Speak Good English Movement in Singapore : Reactions in Social and Traditional Media

The first Speak Good English Movement, SGEM, took place in 2000, and has been organized annually ever since. Speaking a “standard” form of English is considered to bring increased personal power. However, the SGEM wants the Singaporeans to use “standard” English in their private life as well. A decade after the beginning of the campaign, a Speak Good Singlish Movement was started. Based on studies of language and identity, it is understandable why some Singaporeans might feel the SGEM threatens their identity. However, the reactions towards the campaign are mainly positive. For the purposes of this analysis, Twitter messages, Facebook pages, and newspaper articles from The Straits Times were collected. The SGEM has hailed both direct and indirect praise and criticism in both social and traditional media: Five newspaper articles praise the campaign while five criticize it; the results are nine and seven respectively for social media. This thesis looks at reactions towards the SGEM in both social and traditional media, analyzes how these reactions might relate to the ideas of the power of language, its variety and the relation of language and identity.

Ne videt, ne znat – det direkta objektets kasus vid två negerade ryska verb

This essay examines the case of the direct object in Russian sentences with the negated verbs не видеть and не знать. For each verb, 50 contexts were downloaded from the newspaper corpus of the Russian National Corpus and analysed with respect to the semantic properties of the direct object and the negated verb. The theories and concepts used for the analysis have been outlined in Padutjeva, 2006. The analysis of не видеть suggests that the main difference between the genitive and the ac-cusative case is to be found in the notion of non-existence or absence implicated by the verb’s semantics. In utterances with не видеть as a predicate, this notion is always present and is expressed by the genitive case. The speaker may also choose to ignore it by using the accusa-tive and thus emphasize some other aspect of the described situation. The examined properties of reference, definiteness and denotative status of the direct object seem to play a secondary role for how case is used. Their influence is to delimit the meaning of the objective genitive to either non-existence or absence. No similar conclusions could be drawn from the examination of не знать. The reason for this is that the concept of private sphere, used by Padutjeva to explain the use of objective geni-tive with this verb, could not be properly established during the analysis. Just as the notion of absence is crucial for the understanding of the objective genitive when it occurs with не видеть, the concept private sphere seems to be the key to understand it when it occurs with не знать.

Wind farm construction impacts reindeer migration and movement corridors

Over the last decade, we have seen a massive increase in the construction of wind farms in northern Fennoscandia. Wind farms comprising hundreds of wind turbines are being built, with little knowledge of the possible cumulative adverse effects on the habitat use and migration of semi-domesticated free-ranging reindeer. We assessed how reindeer responded to wind farm construction in an already fragmented landscape, with specific reference to the effects on use of movement corridors and reindeer habitat selection. We used GPS-data from reindeer during calving and post-calving in the MalAyen reindeer herding community in Sweden. We analysed data from the pre-development years compared to the construction years of two relatively small wind farms. During construction of the wind farms, use of original migration routes and movement corridors within 2 km of development declined by 76 %. This decline in use corresponded to an increase in activity of the reindeer measured by increased step lengths within 0-5 km. The step length was highest nearest the development and declining with distance, as animals moved towards migration corridors and turned around or were observed in holding patterns while not crossing. During construction, reindeer avoided the wind farms at both regional and landscape scale of selection. The combined construction activities associated with even a few wind turbines combined with power lines and roads in or close to central movement corridors caused a reduction in the use of such corridors and grazing habitat and increased the fragmentation of the reindeer calving ranges.