Eid

Eid Mubarak to all. Its Eidul Adha and as usual I was at home all the day, doing nothing. I watched a movie and surfed net, that was my eid. The only thing unusual was Mustansar Hussain Tarar's travel log Barfeeli Bulandian. I was reading him after a long time, after months. His unique style of writing always appeals me. His use of past simple tense to describe things as habitualized universal truths makes it something unique. I haven't studied his style very much but I have a plan to study his style properly. Uptil now I am learning Literary Stylistics, at the end of this semester I would like to have an analysis of some piece of writing of Tarar.

Hesitation

English has always been a remote language for me. I am just comfortable with it in Education domain. As I am studying Linguistics, mostly materials in our filed is related to English Applied Linguistics and we are taught using English. So I am very much familiar with English in my university and educational life and can write lengthy articles on my daily routine linguistics topics. But when case comes for writing on my blog, I always try to avoid it. Simply I can't gather courage to write on my blog. I want to make some money from internet and I know it would be possible by writing in English only but still I am unable to make it a routine to write in English. Once again, by this post, I am gathering my courages and to shed the hesitation and write in English. May Allah help me to do this.

Papers

Papers of 2nd Semester of MSc Applied Linguistics approaching and I have to study now. So folks till than bye

Listening Michael Jackson :-/

Michael Jackson is dead. This sudden death stunned his fans. I, who was expecting him performing in London, surprised by this news. He was a great singer and a pop star. Every one know this :) so lets come to the point.
Actually I am listening him today. It is our general psyche as nation that we remember and tribute legends when they are passed away. So I am also tributing him. Upto here it is simple. The problem comes at the point I am unable to understand the songs. :-S I have no taste of listening English music specially pop songs. This is just done as a duty. And obviously I am going to ask my class fellow tmorrow have they ever listned Michael Jackson. ;) So go on miaN g.

Conflict

In Pakistan, mostly Linguistics is taught with respect to or in association with English literature studies. BZU Multan is the most biggest institute regarding Linguistics education in Pakistan. The students of BZU whether they are mastered in literature or language they have the basic knowledge of the other discipline. MSc Linguistics know the basics of literature and genres and, on the other hand, MA English Literature students have a basic knowledge of the major areas of Linguistics.

Linguistics at GCUF is trying to establish its roots. The Applied Linguistics Department was established in 2006 and after some time it was merged with Department of English. It was run under the head of English department of almost 4+ years. Here at GCUF, we have typical problems of management, favoritism and other such social evils of our society. People cannot see something progressing so linguistics students were suppressed in the department. Thus a dichotomy and tension was created among the two discipline's students. There is a fair state of hatred among them.

The department of applied linguistics is now a separate department but still we do not have equipment, managing staff and sufficient teaching staff. We share everything with department of English. The cream of university, the higher management is also in favor of English department. We need a language lab and today the controller examination of our university announced that department of English should re-submit the proposals etc so it may get the hosting of this language lab. I was wondering what is the need to have a language lab for an English Literature student.

I am not against the merger of these two departments. But the problem is what I mentioned above. The poeple are not ready to accept our existance in university. So we had to separate. Although it looks strange in Pakistani context that linguistics department is separate from english literature department. We should accept the existence of each other in every field of life instead of cutting the roots of each other.

Language Monster?

We are studying Sapir Whorf Hypotheis these days. Along with it there is another cousrse regarding Literary Theory in which we are studying Strucuralism. Both of these theories regard language as if it were a monster. The quotation from Whorf's writings "Humans beings are at the mercy of their Language" is the most controversial one. And then the strcutulists and post-structuralists say that language is superior to our thought. Every thing is a construct of langauge. What we perceive is due to language and nothing else. I am quite confused here because my personal attitude is towards medial way. I think language influences our thought but not determines it. There are lots of examples when human mind breaks the cage of language and thinks beyond the so-called singnification system. All the scientific discoveries and revolutionary ideas are the product of same process. We create words often to name the concepts which we have thought of or oberverd. I personally do not think that langauge 'determines' our thought. Ok I admit it influences but this influence is a biletral process.