Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature
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Pragmatic and Cultural Considerations of Compliment Responses among Malaysian-Malay Speakers
Get PDFJanet Holmes defines a compliment as “a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some 'good' (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer†(485). Compliments vary from one culture to another. As suggested by Holmes (1986), compliments are generally paid and appreciated in the Western culture. However, in the Eastern culture, when compliments are paid, they are either rejected or denied (Gu, 1990; Chen, 1993). Malaysia is a multicultural society with a colonial history. English is spoken widely in the country, side by side with several vernacular languages. The study investigates the pragmatics of Malay compliments using Brown and Levinson's (1987) “face†framework and Searle's (1969) speech act framework among Malay speakers in Malaysia. The results show that compliments when given are more appreciated than denied or rejected by Malay speakers now than before, indicating a shift in the culture of compliments and compliment response in Malaysia. Results also show that compliment responses differ according to the subject of compliment and its relative “distance†to the compliment receiver; closeness causes more compliment rejections, while distance results in compliment acceptance
Translating the Nation: Rizal, the Novel and Philippine Literatures in the Regions
Get PDFLegislated as the official national myth in the Philippines, the revolutionary novels of the foremost Filipino hero, Jose Rizal, continue to be taught across the secondary and tertiary levels in the Tagalog-based language of Filipino. Together with English, Filipino enjoys a distinct advantage as a fully developed literary language in the country, even as the many other languages of the archipelago are slowly and inexorably sliding into desuetude and neglect. Arguing that translation is at once a metaphorical and appropriative act, the author proposes that Rizal’s already inescapably translational texts be made available to Filipino students in their own mother tongues, in recognition of their evocative power (that includes rather than excludes) on one hand, and in order to more fully realize Rizal’s vision of an emancipated national body, on the other
Is It the Kingfisher?; Solsequiem; In Baclayon; Reading Levertov's "For Those Whom the Gods Love Less"
No full textRabindranath Tagore and Hermann Keyserling: A Difficult Friendship
Get PDFHermann Keyserling, Germany's most influential philosophical writer in the early 20th century, met Rabindranath Tagore in 1911 in Calcutta and noticed his genius before it became known to the world through the Nobel Prize (1913). Keyserling's Travel Diary of a Philosopher (1918) with a long chapter on India continues to be a highly acclaimed work. Keyserling, who was endowed with a tempestuous temperament, tried to monopolise the Indian poet when he visited Germany in 1921. Tagore defended his independence successfully. However, he agreed to conduct the so-called “Tagore Week†at Darmstadt where Keyserling lived and had founded his School of Wisdom. While Keyserling always talked of Tagore in a language of superlative praise, it is clear that Rabindranath and his son Rathindranath Tagore were less appreciative of the philosopher and, privately, criticised him because of his domineering manners
Shaking the Roots of Western Science in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome
Get PDFThe typical worldview based on the strict hierarchies and rigid binaries of standard/ nonstandard, civilised/savage, good/bad, dark/white, rich/poor and so on needs to be interrogated and dismantled in order to develop a fair perspective of the world. Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome (1996) presents a critique of the Eurocentric discourse of science and offers the possibilities of an alternative, and a paradigmatic shift in our perception of modernity and primitivism. The present fascination for the Western model of science and development will push the planet nowhere but to a premature collapse. In this paper, we discuss the subversive strategies which Ghosh employs in the text to conclude that it is time we interrogated the grand narrative of science and development and put the local “other†in its place if we want to save the world from an impending disaster
