Language, Perspective and Ideology

Assalamualaikum w.b.t

This week has been a very tiring week because all semester four decomers had to do the assignment that need to do the sale. Each group need to come up with the idea of the product and the sale started from 4.30 pm to 10 pm. Everyone felt very tired but we still carry on focusing towards the presentation made by two groups.

We learn about the language, perspective and ideology. This chapter stress on the perspective which students do not really understand. It is about the word choice in the writing which will indicate the stance by writer in his or her writing.

In this chapter, it considers the linguistic reflexes of differences of perspective across speakers of the same language. Based on the newspaper report on events in Soweto, it contains lot of bias. The usage of word “black” considers the writer’s perspective. For instance,” The black township of Soweto, which has been simmering.........” and also “The black hospital of Baragwanath nearby was reported.......”

The Guardian and The Times have made a different style of story because it is up to the writer’s perspective. In The Guardian, the writer uses equivocation as in the headline “Police shoot 11 dead in Salisbury riot”. The writer uses riot means that it is negative perspective. While in The Times, the writer state the positive perspective as in the headline, “Rioting blacks shot dead by police as ANC leaders meet” It is show the demonstrative as ANC leaders meet.

In conclusion, the usage of words or semantic will determine the writer’s perspective in the writing. So, it will influence the story of the particular writer about the particular story towards the readers.

V FOR VENDETTA

Assalamualaikum w.b.t

This week, Miss Wani asked us to watch film V for Vendetta. It is a very interesting movie and she asked us to evaluate the movie based on the ten rules of Critical Literacy.

This week, we have a great and interesting topic discussed in the class based on the ten rules of the film V for Vendetta. It’s about the groups of people who become the victims of the experimental product. Those groups are Muslim, Terrorist and Homosexual. The question is, why Muslim people were treated awfully by the Christian people? Why they assume Muslim people as a bad people? They were actually afraid that Muslim people will become more progressive than their people. All the sources that they get to succeed is from Al-Quran and they investigate it and learn from that. In the latest film of Shah Rukh Khan which is My Name is Khan is about the Muslim people. However, when Shah Rukh Khan went to US to promote his film, he has been caught at the US airport just because he is a Muslim. It showed that they are aware of Muslim people entering their country and assume that Muslim people is a terrorist.

Another topic is from this sentence, “The people should not be afraid of the government, the government should afraid of the people”. In my point of view, I do agree with this stance. Without the support from the people towards the government, the government automatically will go down. Just like in the election, if the government lost many chairs or votes from the people, it has to break the position in the parliament. So, in order to stick in the position, government should make a difference and make people happy and satisfied with the government. Like in the film V for Vendetta, V is like a part of the public which represent the public.

When we unite, we will become stronger.

10 RULES OF CRITICAL LITERACY FOR V FOR VENDETTA

TOPIC

The film focuses on the vengeance or revenge made by V represents the victims of the particular groups which have been tortured to make the experimental product which is a biological weapon towards the government.

CONTENT

The film covers about a mask guy named V seeking for revenge towards the government and the particular group of scientist who run the research to make a biological weapon. He and his other friends have been tortured because they were the experimental product to make a biological weapon. This experiment done by government in charge and Adam Setlor is the high chancellor in the top hierarchy in the government system. His role is anarchy and being demolished by witless dictatorship. He is a narrow-minded and religious person in term of Christian. The group of people who became the victim of the experiment were Homosexual, Muslim and Terrorist. In Bible, it’s wrong to be homosexual because it leads to disease like AIDS. He follows the Bible in and out so that’s why he chose those particular groups to become the victims. So, V is one of the victims and seeking for revenge by killing all the people who involved in the experiment and want to destroy the House of Parliament on the 5^th of November.

SOURCE

This movie is comes from Joel Silver, Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski.

AUDIENCE

The film is produce for the non-specialist people

RHETORICAL FUNCTION

The film is designed to inform and educate people

PURPOSE

The film aims to inform and to educate the non-specialist people about V who seeking the vengeance or revenge which represents the victims of the particular groups which have been tortured to make the experimental product which is a biological weapon towards the government.

PERSPECTIVE

The stance taken in the film is to condemn the ruling system in the government of Britain. In 2027, Britain use the totalitarism system and is ruled by the Right-wing, Fascist Norsefire regime. In this society, there is constant surveillance and propaganda, heavy censorship, and most minorities, such as Jews, blacks, Muslims, homosexuals and communists are classified as enemies of the state. In this film, the victims of the experimental products were these minorities. They were assumed as terrorists and enemies in the Britain. In my view the stance taken is really appropriate because we have to condemn the ruling system which is very irrelevant and bias towards the certain particular groups. The stance taken tells us that the producer probably believes that this kind of ruling system was exist in the real world and want to show to the worldwide that we should avoid from this transpire. The implication for understanding this film is that the minorities society was always been teased and not being respected by the majority society.

POSITIONING

The film describes the main cast in this film is V. He is a guy Fawkes-masked vigilante known as “V”. He was characterised as violent guy because he had murdered a lot of people who related to the experiment. However, he had a reason of doing so. He also make a trap to Evey by tortured her in the cell. The police threaten to execute her if she does not give up V’s location. Evey says she rather dies, and escorted out of the prison into V’s lair. She found out that her imprisonment was staged by V, to free her from fear of the fascist government – “Only when you have no fear you are free”. V says to her. It showed that he is violent but he has reason of doing so.

Secondly, Evey, a young girl who work at British Television Network (BTN), is the one who V fallen in love of. He met Evey when he save her life from the bad guys and asked her to accompany him to watch the destruction of the Old Bailey. Since from that moment, Evey always with V.

IMPACT

The effect on people is likely to be about the hot issue in this film which is the ruling system in the Britain government. Because of the bad ruling system, the representative from the public appeared to seek the revenge. V, has the right to seek the revenge because he is one of the victims of the experimental product.

VISUAL LITERACY

The visual aspects of the text are significant because this movie is set in London in a near-future dystopian society. The usage of the symbol of V is very mysterious and eye-catchy. It really can attract the public to know what the meaning behind the symbol is. Besides that, when the public see the main actor wearing mask, they will curious to know the real face of the main actor.

Reference: 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film)

The Fourth Entry

This week, there were three groups presenting about the particular topics in chapter one. The first topic is ‘Introduction to Critical Thinking’. Critical thinking is the general term given to a wide range of cognitive skills and intellectual dispositions needed to effectively identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments and truth claims. In my point of view, critical thinking is based on our own schemata which mean the background knowledge. We can evaluate ideas and information by our own selves. It does not in position right or wrong, it only matters on the ideas which logically accepted.

There are many critical thinking standards which are clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, consistency, logical correctness, completeness and fairness. For clarity, i think we need to put ourselves into the situation. We need to have clear concept on our goals and priorities based on our abilities and clear understandings on the problems and opportunities we face. About precision, we need to think precisely about the reasons why we commenting on something. We have to seek the precision in order to get the truth about something like a detective in Crime Scene Investigation, Numbers and many more. We move to the next standards, accuracy which we need to have the ability to do something in an exact way without making a mistake. So we need true information in order to make a right decision. For relevance, we need to directly relate to the subject or problem being discussed. We have to ensure that we always in the right track. The next one is consistency. We need to believe in logic and need to love truth and detest falsehood. This is followed by logical correctness. We need to have an accurate and well supported beliefs and we need to provide the reasons for choose something. Next is completeness. To be a critical thinkers, we need to look all the up and down which means from every angles possible thoroughly. The last one is fairness. The basic thing in someone character is fair-minded which can make us the perfect critical thinkers.

One of the benefits of critical thinking is critical thinking in the classroom. Students can learn many skills that can improve their academic performance. Another benefit is critical thinking in the workplace. The quick learners can solve the problems, think creatively and many more. They are generalised thinking and have a problem-solving skills. The last one is critical thinking in life. There are three ways of the value of critical thinking in life. It can avoid us from making the foolish personal decision by teaching us to think about important of life decisions more carefully.

There are various kinds of barriers to critical thinking. One of it is egocentrism which mean the tendency to see reality as centered on oneself, selfish. Next is sociocentrism, is the group-centered thinking. They just focus on the group itself without anyone else. After that is the unwarranted assumptions and stereotypes. This means the wrong assumptions being made because there is no evidence or proof. Then, relativistic thinking which means the view and truth being made based on our own moral and realistic thinking. The last one is wishful thinking. Think something is good can bring us more joy and bliss.

The last topic is the characteristics of a critical thinker. The most dominant characteristics for me for critical thinker are they should understand the value of critical thinking, both to individuals and to society as a whole. So as a result, they find it easy to relate the information as a whole and it becomes perfect.

Miss wani asked us to form a group of four and discuss about ‘Battling the Bullies’ and evaluate it based on the ten elements of critical thinking.

3rd week

Beautiful Boxer

This week, we were watching a film which is Beautiful Boxer. Ms Wani asked us to evaluate this film based on the ten elements of critical literacy. The topic of this film is the boxer who turns into transvestite and become the famous beautiful boxer in Thailand.

This film is about a man, Nong Thom who has the female characteristics inside him. He started to like to become a woman when he went to the temple fair and watch the Thailand opera. He likes to watch the beautiful dancers and went to peek at the back stage and saw the dancer put the make up to her face and suddenly the lipstick fell off to him. Start from that moment, he like to put the lipstick on his lips. He tends to play with her girl friends instead of boy friends. He always was bullied by his friends and even his younger brother. He cannot protect his own self so his parents took him to the temple to become a monk.

When he quit from become a monk, he interested in boxing due to the financial problem of his family. He had won so many boxing competitions and he got confident to be what he wanted. He put make up on his face while boxing with his opponent. It becomes his trade mark and his popularity rises rapidly all over the world. Every time after he had won the competition, there are a lot of journalists wanted to interview him. After wait for a very long time, he managed to compete at the Lampini Stadium at Bangkok and he won. Owing to the fact that he has turns into transvestite, he was banned from doing boxing at Thailand, he was given the opportunity to perform the boxing at Japan, fight with a woman. Luckily, he won the fight. After waited for a very long time, he got enough money to do the operation to turn him into a real woman. It took about a month for him to become a woman. However, it’s really worth because he had got what he dreams of.

The public can watch this movie at the Internet, television and DVD. The audience for this film is the public of 18 and above because there is an inappropriate scene shown in the film. The film is designed to entertain and inform the public about the boxer who wanted to become a woman. The purpose of this movie is to inform and entertain the public of 18 and above about the boxer who turns into transvestite and become the famous beautiful boxer in Thailand. The stance taken in the film is about the desire of a man who wanted to become a woman even he was a boxer. The film describes Nong Thom as in the right side because he really wanted to be a woman to fulfil his real dream. He never ashamed of what he wanted to be and never hypocrite even he put make up on his face in the battle. He said that, when he put make up on his face when he wanted to fight, he becomes so ‘himself’. The effect on audiences is likely to be the most spectacular impact due to the line of the story, the real acting from the casts and an interesting setting in the film. The visual aspects of the film are significant because it shows the relationship of the people and the setting of the film. It show a great effect on the audience based on the visual showed in the film.

Transvestite becomes a very sensitive issue in this film and also in Malaysia. In my point of view, transvestite should be banned in Malaysia because it’s really against our belief. I think it is accepted in Thailand because they do not have the belief of its own but it’s about the society which allowed it or not.

Second Week

This week, we learn about the ten elements or rules in critical literacy based on the newspaper article, ‘Convicted killer back at work’. The first element is topic.

To find out the topic, we should look at the surface of the article which contains the picture and headline. Based on the picture, Deborah Parry looks really calm in spite of the fact that she was convicted as a murderer. I think she is innocent and was accused, that is why she can come back to work. The second element is content. We have to answer the wh- questions in order to get the full story of the article.

Next is source. This kind of article is usually found at the daily newspaper. The fourth element is audience which means who this article is written for. I think the audience is the public because from the usage of words, there are no complicated and scientific words. The fifth element is rhetorical function which means what the writer is trying to do. Next is purpose which includes the rhetorical function, audience and topic. The purpose of the text is to inform the reader that Deborah Parry who is a convicted killer is not guilty and can get back to work.

Then, Miss Wani takes out the lyric of ‘What About Now’ by Chris Daughtry. The students tend to sing it first before evaluate the lyrics based on the six elements that we already learn. The topic of this song is the humanity, love and unrequited love. The content is about disappointment in term of life, love and nature. The audience for this poetic song is all walks of life and the rhetorical question is encouraging people to make a change. So, the purpose of this song is to encourage the listeners from all walks of life about making a change in life, love and nature.

We proceed to the seven elements which is perspective. It is like the point of view, stance of the writer. As a reader, we can either for or against the article. We can condemn or commend the article based on the writer perspective. It is followed by positioning. This is where the writer positioned Deborah Parry in the article. It includes the bias statement from the writer. The ninth element is impact which is the effect of the text that covered the eight points. The last element is visual literacy. It is the picture that provided in the article. I think the picture is taken to show that Deborah Parry is innocent because she smiles like nothing happen to her.

Then, Miss asked us to form a group of six to make a debate between groups. Two groups get the Racial Segregation: Malaysia by 2020 and the other two groups get Muslim Religious Views Understated. The first debate is between Asri and Aishah group which debating on the second topic. They should include their points based on the ten elements that we have learnt. The government side has come out with the concrete evidences and pointed their view confidently saying that the negative perception of other religions towards Islam. They said that the western countries tend to conquer the Muslim people through films, face book, lyrics of the song and many more. Besides that, apart from the tragedy of 11^Th September, Muslim people are called as a terrorist by the western people. However, the opponent team also give their best ideas to against them. They have come out with the three issues which are health, food and education. Unfortunately, the government team were in the wrong track and it did not related with the topic. So, the opponent team won the debate.

Critical Literacy - First class

The first week (13^Th January 2010)

On 13^Th January 2010 which is Wednesday is the first class of Critical Literacy subject. This subject is taught by Miss Shazwani binti Hanapi. She is the TESL graduation lecturer from UITM, Shah Alam. In the first class, she introduced herself and tried to recognise her students that she had taught. She can recognise her students very well. For me, she is a very nice and great lecturer. Everybody likes her with her warm and sporting character.

Before we proceed with the lesson, she asked all of her students to know each other closer by doing a very interesting ice breaking. There are two sides of seats in the class, so she asked the right side to choose a person from the left side to get his or her background information and give the types of personality for the person he or she had chose based on four shapes which are triangle, circle, square and wave. However, if somebody is eclectic, he or she can mix the shapes to make it more interesting. Each of the shapes resembles the personality of a person. So, the students have to tell the reason why they choose that particular shape for their friend. I think this activity is related to critical literacy because the students need to give the shape to their friend by looking at her or his characteristics and give the reasons why they choose the shape.

The meanings of the shapes are; the triangle means the Chinese people who always have enthusiasm in everything they do and very ambitious while the square represent the Indian people who is strict, obedient people. For the circle is resemble the Malay people who always in the comfort zone who never wants to develop and for the wave, the people who do not have stance in their life. In my opinion, it is really true that these shapes resemble the personality of the races which we can see clearly nowadays.

Then, Miss Wani talked a bit about critical literacy. She said this subject is about our own schemata which means based on our background knowledge. She gave the example of the picture of Mona Lisa. Mona Lisa gave a cynical smirk that in my point of view, she was force to give a smile. She hid her sad feeling in order to give the best posture of her portrait. She did not want other people know about her problem or something that bother her mind while making the portrait. Everybody has own perception and opinion about the portrait and it is called the schemata of each person.