Islamization of Knowledge: Islamic Literature

     In Islamic Literature, we learn about literary works written by Muslim scholars. We chose this subject as our theme because we think that it is our responsibility as Muslim students learning literature to acknowledge and glorify the Muslim scholars, since they are not known amongst students specifically and Muslims generally. Some of these scholars are Ibn Hazm, Rumi, Jami, Sari Mehmed Pasha, Nizam al-Mulk, Ibn Batuttah and many others.

     After learning about Islamic Literature, we are exposed to many Islamic writers. All this while, we never thought that there are a large number of Islamic writers with good artworks out there. We've been so busy studying Western's literature. The degree of ignorance is very high among Muslim youth. Even Madonna acknowledges Rumi's work - one of the greatest Muslim love poets.

     We believe the reason for this enthusiasm in learning Islamic literature was born after realizing and reflecting on how we are too absorbed in anything Western that we abandon nearly everything Islam. We always look forward to the Western world, undeniably we memorize English literary works like William Shakespeare, John Keats, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Anne Bradstreet and etc. However, how many of us even know Firdawsi, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Khaldun and etc?

     After being exposed to so many great Muslim writers, it was hard to choose our favorite writers or works because all of these works are special in their own ways. For example, in Ibn Hazm's Falling in Love, he writes about the symptoms of falling in love. It is a very interesting work of Ibn Hazm. He simply writes about normal things that could happen to anyone and make it so beautiful. Sometimes, a great work of literature does not have to talk about complicated things, but just focus on things that are around us, and make it beautiful. An example from Falling in Love reads;

"The lover will direct his conversation to the beloved even when he purports, however earnestly, to address another: the affection is apparent to anyone with eyes to see. When the loved one speak, the lvoer listens with rapt attention to his every word; he marvels at everything the beloved says, however extraordinary and absurd his observations may be; he believes him implicitly even when he is clearly lying, agrees with him though he is obviously in the wrong, testifies on his behalf for all that he may be unjust, follows after him however he may proceed and whatever line of argument he may adopt."

     We had so much fun learning about it as most of us can relate to it ;) People are always experiencing love and when in love, there will be signs obvious to others' eyes but not ours. InsyaAllah, we hope this course will bring so much knowledge and joy to students who will be taking this subject and for those who have taken this course, let's reminisce what we have learnt and put it to practice.

Task 3 (Part I)

Introduction

         The purpose of this study is to inspect students’ engagement by using blogs. Therefore, students’ performance on blogs is compared with the performance on paper assignments. In this study, students are required to submit their works on blogs throughout the first half of the semester and submit their works on paper throughout the other half.

Blogs, also known as weblogs, are described as a frequent publication of individual thoughts, done in a chorological order (MarketingTerms.com, 2006). As stated by Price &Starkov (2006) travellers are the common bloggers. They use blogs to post their experiences and activities during their trips. Blogs are very useful as a marketing tool in a hospitality organization Price &Starkov (2006).

Journal Address

 http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/hlst/documents/johlste/vol10no1/09PP282CobanogluBerezina99to105.pdf

Literature Review

As defined by Natriello (1984), student engagement students’ participating activities in the school program.

The usual way of measuring students’ engagement is via the information reported by the students themselves (Chapman, 2003). Other than that, students’ engagement can be measured by observations, work samples and case studies.

         Nevertheless, only a few studies have been done on the influence of technology-based system on students’ engagement, compared with the number of words used in a paper assignment. Thereforethe hypothesis: students’ engagement level as measured by the number of words used between a paper assignment and a blog assignment is prominently different. 

Use of blogs in education

Since many students feel more comfortable using blogs for learning, many instructors started using blog. According to Henry Farrell, there are five major uses for blogs in education such as:

1.      Teachers use blogs to replace the standard class web page.

2.      Instructors begin to link to Internet items that relate to their course.

3.      Blogs are used to organise in-class discussions.

4.      Some instructors are using blogs to organise class seminars and to provide summaries of readings.

5.      Students may be asked to write their own blogs as part of their course grade.

 Sample

            Undergraduate students in the North-East of United States of America.

 Methodology

52 undergraduate students of advanced level hospitality technology module in one of the universities in the North-East of the USA took part in this experiment during spring semester 2009. They were asked to read an article on hospitality technology and write a one paragraph summary ever week and post it on a blog that they must create. They must also read and comment on other participant’s blogs. Besides that, all participants are allowed to post extra articles on the same topic.

The researcher (instructor) conducted the qualitative (content) analysis of participant’s submissions and the number of words used was taken as a measurement of student engagement.

They collected the following data:

1. Number of words used to summarise the article - PAPER

2. Number of words used to summarise the article – BLOG

3. Number of words used in the reflection – PAPER

4. Number of words used in the reflection - BLOG

5. Number of extra article critique submissions – PAPER

6. Number of extra article critique submissions – BLOG 

  Demographic Characteristics

 About 36% of the Northeast American University students were male and 64% female. 65.4% were forth year students, 23& were third year students, and 11.5% were second year students. All students were asked to reveal their grade point averages. About 20% of the respondents had a GPA over 3.5, 40% between 3.1 and 3.5, and 36% between 2.6 and 3.0.

 Impact

Hypothesis can be tested by calculating mean scores for blog and paper assignments. The mean number of words used to summarize the article in the paper assignment was 55 and 71.9 words for the blog assignment. Students used 65.90 words to write the reflection part of the article assignment when they submitted it in paper format and 86.2 words in the blog platform. The instructor claimed that some of the blog postings were posted just for the sake of completing the assignment.

Intellectual discussions and high level thinking were not used by the students. However, some of the student’s postings established critical thinking and some of the comments posted to other students’ blog showed a high level of intellectual discussion.

 Conclusions

            Apparently the participants in this study participate and come up with more words when posting assignments on a blog rather than on paper probably because technology-based assignments are more fun and interactive. Also, due to social pressure where the blog is made public and students are supposed to comment on each other’s posts.

            Among the recommendations the researchers brought forward are instructors should create a non-graded test blog assignment to build up students’ confidence, offer rewards like extra marks to motivate students since they mentioned that if credit was not given, they would not do the assignment and instructors should use blogs as a medium for discussion outside the classroom.

            The limitation to this study was the sample size. Since the researchers only used one class for sample, the results cannot be generalized to represent entire college population in the USA. A larger sample should be used in future replication of this study to gain a more general result and can include international participants. Also, including students of different classes and different disciplines in the study, as well as considering other variables when measuring the assignment like quality of the assignment.

 Comment

            Students are interested in this kind of assignment because it involves technology, something that is close to young people in general. But we cannot generalize the result of this research due to its small sample and this research only covers undergraduate students in the North-East of United States of America.

            However, researchers who are interested in this area of study can replicate with a larger sample in order to further investigate the impact of the use of blogs on students’ assignment engagement.

Task 3 (Part II)

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to analyze one of computer mediated communication tools which is blog in terms of sociolinguistics aspect. Sociolinguistics can be defined as study the relationship between language and society. Sociolinguistics interested in explaining why we speak differently in different social contexts. In addition, sociolinguistics is used to identify the social functions of language and the ways is used to convey social meaning.

Description of the Corpus

            Blog which is used for the corpus analysis is ‘As Suanie Sees It’. Five posts are used to analyze the corpus based on sociolinguistics aspect. The posts that we used were posted in 2012. Those posts can be said among the latest posts in this blog. There are several posts that can be found in this blog. Posts that we used were ‘A Modern Journey to Taman Negara: Day01’, ‘Taman Negara Day 02: not so ardvous activities’, ‘Taman Negara Day 03: Lata Berkoh then balikkkkkkk!’, ‘Batu Pahat Fish Ball Noodles’, and ‘ How ‘Nokhea the Samsung Galaxy Nexus’ came to be’.

Framework for the Analysis

            Code-mixing is used as one of the elements in analyzing the corpus. According to Wikipedia, code-mixing means the mixing of two or more languages or language varieties in speech. The term code-mixing and code switching are used interchangeably by some sociolinguistics scholars. Those terms are used in studies especially is syntax, morphology and other aspects of language. Code mixing may happen in multilingual and multiracial setting where people in that particular area share more than one language. H. Janet in An Introduction to Sociolinguistics suggests that the speaker is mixing up la languages because of incompetence. 

            H. Janet in An Introduction to Sociolinguistics claims that people sometimes switch code within a domain and social situation. Code switch reflects the social situation in one particular society and code switching occurs during the presence of a new participant. In addition, a speaker may similarly switch to another language as a signal of group membership and shares ethnicity with an addressee. H. Janet also states such switches are made predominantly for social reasons.

Findings for Analysis

Taman Negara

Code Mixing.

Post 1

1.      Thought we’d check out Pan Heong at Batu Caves for its famed flat noodles in egg gravy (wa tan hor).

2.      Found a ‘nasi kukus’ corner stall opposite a Petronas petrol station.

3.      Quite good, best part was the chilli z0mg so pedas but so syiok.

4.      3 hours. Three. Tiga. San. SIAO AR?

5.      Really basic room but everything worked. Not the most comfortable bed but 2 nights only what, and I’m no princess.

Post 2

1.      If I had money to spare, I’d stay at Mutiara also lah…

2.      Can’t tell you much about the trek as it was… like that lah.

3.      The guide did pinpoint some more interesting things, e.g. big trees, big barks, sandalwood, rotan, the natural insect repellent for orang asli etc.

4.      Quite fun la

5.      My nasi goreng padprik ayam was like champagne and caviar compared to last night’s dinner at the restaurant next ‘door’.

6.      But biasa lah, tourist (like me) place.

7.      A bit boh liu but whatever lah, join the boh liu ‘fun’ lor.

8.      She said, “Oh cos can see the animals mah.”

Post 3

1.      Taman Negara Day 03: Lata Berkoh then balikkkk!

2.      But the Cina in me kept calculating cost per person etc.

3.      There was one for ‘Lata Berkoh’. Quite pricey leh.

4.      Close my Cina eyes and just do it lah!

5.      I thought it was worth it lor

Batu Pahat Fish Ball Noodles

1.      Why ar?

2.      When I was younger, there used to be a fish ball noodle stall at the old Champion shoe shop near the pasar.

3.      Good lah, because it’s always sold out very early.

How ‘Nokhea the Samsung Galaxy Nexus’ came to be.

1.      I wanted to get it bundled with a Celcom package and plan (cheaper phone price, no money mah…).

2.      The Malays would call it, nyawa-nyawa ikan.

Interpretation

1.      According to Holmes (2008), code mixing suggests the speaker is mixing up codes indiscriminately or perhaps because of incompetence, whereas the switches are very well motivated in relation to the symbolic or the social meanings of the two codes. This kind of rapid switching is itself a specific social linguistic variety; it has been labeled a fused lect. It is a distinctive conversational style used among bilinguals and multilinguals – a rich additional linguistic resource available to them. Switching between two or more codes, the speakers convey affective meaning as well as information.

2.      Malaysian chinese. Entering 30s. Batu Pahat.

3.      Malaysia is a multilingual community. 

Bibliography

1.      Holmes, J. (2008) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Pearson Education Limited; England.

2.      Suanie. (2012). As Suanie Sees It: A Modern Journey to Taman Negara: Day01’, ‘Taman Negara Day 02: not so ardvous activities’, ‘Taman Negara Day 03: Lata Berkoh then balikkkkkkk!’, ‘Batu Pahat Fish Ball Noodles’, and ‘ How ‘Nokhea the Samsung Galaxy Nexus’ came to be. Retrieved from http://www.suanie.net

3.      Retrieved from www.wikipedia.com/codemixing.

Reflection on Task 3

Assalamualaikum.

Task 3 required us to analyze a corpus in terms of Sociolinguistics. For this task, we chose blog as our corpus and analyzed the language that is used in the blog. We emphasized on code-switching since we live in a multicultural country where most people are bilingual, even multilingual!

The blog that we chose is from a Chinese-Malaysian writer. She uses English language in her writing with a mix of Bahasa Malaysia and also Mandarin. Her writing style definitely reflects her identity. After analyzing the corpus based on Sociolinguistics aspect, we managed to come out with many words that she code switches, usually from English to other languages.

This task emphasized the power of diction in daily conversation. All this while, we neglected the importance of using correct English. After all, as an English major students, we should practice this in our daily life even though the setting is informal.

We hope with Task 3, everyone can see how language play a huge role in reflecting our identity as Malaysia, Malay, Indian or Chinese.

Wassalam.

Task 4: Corpus Linguistics

Corpus Linguistics Analysis

(source)

Forensic Linguistics

What is a Corpus?

l  “A collection of linguistic data, either written texts or a transcription of recorded speech, which can be used as a starting-point of linguistic description or as a means of verifying hypotheses about a language.”

(David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Blackwell, 3rd Edition, 1991)

l  “A collection of naturally occurring language text, chosen to characterize a state or variety of a language.”

                 (John Sinclair, Corpusize Concordance, Collocation, OUP, 1991)

Definition

•      Characterized as taking linguistic knowledge, methods and insight, and applying these to the forensic context of law, investigation, trial, punishment and rehabilitation.

•      It is not a homogenous discipline in its interest, methods or approach, but rather both involves a wide spectrum of practitioners and researchers applying themselves to different areas of the field.

                                                                       (www.forensiclinguistics.net)

Corpus in Forensic Linguistics

•      Determine the authorship of a document by comparing linguistic features in the disputed document(s), in undisputed documents and in a general corpus.

SCOPE OF FORENSIC LINGUISTICS

1. Language of legal texts
2. Language of legal processes
3. Provision of linguistics evidence

 1)The language of legal texts

•      Study text types and forms of analysis.

•      Any text or item of spoken language can potentially be a forensic text when it is used in a legal or criminal context.

•      Analyzing the linguistics of documents

            -Acts of Parliament (or other law-making body), private wills, court judgments and summonses and the statutes of other bodies, such as States and government departments.

2) The language of legal processes

•      Examines language as it is used in cross-examination, evidence presentation, judge's direction, police cautions, police testimonies in court, summing up to a jury, interview techniques, the questioning process in court and in other areas such as police interviews.

•      The judicial process

Point of arrest - through interview – charge – trial – sentencing

 Linguists, for example, have a considerable interest in the language of police (and other) interviews of witnesses (e.g. Johnson, 2007) and suspects (e.g. Haworth, 2006).

3) Provision of linguistic evidence

•      Trademark disputes

•      Judging Linguistic Competence

•      Failures in Interpretation

  e.g. in police interviews

•      Investigative linguistics: the investigation of forensically interesting texts to aid investigation and or provide evidence.

e.g. suicide/death notes

Example of Suicide Note

•      A suicide note or death note is a message that states the author has died by (or plans to die by) suicide, and left to be discovered and read in anticipation of suicide. (Wikipedia)http://kurtcobainssuicidenote.com/
http://www.thetext.co.uk/cgi-bin/view_texts.pl?dir=&folder=Suicide Notes&text=Analysis of a suicide note.txt

Study: Charlantry in Forensic Speech Science

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~julia/papers/eriksson&lacerda07.pdf

•      Charlatan means one making usually showy pretenses to knowledge or ability (fraud / faker)(www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary)

•      Focus of the paper was on discrepancies between the claims the producers and vendors make and what their products are capable of delivering.

•      Methodology
Micro tremor
LVA
Voice Stress Analyzer (VSA)/Psychological Stress Evaluator (PSE)
CVSA

•      Findings
CVSA [Computerized Voice Stress Analyzer] nor the LVA [Layered Voice Analysis] were sensitive to the presence of deception or stress.

•      Conclusion

            The authors reviewed 50 years of lie detector research and came to the conclusion that there is no scientific evidence supporting that lie detectors actually work.

•      Is there anything we can do to prevent charlatanry in forensic speech science?

 

Reflection on Task 4

In this task, our group focused on Forensic Linguistics which can be said something new for us. This task allowed us to understand how language is used forensically. It is totally interesting since we have not heard about Forensic Linguistics before. For this task, we are required to know what Forensic Linguistics is all about. Besides that, we are also assigned to summarize an article which is related to this aspect of knowledge.

Overall Reflection

Assalamualaikum Warrahmatullah Wabarakatuh,

After spending almost one semester on this subject with the help of Dr Rozina, we finally understand the importance of computer as a tool in language learning. What we have done for this subject were: Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), creating study plan, corpus analysis and corpus linguistics. We've learned so much from this course.

We were on the computer most of the time to complete the tasks given. We also communicate online when discussing all of our task. We really made a full use of technology and Alhamdulillah we are very much blessed to be born in this era where technology eases most of our daily routines.

After learning from Dr. Rozina for  almost one semester, we realized the importance of highlighting Islamic values in everything we do. Dr. Rozina also gave us lots of advices in becoming a better Muslim. Her advices will always be in our hearts.We hope to become better Muslimahs as well as practise Islam and spread the beauty of our religion, insyaAllah.

We really enjoyed this course because we learn something new every time. Thank you so much Dr Rozina for helping us in our studies. We will use all the knowledge that you've taught us as of today, insyaAllah.