Issues in Teaching the English Language Essay -- English Writing Teach

Struggle as I may, I cannot avoid James Berlin’s statement: â€Å"To teach writing is to argue for a version of reality† (234). If I’m going to be successful in any academic field, in any language, there are certain conventions that I must follow, but what I say and how I think is inexorably linked to the available resources of any particular convention. For my part, I just can’t escape the confines of the English language. I see this most poignantly when I try to teach a Chinese writer how to cite sources or when I attempt to read a text in translation. To teach writing is to argue for a version of reality, and the best way of knowing and communicating it. . . . All composition teachers are ineluctably operating in this realm, whether or not they consciously choose to do so. (Berlin, 234) The language in which we think, speak and write effects the meanings we are able to construct; it molds our versions of reality. One of the more famous instances of this dynamic at work can be observed in translating Sophocles’ Antigone. There is a word in the first and second lines of the Second Stasimon, popularly referred to as â€Å"The Ode to Man,† which brings this issue to the foreground. The word is deinoj [1] (deinos). It is conventionally translated as â€Å"wondrous.† Its meaning, however, is far more complex than â€Å"wondrous.† If any one word in the English language comes closest to approximating its meaning in the given context, the word is awesome. In Greek, its meaning runs the gamut of terrible, fearful, awful, danger, implying force or power for good or ill, mighty, wondrous, marvelous, strange, passed into that of able, clever, skilful [2]. It is utterly impossible to translate this Greek idea into English without somehow tempe... ...uns on the French word differer, which means both "to differ" and "to defer." The result is differance, which is a misspelling of 'difference.' Since words are only signifiers and have no inherent meaning, there is a distance between the signifier and the signified. The meaning is deferred. And since words are identified by what they are not, their meaning is defined by difference. Hence, differance. When spoken in French, differance sounds no different than difference, a clever subtlety that, again, is lost in the translation. Derrida is no doubt aware that the two words sound the same, a fact which exhibits a weakness in spoken language† (http:65.107.211.207/theory/maslin/Difference_750.htm). Please note that the author didn’t define this term in his paper because the author has taken a decidedly anti-academic-jargon stance in so far as he can never actually stand. Issues in Teaching the English Language Essay -- English Writing Teach Struggle as I may, I cannot avoid James Berlin’s statement: â€Å"To teach writing is to argue for a version of reality† (234). If I’m going to be successful in any academic field, in any language, there are certain conventions that I must follow, but what I say and how I think is inexorably linked to the available resources of any particular convention. For my part, I just can’t escape the confines of the English language. I see this most poignantly when I try to teach a Chinese writer how to cite sources or when I attempt to read a text in translation. To teach writing is to argue for a version of reality, and the best way of knowing and communicating it. . . . All composition teachers are ineluctably operating in this realm, whether or not they consciously choose to do so. (Berlin, 234) The language in which we think, speak and write effects the meanings we are able to construct; it molds our versions of reality. One of the more famous instances of this dynamic at work can be observed in translating Sophocles’ Antigone. There is a word in the first and second lines of the Second Stasimon, popularly referred to as â€Å"The Ode to Man,† which brings this issue to the foreground. The word is deinoj [1] (deinos). It is conventionally translated as â€Å"wondrous.† Its meaning, however, is far more complex than â€Å"wondrous.† If any one word in the English language comes closest to approximating its meaning in the given context, the word is awesome. In Greek, its meaning runs the gamut of terrible, fearful, awful, danger, implying force or power for good or ill, mighty, wondrous, marvelous, strange, passed into that of able, clever, skilful [2]. It is utterly impossible to translate this Greek idea into English without somehow tempe... ...uns on the French word differer, which means both "to differ" and "to defer." The result is differance, which is a misspelling of 'difference.' Since words are only signifiers and have no inherent meaning, there is a distance between the signifier and the signified. The meaning is deferred. And since words are identified by what they are not, their meaning is defined by difference. Hence, differance. When spoken in French, differance sounds no different than difference, a clever subtlety that, again, is lost in the translation. Derrida is no doubt aware that the two words sound the same, a fact which exhibits a weakness in spoken language† (http:65.107.211.207/theory/maslin/Difference_750.htm). Please note that the author didn’t define this term in his paper because the author has taken a decidedly anti-academic-jargon stance in so far as he can never actually stand.