be found in the dictionary and can be distortions of existing words or entirely invented terms “Lit” is an example of one of the most common slang terms in electronic communications it has been a slang term meaning “intoxicated” for over a century but lately through texting it has acquired a new meaning for exciting or really fun. a possible reason why it is used throughout texting to hep increase efficiency as it is a lot easier to text ‘That party was Lit’ than say than ‘wow that party was really exciting and fun’. Another example of internet slang is ‘ dat’ it is used as a slang term for the word ‘that’ especially among young people. We use slang because it communicates more quickly than formal language and also identifies us with a certain group of people such as age group, for example, teenagers use internet slang to when texting while most older adults use no slang or completely different slang that stays in their generation which teenagers can’t understand as easily as their everyday slang and also vice versa as most older adults find teen slang confusing or don’t understand the meaning.

Another way text messaging has more in common with speech is the use of Abbreviations, these stemmed from when texting first was invented as features of early mobile phone messaging encouraged users to use abbreviations to save time as texting was a slow process. Abbreviations are one of the few things that were used in the early days of text messaging and are still commonly used now. They can be used to express words or even whole sentences with just the use of a few letters, a text abbreviation commonly used is ‘ ROFL ‘ meaning ‘rolling on the floor laughing’ is used to signify something is extremely funny or hilarious. With just four letters this abbreviation allows us to be able to express a whole sentence therefore greatly reducing the time taken to send a text. Another abbreviation that is commonly used is ‘ SMH ‘ which stands for ‘shaking my head’ it is usually used when someone finds something so stupid, no words can do it justice.  Abbreviations use just a few letters to represent a whole sentence this means users can use them to increase the speed in which we can text.

Since text messaging was first invented in 1992 has it has grown and evolved from formal written language to something far closer to speech, this has happened through the use of paralinguistic features such as emojis and slang like the word ‘2moro’ a very common internet slang and also the use of abbreviations such as ‘ROFL’ which meant ‘rolling on the floor laughing’ all these features were previously only seen in speech until text messaging began to gaining popularity. Because texting was used so often features of speech began to be woven into it until now where text messaging has more in common with speech than formal written language.

by Tai

Text

When we have electronic conversations such as texting we drift from formal English, one way we do this is with Logograms. Logograms are a letter, symbol, or sign used to represent a word or phrase when used in texting may they may be used alone, or in combination, in my text transcript they were used in a combination as it says ” when r u cming to town?” by using logograms such as ‘r’ and ‘u’ it is a far more efficient way of saying the words ‘are’ and ‘you’ yet still with the same sound and meaning. The reason we do this is that text messaging is instant, so we change the way we write to make the words sound the same as when you speak, so we use logograms to increase the speed in what can send a reply.

by Tai

Text conversation

vc1 when r u cming to town?

vc2 4ish

vc1 cool

vc2 can u meet me outside school soon, we running out of time.

v1 do i hv to its to hot

v2 yep u do

v1uggggg

v2 yeah we can go swim after tho

v2 actually u better run we running out of time

v1 OMG u expect me to run in this heat?!

v2 seriously!

v2 run!

v1 srry not happening with bg and school clothes

vc2 why the hell r u so far away?

Vc1 u should hv came to twn earliar then we would not have this prob!!!!!

vc1 We cming to get u

by Tai

Identifying language effects

When we speak we use a variety of different language features that affect the meaning of what we say. Throughout our transcript we used verbal fillers regularly. Verbal fillers are words or phrases that we use during speaking to fill in a moment of silence between connecting thoughts or ideas. In our transcript, one speaker says “Yeah like umm your shoes are not black ” by using ‘umm’ the speaker is giving themetime to formulate what they will say next and it is also giving the person listening time to catch up and process what the speaker has just said.

by Tai

Conversation transcript

v1- yeah

v2- oh thanks for asking geezer, know what I mean

v-3 give me that! where ya been fool? making us rinse out our credits leaving you messages and dat.

v2- Mr Daws is well on the warpath with you bruv yeah

v1- coz of the bag?

v2 what bag!? cox you missed a lesson you check.

v3- give me that the bag weren’t the problem, teggsy never mentioned it, he bottled it, hey you comin over to mine later to play computa?

v1- Nah man I’m at home now, I got business i gotta run

v2- what business?

v1 – business that minds it own, I’m out.

by Christopher Waugh

This is your online portfolio

Hello and welcome to your personal online journal.

This platform has been created to enhance and enrich your learning at Mount Aspiring College. Its purpose is to provide you with an audience for your work (or work-in-progress) and you have the choice (by altering the ‘visibility’ of your posts) of whether your work on here is visible to the world, or only to your teacher.

Anything you post here in the public domain represents you and thus it’s important that you take care with that decision, but don’t be afraid to publish your work – as the feedback you may get from people at home, your peers and people from around the internet is only likely to enhance it.

Remember you can always access your class blog and all manner of resources through the Department of English main website – and by all means check out the sites of your peers to see what they’re getting up to as well.

If you have any questions for me, an excellent way to get an answer is to create a new private post on this journal. I am notified of any new posts and will reply swiftly to any queries.

Make the most of, and enjoy this new freedom in your English learning.

Righto!

Chris Waugh