Sunday, October 13, 2019
Politeness - a comparison between Chinese and English :: essays research papers
Table of contents 1. Introduction      2 2. Politeness – a theoretical approach     3 3. the concept of limao     4 4. Request strategies     4      4.1. Request strategies in Chinese     4      4.2. Request strategies in English     5 5. Forms of address     6      5.1. Forms of address in Chinese     6      5.2. Forms of address in English     7 6. Chinese: Politeness across social groups     8 7. Conclusion     9 References          11 1. Introduction In many parts of this world, former existing borders are removed and people move closer together. It has to be admitted that most of the time this happens due to economical reasons, and the phenomenon of mass media has to be mentioned in this context as well. Therefore it becomes even more important to be able to understand cultures of different life-styles. But the success or failure of communication does not only depend on how well a language is spoken, but also on intonation and body language. Dr. Mehrabian, a prominent and successful psychologist, is perhaps best known for the investigation of the role of non-verbal communication. He published findings indicating that spoken words only account for 7% of what a listener perceives. The remaining 93% of what a listener comprehends originate from the speaker's body language and tone employed in the delivery of the words. Not only because of studies like this, non-verbal communication plays an important role when studying language in its social context. A very interesting topic in this large field is politeness, since forms of politeness are often misinterpreted and lead to misunderstandings. So I chose to have a closer look at the differences between politeness in Chinese and English. Since it is very difficult to collect data concerning politeness in the language of Chinese, this paper is theory-based only. Nevertheless, many books that cover this topic can be found. Some of the books used for the research of this paper were written by native speakers of Chinese, which is an indication for the author’s competence of the language. Therefore, collecting additional data would not only have been difficult, but also inefficient. This paper will deal with the topic of request strategies used by speakers of the People’s Republic of China and the terms of address in Chinese and English. Besides, it will focus on request strategies across societal structures and social groups. In addition, it will discuss the concept of limao, the traditional concept of politeness in China. This paper will not allow to cover all important issues concerning this topic, but it shall give a rough overview and should give the reader an incentive to have a closer look at this field of study.
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Imagery In John Donnes The Bro Essay -- essays research papers
Imagery in “The Broken Heart'; Â Â Â Â Â John Donnes’ poem “The Broken Heart'; is full of imagery, used to portray his broken heart. Donne uses the imagery so we can get a visual picture of what love means to him. He uses the imagery because it’s necessary to see a picture of the pain he lives with. Donne uses several aspects of imagery, including death to show his grief and Donne also does uses despair to display his pain. Â Â Â Â Â The image of death was used throughout the poem. “…Love so soon decays,'; meaning that love so quickly dies. If you cut a flower and do not put it in water it will quickly wither and die. Another image of death would be the plague. A plague is a widespread disease that causes thousands of people to die. The plague is also synonymous with suffering. Donne writes that he has “had the plague a year,'; by writing this Donne has been deathly ill for what he thinks is a year. Love, to Donne is something that you think about for a long time so, therefore, it seems that you have loved someone for that long but in reality it is only a short period of time. According to Donne, love is very powerful and causes the widespread destruction to thousands. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Donne also uses the image of despair and depression. In the second stanza, he says “Ah, what a trifle is a heart, if once into lo...
Friday, October 11, 2019
The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating Essay
We have all heard the expressions â€Å"you are what you eat†and â€Å"an apple a day keeps the doctor away.†Turns out these expressions hold more truth than we’d probably like to admit. With so many delectably refined, enriched, neon colored, pseudo foods out there, our brains are more confused than ever before. Today, food is specifically formulated to hit all the right spots on our tongues; also, its being reinforced with chemical additives that stimulate our appetites through receptors in our brain, much like opiates. Then, its all wrapped up in carefully designed, brightly colored packaging, so how could we resist? Not to mention this food is cheap! If you’re on a budget you might be in the crosshairs of the mean machine I’m calling modern food. It’s getting increasingly difficult to see past all the pizzazz, and divert our attention back to plain old, dingy apples, or murky green spinach. I’d like to spill the beans, so to spea k, about how I came to believe that modern food is deceiving us and exploiting our weaknesses. Before I had my children I was aware, to some extent, that the food I was attracted to, and ate regularly wasn’t the best. It can be very difficult to weed out the ‘bad eggs’ of the bountiful grocery store shelves. A pivotal point in my nutritional pilgrimage was when I found out I was carrying my first son. I started reading about nutrition and learning how the systems of the body digest and use the foods we eat. I began by reading articles on the Weston A. Price Foundation website, whose proclamation is: â€Å"Restoring nutrient-dense foods to the American diet through education, research and activism.†I learned that I had an opinion about nutrition, and that I didn’t agree with a lot of the guidelines set for us. I discovered that the largest section on the American Food Pyramid, reserved for 6-11 servings, belonged to grains. Eating this quantity of any one type of food each day is alarming in itself. I decided to look into the topic of grains i n particular. I read the book â€Å"Wheat Belly†by author, William Davis, a renowned cardiologist who noticed the adverse effects that modern day wheat is reaping on our bodies. This book is an alarming read. It basically states that modern wheat is actually a product of genetic tinkering and agribusiness and not the wheat our grandparents ate. This â€Å"wheat†is highly toxic and should be completely removed from our diets. I decided to use this new perspective of food to my advantage, and ultimately to the benefit of the bun I had in my oven. With all this nutritional information and a baby on the way, I could no longer deny that I needed to change my diet. Even still, I would have never guessed how difficult this change would be. I was about to be served a huge slice of humble pie. It would seem that modern agriculture and big business did not want me to know what was in my food. Standing in the grocery store isles reading the back of packages was tedious, but crucial. I practically had to learn a new vocabulary to dissect the 15 letter terms on the ingredient lists. I must have missed the lesson in school on Mono- and Diglycerides: The most common emulsifiers, and Xanthan Gum: The most common stabilizer and thickener. Since these ingredients are abundant in prepared foods, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to throw them a bone early on, with a lesson on additives. Can you imagine a nursary rhyme filled with words like Thiamin Mononitrate, Benzoate, and Hexametaphosphate? The story of Hansel and Gretel stumblin g upon a house made of Monosodium Glutamate. The Cookie Monster chomping down on some yummy, crunchy, calcium chloride. This brings me to my next bone of contention with modern food, one that has become especially prevalent in teaching my children proper nutrition. Why is it necessary to dress up the boxes of terrible foods with cartoons my children recognize? It feels slightly like an ambush to me. It’s come to the point where taking my kids to the store has become dreadful because every turn they want Dora this, and Spongebob that. The natural, instinctive attraction to healthy foods is being ripped from our children as a result of targeting and over marketing. That adorable rabbit on the box of cereal is pulling more Trix on me than I would have ever guessed. Amply informed, we decided to change our eating habits as a family. We started full force, because lets face it, there is no easing into a change like this. I gathered my groceries and we began our health experiment. We didn’t consume any gluten, we amped up our fats, we ate tons of meat and dairy, and we plied on the fruits and vegetables. I got creative with snacks and meal plans to keep from feeling repetitive. The first few weeks were hard; I’d pick up a cracker, and right when I’d go to take a bite, I’d realize that I wasn’t supposed have it, so I’d put it back. Although, there were many more times that I would actually take a bite, and then end up having to abort that mouthful, mid-chew. With all big adjustments, the beginning is the hardest. Days went by, then weeks, and this became less of a stumbling block and more second nature. Beginning this endeavor with hopes of avoiding certain substances, we didn’t anticipate the other benefits that would ensue. We showed noticeable weight loss, increased stamina and energy, mind clarity, and drastically improved digestive function. We might as well have hit the wellbeing jackpot. Our pocketbooks, however, would reflect a significantly less profitable state. We were learning just how expensive keeping stocked on perishables, such as fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy could be. This is where, I believe, the American food system has deeply failed us. You can buy an overflowing cart of prepared foods for about $100 and have it last over a week, but the same amount of healthy food would cost well over $200, and possibly last that long. Why should the low income families be forced into buying imitation food? We all know that this is more than an epidemic in America, where every year more people die from diet related complications than car crashes, alcoholism, and dr ug use combined. Children are being born with new age conditions. Childhood obesity and diabetes has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years. How could that not be diet related? It is almost inconceivable that there could be such a simple fix to these enormous problems. It doesn’t involve depriving ourselves of delicious foods, its more about avoiding toxic chemicals and genetically engineered ingredients hiding in our food. Whether it is an obvious, 15 letter ingredient like those mentioned previously, or a seemingly innocent grain, like the toxic GMO wheat; We need to understand what we are consuming and ultimately nourishing our bodies with. There is an expression I like that does a good job summing up, â€Å"You can be well fed and malnourished at the same time.â€
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Human DNA and Sexual Differentiation Essay
There has with respect to understanding human evolution, thus far, hardly been any greater an academic marriage than that which has occurred between physical anthropology and genetics. For anthropologists the union has been particularly beneficial as DNA has been incorporated into the quest to understand human evolution. Some scholars have referred to this as the culmination of the evolution of the once distinct fields represented symbolically by Darwin’s theories on evolution and Mendel’s speculation regarding genes; one scholar has opined that Darwin and Mendel are the core, the essentials of understanding. These basics work together. The gene pool  the hereditary property of a population of animals  maintains the variation of the population or species, and mutation tends to increase that variation. Darwin’s selection cuts back the less favorable variation, in that way sculpting the inheritance of the species. (Howells 8) Fossils and genes, taken together, illuminate in ways that one without the other simply cannot. This refers to the discovery of positive knowledge as well as the discovery of long-established fallacies in the field of physical anthropology (Marks 131). This essay will focus on a few types of positive knowledge regarding the evolution of human DNA. More specifically, this essay will discuss how DNA variation can be used to explain some of the evolutionary physical features for sexual differences in humans as they pertain to language, sexuality, and visual spatial skills. As a preliminary matter, it is important to acknowledge that human sex differences were not always as pronounced as they are today. There were genetic variations that occurred over a long period of time and these genetic differences are evident in the fossils used by physical anthropologists to piece together how and why DNA has evolved as it has over the course of time. Scholars seem to agree that the evolution of human DNA is unique in certain respects; for purposes of this essay, it is significant to note that, regarding sexual differences in species, â€Å"It is apparent that these same cross-species sex differences have become more pronounced in humans†(Joseph 35). The evolution of human DNA with respect to sexual differences is greater than has been found in studies of other species. It has been demonstrated that DNA evolution led to Homo erectus females experiencing a vaginal reorientation at the same time that males experienced a change in pelvic structure (Joseph 35). The consequences were tremendous as this likely resulted in the development of long-term relationships between males and females; this is because, rather than being dependent on estrus in order to get pregnant, females were now physically and genetically configured to be sexually receptive continuously rather than sporadically. These long-term relationships also seem to have coincided with males and females establishing more permanent or semi-permanent homes. It can be argued, to some degree at least, that this genetic variation led to an embryonic notion of marriage and home. These human sex differences were further accelerated with the genetic evolution of the brain; indeed, as the brain became larger, â€Å"this required a larger birth canal and an increase in the sexual physical differentiation in the size and width of the H. erectus†(Joseph 35). DNA varied to accommodate these changes and they are manifest even today in the way that women walk as well as in the more fragile nature of their pelvic bones when compared to their male counterparts. As the female was evolving there were practical consequences; for instance, â€Å"The transformation of the human female hips and pelvis, however, also limited her ability to run and maneuver in space, at least, compared to most males†(Joseph 35). These DNA variations thus functioned to separate males and females and to lay the physical groundwork for other changes. This evolution in human DNA, in turn, led to a division of labor predicated on these newly exaggerated differences between the sexes. Generally speaking, women became gatherers and men became hunters. Each of these roles demanded different types of skills and the human animal adapted through the mechanism of its DNA. The female role demanded careful language skills rather than violence whereas the male role demanded aggression and physical strength. In explaining how the male DNA evolved to adapt to the male’s developing function, one scholar has noted that â€Å"successful hunting requires prolonged silence, excellent visual-spatial and gross motor skills, and the capacity to endure long treks in the pursuit of prey. These are abilities at which males excel, including modern H. apiens†(Joseph 35). In short, many of the human sexual differences noted today can be traced to the ways in which human DNA has evolved over time in order to adapt to changed environments and to changed sex roles. In the final analysis, even a cursory examination of the history of the evolution of human DNA suggests rather persuasively that there are watershed events which can aid in underst anding the uniqueness of sexual differentiation in humans and how sex roles evolved in response to that sexual differentiation.
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Affirmative Action Initiative in South Africa
Affirmative Action Initiative in South Africa Affirmative action is an initiative adopted by the South African government, which seeks to correct the imbalance of wealth and provide opportunities to the people who were adversely affected as a result of the apartheid regime. It has created a situation where organizations are required to meet specific employment targets for persons of colour in order to operate to the satisfaction of the state. As a result, these people are able to participate in the corporate environment at an accelerated rate. On the contrary, many white South Africans are finding it difficult to obtain their most select employment. The efficiency of affirmative action is best analyzed by assessing its objective of promoting black representation in the workplace and comparing it to empirical evidence. Figures provided by the government indicate that the unemployment rate has steadily declined annually since the inception of the study (September 2001). The September 2007 average unemployment rate of 23% is signi ficantly lower than 29.4% in September 2001. This provides evidence that the policy is doing well to provide work to more South Africans. (www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0210/P0210September2007.pdf) However, a more in-depth study reveals the change in unemployment rates amongst each population group. The best results have been for black people with a decline from approximately 35% (September 2001) to 26.8% (September 2007). The Indian people in the country also improved from approximately 19% to 10% over the same period. White and coloured unemployment rates have remained relatively static over this period at approximately 5% and 20% respectively. This bodes well for black and Indian people and is a strong indicator that affirmative action is achieving its goals. The policy seems to be failing in its attempt to compensate the coloured population. (www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0210/P0210September2007.pdf) However, there are problems that are emerging from affirmative action tha t is having a detrimental effect on the performance on enterprises and the overall success of the economy. The instantaneous and rapid enactment of affirmative action has seen unqualified persons attaining important positions. Many of these people were/are incapable of fulfilling the roles they have been assigned. This has a negative impact on, firstly, the corporation employing these people as they incur costs without the required level of service from their employees. It also adversely affects the consumer, who is dependant upon those employed by organizations to make the best decisions in order to obtain maximum reward. A situation exists whereby unskilled employees are filling skilled positions. (www.sairr.org.za/press-office/institute-opinion) Another concern is that many white South Africans are leaving the country, resulting in a major shortage of fundamental skills. The South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) revealed that between 1995 and 2005, one million white S outh Africans moved abroad. The lack of adequate services has left the country in desperate need of professionals. These people also served as mentors/teachers to inexperienced employees and accelerated their development in the organizations thus exacerbating the problem of their departure. (www.fin24.com/articles/default/display_article) Many contend that a weakness of the affirmative action policy is that it creates a minority of rich black people and does not help the rest (www.new.bbc.co.uk). The majority of the black population are unskilled workers without educations. These people are likely to struggle even with affirmative action in place as their employment options are limited to low income earning sectors due to educational and language problems. It is anticipated that the current generation of black children will reap the benefits of the policy. The government has put facilities in place to ensure these people are schooled and can attain funding for universities. These ar e the real beneficiaries of the system as their employment options are diverse. It would therefore seem that the efficiency of affirmative action should only be interpreted to a significant extent when the current black youth reaches adulthood.
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Sustainable relationship Marketing Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6000 words
Sustainable relationship Marketing - Assignment Example It transcends the boundaries between specialist functions and disciplines.†Gummesson (1999:73). Relationship marketing is closely intersected with sustainability – â€Å"a form of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs†(Benn & Martin, 2014:742). Nowadays, the role of RM is recognized by many different organisations, operating in various industries. Increasing number of organisations strive to focus on customer retention, to emphasize customer service, to maintain high contact with customers, and to pursue long-term relationships (Christopher, Payne, and Ballantyne, 1991). Relationship marketing is viewed as a multidimensional discipline, which has many different models applicable to various situations. Five major models discussed in this report are: (1) Relationship Marketing’s Six-Markets Model; (2) Sustainable Marketing Model; (3) Ethical Relationship Marketing Model ; (4) The Morgan-Hunt Model of Relationship Marketing; and (5) Return on Relationship Model. Combined use of these five models enables to understand various aspects of relationship marketing, interrelationship and connection of different elements. A company implementing RM strategy gains increased opportunities for retaining existing customers and build profitable long-term and sustainable relationship. In order to test this hypothesis, there was chosen McDonalds Corporation for further analysis. The research shows that initially McDonalds has made a focus on customer-centric approach early before the concept of relationship marketing has gained wider popularity. However, by 1990s the company has failed to ensure excellent customer service and value-added approach because of quick geographical expansion of its restaurants. However, soon the company has recovered its position on the market by developing comprehensive relationship marketing strategy, focusing on three major markets: customers,
Monday, October 7, 2019
Integration of Supply Chain Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words
Integration of Supply Chain Management - Essay Example The article â€Å"Integration of Supply Chain Management with Internet and Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) Systems: Case Study†focuses on the business environment of Dell Computers (Ghani, Zainuddin, Ghani 97). The articles states that Technology brings in countless advantages to the business environment. Further, the business environment includes businesses having a supply chain management strategy. Specifically the technology used in enhancing the supply chain management process is grounded on the management of information technology. Management harnesses the many benefits of information technology to enhance its supply chain management process. Specifically, information technology is synonymous with the use of the internet or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. To determine the current status of the company’s supply chain activities. The same article proposes that the environment of business is grounded on generating net profits. To generate net profits, the company must sell its products or services. In turn, the company must deduct the total amount of costs of purchasing or manufacturing the salable products and services. The excess of the revenues or sales over the cost of sales or cost of production is the company’s gross profit. Next, the business must deduct the marketing expenses and the administrative expenses from the gross profit to generate a net profit figure. The same article emphasizes that the supply chain management strategy affects the revenue amount. The company will generate more revenues if the company’s supply chain management activities ensure the delivery of the company’s products and services to the current and prospective customers. A decline in the supply chain management’s delivery system precipitates to lower revenues. Lower revenues will create lower gross profits. A lower gross profit will trigger a lower net profit. A slow supply chain management system will create a delay in the delivery of
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