Progress Report
Well, since university is already steaming on past the middle of semester one (what the hell??) I thought now would be a good time to do a general update of what’s going on, and why I haven’t been posting all these insightful posts about linguistics I mentioned earlier in the year.
Mostly this semester has been taken up with my two coursework subjects, ‘Linguistic Theory’ and ‘Language and Identity’. The former is the compulsary fourth year honours subject in linguistics, and mostly deals with the history of linguistic thought and theory. The latter is pretty much what its name suggests, dealing mainly with the ways in which we construct our identities using language, and how language helps define those identities. The latter is also very relevant to my honous thesis (which is why I’m doing it.)
What all that means, thus far, is that I haven’t done much work on my thesis at all. I’ve been doing some general background reading into Yanyuwa, and to a lesser extent into Kriol, and language endangerment in general, but I’ve mostly been trying to get assessment stuff done for my coursework subjects (which are, after all, worth 50% of my mark this year – so sacrificing them for the good of the thesis will only screw me up anyway.)
So, in essence, that’s why I haven’t been posting any insightful posts about lingiuistics or much else for that matter. However, I can say that as I work on my next assignment for Language and Identity I’ll probably have some interesting comment to make on the Nothern Territory Intervention and the language used to sell it to the people. So that’s something you can look forward to if you so wish.
So, now that I’ve explained my lack of blog posts, I should get back to all the other stuff I have to do!