The Merchant of Venice Essay Example

The Merchant of Venice Paper If a man has prejudged, negative opinions against a group of people, because of race, colour, wealth or any other reason, can he be considered to be uneducated in the modern world or has society merely educated him with narrow-minded views? The concept of racism, prejudices and inequalities is dealt with throughout Shakespeares A merchant of Venice and although it was written around 1598, like most of Shakespeares works the themes are universal and timeless which makes them very relevant to contemporary society. The main themes of the play are justice and mercy and how these is given and received in the bitter relationship between Antonio, the Christian merchant and Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. The merchant of Venice is considered to be one of Shakespeares comedies as it has a happy ending for most of the characters and an Elizabethan audience would find Shylocks tragedies amusing, but in the last four hundred years society has drastically changed. Would a modern audience have a different opinion on the treatment of Shylock or would the Elizabethan values remain? Fear of the unknown is part of human nature and the Jewish religion and its followers were very unknown to the vast majority people in Shakespeares time. We will write a custom essay sample on The Merchant of Venice specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on The Merchant of Venice specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on The Merchant of Venice specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Jews started to enter England in 1066 and in the course of a generation they established communities in Bristol, York, Canterbury and London, and began to prosper by trading and lending money. However, in 1290 under the reign of Edward I, 16000 Jews were expelled from England although a few managed to stay in England by hiding their identity. This expulsion led to 350 years of Jewish exile from England, which means that there had been no Jews in England for about 300 years before Shakespeare was born! Few people knew a Jew and the majority of people were quite simple, uneducated and illiterate. It was easy to categorize Jews and tereotype them. Something that helped in the stereotyping process was a famous drama by Marlow called The Jew of Malta, performed in 1589. The lead character, Barabas refuses to pay tribute to the crown and so, his wealth is seized and his house converted into a convent. Enraged by these events Barabas sets out on journey of slaughter, which includes the poisoning of an entire convent. Elizabethan audiences loved the exaggeration and hyperbole of Barabass character and the conclusion of the story, were he is boiled to death in a cauldron of water while screaming was very much enjoyed by the audience! The Jew of Malta is not just an anti-Semitic play, but it clearly shows the hypocrisy shown by the Christian community in Elizabethan England. One of the few Jews in England was Dr. Lopez. He was the doctor for Queen Elizabeth I. Lopez was convicted of trying to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and was executed after he was tortured quite savagely, and during the interrogation the fact that he was Jewish became known. The causes for conviction were beliefs that Lopez had tried to poison Queen Elizabeth, but what was later discovered was that the facial makeup she used contained Mercury, a highly poisoned metallic element. However the lack of scientific knowledge in Elizabethan times meant that Lopez was killed. Significantly, Marlowes drama The Jew of Malta was performed shortly after the execution, some accounts claim it was merely ten days after, so the idea of Jews being evil, murderous creatures would have been highly inflicted into Elizabethan stereotypes. Shakespeares generation based their anti-Semitism on religious grounds. The Nazi program which climaxed in the Holocaust of World War 2 and resulted in the deaths of six million Jews was anti-Semitism on racial grounds. A Nazi does not care if a Jew believes in God or rays; A Jew is a Jew and they were considered racially inferior. Elizabethan England however, had inherited the Christian propaganda that the Jews had murdered Christ and so were connected to the devil and were actively trying to stop the spread of Christianity. Jewish people do not accept the blame for the crucifixion of Christ for various reasons: * Crucifixion was a Roman form of execution * People who lived decades after the event itself and were most likely to be biased against the Jews (so to take the blame from Christianity) wrote the accounts of the crucifixion and the events leading up to the crucifixion. Throughout its history, Christianity has tried to stop the following of other religions as well as Judaism. Paganism and other Earth based religions had been established hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus yet as Christianity began to spread, leaders of the Church claimed that the pagan horned God was the devil. This kind of religious propaganda has stayed in society for years as this is were the concept of the devil having horns comes from. Even Christians themselves did not live together well in Elizabethan times, and still today as can be seen in Northern Ireland; Catholics and Protestants onflict. When we see these points, it is no wonder that the Christian Church throughout history targeted Judaism. All this information is relatively clear to how Elizabethan society as a whole viewed the Jews, yet what is not so clear is what exactly Shakespeares image of a Jew was, as they had been banished from England three hundred years before his birth. This is a personal opinion, and the reader must come to his or her own conclusion after considering whether Shakespeare did satisfy the narrow-minded views the audience would have against the Jews. To do so, not just the text hould be analysed but also the dramatic devices used, stage history and the history of the Jews. The purpose of the first scenes is to inform the viewer of the main plot, e. . the bond, but Shylocks first scene not only tells us of this, but also we realise Shylocks character traits. These traits are quickly laid down and repeated his focus on money, (my meaning in saying he is a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient- lines 13-15) his hatred of Christians, (I hate him for he is a Christian- line 38) his pride in his religion and also, his cunning mind. Shylock actually speaks less than Bassanio or Portia and appears in only five scenes but due to his audience-provoking character he is the most dominating character. Shylocks first appearance in The Merchant of Venice is in Act One Scene Three. From his entrance on stage the audience would identify him as a Jew, as he would be wearing traditional Jewish clothing such as a gabardine, which is a loose cloak worn by Jewish men. Shakespeare would emphasize the costumes in the Globe theatre and other theatre during his time, because the audiences were quite rowdy. People were known to shout at the villains, cheer for their heroes, nd comment on the play loudly. At the same time, food and drink vendors would be going around the audience selling their goods. Distinctive costumes made Shakespeares plots easier to follow for the viewers. However, as mentioned before, many spectators would jeer at the villains and Shylocks entrance on stage would receive a very negative response. What adds to the audiences aggression towards Shylock is what he is talking about in his debut. He is talking to Bassanio about lending three thousand ducats (form of currency) to Antonio. This marks him as a usurer, someone who lends money and charges interest, hich was hated in Elizabethan times. This may seem hard to understand as this is how major banks work today, but in the Old Testament the exacting of interest on a loan was forbidden to Jews who were lending to Jews and in the Middle Ages it was forbidden to Christian clerics and then to laymen. Medieval theory says that money cannot breed money and Aristotle taught that money was barren. After the rise of capitalism however, the sixteenth-century reformers relaxed in this teaching but some countries toleration of usury came late, and England was one of those countries. The way Shylock may be acting at this point in the play would also agitate the audience. Bassanio, a Christian and a good friend of Antonio, comes to Shylock the Jewish moneylender, whom he and Antonio have cruelly mocked many times before, to ask to borrow money on behalf of Antonio. For the first time, Shylock feels as though he has the upper hand. Nowadays most people would certainly be able to understand why Shylock would lengthen this superiority but not Shakespeares audiences. This would simply annoy them more as they would not be able to see that a Jew is still a human and would have uman reactions, just like a Christian, just like themselves. The main plot of the play is determined in this scene, as the forfeit of the bond is decided. If Antonio does not pay the bond back within three months then Antonio must allow Shylock to cut a pound of flesh from anywhere upon Antonios body. Shylock suggests the forfeit in a joking manner as he says: This kindness will I show. Go with me to a notary; seal me there Your single bond, and, in a merry sport, If you repay me not on such a day let the forfeit Be nominated for an equal pound Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken In what part of your body pleaseth me Antonio merrily agrees to the bond, but Bassanio cautions him; he doesnt want Antonio risking his life so that Bassanio can borrow money, however Antonio reassures Bassanio that My ships come home a month before the day. What he means by this is that as a merchant not only will his ships return home but his money also. What Antonio and Bassanio do not realise though is the fact that Shylock would much rather have a pound of Antonios flesh than any amount of money because Shylock seeks revenge upon Antonio for the way he treats him and his fellow Jews. Antonio and Bassanio, like the Christian audience, would not be able to believe that a Jew would want revenge on a Christian; their narrow-minded views would not comprehend that. Lines 102 to 125 in Act One Scene Three are of Shylock speaking to Antonio about the unfair way he has been treated in by Antonio and his fellow Christians in Venice. This speech is essential for the comparison of a modern audiences view on the treatment of Shylock compared to an audience of Shakespeares time. Shylock speaks to Antonio about the way he has received abuse from the Christians, verbal and physical. Shylock states that although Antonio as often criticised him about his business, he has borne it with a patient shrug, For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. This again emphasizes his strong belief in his religion, and reinforces image that throughout history the Jews have often been singled out for persecution. More evidence of how Shylock is treated in Venice continues, as he states, You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, And spit upon my Jewish gabardine, This shows how not only was he verbally abuse, but also physically. He is constantly insulted because of who he is, and Christians spit upon his religious clothing. He late in the speech claims that Antonio has foot me as you spurn a stranger cur, (Kicked me as you would kick a stray dog), and did void your rheum upon my beard. All of these points show Shylocks side of the story, and Shylock then questions Antonio, Hath a dog money? The way that Shylock mocks Antonio by asking this would anger Shakespeares audience, how dare a Jew speak to a Christian in such a way? It is clear now that the Elizabethans, like the Nazis, saw the Jews as an inferior race. Shylock asks if Antonio expects him to humble himself to Antonio and say: Fair sir you spat on me Wednesday last; You spurned me on such a day; another time You called me dog; and for these courtesies Ill lend you this much moneys? He would most likely speak in a sardonic, scornful tone as Shylock for probably the first time, has power above Antonio. Again, the audience are angered. After Shylock has spoken of his suffering, Antonio blatantly tells Shylock that he will most likely call him again! Antonio does not care about the pain Shylock has to go through because of him and his friends, because Shylock is a Jew. He obviously does not like the tone Shylock has spoken to him with and so he is trying to regain his ower. Antonio and Shylock settle on the bond and Act One, Scene Three ends, with Bassanio disliking the terms of the bond. The dramatic tension increases as throughout the play as Antonios ships fail to return home and the audience informed of this revelation by the use of two minor characters. Shakespeare often used this technique, as it is an effective way to move on in the story. Salerio and Solanio are the minor characters used as in Act Two Scene Eight, they joke about Shylocks misfortune (his daughter Jessica has stolen a lot of his money and has ran away to marry Lorenzo, a Christian) and hen Salerio informs Solanio of how a vessel of our country richly fraught has crashed, and Salerio suspects it may be Antonios. The audience would presume that it was Antonios ship, as this would have to happen for the sake of the plot, and it is also clear that with his recent misfortunes, Shylocks need for revenge upon the Christians would be greater. Shylocks vindictiveness feeds on the news of Antonios sorrow and the conclusion of the story is the trial scene, Act Four, Scene One. Antonio could not pay the 3000 ducats back in time and Shylock demands that he takes the pound of Antonios flesh, it seems that no one can top him by persuasion nor legally can they stop him. The matter is brought to court where the comedy aspect returns, as Bassanios new wife, the beautiful Portia dresses as a young lawyer named Balthazar to represent Antonio in court. Comedies are based on convention of some sort, so an Elizabethan audience would have known Balthazar was actually Portia yet for the purpose of the story this would have been easily accepted, as would the fact that her husband doesnt recognise her. Shylock enters the courtroom and the Duke of Venice proceeds with a speech he presumes will make Shylock show mercy towards Antonio. He ends it with We all expect a gentle answer, Jew! This shows how not just the Christians and merchants see him and Judaism, but also the authorities, as the Duke represents political views. They all doubt that a Jew could ever want revenge upon a Christian no matter what the situation is they expect Jews to be meek towards them and never retaliate. Shylock is defiant and is sure he will have his bond. Again, his religion is part of the argument because by our holy Sabbath have I sworn. He believes strongly that he is standing up for the Jews, for all the suffering they have gone through. A main factor that adds to the delicate situation is concerned with the law of Venice. Venice had a good reputation of strictly enforcing its laws, even against its citizens. The bond between Shylock and Antonio was a legal one, and if Venice were to spare Antonios life and destroy the bond Venices reputation would be severely damaged. The courtroom sees shylock as an unfeeling man, but Shylock refuses to be intimidated and he is persistent that he wants his bond. At one point, Bassanio offers Shylock six thousand ducats, twice the money Antonio was to pay back, but Shylocks determination is shown with his eply: If every ducat in six thousand ducats Were in six parts, and every part a ducat, I would not draw them; I would have my bond! Clearly, there is no way that Shylock will show mercy at this stage, but the Duke asks him How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none? This may seem quite ironic as the same question could be posed to Antonio, but when Shylock replies it is plain to see that Shylock does not think he is doing any wrong, and he demands a decision. The Duke is obviously in a difficult position because Shylock does have a bond and so he ca lls for Bellario, a learned doctor but instead, Balthazar (Portia in disguise) comes on his behalf. Through out the courtroom scene Antonios behaviour has been patient and he is ready to face death if he can goodbye to Bassanio. An example of his self-pity is when he speaks to Bassanio, his close friend, and says: I am a tainted wether of the flock, Meetest for death The build up of dramatic tension continues in the trial scene as Shylock wets his knife, preparing to cut the pound of flesh. This shows how sure Shylock is that he will get his bond and it also adds to the underlying current of tension as the courtroom await a decision. This action by Shylock makes him seem inhuman; he is happily anticipating the opportunity to murder someone. Elizabethan opinions on Jews would be satisfied, and it would seem that Shakespeares interpretation of a typical Jew was the same bloodthirsty image as the audiences. This is then stressed by Gratianos insults towards Shylock in which he calls him a damned, inexorable dog and he also states that he is almost tempted to abandon his faith in Christianity and believe the ideas of Pythagoras, who was a philosopher who taught the belief of reincarnation. Gratiano states that Shylock would become wolf after death, as his desires are wolfish, bloody, starved and ravenous. Yet none of this affects Shylock, who would have greatly irritated the Elizabethan audience. He meets his match however in Portia. Upon her entrance in the courtroom she quite ignorantly states, Then must the Jew be merciful. She, of course, has the same view on Jewish people as the rest of the courtroom and when Shylock demands why he must be merciful, she tells not only Shylock, although her words are addressed to him, but the whole courtroom, about mercy. This is the strongest plea of the trial scene and it is also very mportant because it shows that Portia is not just a beautiful woman, but an intelligent one too. She says that: The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath; it is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes She continues to use very strong pleas of how mercy is at it strongest when it is a quality shown by those in power, in this case Shylock. Shylock demands justice and so Balthazar points out to Shylock one of the key points in her speech: Therefore Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation Balthazar tells Shylock that if we all received justice and no mercy none of us would go to Heaven as we all have sins- Jews and Christians. This is Shylocks last chance to show mercy, take the money and be done with the situation but he will not turn back. He is very stubborn and to his delight Balthazar grants him is bonds. Shylock rejoices and pronounces how wise Balthazar is. Unknown to Shylock is the extent of Balthazars wisdom, as she has led him into a written trap. Antonio and Bassanio say goodbye to each other as Antonio awaits his fate; he eems as though it really is the end for Antonio until Balthazar interrupts the proceedings: Tarry a little; there is something else: This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood; The words expressly are a pound of flesh; Take then they bond, take thou thy pound of flesh, But in the cutting it, if thou dost shed One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods Are (by the laws of Venice) confiscate Unto the state of Venice Suddenly, it is not Shylock who is shouting O learned judge! but Gratiano. Balthazar finds another technicality to stop Shylock from taking the pound of flesh as he must take exactly one pound of flesh, o more or less, if not he will be executed and all his goods confiscated. Shylock changes his mind at this point and decides he wants to take the money instead now that he knows of the consequences if he does take the bond. Bassanio is willing to give Shylock the three thousand ducats but Balthazar will not let Shylock have it, as he has refused it in the open court. Yet another law of Venice is brought to light and used against Shylock because, as he, an alien (not a citizen of Venice) has plotted to kill Antonio, a citizen, Antonio should be given half of his goods and the other half to the Duke. Antonio asks the Duke to waive the States share, and says he will hold his half-share in trust for Lorenzo and Jessica, provided that Shylock becomes a Christian and leaves his estate to Lorenzo and Jessica. Shylock accepts, claiming to be content and he leaves the courtroom a broken man. His behaviour now is completely different to the start of the scene. He has lost his power, his wealth and most importantly, his religious freedom. Throughout the play Shylock is isolated and alone. He only has one friend, who is Tubal and his only relative is Jessica, but when Jessica elopes, taking the money and family jewels, we see him taunted y Christians and tortured by Tubals news. He, as a Jew cannot be a merchant yet he is abused because he is a usurer, and he is forced to live in a Ghetto along with the other Jews, a place he does not want to live. Shakespeares use of language further alienates Shylock. Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English and his vocabulary included 30000 words whereas today our vocabularies only run between 6000 and 15000 words. Shakespeare wrote the way he did for poetic and dramatic purposes, and he wrote in both prose (language without metrical structure and verse (poetry) and in The Merchant of Venice Shylock requently speaks in prose while the Christians use the iambic pentameter. Shylock also speaks a lot less than Portia and Bassanio because they use long, flourishing and descriptive ways of talking while Shylocks language is often blunt and he uses harsh words to describe things, such as his comparison of Antonio to a rat to be poisoned. Shylock has his own prose, and uses special Jewish vocabulary, which marks him as different and he constantly uses Hebrew names: Jacob, Abraham and Leah. However, there is more Christian language in The Merchant of Venice than in any other comedy, partly because of its story of the Jew. Shakespeare also makes Shylock very anti-Christian and he mocks the New Testament. (The audience would take this very personally). Another way in which the Christian language is shown is the relation between the story of Bassanio coming to Antonio for forgiveness and the parable of the prodigal son. The audience would pick up on these different kinds of language used, as they do sound different. It would also please the audience because lesser characters spoke in prose, and they would believe that Shakespeare too saw the Jews as an inferior race. But did he? Shylocks downfall would have been greatly welcomed by the ast majority of Elizabethan society but from a contemporary point of view, The Merchant of Venice can be seen as a cleverly written satire, which effectively criticizes the anti-Semitic views of his time. One of the ways in which Shakespeare accomplishes this critique is by emphasizing Shylocks character as a man rather than his identity as a Jew. What the play reveals is how some Christians are terrible men, as are some Jews. But the genius of The Merchant of Venice is that it allows us see past the surface of the religious identity that defines Shylock the Jew; beyond that Shakespeare allows s to glimpse Shylock the man who hates and bleeds as does any Christian. Shylock proclaims this when he asks, If you prick us, do we not bleed? Shakespeares genius gave the Elizabethan audience what they wanted but looking back we can see how this is very ironic and sarcastic in its tone towards anti-Semitism. This Jew is no longer a caricature and though he remains the villain, the evil is on more than one character. Shylock is a paradox because he is both the bloodthirsty, ravenous wolf Gratiano described him as and also the human victim of abuse that makes his revenge understandable. With this in mind, I doubt that a modern audience would be glad of Shylocks downfall. We would recoil from the hatred he expresses but we would sympathise once we hear of the way he is treated by Antonio. Yet in the courtroom scene these mitigating circumstances were ignored and so Shylock did not receive a fair trial by modern day standards. This adds to a contemporary audiences compassion towards Shylock and I think many people would find Shylocks punishment too harsh. Religious freedom is taken for granted by many in the western world and I also think that many people would want Antonio to be given some ind of punishment. We can see the man behind the murderer and although two wrongs dont make a right, Shylocks actions are understandable if we see him as a human being. So when can we call someone uneducated? In my opinion, a person with unjustified prejudices is educated, but with narrow-minded views. The most uneducated point of a persons life is when theyre a child; when they are first born. Elizabethan society fed their children these views and so we cannot blame Antonio directly. Shylock may have been a cut-throat usurer but he was not a dog and did not deserve to be spat at.

Madam c.j. walker essays

Madam c.j. walker essays Born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 on a Lousiana plantation, she was a daughter of former slaves. This young woman had transformed herself from an uneducated farm laborer and laundress into one of the most successful women in the 12th century. Even though she was orphaned at the age of seven she still strived to achieve success with the help and side of her sister, Louvenia. She often said, I got my start by giving myself a start. (Madam C.J. Walker Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Social Activist) Sarah married a man named Moses McWilliams at age 14 to escape abuse from her violent brother-in-law, Jesse Powell. They soon had a daughter on June 6, 1885, Lelia, who later became known as Alelia Walker. Her husband died after a short two years after the birth of their daughter. She picked up her things, along with her daughter, and moved to St. Louis. There she joined her four brothers, who were currently employed as barbers, and worked for as little as $1.50 a day which she put towards her daughters education. Although struggling to get buy, Sarah noticed that she was suffering from a scalp aliment in the 1890s which caused her to lose most of her hair. Eager to grow it back, she experimented with homemade remedies and store bought products. Some of these products where made by another entrepreneur Annie Malone who Sarah was inspired by to sell her products. She moved to Denver in 1905 to continue a door to door service where she met her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker, a St Louis newspaperman. Sarah had then changed her name to Madam C.J. Walker when finding her own business and selling products under the company name Madam C.J. Walkers Wonderful Hair Grower. This was a scalp conditioning and healing remedy which she said was revealed to her in a dream. The secret ingredient was said to probably have been sulphur though. Some people incorrectly believe it to be true that sh...

Critical Analysis of a Research Paper

Critical Analysis of a Research Paper Critical Analysis of a Research Paper Critical Analysis of a Research Paper: Helpful Tips Making of critical analysis of research papers may possess some difficulties for students. First of all, it is because you should not only study a research paper you have to analyze but also have at least some general knowledge about an issue that is investigated in it. Otherwise, how can you define strong and weak points of this work? Of course, to make good discussion of the issue you should be aware of this issue. Besides, when writing your critical analysis of a research paper you should take into account that the style of your analysis should correspond, to some extent, to that of the research paper it is written on. Although there are certain requirements to writing of assignment analysis it goes without saying that the style of analyzing of a poem, for example, is rather different from that of analyzing of a research paper. Thus, if you are provided with an assignment to write critical analysis of a research paper you s hould do your best in order to cope with such a task! Critical Analysis of a Research Paper: Nota Bene! When writing critical analysis of a research paper keep in mind the following information:It is obvious that before getting down to your critical analysis of a research paper you should study the research paper you are going to analyze. But first of all, you should study the subject it focuses on. So, find and study some information on the issue. You should get the point to make really thorough analysis. After studying the issue in question read the research paper. You may make some notes or consult some informational sources on the issue. Remember: good critical analysis is based on the deep studying of the subject. Your critical analysis should be thorough. But if it covers the whole research paper, you will not be able to put it into several pages. Be sure of that! So, you should concentrate your analysis on a certain point. Your work will be small but deep in thi s case. Thus, after studying the research paper and all necessary additional information you should point out an aspect that seems to be the most interesting for analyzing. Put it in the form of a thesis statement. Pay attention that it should depict fully the subject of your critical analysis. When thinking over your analysis make an outline containing the main points that you want to dwell on. That will help you make your work well-structured. Pay attention to your writing style. Avoid slang elements, jargon, idioms and other colloquial units.Be sure that this information will help you cope with your critical analysis of a research paper.

Business Expansion Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Business Expansion - Case Study Example For instance, one of the sites suggests that surface travel arrangements by travel agents for employees to go for work is encouraged by lot of local employers in the UK. 3. If the above two steps encourage him to expand his business to a level, beyond his individual capacity, then he must think in terms of creating a corporate body which will enable him to raise funds for bigger investments, without much difficulty and with reasonable risks. Perhaps, the strategic approach under item 4, that is collaboration with worldwide organizations, can be taken up immediately. He may progresses with the other three items for expanding his business on long term basis, simultaneously. With regard to the Website, it is a basic requisite today and it will not be expensive as he presumes. But, what we should be concerned with is to make people visit the Website. That is more expensive but inevitable.

Business strategy analysis_ case Nucor corporation Essay

Business strategy analysis_ case Nucor corporation - Essay Example b) Analysis of Nucor’s challenges are exaggerated competition from global competitors, fluctuating steel cost, increased raw material cost, amplified energy cost and increasing costs to abide by the environmental convention (Nucor, 2013). d) Recommendation is provided to the company for dealing with their challenging issues. Nucor Corporation needs to practice pricing and revenue optimization which will prove to be successful technique for enabling the company to enhance profitability and competence (Nucor, 2013). e) Implementation of the plan can be possible by the contribution of the company’s readily available human resources, financial resources and time. The company has a strong organizational culture in combination with various technological innovations to support the growth plan. Nucor Corporation over the recent years has positioned itself as the fourth largest steel manufacturer by market capitalization. The chart below shows the increased revenue increase of the steel company over the two years (Whatley, 2013). The sales of the company has been rising over the several quarters, now having revenue increase of 15%. Due to the tremendous consolidation of the steel industry and monopolistic US steel market conditions, the company did not cut its prices much in order to respond to down market in the current years. Nucor Corporations net sales declined due to selling less steel and not lowering prices of steel. The company is making attempts to grow in the UK economic downturn and trying to build a long term value for their shareholders (Dzielinski, 2013). Nucor Corporation is also facing a tough competition from other leading foreign steel manufacturers which are offering steel products in highly competitive prices. Nucor Corporation has positioned itself as the global leader in environmental performance. According to the analysis of the case study the company has been able to make improvements in revenues and

Applied linguistics Essay Example for Free

Applied linguistics Essay Applied linguistics 1 History The term applied linguistics dates back at least to the 1940s in the USA when linguists applied analytical methods to the practical problems of producing grammars and phrasebooks and developing language courses. 2 What Is Applied Linguistics? Applied linguistics: (1) was interdisciplinary, drawing on psychology, sociology, and pedagogy as well as theoretical linguistics; (2) included a range of fields including lexicography, stylistics, speech pathol ogy, translation, language policy, and planning among others; (3) performed a mediating function between theory and practice. Ð pplied linguistics must take into consideration the nature of language and the nature of the particular world in which language is used, the beliefs, social institutions, and culture of its users, and how these influence language use. Ideally, the job of an applied linguist is to diagnose a problem in real-world language use, bring the insights of linguistics to bear on the problem, and suggest solutions. 3 Relation of Theory and Practice: the Case of Language Teaching The applied linguist stands at the intersection of theory and practice, but it is not always clear how the applied linguist mediates between the two. This suggests a one-way street in which theory is at the starting point, and the applied linguist directs traffic from theory to practice. Influenced by structuralism in linguistics and by behaviorism in psychology, applied linguists believed that language was a collection of discrete learnable structures, speaking was primary, and learning a language was a matter of correct habit formation. To inculcate correct habits, teachers drilled students incessantly in correct pronunciation and patterned practice of grammatical structures. Under the influence of the theoretical work of Noam Chomsky, applied  linguists saw language learning as a cognitive process of hypothesis testing, in which errors indicated the stage of the language learner’s interlanguage. Instead, knowing a language means knowing how to communicate in the language; it involves acquiring â€Å"communicative competence. † A richer model of the relationship among theory, practice, and applied linguistics sees it as a two-way street in which the applied linguist directs traffic from theory into practice and from practice into theory. Similarly in applied linguistics, practice provides a testing ground for theory,  but it is more than that: real-world language use provides new questions and issues requiring new theories. 4 Recent Range of Inquiry Nevertheless, the central characteristics of applied linguistics remain: (1) focus on contextualized language use; (2) application of theory to practice and vice versa; (3) practical problem-based approach; (4) multidisciplinary perspective. 4. 1 Second language teaching and cross-cultural linguistics 2Accurate description of language use with the ultimate goal of teaching has motivated research in cross-cultural discourse and pragmatics. Concentration on  spoken language, combined with speech act theory among others, has engendered numerous research projects in applied linguistics investigating specific speech acts such as making requests and apologies in different languages and cultures. Applied linguists have examined the development of pragmatic competence in second language learners and the possibilities for teaching pragmatics. 4. 2 Language use in context: contributions of discourse analysis Outside the area of language pedagogy, the burgeoning of discourse analysis has provided a means whereby linguistic insight can be applied to real-world situations. Other institutional and professional settings, too, have come under scrutiny from applied linguists using theoretical constructs to explain how language is used in real-world settings such as commerce, employment, and public services. A field that has developed considerably in recent years in response to societal concerns is the investigation of language and gender. Recent empirical studies have enriched understanding of the interrelationship of language and gender and demonstrated that generalizations about male and female speech are unreliable when the particular communicative contexts in which the speech occurs have not been examined. Other work has examined gender and language cross-culturally and in specific institutional settings. 4. 3 Language maintenance and endangered languages and dialects The work of applied linguists on endangered or minority languages and dialects brings together field linguistics, anthropology, sociolinguistics and education. For example, a longitudinal study of language use and cultural context draws together sociolinguistic research into language use, research in language socialization, and second language acquisition research into educational discourse. It is not only minority languages that are under threat, but also dialects. 2. Contemporary linguistic approaches: Clinical, forensic, computational linguistics ( Ð ²Ã'‹Ã'‡Ð ¸Ã' Ã »Ã ¸Ã'‚Ð µÃ »Ã'Å'Ð ½Ã °Ã'  )( 29, 30, 25) We have chosen to focus on four relatively popular areas of inquiry: †¢ syntactic parsing; †¢ discourse analysis; †¢ computational morphology and phonology; †¢ corpus-based methods. Parsing and discourse analysis have had the longest continuous history of investigation. Computational morphology and phonology began to grow as a separate discipline in the mid-1980s. Corpus-based approaches were investigated as early as the 1960s. 1 Parsing (Ã'€Ð °Ã ·Ã ±Ã ¾Ã'€) Parsing is the act of determining the â€Å"syntactic structure† of a sentence. The goal is to represent â€Å"who did what to whom† in the sentence. Parsing involves tagging 3the words with an appropriate syntactic category and determining their relationships to each other. Words are grouped into phrase-like constituents, which are arranged into clauses and sentences. Machine translation systems employ parsing to derive representations of the input that are sufficient for transfer from the source to target language at either the syntactic or semantic level. A great deal of attention to the application of syntactic parsing models for language modeling for automatic speech recognition. 2 Discourse Analysis. The area of discourse analysis is concerned with inferring the intended meanings of utterances. In order for the dialogue participants to successfully carry out a dialogue, they must be able to recognize the intentions of the other participant’s utterances, and to produce their responses in such a way that will enable the other participant(s) to recognize their intentions. A recipe is a generic template for performing a particular action. The recipe library contains a collection of generic recipes, and during discourse understanding, the plan inference module attempts to infer utterance intentions and relationships using  information provided by this library. 3 Computational Morphology and Phonology Roughly speaking, the topics can be classified into computational morphology, which treats the analysis of word structure; and computational phonology, which, deals with the changes in sound patterns that take place when words are put together. 4 Corpus-based Methods The word corpus in linguistics is typically a collection of texts. Corpora have been widely used by linguists to identify and analyze language phenomena, and to verify or refute claims about language. However, a corpus also reveals important  quantitative information about the distribution of various language phenomena. 29 Clinical Linguistics Clinical linguistics is the application of the linguistic sciences to the study of language disability. 1 Identifying Linguistic Symptoms Attention has now come to be focused on important symptoms of language disability, and to those aspects of the problem which have been ignored or misdiagnosed. â€Å"Less noticeable† refers to any feature other than the audible qualities of pronunciation, the order and omission of surface grammatical elements, and the actual items which constitute vocabulary. These features exclude  most of the properties of phonological systems, the sense relations between lexical items, the constraints operating on discourse in interaction, and the many ramifications of underlying syntactic structure. All of these play a major part in identifying the various kinds of language disability. The use of a clinical linguistic frame of reference has also enabled people to make progress in identifying disorders of language comprehension. That requires careful testing and the controlling of variables. Disorders of a pragmatic kind, likewise, 4 have often remained undiagnosed, or have been misdiagnosed as problems of a  psychological or social behavioral type. 2 The Role of Clinical Linguistics 2. 2 Description A major area of clinical linguistic research has been to provide ways of describing and analyzing the linguistic behavior of patients, and of the clinicians and others who interact with them. 2. 3 Diagnosis An important aim of clinical linguistics is to provide a classification of patient linguistic behaviors. This can provide an alternative diagnostic model, and one which is more able to provide insights about intervention in cases where there is no clear evidence of any medical condition. 2. 4 Assessment (Ð ¾Ã'†Ð µÃ ½Ã ºÃ °). Clinical linguistics has also been much involved in devising more sophisticated assessments of abnormal linguistic behavior. A diagnosis tells us what is â€Å"wrong† with a patient; an assessment tells us just how seriously the patient is â€Å"wrong. † 2. 5 Intervention The ultimate goal is to formulate hypotheses for the remediation (Ð ¾Ã ·Ã ´Ã ¾Ã'€Ð ¾Ã ²Ã »Ã µÃ ½Ã ¸Ã µ) of abnormal linguistic behavior. Not all aspects of a patient’s problem are directly relevant to the need for linguistically based intervention, clinical linguistics can help clinicians to make an informed judgment about â€Å"what to teach next,† and to monitor the outcome of an intervention hypothesis, as  treatment proceeds. To a large extent, moving well beyond the patient’s language, to include an investigation of the language used by the person(s) carrying out the intervention, the kind of teaching materials used, and the setting in which the interaction takes place. 3 Linguistic Insights The chief aim of clinical linguistics is to provide the clinician with increasing levels of insight and confidence in arriving at linguistic decisions. The three pillars of any clinical linguistic approach: description – grading – intervention. All change needs to be regularly monitored, to demonstrate that progress is being made – this  is the task of assessment. The keeping of comprehensive linguistic records is a further priority, without which the efficacy of intervention can never be demonstrated. Forensic Linguistics Now linguists also have begun examining voice identification, authorship of written documents, unclear jury instructions, the asymmetry of power in courtroom exchanges, lawyer–client communication breakdown, the nature of perjury, problems in written legal discourse, defamation, trademark infringement, courtroom interpretation and translation difficulties, the adequacy of warning  labels, and the nature of tape recorded conversation used as evidence. 1 Trademark Infringement Typically, they respond to requests of attorneys to help them with their law cases. 2 Product Liability 5But the linguist, calling on knowledge of discourse analysis, semantics, and pragmatics, can determine the extent to which the message was clear and unambiguous and point out the possible meanings that the message presents. Once this is done, it is up to the attorney to determine whether or not to ask the linguist to testify at trial. 3 Speaker Identification Linguists have been used by attorneys in matters of voice identification. If the tapes are of sufficient quality, spectographic analysis is possible. If not, the linguist may rely on training and skills in phonetics to make the comparison. 4 Authorship of Written Documents Law enforcement agencies process provide a â€Å"psychological profile† of the person. Calling on knowledge of language indicators of such things as regional and social dialect, age, gender, education, and occupation, linguists analyze documents for broad clues to the identity of the writer. Stylistic analysis centers on a writer’s habitual language features over which the writer has little or no conscious awareness. 5 Criminal Cases Suspects are recorded with court authorized wire taps placed that none of the speakers is aware of being taped, or by using body microphones and engage suspects in conversation. If the law enforcement agency is concerned about the adequacy of the language evidence that they have gathered, they may call on a linguist to make transcripts of the conversations, analyze them. The tape recorded conversation itself points to the use of the other tools of the forensic linguist, including syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics, dialectology, and discourse analysis. 3. Discourse analysis (17) Discourse analysis is concerned with the contexts in and the processes through which we use oral and written language to specific audiences, for specific purposes, in specific settings. 1 What Is Discourse? A Preliminary Characterization The big D concerns general ways of viewing the world and general ways of behaving, the small d concerns actual, specific language use. Discourse analysis emphasizes that language is not merely a self-contained system of symbols but a mode of doing, being, and becoming. Discourse research can be divided into 2 major types of inquiries: (1) why some but not other linguistic forms are used on  given occasions and (2) what are the linguistic resources for accomplishing various social, affective, and cognitive actions and interactions. 2 Communicative Motivations for the Selection of Linguistic Forms Language is inseparable from other aspects of our life and that the selection of linguistic forms should be explained in terms of authentic human communicative needs (i. e. , social, interactional, cognitive, affective needs). 2. 1 Context 6One of the first questions is what is happening in this stretch of talk, who the participants are, where they are, and why they are there. Linguistic choices are  systematically motivated by contextual factors. Context is a complex of 3 dimensions: First, the field of social action in which the discourse is embedded. Second, the set of role relations among the participants. And third, the role of language in the interaction. In this view, language is a system of choices made on the basis of a contextual configuration which accounts for field, tenor, and mode. 2. 3 Speech act What kind of speech act utterance is and whether this act is accomplished through direct or indirect means. Speech act theory says that language is used not only to describe things but to do things as well. Further, utterances act on 3 different levels: the literal level (locutionary act), the implied level (illocutionary act), and the consequence of the implied act (perlocutionary act). 2. 4 Scripts / plans Script is to describe the knowledge that we have of the structure of stereotypical event sequences. If such knowledge can be described in a formal way, then we may have a theory of how humans process natural language. 2. 5 Referentiality How entities (Ð »Ã ¸Ã'†Ð °) are referred to in utterances. Some analysts are interested in how referential forms make a stretch of discourse cohesive in form and coherent in meaning. 2. 6 Topicality and thematicity What is an utterance about, what is the starting point of a message, what is the focus of a message. Topic the part of the utterance about which something is said. Prague School linguists developed the functional sentence perspective which says that word order has to do with how informative each element in the utterance is – communicative dynamism, or CD. A sentence begins with elements with the lowest CD and ends with those with the highest CD. Theme is the part of the utterance with the lowest degree of CD. 2. 7 Sequential organization The sequential context of the utterance. Discourse analysts have sought to explain linguistic choices in terms of ethnographic contexts, knowledge structure, rhetorical organization, communicative intentions, textual organization, information management and sequential organization, among others. Discourse Analysis, Linguistics, and More Discourse analysts research various aspects of language not as an end in itself, but as a means to explore ways in which language forms are shaped by and shape the contexts of their use. Further, discourse analysis draws upon not only linguistics, but also anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, and  other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences concerned with human communication. Discourse analysis promotes a view of language which says that 7 Resource Center Saved Recents Uploads My Answers Account Products Home Essays Drive Answers Texty About Company Legal Site Map Contact Us Advertise  ©2016 StudyMode. com HOME   ESSAYS   LINGUISTICS   LINGUISTICS Linguistics Applied linguistics, Discourse analysis, Language By maor87 Apr 17, 2015 6489Words 150Views More info PDF View Text View PAGE8 OF 18 language use is not only reflective of other aspects of our lives but is also constitutive of them. As it draws insights from various disciplines, it also contributes to interfacing linguistics with other domains of inquiries, such that we might now investigate the construction of culture through conversation or program computers to generate interactive texts based on our understanding of the rules and principles of human interaction. It focusses on language as it is used by real people with real intentions, emotions. 4. Linguistics and pragmatics (16) The Puzzle of Language Use: How Do We Ever Understand Each Other? Pragmatics is the study of communication – the study of how language is used. This study is based on the assumption of a division between knowledge of language and the way it is used; and the goal of pragmatics is providing a set of principles which dictate how knowledge of language and general reasoning interact in the process of language understanding, to give rise to different kinds of effects which can be achieved in communication. Pragmatics as the Application of Conversational Principles to Sentence Meanings The starting point for studies in pragmatics is the mismatch between what words â€Å"mean, and what speakers â€Å"mean† by using them. There is the knowledge of  language, which dictates the meanings of words and the ways in which they can combine. This is called the encoded meaning. On the other hand, there are pragmatic principles which enable a hearer to establish some different interpretation – the nonencoded part of meaning. Moreover, given the full array of rhetorical effects such as metaphor, irony, etc. , all of which are uses of expressions in context in some sense, the proposed approach maintains a natural separation between literal uses of words, which are reflected in sentence-meanings, and the various non-literal uses to which they may be put. Knowledge of language: sentence-meanings as partial specifications of interpretation The problem for this â€Å"clean† view is that we use commonsense reasoning, whatever this consists in, not merely in working out why a speaker has said something, but also in establishing what she has said in using the words chosen. The overall picture of interpretation is that grammar-internal principles articulate both syntactic and semantic structure for sentences, a semantic structure for a sentence being an incomplete specification of how it is understood. Pragmatic theory explains how such incomplete specifications are enriched in context to yield  the full communicative effect of an uttered sentence, whether metaphorical, ironical, and so on. The Process of Reasoning: How Do Hearers ever Manage to Choose the Right Interpretation? Grice’s cooperative principle and the conversational maxims According to Grice who was the pioneer of the inferential approach to conversation, there is a general assumption underpinning all utterance interpretation that the interpretation of utterances is a collaborative enterprise. This 8collaborative enterprise is structured by a number of maxims, which speakers are presumed to obey: †¢ The maxim of quality: do not say that for which you lack evidence; do not say what you believe to be false. †¢ The maxim of relevance: be relevant. †¢ The maxim of quantity: make your contribution as informative as is required, but not more so. †¢ The maxim of manner: be perspicuous (avoid obscurity, avoid ambiguity, be brief, be orderly). Grice articulated the maxims as a means of simplifying the overall account of the relation between the use of language in logical arguments and the conversational use of language. Relevance theory This theory claims to characterize pragmatic phenomena in terms of a single  cognitive concept, that of relevance, replacing the social underpinnings of Grice’s cooperative principle. The principle of relevance Optimal relevance is getting the right balance between size and type of context and amount of information derived. The more information some stimulus yields, the more relevant it is said to become, but the more effort the interpretation of that stimulus requires, the less relevant it will become. And to be minimally relevant a stimulus must lead to at least one non-trivial inference being derived. However interpretation of an act of communication involves two agents – the  speaker and the hearer. The constraint of balancing cognitive effect with cognitive effort will also apply to what the hearer does, but here the task of interpretation is more specific because the hearer has to try and recover what the speaker intended to convey. There are two aspects to the task: 1 Decoding the information associated with an uttered expression– i. e. working out what words have been said and the information that they by definition carry. 2 Making choices which enrich that encoded information to establish what the speaker had intended to convey using those words. Relevance and speech acts  On the speech act view of language, language can best be understood in terms of acts such as these which speakers carry out in using language. The observation by speech act theorists that there is more to language than just describing things is quite uncontentious. Nonetheless, in relevance theory, where the type of implications that can be drawn is quite unrestricted, there is no need of any special discrete categories for such different kinds of act. 5. Linguistic typology and its directions (14) 1 The Diversity of Human Languages The field of linguistic typology explores the diversity of human language in an  effort to understand it. The basic principle behind typology is that one must look at as wide a range of languages as possible in order to grasp both the diversity of 9language and to discover its limits. Typology uses a fundamentally empirical, comparative, and inductive method in the study of language. That is, typologists examine grammatical data from a wide variety of languages, and infer generalizations about language from that data. The basic discovery of typology is that there are limits to linguistic diversity. By comparing diverse languages and discovering universal grammatical patterns, one can attempt to disentangle what is  universal about the grammars languages from what is peculiar to each individual language. 2 The Nature of Language Universals: Word Order One of the first areas of grammar where it was recognized that there are limits to grammatical diversity was the order of words. Word order is probably the most immediately salient difference in grammatical patterns from one language to the next. First, one must examine a sample of languages in order to infer the range of grammatical diversity and its limits. A variety sample collects as broad a range of languages as possible from different geographical areas and different genetic  groupings. Its purpose is to ensure that all possible language types are identified. Second, one must be able to identify phenomena from one language to the next as comparable. The basic problem here is the great variety of grammatical structures used in the world’s languages. The solution to this problem is due to another insight of structuralism: the basic unit of the language is the sign, a form that conventionally expresses or encodes a meaning. The basis for cross-linguistic comparison is a particular linguistic meaning; once that is identified, we may examine the different structures used to encode that meaning. Third, we must identify a range of grammatical patterns or types used to express the linguistic meaning being examined, and classify languages according to what type(s) is / are used in them. For instance, in describing word order of the sentence, the relative position of subject (S), object (O), and verb (V) are used to classify language types. Language structure is determined by factors of language use, such as processing. Language structure is also determined by historical relationships among grammatical patterns, which themselves are due to similarity in meaning. However, these factors do not uniquely determine a language structure, but  compete with each other. Speech communities resolve the competing motivations in arbitrary, language-particular ways; this leads to the diversity of languages found in the world. 3 Language Universals and the Formal Encoding of Meaning Word order universals appear to be motivated in terms of processing of linguistic structure in the act of producing and comprehending language. Word order is a fundamental grammatical property of sentences. 3. 1 Typological markedness and morphological representation 10Some of the earliest work in typology examined the coding of grammatical and  lexical concepts in inflected word forms. The universals go under the name of (typological) markedness. Typological markedness represents an asymmetric pattern of the expression of meaning in grammatical categories across languages. Typological markedness has two central characteristics. First, typological markedness is a property of conceptual categories – e. g. singular and plural – or more precisely, how those conceptual categories are expressed in languages. For number, the singular is unmarked and the plural is marked. Second, unmarked status does not imply that the unmarked member is always left unexpressed and the marked member is always expressed by an overt morpheme. The presence / absence of an overt inflection encoding a conceptual category is only one symptom of markedness, namely structural coding. Typological markedness is found in another aspect of the coding of concepts in words and constructions. Most words in sentences express more than one conceptual category. Pronouns in English, for instance, can express gender as well as number. In English, neither the singular nor plural pronouns express number by a separate inflection; instead number is implicitly expressed by distinct forms such as he and  they. The grammatical coding of additional, cross-cutting, distinctions in the singular but not in the plural is an example of the second symptom of markedness, called behavioral potential. Behavioral potential is also represented by an implicational universal: If the marked member of a category grammatically expresses a crosscutting distinction, so does the unmarked member. A third property of typological markedness points to its underlying explanation. The unmarked member is more frequent than the marked member in language use. Concepts that occur more frequently in language use (e. g. singular) will tend to be expressed by fewer morphemes than less frequently occurring concepts (e. g. plural). This explanation for how meaning is encoded in grammatical form is a processing explanation, called economy or economic motivation. 3. 2 Hierarchies and conceptual spaces We can describe the cross-linguistic distribution of plural markings across classes of pronouns and nouns with the animacy hierarchy. The hierarchy is a succinct way to capture a chain of implicational universals: if any class of words has a plural, then all the classes to the left (or higher) on the hierarchy have a plural. These  patterns are defined over a conceptual space. The conceptual space describes a network of relationships among conceptual categories which exist in the human mind and which constrains how conceptual categories are expressed in grammar. Grammatical change must follow the links in conceptual space. For instance, a plural marking spreads from left to right in the animacy space. Conceptual spaces specify what grammatical category groupings are found in, and how constructions spread (or retreat) over time in their application to grammatical categories. If we compare absence vs. presence of case marking on nouns for the grammatical  11 relations hierarchy, we find that absence of case marking occurs at he higher end of the hierarchy, and presence thereof at the lower end of the hierarchy. The grammatical relations hierarchy also defines the distribution of verb agreement across languages. Verb agreement is associated with the higher end of the grammatical relations hierarchy – the ability to trigger verb agreement indicates the greater behavioral potential of the grammatical relation. These facts demonstrate that the two grammatical relations hierarchies in fact reflect a deeper cross-linguistic universal pattern, found in many different parts of the grammar of languages. 3. 3 Economy and iconicity Economic motivation: the more frequently used category is more likely to be reduced in expression or left unexpressed. Iconic motivation the structure of language reflects the structure of concepts. In the example, each conceptual category, both singular and plural, are overtly encoded in the word form. A subtype of iconicity called isomorphism: the correspondence between forms and meanings. There are two ways in which isomorphism occur in human languages. The first way is in the correspondence of forms and meanings in the combination of words and inflections in a sentence. This is called syntagmatic isomorphism. Economic and iconic motivation compete to produce the range of attested and unattested correspondences between form and meaning. There are 3 predicted patterns. Overt expression is iconically motivated: there is a one-to-one correspondence between meanings and forms. However, it is only moderately economically motivated: it is more economical than expressing a meaning with more than one word or morpheme, but less economical than not expressing the meaning at all. Non-expression of a particular meaning, such as the singular of English nouns like car-O (vs.plural book-s), is economically motivated: zero expression breaks one-to-one correspondence between forms and meanings. The third possible option, zero marking of both singular and plural, corresponds to the absence of expression of the category. This option is economically motivated: either the meaning can be inferred from context, or it is not relevant to the communication. There is another economically motivated pattern of expressing meaning in form: the combination or fusion of discrete meanings in a single form. For example, the suffix -s in English run-s indicates 3rd person subject, singular  subject and present tense, all in a single suffix. In other languages, inflectional categories are found in separate suffixes, as in Turkish. The second type of isomorphism is the correspondence between form and meaning in the inventory of words stored in the mind; paradigmatic isomorphism. 12The possible means of expression of meanings in words are limited by economy and iconicity. Unmotivated possibility: the existence of more than one word with the same meaning, synonymy. It is not iconically motivated. A one-to-one match between a word and a meaning is called monosemy. It isiconic ally motivated but not that economically motivated: we would need very many words to express each discrete meaning. Homonymy is economically motivated, but it is not iconically motivated (many unrelated meanings are expressed by a single form). By far the most common state of affairs in languages, however, is polysemy: the grouping of related meanings under a single form. Polysemy is economically motivated because it subsumes several meanings under a single form, as with homonymy. It is iconically motivated, because the meanings are related. 4 The Dynamic Approach to Language Universals The most common word.

Is hypnosis and effective method to Improve Health? Essay -- essays re

Is Hypnosis an Effective Method to Improve Health? Many high schools have hypnotists come to their school to entertain the students. Once a hypnotist came to the Fletcher High School gymnasium and hypnotized about a half dozen people. He convinced these six people into believing they were five years old watching their favorite cartoon. Their mannerisms were shocking. They truly believed they were five-years-old, throwing a fit when the hypnotist told them their mother just turned off the cartoons. Knowing that it is very hard to remember back to when a person is five-years-old, it was amazing that the power of hypnosis made them remember so easily. It seemed as if the hypnotist could make them remember anything. Just before the students woke from their hypnosis, the hypnotists told them they would be fully rested and feel extremely good about his or herself. Afterwards, they remarked on how rested they felt. A hypnotist can make people feel completely rested while being under hypnosis, and make people believe things that are not true. Why stop there though? If something hurts, then tell the hypnotherapist to suggest under hypnosis that the pain is gone and does not bother them anymore and the person will feel better. If someone has a stuttering problem, then they can visit a hypnotherapist and he should be able to straighten up their speech so they can speak more clearly. Likewise, a person’s self-confidence could be uplifted and they Stayton 2 could begin to believe in his or herself. Some people could even be anesthetized for surgery using hypnosis. Many people are hypnotized for entertainment purposes, so maybe it should also be used to help people with problems that are hard to resolve. Hypnosis can be used to relieve pain, conquer almost any fear, eliminate the use unnecessary prescription medicines, and help a person to overcome alcoholism and to overcome drug addictions. Also, upon finding support from a hypnotherapist, many have been able to quit addictive habits such as smoking. Conquering phobias is a specialty of hypnotherapists. A phobia is a compulsive fear of a specified situation or object (Knight 2). A few types of phobias are fear of open spaces, fear of snow, fear of the cold, fear of marriage, fear of insanity, fear of being alone, fear of darkness, fear of disease, fear of beards, fear of birds, fear of being stared at, fear of bein... ...nly one aspect of hypnosis. If a hypnotist can make someone remember something so far back and make that person reenact those memories, hypnosis could be a powerful tool regarding many health problems caused by brain activities. There is so much more that has yet to be discovered. Estabrooks, George H., Hypnotism. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1957. â€Å"Hypnosis and Smoking: The Mighty Power of Suggestion.† Smoking Cessation. N. pag. Online. Internet. 13 Apr. 2000. Available WWW: http://www.hypnosis.about.com/smoking.hypnos.htm Kirsch, Irving, Antonio Capafons, Etzel Cardeà ±a-Buelna, Salvador Amigà ³. Clinical Hypnosis and Self-Regulation. Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1999. Knight, Bryan. â€Å"You Can Conquer Your Phobia.† Hypnogenesis. N. pag. Online. Internet. 13 Apr. 2000. Available WWW: http://www.hypnos.co.uk/hypnomag/drknigh3.htm Nicoli, Thomas. â€Å"Pain and Physical Disorder – Relief Through Hypnosis.† Hypnogenesis. N. pag. Online. Internet. 13 Apr. 2000. Available WWW: http://www.hypnos.co.uk/hypnomag/nicoli1.htm Schneck, Jerome M. Hypnosis in Modern Medicine. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1953. Wolff, Michael. Personal Interview. 28 Apr. 2000.

Usa and it policies

Ukraine, which was until 2008 Bucharest summit extended its support ND participation towards NATO forces, has now turned indifferent and cold to US under the presidency of Victor Hancock. It's necessary to recall the actions of the United States in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, where they acted either without and sanction from United Nations Security Council or distorted the contents of the resolution, as it happened in Libya. US is often accused of having different yardsticks on the issue of military intervention.The current crisis is not only about Ukraine. However, the outcome of the East-West standoff in Ukraine may be crucial for deciding the success or failure of Russian's new policy of defiance. Crimea was Putting trump card and he played it well. Despite the load threats of sanctions and other punitive actions by the west, President Vladimir Putting went along with the wishes of the people of the Crimean peninsula and on march 21 duly signed a treaty incorporating the regio n into the Russian Federation.And Russia seem to receive an unprecedented support from many developing counties Including BRICKS nations which declared to have no appetite for the sanction regime that the west wants to impose on Russia and regretted the use of sanctions as a weapon against Russia. While on the contrary the 67 leaders meeting at The Hogue In the last week of March decided unanimously to suspend Russia from the 68.The GO leaders Issued a statement condemning what they termed as â€Å"Russian's Illegal attempts to annex Crimea In contravention to International law'. The 67 leaders warned that they would â€Å"Intensify actions† that could have a escalating Impact on the Russian economy! Though Putting gave an assurance that there would be no further moves to â€Å"split Ukraine† despite the growing glamour among the Russian speaking parts of eastern Ukraine for breaking away!Well, there still a lot more to this undying wave of rattling animosity. The wor ld Is transforming, change Is Inevitable and India for now advised to remain clang to Its â€Å"Non alignment policy' and refrain Itself from stepping Into the chaos! USA and it policies By reestablishment unprecedented support from many developing counties including BRICKS nations While on the contrary the 67 leaders meeting at The Hogue in the last week of March decided unanimously to suspend Russia from the 68.The 67 leaders issued a statement condemning what they termed as â€Å"Russian's illegal attempts to annex Crimea in contravention to international law'. The 67 leaders warned that they would â€Å"intensify actions† that could have a significant impact on the Russian economy!

Impact of Culture on the Spread of Hiv/Aids in Kenya

bdalla A. Bafagih Professor Trent Newmeyer Sociology of AIDS Soc 309Y1F June 21, 2004 Impact of Culture on the Spread of HIV/AIDS in Kenya a national culture is not a folklore, nor an abstract populism that believes it can discover the people’s true nature†¦. a national culture is the whole body of the efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence (Fanon, Frantz). Introduction Culture, even in the twenty first century, has numerous denotations.In various parts of the world, it has been and is still considered to be important for the development of civilization and of people’s minds; a particular society or civilization is considered in relation to its beliefs, ways of life and values. In short, culture plays a crucial role in a groups’ quest for identity and is therefore at the centre of the socio-cultural development of a people, region or even county in terms of identity and politics-it serves as a code of life that must be followed under any circumstances even with an HIV/AIDS epidemic.These observations help illuminate responses to our central thesis: that cultural barriers and the ensuing gender bias have not only perpetuated the spread of HIV/AIDS among women, but are also hindering an effective HIV/AIDS prevention campaign in Kenya. Our position is that HIV/AIDS prevalence is a gendered issue because women in most parts of the developing world, due to the repressive cultural practices women have no power. Furthermore women continue to be betrayed by outdated traditional norms such as widow inheritance, widow cleansing, polygamy and gender inequality, as is the case in parts of Kenya.When these issues may seem to differ, in reality they are intertwined and date back to generations. To make matters worse those infected with HIV, both women and men blame witchcraft as the source of death (McGeary, J. Time Magazi ne, p, 30). Moreover as Madhu Bala Nath states â€Å"myths are also rooted in the nature of denial that is associated with HIV/AIDS. Because HV/AIDS is so frightening, there is a temptation to deny the existence of the disease (2001, p, 32). Such denial plays a large part in sustaining such outdated practices.We should point out from the outset that the current risky practices were at one time seen as strength (pre HIV/AIDS era) since they were really helpful and appropriate for their communities. Among the merits of such traditional practices were, among others, the widow’s security within the household was guaranteed and the orphaned children were guaranteed the extended family support and therefore survival within the community. It was meant to ensure the widow and children never became homeless.According to the Washington Post, In Western Kenya, the custom known as wife inheritance once held an honorable promise: A community would take care of a widow and her children. S he did not remarry. Her husband's family simply took responsibility for her. If a brother-in-law could not care for her, then a cousin or a respected outsider would. The inheritor made sure that the widow and her children were fed, clothed, sheltered, educated, protected, kept (Buckley, Stephen.Washington Post, November 8, 1997). For the purpose of this paper, we take a position that the spread of HIV/AIDS has rendered what were once cultural assets into deadly liabilities particularly towards women and children. That is why there is a need to be creative and embrace alternative rituals that do not involve risky sexual behavior. Our position is that inheritance per se is not bad, but widow inheritance and cleansing that endanger the lives of the widow and the inheritor/cleanser should be discarded.Wife inheritance or wife cleansing involves an inheritor who has his own family. As reported by the Washington Post â€Å"he infects his first wife and the widow he has inherited. Then he dies, and two other men inherit the women he leaves behind. Those men die. And then their widows are inherited† (ibid. ). It is this vicious circle that explains the rising HIV rates in Kenya. Kenya has vibrant and diverse cultural groups but some groups elevate ethnicity above nationalism.This makes it sometimes problematic to deal with intra and inter cultural norms or to undertake reforms of certain entrenched traditions. On one hand you have believers in Christianity who are more willing to abandon certain outdated traditions such as those discussed in this paper. For instance, a Kenyan bishop, called on widows to take a stand against wife inheritance (Gonza, Sam. 2000, p, 1). On the other hand you have the rigid traditionalists who are not open to any reforms or changes within traditions.There is usually no middle ground and unfortunately it cuts across class lines. We agree with the position put forward by Human Rights Watch in their report entitled Double Standards: Wo men’s Property Rights Violations in Kenya that â€Å"as important as cultural diversity and respecting customs may be, if customs are a source of discrimination against women, they like any other norm-must evolve† (2003, p, 2). Kenya has approximately forty tribes, which are co-related to the four greater ethnic groups (Buckley, Stephen.Washington Post, November 8, 1997): Bantu, Nilo-Hamitic, Nilotic and Hamitic (see figure i). Because of it’s neighboring, cultures are related to each other within Kenya and in the border countries such as Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Sudan. [pic] Figure: i Source: http://www. lib. utexas. edu/maps/kenya. html It will be imperative for this paper to provide short historical events in Kenya so as to provide a proper understanding of both the internal and external dynamics of this country.Kenya attained its independence from Britain in 1963 and has a population of thirty two million (32 million). [1] Kenya like other Sub-Saharan countries is a creation of European scramble for Africa. [2] As a result same ethnic groups are presently dispersed across different countries. The boundaries are like artificial divisions in a way that the people cannot be checked at all border-crossing zones. [pic] Figure: ii Source: http://www. lib. utexas. edu/maps/kenya. html The point, which we want to discuss, is that it is difficult to try to onvince these communities to abandon some of their practices, because they feel that at the end, abandoning their customs, would completely wipe out their culture and eventually loose their identity. In some African countries, various ethnic groups are the minorities and would want to keep intact their culture for the purpose of their own identity, so as to enable them to negotiate any political power in the government (Kanyiga, Karuti. 1998, p, 7)). On the other hand the ethnic groups, which are the majority, would want to maintain their hegemony and are not ready to change their tradi tions (ibid).Thus why dealing with health issues such as HIV/AIDS creates profound consequences. Current HIV/AIDS Situation in Kenya The synopsis about Kenya is not good at all. United Nations AIDS (UNAIDS) reports that over 2 million out of a total population of 29. 5 million (2000) were infected with HIV and a cumulative number of 1. 5 million people had died due to AIDS. The high prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS have negatively impacted life expectancy to the extent that it has dropped by approximately 13 years to 51 years (1998); while GDP reduced by -0. in 2000 and is expected to worsen in coming years. The average literacy rate is estimated at 78% (1995) and total fertility rate in Kenya is about 4. 4 (1998). Approximately 30% of the population lives in urban areas and more than half of the population live under the poverty line, women constituting the majority. UNAIDS estimates that about 500 persons died of AIDS each day in the country in 1999. (www. unaids. org/Unaids/EN/geogra phical+area/by+country/kenya. asp).According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the estimated number of adults and children living with HIV/AIDS, in Kenya end of 2001 stands as follows: Adults and children 2,500,000, Adults (15-49) 2,300,000, Women (15-49) 1,400,000 and Children 220,000, current living orphans, 890, 000, estimated number of death due to AIDS (2001), 190, 000 and the current adult rate of 15. 0 percent (www. who. int/hiv/pub/epidemiology/pubfacts/en/). Furthermore, the Human Rights Watch Report (2001) indicates that an estimated 2. million adults and children live with HIV/AIDS, representing about 14 percent of the sexually active population. The scary statistic is that Kenya has the ninth highest HIV prevalence rate in the world to the extent that the U. S. Census Bureau projections indicate that by 2005, there will be about 820 deaths per day from AIDS in Kenya. (http://www. hrw. org/reports/2001/kenya/kenya0701-03. htm#P144_18884). Factors behind the Gendered HIV/AIDS rates in Kenya. Through culture and society, we are able to transmit skills and other systems of social relations to modify our environment.But that has not been possible with women in Kenyan in both rural and urban areas even in the event of a HIV/AIDS epidemic with no cure in sight. Since our beliefs and ways of life are inseparable from our particular cultures, it is common for people to reject a behavior if it is not signified in their culture’s social code. It is however much harder for the marginalized groups like women and girls to reject what is supposedly part of their culture as is the case among the Luo and Luhya[3] of Kenya where they practice their culture to a fault.In such cases, individual behavior patterns alone are not responsible for the observed high-risk activities that cause HIV/AIDS. Needless to say, HIV/AIDS transmission in parts in Kenya is mostly through heterosexual relations. Because of [blind] loyalty to their culture, many within the gr oup (most educated women with the economic means to support themselves are now increasingly defiant against certain regressive policies like widow inheritance) in a society which has its own subculture, often face social risks, such as wife (widow) inheritance, to the extent that failure can result in exclusion from participating in communal events.For example, women who refuse to be inherited among the Luo and Luhya automatically lose their right to remain within their households, because their behavior is considered odd. Consequently women are frequently subject to violence, abuse, scorn and ridicule and other expressions of hate (HRW, 2003, pp, 16-21). Similarly, when it comes to apportioning blame as to who is the responsible party for bringing HIV/AIDS among married couples; it is usually women who are blamed even though in most cases, it is the men who have multiple partners.That goes to show that in the name of culture, women in Kenya find themselves in subordinate positions to men and are socially, culturally, and economically dependent on them. Because of the cultural biases, women are largely excluded from decision making, have limited access to and control over resources, are restricted in their mobility, and are often under threat of violence from male relatives (that is why many women have no choice when it comes to certain oppressive rituals, because they have no where else to return to should they be evicted from their late husband’s property) (ibid).In many cases, women in many parts of Kenya are perpetual minors subject to the guardianship of their male relatives and husbands. As a result, not only are their statuses lower than that of men, but also their condition is also dependent on that of their men folk. This subordination of women is connected to the distribution of power in society. In Kenya, economic, social and political power accrued to men partially as a result of their control of women, even though the thinking was and still is that a prosperous homestead depended on female reproduction and production.This keeps such oppressive rituals like widow inheritance in practice. Additionally, the gendered HIV/AIDS prevalence rates illuminate how gender as a constitutive element of social relationships. The Human Rights Watch of 2003, stated that of the 1. 4 million were women and girls with HIV positive, between the ages of fifteen and forty nine, this clearly shows how differences between sexes-power relationship within and between different women, urban versus rural and single versus married is very much embedded within society.Furthermore, the violation of fundamental human rights, and especially reproductive rights of women, plays an important part in perpetuating gender inequity and the observed HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in Kenya. As discussed in some parts of Kenya certain groups have taken Fanon’s dictum above about culture to new levels (p, 42), which have resulted in the discrimination, violati on of women’s rights and have placed women at great risk of contacting HIV. The impact has been traumatic on women as members of a community that continues to marginalize them in alls aspects of life.Yet women continue to provide care as wives, mothers, daughters, nurses, teachers, and grandmothers towards the sick, the dying and the orphaned children, many of whom are traumatized by the loss of their loved ones from AIDS. Unfortunately, in most parts of Kenya as evident elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, as Fanon further argued, societies have not acknowledged the totality of culture and its vital role within the context of culture and history (p, 43).What we know and will be shown in this essay is that an examination of cultural practices allow us to know the nature and extent of the imbalance and conflicts (economic, social and cultural) which characterize the evolution of a society: culture allows us to know the dynamic synthesis which have been developed and established by social conscie nce to resolve these conflicts at each stage of its evolution in search for survival and progress (ibid).In the case of Kenya, and elsewhere as it was made clearer in this course, the quest for in Kenya such attitudes pervade all aspects of social life to the detriment of girls in particular and women in general. Evidently, the recurring theme in Kenya is the conflict between modernity and tradition that is often treated in terms of its relevance to women and men, rural versus urban or what it means to belong to a particular ethnic group. This goes to the heart of gender equity, property rights, agrarian reform and its problematic impact on women.In parts of Kenya, those who believe that culture is stagnant rather than vibrant to the extent that oppressions against women are presented in terms of cultural harmony and the survival of entire ethnicities have hindered the process of social liberation by women. Some of the cultural traditions discussed include wife (wido w) inheritance, widow cleansing and polygamy all of which contributed to the lack of secure property rights that result into the violation of human rights for women, and the observed disparity in HIV/AIDS rates between men and women in Kenya. 4] Unfortunately westerners including many of our classmates sometimes do not seem to understand that countries like Kenya have very poor laws that govern human freedoms and rights like the Canadian Charter of Freedoms and Rights. Women in Kenya are routinely discriminated against in most cases with the connivance of the state. [5] While personal freedom and choice have certainly played a role in the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS elsewhere, where laws are enforced, in the case of Kenya, the interplay of culture and gender roles is to a great extent responsible for the statistics cited above in this essay.Although awareness of HIV/AIDS is reasonably high in Kenya this is not reflected in sexual behavioral changes, given the high prevalence and incide nce of HIV/AIDS (Rosenvard, C and T. Campbell, 1996, p, 11). This finding reflects our thesis; the entrenched cultural biases against women and girls can explain such behavior to the extent where awareness is high yet infections rates are also rising. It is not that Kenyans in general or women in particular are not rational, they are but they have become victims of outdated cultural traditions and gender biases.What this rather contradictory finding shows is the need to view the HIV/AIDS pandemic through, multiple lenses but most importantly through the lens of power inequality in society that are rooted in gender. Gender norms pervade all aspects of Kenyan culture and society to the extent that culture dominates anything else among the Luo and Luhya of Western Kenya. The marginalized status of women plays a key role in the spread of HIV/AIDS in Kenya as reflected in the UNAIDS and WHO figures.It is thus important to recognize the complex underlying factors influencing the role of w omen and how such roles affect African societies and behavior. In the traditional Kenyan society, women are expected to be submissive and to provide for their household at all times (Caldwell, 1989, p, 185). In Kenya especially in the rural setting, the woman’s marital status does not end when the person who married her dies; she is by all accounts married to the clan in the sense that under certain ‘invented’ customary traditions, the clan has the right to inherit her.Traditionally, Luo or Luhya women have little or no say in such matters of inheritance including the retention or sharing of resources such as land and property. According to Human Rights Watch: Widows are often evicted from their homes as in-laws rob them of their possessions and invade their homes and lands. These unlawful appropriations happen even more readily when the husband died of AIDS†¦ In some places, widows are forced to undergo customary, sexual practices such as â€Å"wife inheri tance† or ritual â€Å"cleansing† in order to keep their property. Wife inheritance† is where a male relative of the dead husband takes over the widow as a wife, often in a polygamous family. â€Å"Cleansing† usually involves sex with a social outcast who is paid by the dead husband's family, supposedly to cleanse the woman of her dead husband's evil spirits. In both of these rituals, safer sex is seldom practiced and sex is often coerced.Women who fight back are routinely beaten, raped, or ostracized (Double Standards: Women's Property Rights Violations in Kenya) (http://www. hrw. rg/reports/2001/kenya/TopOfPage). While the quotation above tells us sufficient story about the problems facing Kenyan women, Human Rights Watch report entitled, Double Standards: Women's Property Rights Violations in Kenya captures the agony of Kenyan women in their own voices. It is thus important to reproduce just three of their experiences below to capture what Human Right Wa tch calls â€Å"the heinous nature of women's property rights violations: through personal interview. Human Rights Watch of 2001, reports, â€Å"AIDS exacerbates those hardships†. †¢ Jiwa, a fifty-five-year-old widow from western Kenya, said that after her husband died, her brother-in-law brought a â€Å"cleanser† to her home to have sex with her. She objected, saying: â€Å"I don't know this man's HIV status, and if I die my children will suffer. † Her brother-in-law and four cousins pushed the cleanser into Jiwa's hut and he raped her. She screamed but the cleanser covered her mouth and the in-laws stood guard outside. The brother-in-law paid the cleanser with a cow, chickens, and clothing. Jiwa was then forced out of her home and into a shoddy, makeshift hut. Her brother-in-law took over her land and furniture.She reported this to the village elder, who did nothing. Jiwa now has a persistent cough and has lost much weight. She fears she contracted HIV f rom the cleanser but has not been tested and cannot afford medical treatment. †¢ Adhiambo, a thirty-year-old widow from Nairobi, said that when her husband died of AIDS in 1998 he left her HIV-positive with five children. She quickly went from being relatively affluent to destitute after her husband's family took her property. Her in-laws grabbed household items from her Nairobi home and took over a rural home, land, and livestock even though Adhiambo helped pay to construct the house.Her father-in-law called a family meeting, told her to choose an in-law as an inheritor, and ordered her to be cleansed by having sex with a fisherman. Adhiambo refused, and fled when her in-laws threatened her. She now struggles to meet her children's basic needs, and her slum landlord has threatened to evict her. †¢ Imelda, a twenty-five-year-old widow with AIDS, lost her home, land, and other property in Kenya when her husband died in 2002. She told her in-laws that she had AIDS and wanted to stay in the house. They snatched her property anyway and wanted her to be â€Å"inherited. She recalled: â€Å"I told my in-laws I'm sick . . . but they took everything. I had to start over . . .. They took sofa sets, household materials, cows, a goat, and land. I said, ‘Why are you taking these things when you know my condition? ‘ They said, ‘You'll go look for another husband. ‘ My in-laws do not believe in AIDS. They said that witchcraft killed my husband. (http://www. hrw. org/reports/2001/kenya/TopOfPage). The above tribulations capture the victims in their own words and show how widow’s inheritance and cleansing devalues the dignity of women.While case law establishes that family property may be evenly divided upon separation or divorce in practice, the captured words of the three widows above, seems to differ. But above all, as has been our point of argument throughout this paper, under the very oppressive and discriminatory customary laws that are extremely influential in Kenya, it is the men who are accorded greater property rights than women. Other discriminatory practices are usually sexist customary tradition that obstruct women's equal rights to property and also prevent women from seeking redress for violations of these rights.Additionally, the problem is made worse by unresponsive authorities that ignore women’s woes regarding property violations, and ineffective courts that are biased against women. However the greatest setback is the fact that many Kenyan women and men too have land problems where squatters are routinely evicted even though they have lived on such land for generations. The other is low level of awareness of their rights, the time and expense of pursuing claims, violence, and the social stigma of being considered greedy or cultural traitors if they assert their rights. www. hrw. org/campaigns/women/property/factsheet. htm). Evidently, what the discussion above illustrates is that in K enya, women’s rights violations must be understood and combated in the context of Africa's AIDS epidemic.In Kenya, 15 percent of the population between the ages of fifteen and forty-nine is infected with HIV, more than half of whom are women, and one out of eight adults in rural Kenya and one out of five adults in urban areas is infected, though most do not know it. AIDS has reduced life expectancy from sixty-five to forty-six years ((http://www. rw. org/reports/2001/kenya/TopOfPage). These figures are quite telling in that in Kenya, HIV/AIDS is worse among urban dwellers than is the case among rural dwellers. According to Dyson, the higher urban incidence rates are due to â€Å"relatively high rates of social interaction and crowded urban living conditions and squalid living conditions† (p, 427). Similar results for Sub-Saharan African in general, has been documented by Caldwell who found that â€Å"urban levels of HIV infection rates are typically four to ten times those of rural areas† (p, 44).In countries with a substantial level of urbanization, and home to some of the largest slum areas in Africa, the numbers are certainly depressing. Moreover as noted by Bollinger et al, Sometimes traditional practices that occur in Kenya, particularly in the rural areas, can contribute to the spread of HIV. For example, a director of the Kenyan governments AIDS efforts attributed the high prevalence rate in some parts of western Kenya to the practice of wife inheritance that exist there (5-6). These findings do illuminate our thesis.Furthermore given the feminization of poverty due to Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) policies (Cooper, 2002, 87), women in urban areas and also in rural areas find themselves on the economic margins where they are forced to engage in risky behaviors like prostitution. Moreover, because of SAP polices and the introduction of user fee in hospitals; women are disadvantaged with regard to health and health care (ibid), a clear indication that gender inequalities have led to a systematic neglect of women’s health and the gendered incidence of HV/AIDS in Kenya. It is not our intention to call such traditions as ‘uncivilized’ or extreme.It would be naive to make this assumption and one has also to try to understand the dynamics of Africa and its communities at earlier times. Caldwell captures the reality that â€Å"it is clear that lifestyle plays a dominant role in determining individuals’ chances of infection, and it seems probable that level of the disease over the coming decades is more likely to be decided by changing lifestyles than by medical breakthroughs. Those changes will be more successful, and least damaging to the society, if behavioral factors in the spread of the disease are well understood† (p, 186).Conclusion This essay has outlined and argued that the disparity in HIV/AIDS prevalence rates between men and women are rooted in the cultural biases aga inst women and girls such as widow inheritance in parts of Kenya. Our position in this essay has been that the cultural barriers and the ensuing gender bias have not only perpetuated the spread of HIV/AIDS among women, but are also hindering an effective HIV/AIDS prevention campaign in Kenya. We have shown the linkages between cultural biases against women and girls and the spread of HIV/AIDS.The challenge has been to decouple the notion that addressing women rights in Kenya is a western value or that concerns of equity must take a back seat in the struggle against HIV/AIDS epidemic. We recognize that eliminating all forms of discrimination against women in Kenya will take time, but the government must start to enforce existing laws to protect women against repressive cultural practices like widow inheritance. The people must be told that culture is not static but rather dynamic, and should be encouraged to discard risky cultural traditions and activities that expose women to HIV/AI DS and thus endanger their lives.From this course (Sociology 309), we know the relationship between safe and improved reproductive rights such as increased condom use and the health status of women are crucial in fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS. As shown in this paper there is a positive correlation between women’s precarious health status and their susceptibility to HIV/AIDS particularly in urban areas, inequitable gender relations and women’s poverty and powerlessness in society especially in rural areas.Finally, the Kenyan stakeholders – politicians, church leaders, civil society, NGOs, women leaders, youth groups, cultural and traditional leaders, must deal urgently with the existing power inequality among the sexes, that accounts for the excessive burden of HIV/AIDS transmission and the consequences on women in general who have so far been hit most by the spread of HIV/AIDS. That trend needs to be reversed if Kenya is to stem the devastating impact of HIV/A IDS epidemic and its distressing impact on the Kenyan society at large.