Welcome to Language & Culture II 2013!!!

Hello, Dear Students. This is the blog of our subject. This means will be used for complementing, sharing work and it`s our path to the subject's virtual platform called ecaths. 

My piece of advice is to check this blog and the platform on (at least) a weekly basis, as you will be assessed for participating.

Here goes link to  2013 syllabus:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B89-Hv57WDTqXzdGOHpNTmItMDQ/edit?usp=sharing

And this is an essay on High and Low cultures for the first classes:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qovvskzWMA4R4ff-9cSejd72gDMvVjs6O5ckBzKihic/edit?usp=sharing

Welcome to Language and Culture II!!!

Hiya 2012 students!!! You will soon see that this blog will help you  complement, give opinion, share and download material for the subject. So here is my piece of advice: check this blog on a weekly basis.
Here goes a link to this year syllabus:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HVeS787et0KSkylu3CSA2eviIese53NBjP-MKMSbZhU/edit


And this is the essay on High, Low and Mass Culture we`ll discuss on the first classes.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qovvskzWMA4R4ff-9cSejd72gDMvVjs6O5ckBzKihic/edit

See you next Monday at 5pm!!!

Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles (click here for text and explanations) was the peace settlement signed after World War One had ended in 1918 and in the shadow of the Russian Revolution and other events in Russia. The treaty was signed at the vast Versailles Palace near Paris - hence its title - between Germany and the Allies. The three most important politicians there were David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson. The Versailles Palace was considered the most appropriate venue simply because of its size - many hundreds of people were involved in the process and the final signing ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors could accommodate hundreds of dignitaries. Many wanted Germany, now led by Friedrich Ebert, smashed - others, like Lloyd George, were privately more cautious.
The treaty was signed on June 28th 1919 after months of argument and negotiation amongst the so-called "Big Three" as to what the treaty should contain.

Who were the "Big Three" and where did they clash over Germany and her treatment after the war ?

The "Big Three" were David Lloyd George of Britain, Clemenceau of France and Woodrow Wilson of America.

The terms of the Treaty of Versailles

The treaty can be divided into a number of sections; territorial, military, financial and general.

Territorial

The following land was taken away from Germany :

Alsace-Lorraine (given to France)

Eupen and Malmedy (given to Belgium)

Northern Schleswig (given to Denmark)

Hultschin (given to Czechoslovakia)

West Prussia, Posen and Upper Silesia (given to Poland)

The Saar, Danzig and Memel were put under the control of the League of Nations and the people of these regions would be allowed to vote to stay in Germany or not in a future referendum.

The League of Nations also took control of Germany's overseas colonies.
Germany had to return to Russia land taken in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Some of this land was made into new states : Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. An enlarged Poland also received some of this land.

Military

Germany’s army was reduced to 100,000 men; the army was not allowed tanks
She was not allowed an airforce She was allowed only 6 capital naval ships and no submarines The west of the Rhineland and 50 kms east of the River Rhine was made into a demilitarised zone (DMZ). No German soldier or weapon was allowed into this zone. The Allies were to keep an army of occupation on the west bank of the Rhine for 15 years.

Financial

The loss of vital industrial territory would be a severe blow to any attempts by Germany to rebuild her economy. Coal from the Saar and Upper Silesia in particular was a vital economic loss. Combined with the financial penalties linked to reparations, it seemed clear to Germany that the Allies wanted nothing else but to bankrupt her.
Germany was also forbidden to unite with Austria to form one superstate, in an attempt to keep her economic potential to a minimum.

General

There are three vital clauses here:

1. Germany had to admit full responsibility for starting the war. This was Clause 231 - the infamous "War Guilt Clause".

2. Germany, as she was responsible for starting the war as stated in clause 231, was, therefore responsible for all the war damage caused by the First World War. Therefore, she had to pay reparations, the bulk of which would go to France and Belgium to pay for the damage done to the infrastructure of both countries by the war. Quite literally, reparations would be used to pay for the damage to be repaired. Payment could be in kind or cash. The figure was not set at Versailles - it was to be determined later. The Germans were told to write a blank cheque which the Allies would cash when it suited them. The figure was eventually put at £6,600 million - a huge sum of money well beyond Germany’s ability to pay.

3. A League of Nations was set up to keep world peace.

In fact, the first 26 clauses of the treaty dealt with the League's organisation.


The German reaction to the Treaty of Versailles

After agreeing to the Armistice in November 1918, the Germans had been convinced that they would be consulted by the Allies on the contents of the Treaty. This did not happen and the Germans were in no position to continue the war as her army had all but disintegrated. Though this lack of consultation angered them, there was nothing they could do about it. Therefore, the first time that the German representatives saw the terms of the Treaty was just weeks before they were due to sign it in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles on June 28th 1919.

There was anger throughout Germany when the terms were made public. The Treaty became known as a Diktat - as it was being forced on them and the Germans had no choice but to sign it. Many in Germany did not want the Treaty signed, but the representatives there knew that they had no choice as German was incapable of restarting the war again.

In one last gesture of defiance, the captured German naval force held at Scapa Flow (north of Scotland) scuttled itself i.e. deliberately sank itself.

Germany was given two choices:

1) sign the Treaty or
2) be invaded by the Allies.

They signed the Treaty as in reality they had no choice. When the ceremony was over, Clemenceau went out into the gardens of Versailles and said "It is a beautiful day".

The consequences of Versailles

The Treaty seemed to satisfy the "Big Three" as in their eyes it was a just peace as it kept Germany weak yet strong enough to stop the spread of communism; kept the French border with Germany safe from another German attack and created the organisation, the League of Nations, that would end warfare throughout the world.
However, it left a mood of anger throughout Germany as it was felt that as a nation Germany had been unfairly treated.
Above all else, Germany hated the clause blaming her for the cause of the war and the resultant financial penalties the treaty was bound to impose on Germany. Those who signed it (though effectively they had no choice) became known as the "November Criminals".
Many German citizens felt that they were being punished for the mistakes of the German government in August 1914 as it was the government that had declared war not the people.

JD Salinger's death sparks speculation over unpublished manuscripts

JD Salinger, the notoriously reclusive author, gave Tom Leonard a chilly reception in New Hampshire, where rumours are swirling over his unpublished manuscripts following his death.

JD Salinger was standing at the kitchen window when I called at his remote farmhouse in the hills of New Hampshire almost exactly a year ago.

He had just turned 90 and the question as to whether his famous reclusiveness might finally have "mellowed with age" had proven irresistible.

It had not, although his outburst upon seeing me - it sounded like "Oh, no!" - was possibly his last, and strangely fitting, remark to the media.

He was replaced at the window by his wife, Colleen, an attractive blonde who was 40 years his junior. We chatted briefly about my journey up there - she somehow knew my car had got stuck in the snow the previous night - before politely informing me, with apologies for a wasted trip, that the author's desire for privacy was not about to end now. So goodbye.

In an email to the local newsletter on Thursday, one day after he died at the age of 91, Mrs Salinger thanked her neighbours in the 1,600-strong community of Cornish for the "protective envelope" they gave her husband after he moved there in 1953, adding that she hoped they would continue to do the same for her.

She is not wrong in speculating that the interest in the Salinger household is unlikely to wither with her husband's death.

It is more likely to grow as Salinger watchers look for answers to the great mystery of his later years: what lies in his safe, waiting to be published.

A former girlfriend said Salinger, who last had a book published in 1963, wrote regularly every morning and that she had seen manuscripts of two finished novels and stacks of full notebooks. A neighbour said Salinger, who once admitted he wrote simply for writing's sake, had told him he had written 15 unpublished novels.

The author's daughter, Margaret, said he kept a detailed filing system of his writing, with red marks for work that could be published "as is" and blue for copy that needed editing.

Some question whether any of it will be worth publishing. The novelist Jay McInerny said he feared it might be like Salinger's last published piece - a 1965 short story for the New Yorker magazine - which he described as "an insane epistolary monologue, virtually shapeless and formless".

Salinger's literary representatives have so far said nothing but disagreements between Margaret and her brother, Matt, are unlikely to expedite matters. The latter attacked his sister's memoir, in which she revealed that their father drank his own urine, spoke in tongues and had a frightening control over their mother, insisting that he "grew up in a very different house".

Predictably, the writer's neighbours have little to contribute on the literary mystery. Salinger continued to appear around town - at the supermarket, the library and the local coffee shop - but there was a strict understanding that nobody was to acknowledge his fame.

In return for the town's protectiveness, Salinger would invite high school pupils to his house once a week, according to a local restaurant waitress.

But when I visited, the code of silence was clearly disintegrating, with neighbours happy to supply anecdotes and theories about "JD". He was - it was commonly agreed - respected rather than liked. Local tolerance for his famous brusqueness was clearly wearing thin.

As for socialising, the only event he appeared still to patronise regularly in later years was a monthly turkey dinner at the local Universalist Unitarian church - a multi-religion denomination which would have appealed to a man who tried out various faiths.

"Nobody is supposed to acknowledge that he's there. You just treat him like he's just another normal person," said Kay Cavendish, a regular church goer.

Robert Dean, who runs Salinger's favourite café, confirmed that even the locals had to be careful how they treated him.

"The rule is that if you have to talk to him, make sure you never acknowledge that he is famous," he said. "If you see him, you know not to talk to him unless he talks to you. He's not one for chitchat."

To read The Catcher in the Rye

To read about more him

source./www.telegraph.co.uk//wikipedia.org

Civil Rights_Third part: America also needs equality

1948

Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin." The order also creates the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and opportunity in the Armed Services.

1954


The Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned "separate but equal" segregation of the races, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It is a victory for NAACP* attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice.

1955


Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.


(Montgomery, Ala.) NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. As newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott.

1957

Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. According to King, it is essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemongers who oppose them: "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges.


(Little Rock, Ark.) Formerly all-white Central High School learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock Nine."*


1961

Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "freedom riders," as they are called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way. The program, sponsored by The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involves more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white.


1962

James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops.


1963

Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.

During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.

Jun
(Jackson, Miss.) Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside his home. Byron De La Beckwith is tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries*. Thirty years later he is convicted for murdering Evers.

Aug. 28
(Washington, D.C.) About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

1964
Jan. 23
The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax*, which originally had been instituted in 11 southern states after Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote.

July 2
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation.

Aug. 4
(Neshoba Country, Miss.) The bodies of three civil-rights workers—two white, one black—are found in an earthen dam, six weeks into a federal investigation backed by President Johnson. James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman, 21; and Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and, on June 21, had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them.

1965

Feb. 21
(Harlem, N.Y.) Malcolm X, Black Nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is shot to death. It is believed the assailants are members of the Black Muslim faith, which Malcolm had recently abandoned in favor of orthodox Islam.

March 7
(Selma, Ala.) Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the media. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later.

Aug. 10
Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.



Part 3 of a 3-part assignment by Daniel Cappi, L y C II, 2009

Thanks Daniel for such a good research

Civil rights: Second part A bird in a cage – Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 18, 1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe. Mandela himself was educated at University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand and qualified in law in 1942. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948. He went on trial for treason in 1956-1961 and was acquitted* in 1961.

After the banning of the ANC in 1960, Nelson Mandela argued for the setting up of a military wing within the ANC. In June 1961, the ANC* executive considered his proposal on the use of violent tactics and agreed that those members who wished to involve themselves in Mandela's campaign would not be stopped from doing so by the ANC. This led to the formation of Umkhonto We Sizwe. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour.It was In 1963, when many fellow leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe were arrested, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for plotting to overthrow* the government by violence. His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity. On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland.

Part 2 of a 3-part assignment by Daniel Cappi, L y C II, 2009

Civil Rights:First part: A pioneer in India

Gandhi takes on Domestic Problems

In 1932, Gandhi began new civil-disobedience campaigns against the British. Arrested twice, the Mahatma fasted* for long periods several times; these fasts were effective measures against the British, because revolution might well have broken out in India if he had died. In September 1932, while in jail, Gandhi undertook a "fast unto death" to improve the status of the Hindu Untouchables*. The British, by permitting the Untouchables to be considered as a separate part of the Indian electorate, were, according to Gandhi, countenancing an injustice. Although he was himself a member of an upper caste, Gandhi was the great leader of the movement in India dedicated to eradicating the unjust social and economic aspects of the caste system.

In 1934 Gandhi formally resigned from politics, being replaced as leader of the Congress party by Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhi traveled through India, teaching ahimsa and demanding eradication of "untouchability." The esteem in which he was held was the measure of his political power. So great was this power that the limited home rule granted by the British in 1935 could not be implemented until Gandhi approved it. A few years later, in 1939, he again returned to active political life because of the pending federation of Indian principalities with the rest of India. His first act was a fast, designed to force the ruler of the state of Rajkot to modify his autocratic rule. Public unrest caused by the fast was so great that the colonial government intervened; the demands were granted. The Mahatma again became the most important political figure in India.


Independence for India

When World War II broke out; the Congress party and Gandhi demanded a declaration of war aims and their application to India. As a reaction to the unsatisfactory response from the British, the party decided not to support Britain in the war unless the country were granted complete and immediate independence. The British refused, offering compromises that were rejected. When Japan entered the war, Gandhi still refused to agree to Indian participation. He was interned in 1942 but was released two years later because of failing health.


Part 1 of a 3 part assignment by Daniel Cappi, L y C II, 2009

Assignment for Language and Culture II

Cultural references of the XXth century.

a. Find in different EFL textbooks currently being used in our schools (either in EP or ES) examples of cultural references corresponding to topics developed in our syllabus. They could be:

1. Icons or cultural images.
2. Characters or important personalities.
3. Topics or relevant events.


b. In each case mention the textbook and publishing year, teaching point, age group, what icon, character or event is the example referring to(with a short explanation of it; not longer than 400 words. Please avoid the internet copy and paste!!!).

c. Reflect upon the references, taking into account the relevance of the examples for the students , its effectiveness as regards the points taught and suggest changes if you consider so.

d. You are expected to include the photocopy of the lesson where the cultural reference is found, the sources and the bibliography used in each case.

e. The whole work (not including the photocopies of the text analysed) should not be longer than 4 pages. Prioritize your own reflection on c.

f. Date to hand in: second week in August (hand in during examination boards)

g. Please if you have doubts, post them here in the "comentarios" section so everybody can profit from our reflections.