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Forensic Linguistics

Forensic Linguistic is one of the branches in Corpus’ study. In a crime scene investigation, there exists a job entitled Forensic Linguist. This job scope of a forensic linguist is to place someone’s origin based on his/her name and speech intonation, to find a language’s data and to investigate whether a statement is actually made by a certain person. This is because language has a regular structure. Most speaker is consistent in his or her speech.

Reflection:

Learning Forensic Linguistics' job scope has been an eye opener to the students. Forensic Linguistics is an important field in solving a crime scene. it helps a lot in solving the problem that is related to text and language that occurs in a crime. The forensic linguistic field has contributed a lot of help in leading an investigation to an end. Even there are many cases which did not come to an end, the investigation done in terms of the linguistic investigation has given clues for future investigation if ever someone is willing to take over the case. Therefore, from this lesson, Forensic Linguistics has been an eye opener for the student to further their future in the same field or things related to it. May this study gives benefit to the others so that they have something to contribute when in future, they decide to join this filed of study. In Islam, any job that brings benefit to the human nation is permissible as long as it does not contradict to the Islamic Laws. 

Computational Stylistics

Computational Stylistics is the study of patterns formed in a particular text. The traditional way of detecting patterns is more on analyzing the topic of the text which means to know what the text is all about. The existence of computer in this era of technology has helped in developing more accurate detection and explanation on why certain phenomena has occurred. Therefore, the existence of computer helps in knowing the style of the text in which how the text describes its pattern.

Reflection

Learning computational stylistics lead students to develop their creative and critical thinking skills. This is because the existence of computer has contributed to many ways of analyzing one's pattern in writing. The traditional way of analyzing pattern in a text has developed by knowing how a particular text is described to be in certain patterns. Therefore, learners can make use of the knowledge of computational stylistics and try to think of any other benefits that they may gain from learning this topic.

Lexicography

Reflection

Lexicography is important because without it, dictionary that we use will be invalid or meaningless. It is a branch under corpus linguistics in which the lexicographer uses current, reliable, user friendly and relevant corpora in order to produce the dictionary. As an English language learner as well as non-native speaker of the language, dictionary is crucial in learning and even trying to master the language. Apart from that, we can use this discipline to further our study of the language after we graduated. This discipline gives a lot of opportunity to improve and learn a language. 

Concordancer

Reflection

Concordancer is a very great help in corpus linguistics as corpus linguistics is a representation of millions of words that has to be analysed. Using the concordancer may help linguists to speed up their research and may assist others with their findings. Apart from that, academicians can make language learning more remarkable for the learners. The learners could recognize their idiosyncrasy of language usage in their own works by the help of concordancer. Thus, it will lead to stimulating way of language teaching. This will eventually help us in teaching carrier. Two of our group mates are interested in becoming a teacher and a lecturer after we graduated IIUM and concordancer may assist them in making their language learning more interesting. Besides, we can recognize our idiosyncrasy with the usage of concordancer and maybe can improve our writing skills. 

Corpus Linguistics

Corpus linguistics is the study of language as expressed in samples (corpora) or "real world" text.
An approach to derive at a set of abstract rules by which a natural language is governed or relates to another language. Originally done by hand, corpora are now largely derived by an automated process. Corpus", derived from the Latin word meaning "body", may be used to refer to any text in written or spoken form.
In modern Linguistics this term is used to refer to large collections of texts which represent a sample of a particular variety or use of language that are presented in machine readable form. The scope of studies are the possible words, structures or uses in a language. Their probable occurrence in a language and the description and explanation of the nature, structure and use of language with particular matters such as language acquisition, variation and change. there are few types of corpora; written or spoken (transcribed) language, modern or old texts, texts from one language or several languages,texts from whole books, newspapers, journals, speeches,extracts of varying length. Corpus Linguistics is now seen as the study of linguistics phenomena through large collections of machine-readable texts: corpora.These are used within a number of research areas going from the Descriptive Study of the Syntax of a Language to Language Learning. the role of computer in corpus linguistics are to store huge amount of text, to quickly retrieve huge amounts of texts, to retrieve words, phrases or whole texts in context, to sort out linguistic items, to increase reliability in searching, counting and sorting linguistic items and to provide accurate probability of occurrence of specific linguistic items. An example of a software used for corpus linguistics is the concordancer.

Reflection

Corpus linguistics is very useful for making our research more precise in dealing with a huge amount of data and numbers. Other than that, it's contribution as a part of our preaching method is totally undeniable, as obviously from the invention of corpus for Arabic language that specifies on the content of the Qur'an. This method is opening our hearts to learn the content and structure of the Qur'an better, helping us to discover the true beauty hidden behind the Holy Book. from this, the non-Muslim and the non-Arabic native speaker could openly explore the Qur'an with better understanding of it. 

Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)

Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)

Throughout the years, humans have used many different means in order to communicate with others. The latest method that has emerged called computer mediated communication, or CMC. This could be carried out through e-mail, chat rooms, instant messages and even text messaging. There are two forms of CMC which are synchronous and asynchronous CMC. Synchronous CMC is real time and instantaneous communication real, for example, chatting and video conferencing. While asynchronous is non-real time communication, for example, e-mail and bulletin board. CMC is not only used for communication, it is now being used in learning language such as English language. Linguists are slowly adopting computer-mediated language as an object of inquiry. According to Lehy (2001:20), synchronous communication focuses more on content and communicative skills than on form. Thus, the usage of CMC in language learning shows that accuracy and error correction are not the main objective in this subject. The internet can help make homework accessibility to students especially more appealing to students.

In the following week, our lesson is still on CMC but focusing on synchronous and asynchronous in communication.

Reflection

It is proved that CMC may help the students to get somewhat called effective way of language learning. A lot of information, for example personal details, is given during the communication process in the meantime. However, it is important to take into consideration the rate of information exchange that is taking place in CMC. Obviously, when more messages are sent, the personal relation will increase as participants grow more comfortable with each other and interesting topics of conversation are brought up. In the same way, at the beginning stages of any relationship the communication will be more formal and less personal. As quoted from Dr Rozina, as a Muslim, one should know that everything that he or she say or do is accountable in the Hereafter. Allah knows everything that one does in this world even in the hidden place for instance, one’s heart. It is stated in surah Saba’ verse 3 that;

“And the infidels said, 'the Hour will not come unto us'. Say you, 'why not by my Lord, it will no doubt, come to you.' He knows the unseen. Not even an atoms weight, anything in the heavens and in the earth is absent from Him, and nor even anything less than that or greater, but it is in a perspicuous Record.”

Thus, one can use the technology to communicate with others in learning a language or even propagate Islam, but, he or she must use the opportunity that Allah has given to him or her wisely with the knowledge that Allah is All Knowing and all doings are accountable in the Hereafter. 

ASYNCHRONOUS AND SYNCHRONOUS

A week later, our lesson is still on Computer Mediated Communication but specifically on Asynchronous and synchronous communication. basically, the following diagram is the summary of the whole lesson:

Synchronous communication is direct communication where the communicators are time synchronized. This means that all parties involved in the communication are present at the same time. This includes, but is not limited to, a telephone conversation (not texting), a company board meeting, a chat room event and instant messaging. Asynchronous communication does not require that all parties involved in the communication to be present at the same time. Some examples are e-mail messages, discussion boards, blogging, and text messaging over cell phones. In distance (specifically online) education asynchronous communication is the major (sometimes the only) method of communication. Usually, we use different discussion boards in each class with each having its own purpose.

REFLECTION

From the above lesson, students know that CMC's emphasis is on communication rather than its data. Some roles of language output are recognized in this study such that it make learners being aware of the gaps in their existing knowledge. Since there are many ways exist in the process of communication, one should be responsible for what they have conveyed. Channels such as facebook, Yahoo Messenger, Watsapp and others can be usable and beneficial if it use in a correct way. 

"Invite (mankind, O Muhammad) to the Way of your Ord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Revelation and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better"

Surah An.Nahl: 125