Economics of housing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Economics of housing - Essay Example The two main historic junction points that can be identified are in the years of 1915-1919 and also in the year 1979. Occupation of ownership as well as social housing amplified their comparative size in the period of 1915 to 1979. At the same time the private renting contracted drastically. After 1979 till the early phases of 2000 owner occupation augmented at the cost of social housing. Since the year 1995 the comparative size of the private rented sector began to take the steep rising curve. The trends in tenure can be accounted to be the combination of political, economic as well as social drivers that played their role in the short and in the long run. Political transformations like supports from the local government and Rights to Buy interacted with the cycles of the economy to bring changes in attitudes to different tenures. The current trends suggest a mix in tenure of the housing system of UK. For the first time the comparative size of the owner occupied sector took the decl ining curve while at the same time the private rented sector took the oppositely sloping curve. The reason for such a drift may be the supreme numeral of households in owner occupation while the social rented sector remained stable. In the phase of 2005 to 2009 the number of households in the private rented sector augmented by more than one million households. ... If the recent trends sustain in 2013 then the private sector is expected to be larger than the social rented sector. Forecasts also point to the fact that by the end of the decade one in every five households would be private renters. The forecasting trends are based on the continuation of the recent trends. The figures point towards quick changes in tenure mix but the figures do not state how quickly the changes would take place. The key drivers that forced the recent changes in tenure mix are depicted in the diagram below: (Pattison, Diacon and Vine, 2010, p. 5). The three pillars taken in the diagram are owner occupation, private rented sector as well as social housing. The panel above the key drivers are regarded to be the drivers that act to increase the relative size while the panel below the drivers act to decrease the relative size. The structures above the pillar of owner occupation are tax advantages relative to other tenures, political support, preferred tenure and the Rig ht to Buy sales. The structures above the pillar of private rented sector are affordability relative to owner occupation, lifestyle changes increasing desire for mobility. The structures above the social housing pillar are financial stability, demand for social housing. The structures below the pillar of owner occupation are income constraints, wealth constraints and mortgage constraints. The structures below private rented sector are investment constraints, lack of political support, and tax incentive relative to owner occupation. The structures below social housing are Right to Buy sales and pressure on government spending. Question (ii) The report published by the HomeOwners Alliance states the owner occupation in UK is set to go below

Gordan Ramsay Essay Example for Free

Gordan Ramsay Essay Gordon James Ramsay was born on November 8th, 1966 in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland. He was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. Ramsay had played football(soccer) all throughout this life. During his football career he endured many injuries which led up to a career ending knee injury. At the age 19, Ramsay enrolled at North Oxfordshire Technical College to study Hotel Management. After graduating college Ramsay worked in London and moved to France to learn classic French cuisine. While in France, Ramsay worked in Paris under Guy Savoy and Joel Robuchon, both Michelin-starred chefs for three years. After he had learned as much as he could, Ramsay took a year to work as a personal chef on the private yacht Idlewild which was based in Bermuda. Moving back to London he became the head chef at Aubergine which won him his first Michelin-star. In 1998 Ramsay opened his first restaurant in Chelsea which then gave him 3 Michelin Stars. Ramsay is one of only four chefs in the UK to maintain three Michelin Stars for his restaurant. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II in the 2006 honors list for services to the hospitality industry. Ramsay has now published many books and has stared in various television shows. Gordon Ramsay has a aggressive leadership style. We classified him as having both Autocratic Leadership and Bureaucratic Leadership. Ramsay has a strong personality and from this comes the Autocratic leadership roles. We saw this in his television shows where he would shut you down if you did not meet his standards. It seems that it is Gordon Ramsay’s way or the highway. Ramsay poses his ideas quite firmly and is also quite by the book. He delegates jobs accordingly based on skill sets and he always demands professionalism. This is also why we thought Ramsay was a Bureaucratic leadership style. By always demanding excellence Ramsay motivates you to be the best you can be. He gives constructive criticism and educates others with his knowledge and skills. Ramsay inspires you to improve your skill set and be passionate.

Stages of Development | 0-19 Years

Stages of Development | 0-19 Years Explain the sequence and rate of each aspect of development from birth – 19 years. The sequence of development refers to the expected pattern of development of a child from birth through to 19 years. Child development, in turn, refers to the biological, the physical and the emotional or psychological changes which take place within a time-frame as the individual passes through various stages or phases from (complete) dependency to (increasing) autonomy. The term development incorporates the skills and knowledge that children and young people are developing. Children and young people follow a pattern or sequence or order of development, and knowledge about expectations at the different ages and stages, helps practitioners to support development, as well as to identify those individuals who may need additional support or those who may require extension, for example, through a gifted and talented programme. Skills and knowledge and physical growth are all interconnected and therefore cannot be viewed in isolation. Instead a ‘holistic’ approach to development needs to be adopted as these areas are co-dependent. Children and young people need to be able to develop properly in order to reach their full potential. Practitioners should remain aware of the fact that although each area of development is important as an entity in its own right, each area is as important as any other, and also that they all impact upon each other. The areas can be ‘separated out’ as such, but they are reliant upon each other and so if a child does not have the physical skills to turn pages in a book or the language to decode words, then that child will not be able to read. Developmental changes may be influenced by a variety of factors, including genetics, events during prenatal development, the delivery and birth itself as well as post natal influences. Developmental change can be due to maturation – genetically controlled processes or as a result of environmental factors, although mostly, there is an interaction between the two. The development of children and young people is a continuous process and can be measured in a variety of ways. Children and young people tend to develop at different rates but the sequence or order in which they develop will be more or less the same. For example, a child will acquire one skill – walking, before developing the next skill in the sequence – running. As development tends to be more rapid in the early years, the milestones are initially quite close together. As a baby becomes a toddler / child and the toddler / child becomes a young person, the milestones can be further apart. It is important to bear in mind that children and young people are individuals, so their rate of development may be different and also development may not progress across all the required areas with the same degree of equality. Sometimes the rate of development can present cause for concern. However, it is essential to remember that each person is unique and this must be borne in mind, especially when examining the rate and development of a child or young person. Generally speaking, development is said to progress from head to toe, from the inner self to the outer self, from simple to complex and finally from general to specific. The aspects of development by which children and young people are measured against are: Physical Development Physical development can be sub-divided into: Fine motor skills (manipulation) involve the coordination and control of small muscles, for example, tying a shoe lace or using pincer grip to pick up crumbs or hold a pencil and mark make with it. Gross motor skills involve the coordination and the control of large muscles and the acquiring of skills such as running and walking, throwing a ball or pedalling a bicycle. These skills require the use of the entire body or at least several parts of the body. Muscle tone and muscle strength are important, for example, if a body has ‘high tone’, the movements may be jerky or appear disconnected and if the muscle strength is poor, the child or young person may not be able to exert much pressure with his hands or legs. The quality and range of movement is also important – does a child or young person move noticeably slowly or too quickly and is the child or young person able to make movements that go from one side of the body to the other (‘crossing the midline’). Physical development is about learning to master movements and this allows a child or young person to become independent. They master the ability to explore and interact the world and environment around them. The muscles in the body need to develop and gain strength and as they do, the body is able to coordinate better. Cognitive / Intellectual Development This encompasses the way in which the brain processes information (remembering names or colours or numbers and information). Imagination (for example in role-play), is also a cognitive skill and cognitive development is strongly linked to communication and language. Communication and Language This is about learning to communicate with other people and understanding their communication in return. Talking, reading, writing and using gestures/body language or a sign language, are all examples of communication and it is essential that children and young people acquire language and a range of vocabulary or sign language skills in order to be able to communicate effectively. Receptive and expressive language are effective tools for communication. As stated above, communication and language are linked to cognitive development (thinking about what others are trying to convey as well as what you are trying to express). Social and Emotional Development This area is about forming and maintaining relationships, understanding oneself, becoming self-reliant, having the ability to make decisions, feeling sympathy and empathy, knowing what behaviour is acceptable, and having the ability to control emotions appropriately. This area is closely linked to cognitive language development. Intellectual or Moral Development This has strong links with cognitive development and is a sub-set of social and emotional development. Intellectual or moral development is about decisions that children and young people take, principles they adopt and their behaviour towards others. It includes a child or young person’s attention span, ability to understand information and to reason, the developing of memory, logical thinking and questioning. For example, Piaget advocated that group games promoted and advanced the moral and intellectual development of children and young people. An adult explains the rules of a game and gradually reduces his or her involvement, allowing the child or young person to regulate the game this allows room for a child to take risks, to make errors and to learn and develop moral understanding and autonomy. Table detailing the sequence and rate of each aspect of development from birth to 19 years plus Age Intellectual Social/Emotional Language Gross Motor Fine Motor Skills Infant – Birth to 12 months Learns by experimenting with hands and putting objects in mouth. Attaches to the mother and father and begins to recognise faces; smiles. At about six months begins to recognise parents and expresses a fear of strangers. Responds to and participates in simple interactive games. Vocalises a lot more and imitates some sounds, says 2 syllable words like ‘mama’, ‘dada’, ‘baba’. Lifts head, pulls chest up, rolls over, pulls to sit up and crawls or stands either with some or no support. Is able to reach for objects and picks up finger food or toys, like rattles or keys. Picks up small objects like crumbs. Toddler 1 – 2 years Is able to learn words for people and objects and to name some items when prompted. Learns that self and parents are separate, imitates sounds, is able to indicate needs or wants without crying. Is able to say more words and follow simple instructions. Can walk, kick, stop, jump, throw a ball and drop items. Unbutton clothing, build tower with few bricks, mark make, use spoon to feed self. Preschool 2 – 5 years Knows when is tired or hungry, cold/wet or soiled and recognises some colours, numbers, shapes and objects. Able to separate from carer with ease, un/dress with assistance, wash / dry hands, play games. Increasingly independent in toileting and self-care. Follows simple or complex instructions, speaks in simple sentences. Good range of vocabulary. Runs, hops, squats and jumps, pedals a tricycle, balances and co-ordinates well. Pulls self onto play equipment. Builds tower of 7/8 cubes, forms letters and some alphabet and is able to pedal a bicycle. Feeds self. School 5 – 12 years Understands numeracy and literacy concepts, relationships between objects and feelings, acquires knowledge and skill. Increasingly independent, emotionally still attached to its parents, dresses/undresses mostly without assistance, joins clubs and social groups, make friendships. Has an increasing bank of vocabulary, is able to describe his / her feelings, or objects, or materials, is able to school independently. Improved balance, may overestimate physical capabilities, joins in different physically demanding activities. Able to sketch/draw people, copy detail in figures and objects, sew, knit, paint and craft with control. 12 – 18 years Understands some abstract concepts like death or illness or God and religion, and develops an understanding of complex ideas. Experiences mood swings and changes in behaviour, highly influenced by peer group, distances from parents emotionally, engrossed by self-image, may have sexual relationship. Uses increased vocabulary and understands abstract concepts such as grief. These are now fully developed. These are now fully developed. 19 years plus Continues to develop ability to make sound decisions, understands complexity of relationships with others. Becomes independent and develops own lifestyle, chooses career path, develops a social and economic status, may have a partner, become a parent, Continues to develop knowledge, uses increased vocabulary and different styles of language. These are now fully developed. These are now fully developed.

Marilyn Hackers Mother-Daughter Relationship Exposed in Selected Poems

Marilyn Hacker's Mother-Daughter Relationship Exposed in Selected Poems 1965-1990 If Selected Poems 1965-1990 can be taken as an evenly representative sample of Marilyn Hacker's work, motherhood does not seem to be the single central focus of her life or her work. Hacker has quite a few poems about or for her daughter Iva, and Iva is mentioned in many other poems, yet much of Hacker's work focuses on other aspects of her life and interests. The fact that Hacker does not focus exclusively on her motherhood seems important in and of itself. Though I don't think that we get the opportunity, through these poems, to judge whether or not Hacker is a "good mother," I would say that her apparent ability to be simultaneously a mother and an artist and a lover and a daughter makes her a healthy, balanced individual and thus a good role model for her daughter. As illustration of my idea of Hacker's space for mothering, in "La Fontaine de Vaucluse" appear the following lines (p. 116) referring to Iva: Sometimes she still swims at my center; sometimes she is a four-year-old an ocean...

Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Wollstonecraft

Looking to the science of the day, Hobbes determined that there was no soul and attempted to describe human nature as pure mechanics. Human nature was therefore driven by the need to satisfy the physical demands of the body and based on basic passions in life. These are to satisfy physical appetites, to seek power to maintain their wealth and to be superior to others by seeking glory. Hobbes saw the state nature as â€Å"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. † The state of nature is anarchy, with constant violence (or potential violence) by amoral leaders terrorizing the population.Reason is the answer that will lead to a social contract and government. Individuals will give up their individual rights and freedoms to secure peace. Morality and property can then be dictated by the state, since human nature is not equipped to handle those concepts without conflict. This will allow each person to then pursue their own self-interests without fear of violence. The sovereign au thority is the office or institution of government that is contracted by the people. It is the artificial construct onto which the powers are conveyed by the social contract.The only limits to the sovereign’s powers are self-imposed, since it must exist outside of the population; although it should always strive for the good of the people to remain legitimate. Civil law is dictated by the sovereign. Civil law should be designed to promote well-being and progress for society with appropriate punishments for law breakers. Hobbes believed in an absolute monarchy. By making one man in charge, it would make it easy for the people to understand their roles and obey laws.With no confusing dissension or contrary views, people do not have to waste time and effort making political decisions; after all, that’s why they entered the social contract in the first place. He did not, however, believe in the ‘divine right’ or hereditary kings; the contract was conveyed upon an ancestor, which has no bearing on the legitimacy of the heir to rule. Although Locke’s views are similar to Hobbes’, they are not quite as grim and fearful. Similar to Hobbes, he believes that people are naturally free and equal. Locke believes that man is social by nature and is naturally moral, rational and egoistic.In a state of nature, man will generally act with a mutual trust and respect and honor their commitments and obligations to other. Although he emphasizes these positive traits of humanity, he recognizes that since that is not always the case, people will need to form a type of social contract to preserve their rights and liberties. For Hobbes, natural law is a selfish state where people do not recognize the rights of others’ property and liberty. Locke believes that, although they don’t always act in accordance with it, man inherently knows right from wrong and are capable of acting in a lawful manner.The goal of government is to preserv e the rights to life, liberty, health and property of its society and to pursue the public good even where this may conflict with the rights of individuals. It is also to punish wrongdoers and transgressors of the laws it sets for the common good. Since ones path to salvation and religious preferences fall outside those boundaries, government should not enforce or espouse any one form of religion over another. Class and hierarchy is a natural outgrowth of Locke’s views on property.Credited as the founder of the â€Å"Protestant work ethic†, Locke believed that those who worked hard will possess more. By agreeing to have money be an equalizing factor for trade, this will naturally contribute to some having more wealth than others. This is fine and natural, as long as the producers are working without injustice or injury to others. In retrospect, Locke may be considered the father of feminism. Although he still believed women should be subordinate to men, he also noted t hat women were capable of rationality and equally shared in the paternal power of raising children.Most notably, he claimed that marriage was a contract entered into by both parties and that both should be able to dissolve the contract at will; it took almost 300 years for society to catch up and instigate no fault divorces. Locke believed government should be formed with both an executive and legislative branches. The legislative determines the laws and may assign judicial, or magistrates, to exercise it. The executive is responsible for enforcing the laws and conducting foreign affairs. There should be a system of checks and balances between the two branches, to avoid despotism and illegitimate governments.Since a monarchy puts the power of both branches into one person, Locke believed all monarchies to be illegitimate forms of government. By advocating some form of representative or democratic government, society can insure that there representatives are working in their best int erests. Despotism occurs when either of the two branches of government exceed their authority and begin acting against the benefit of the people. Civil society can then remove the offenders from office through their electoral process or agree to set up a new form of government.When the people are denied these means to choose their government, violent revolution may be the answer. Rousseau believes that the state of nature is solitary existence guided by two principles – self-preservation and compassion. Social interactions were driven by the necessity to satisfy their own needs; war and aggression would be unlikely, since primitive man’s compassion drove him to avoid suffering of others. Civilization and establishment of nuclear families led to the beginnings of society, which corrupted the state of nature and led to human nature.Human nature is based on oppression and inequality, the haves dominating over the have nots. Society and governments were established to prot ect the rights and properties of the few landowners without regard to the rights of the laborers. His path to liberation is paved with a just, moral civil society that works for the benefit of all of its members. People must draw on their compassion and work towards the good of society, rather than selfish goals. In this manner, a social contract can be formed that will benefit all of society.Rousseau’s social contract involves an overhaul of civilization and a community that is willing to that is willing to forfeit all of their rights. Although not necessarily a violent revolution, he suggests that liberated people form a new community and create a government. This moral body of citizens would only consider the greater good and not selfish, private interests. He does not envision this to be without economic inequality, however, as long as it does not interfere with political equality; there should not be a situation where one man is able to buy or sell a vote.The basis of le gislative power is the general will of the people. Although entrance into the community must be unanimous, voting is done by majority. All citizens must participate in open discussion before voting. Votes should only be counted from those expressing the general will; those voting based on selfish interests should be discounted, although no practical way of knowing or enforcing this is described. Since authority and freedoms all reside within the general will, transgressors against the general will can be coerced or forced to liberate themselves.There are underlying conditions necessary for the formation of the social contract. There must be a legislator, a divinely enlightened man who will lead the community into an understanding of its true public interest. He initiates the contract and then retires before he can be corrupted. A civil religion is necessary, one that does not divide the community’s loyalties. The civil religion is founded on the way of life of the citizens, i ncluding customs and traditions. It must include belief in God, immortality of the soul and the social contract.The society must be small, modeled after the polis, and agricultural in nature, rather than founded on commerce or industry. The executive institutions are the bureaucracy of the sovereign. The magistrate lays down the laws and is supported by policeman and jailors. The censor is in charge of compliance with the civil religion, using education to guide people. The censor monitors the arts and sciences to insure people are not whiling away their time and distraction themselves from the common good.Two other offices may be used in exigent circumstances to allow for checks on the government. A tribunate can be used to limit the magistrate or a dictator can be used as supreme commander in war or natural disasters. Government should take the form of a republic, with full participation in the legislature and delegation of authority for the executive. Depending on the wealth and size of the state, monarchy, non-hereditary aristocracy or democracy could be acceptable forms of executive. Rousseau was adamant that men and women were vastly different and should be educated appropriately.Men should learn a trade and how to become an enlightened citizen. Women should learn how to raise children, tend house and be a good wife. He did not consider women rational enough to be citizens. Education is not to be done by rote memorization, but is instead to take the form of exploration and learning through experience. In direct response to Rousseau, Wollstonecraft argues that educating women in the same fashion as men makes them better able to function in the roles of wife, mother and daughter.She argues that virtues are not gender specific, but without equal education, women cannot achieve virtues founded on knowledge. Since education begins in the home and mothers were to raise the children, women must be educated to be better mothers and provide their children with ne cessary education. Wollstonecraft sees human nature as truly equal, including equality between the sexes. The basic capacities of all humans are the same for reason and knowledge and the difference between the sexes has arisen out of the societal constructs that separate them.She supported the concept of a social contract, albeit with the inclusion of women as fully realized citizens. She did not believe that either a monarchy or aristocracy could be a legitimate form of government since it perpetuates the subordination of women. She considers property to be as one of the ills of society because it gives rise to the societal problems, which contribute to keeping women ignorant and subordinate. Civil society must be founded on reason, which women are as capable of as men given the proper opportunities and education.

The 21 Best News Roundups for Self-Publishing Authors

The 21 Best News Roundups for Self-Publishing Authors The 21 Best News Roundups for Self-Publishing Authors The sheer amount of information that comes flowing from the internet every week can be overwhelming - especially when you’re living in the ever-evolving world of self-publishing. To help streamline your learning (and cut back on hours of aimless browsing), we’ve put together a list of our favorite writing and self-publishing roundups.As we discover new roundups, we’ll be adding and subtracting entries from this list. If you know of any great publishing-related roundups, let us know in the comments below, and we might find a place for it on this page!General Publishing Roundups1.  The Book DesignerJoel Friedlander’s site has for long been a haven for book design obsessives like us. It also boasts an excellent weekly blog roundup that uncovers tips on writing, publishing, and - of course - book design.2.  The Digital ReaderLooking for a quick shot of book news at the breakfast table?   Nate Hoffelder offers an artisan blend of links in his Morning C offee round-up for readers and publishing enthusiasts who can’t wait a whole week for their fix of publishing news. Check out some of the best news roundups for #selfpub authors 3.  IndieReader We will regularly refresh this page, so if you know of a solid news roundup that shares information, tips, and advice for  self-publishing authors, let us know in the comments below!

Bounded People, Boundless Lands essays

Bounded People, Boundless Lands essays Bounded People, Boundless Lands: Envisioning a New Land Ethic Throughout the book Eric Freyfogle uses examples of poems, fictional stories, and true stories to strengthen his view of the land, and land ethics. One such example is that of the poem by Robert Frost called Mending Wall where the phrase Good fences make good neighbors came from. Freyfogle uses this poem as a precedence throughout the book, making reference to it, and the contradiction of the meaning of the poem, and that people took that phrase literally, and it has become and anthem for the American culture and how they view the land. From the poem on, Freyfogle gives examples of how America has shaped its land, and how boundaries have been set up in American culture. He states, Boundaries and the bounding process have been central elements of American culture since the first days of settlement. The westward expansion of the country, in fact, was a matter not only of taming the land but also of dividing and bounding it. Through a messy process continuing for generations, an interconnected whole became a collection of parcels and pieces. As they divided nature, the settlers severed, mentally and sometimes physically, many of the connections that joined natures pieces into and organic whole. They had reasons for doing so, of course. But in time, their boundaries and senses of boundedness would take a heavy toll on the lands health (pgs. 6-7). After this statement Freyfogle goes on to give examples of how this happened, and people and places that it happened at. Such as in California when settlers divided ! the water flows to go to certain places, and companies such as Chauncey There are many examples that Freyfogle gives throughout the book about the land health and how we need to fix things in order to make i...

The Discount Window as a Monetary Policy Tool

The Discount Window as a Monetary Policy Tool The discount window is a monetary policy tool (managed by central banks) that permits genuine institutions to scrounge money from the central bank, mostly on the basis of short-term, in order to obtain fleeting paucities of liquidity, which may be caused by either internal or external intervals.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on The Discount Window as a Monetary Policy Tool specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The interest that is charged by the central bank is known as the base rate, discount rate or repo rate. However, the borrower must provide collateral on such loan (Federal Reserve 1). The main idea behind the discount window is to give banks liquidity whenever they necessitate it without making them much dependent upon it. In 2007, the Federal Reserve successfully did this by decreasing or increasing the discount rate. This means that by decreasing the discount rate, the Federal Reserve is attempting to enhance the development by making liquidity easier to be obtained, and by increasing, it indicates that Federal Reserve is worried about inflationary on the economy and that is why it is endeavoring to decrease the amount of money in the economy (Bogle 12). What Was Happening to the Banks at That Time? The financial crisis of 2007 was stimulated by the shortfall of liquidity in the US banking system. This caused large financial institutions in US to get themselves into hot water and even some collapsing. The financial sector was impacted by the world crisis in February, 2007. The financial crisis was caused by the major loss which had been reported by the world’s largest bank (HSBC). The bank had lost holdings by $10.5 billion. This led to the crisis which had been compared with the Great Depression. For about 100 mortgage companies had to report about selling their activities or about their shut down throughout 2007. As crisis continued to dig out, other financial institutions decided t o merge or announce to look for merger partners. The top managers (such CEO’s) who could not bear the situation, made a decision of relinquishing their jobs, a good example is the CEO’s of Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, who relinquish within two weeks (Dozark-Frideres 1). Moreover, this financial crisis of 2007 caused huge panic in financial markets and as a result, a lot of investors were totally discourage, hence they began taking away their money from shrinking mortgage bonds and equities and invest it in other secure ways, such as commodities as â€Å"store of value.†Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More However, due to overwhelming number of investors in commodities following the collapse of financial firms, the speculation of commodity has resulted to food crisis and an increase of oil prices, because of commodity super-cycle. In addition, the financial investors who are looking for fast returns have taken away trillions of money from the risky mortgage bonds and equities, making some to invest in raw materials and food (Bogle 45). In 2006, provisions for prospect defaults and mortgage defaults influenced the income at the 8533 depository institutions of the United States. These defaults caused the decrease from $35.2 billion to $646 million by the FDIC. This resulted in a decrease of 98%. Having analyzed the financial situation in t world, it may be stated that the country’s economy has not experience such problems since 1990. 2007 was considered to be the worst year for performance for most financial firms in the country. Turning to the problems of insured depository firms, is should be mentioned that the companies had lost about 31% in comparison with 2006. Thus, the income of the insured depository firms in 2007 was $100 billion, while in 2006 it was about $145 billion. In same year (2007), the profit decreased from $35.6 billion Q1 to $19.3 billion in Q1 of 2008, a decrease of 45% (FDIC 1). Below is a bar graph that shows the quarterly U.S. bank earnings from 2004 to 2008. Quarterly U.S. Bank Earnings from 2004 to 2008 Furthermore, there was a situation when the discount window became the same as the federal fund rate. This situation became possible due to the fact that the supply curve of reserves became horizontal. This was provoked by the Fed desire to offer as many loans as possible at the discount rate to prevent them from bankruptcy. There was a situation in 2007 when discount rate and the federal fund rate equaled each other. This situation became possible in a number of reasons. â€Å"As iff rises above id, banks will borrow more and more at id, and re-lend at iff. The supply curve is horizontal (perfectly elastic) at id (Wright and Quadrini n.p.).Advertising We will write a custom report sample on The Discount Window as a Monetary Policy Tool specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The situation is showed below. Table 1. Equilibrium in the fed funds market (Wright and Quadrini n.p.) It is possible to consider the situation when the discount rate and the federal fund rate equaled each other: on the 16th of March, 2008 the discount rate was cut 25 bps and was reduced to 3.25% and indicated an intermeeting move (Chronology n.p.). What Was Happening to the Economy? The economy of the United State of America was also in hot soup. Betwixt June 2007 and November 2008, it was report that Americans lost approximate a quarter of their net value. The prices of house had decline to 20% from their peak in 2003, while other prospect markets indicating a potential decline of 30 to 35%. By mid-2008, the US total home equity decline to $8.8 trillion for its peak in 2006 that valued at $13 trillion. To understand the level of the problem, it is important to consider the activities from a broad U.S. stock index. The decline in No vember 2008 was 45% if to calculate from the peak in 2007. The declination of the total retirement assets from 2006 to 2008 was about 22% (in 2006 the numbers reached $10.3 trillion, and in 2008 the activities hardly reacted $8 trillion). Meanwhile, the investments and the savings made a loss of $1.2 trillion. At the same time, a loss of $1.3 trillion was considered in the activities of the pension assets (Dozark-Frideres 1). Below is a graph showing US housing price performance from 1998 to 2007. Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More How the Discount Windows Usually Operate To save the situation, or at least do not support its further damaging development, the Federal Reserve Bank have created three different discount window programs. These discount window programs were directed at depository institutions. â€Å"Primary credit, secondary credit and seasonal credit† (Federal Reserve 1) are the discount window programs implemented by the Federal Reserve Bank. However, although all credits are fully secured, each credit has its own rate of interest. In the primary credit program, loans are normally prolonged for a short term (for about 24hrs) to depository firms in order to meet the financial conditions. For the financial firms that are not under primary category can apply for secondary credit so that they can settle their severe financial problems or short-term liquidity necessities. On other hand, seasonal credit is prolonged to comparatively small depository firms that have persistent intra-year ebb and f low in funding necessities, like seasonal resort communities or banks in agriculture. Now, it is important to consider the discount rate charges in the primary credit, in the secondary credit, and in the seasonal credit. Turning to the primary credit, the charges are more than the normal level of short-term market interest rates. Using the secondary credit, the charges are going to be above the primary credit. Using the seasonal credit, the charges are going to be set on an average of certain chosen market rate. The depository institutions had an opportunity to choose the discount window program depending on the conditions of each offer. The discount rates have been formed by every Reserve Bank’s board of directors (Federal Reserve 1). How Did It Exactly Operate in 2007? In the response, the USA central bank together with central banks across the globe and the Federal Reserve took several measures to address the crisis. Below is how the discount window operated in 2007. The discount rate was decreased from 5.75% (August) to 4.75% (December), and the Federal funds rate was also lowered from 5.25% (August) to 4.25% (December). They also formed lending institutions, which offered loans with low collateral to banks and other financial firms. The financial institutions were encouraged to apply for loans, either under primary, secondary or seasonal credit, but this depended on their qualification (Dozark-Frideres 1). Did the Discount Window Continue to 2008 and Why? The discount window programs continued in 2008. Here are a number of reasons for such decision. The main reason for extending discount window in 2008 was the fact that still many financial institutions had not fully recovered from this crisis. In December 2008, the Federal Reserve decreased the federal funds rate further to a range of 0-0.25%. Moreover, in November 2008, the Fed said that it wanted to purchase MBS of the GSE at a price of $600, in order to decrease the mortgage rates (Dozark-Fri deres 1). The Federal Reserve Bank could not leave unstable financial situation in the country without support, so the decision was made to continue the discount window programs up to the time when the financial stability is implemented in the world bank system. What Does the Discount Window Do With Sterilized Funds in the Federal Reserve? The discount window can open market operations, whereby it venders bonds domestically, hence gaining new cash that can go around the home economy (Federal Reserve 1). Moreover, according to the Federal Reserve, â€Å"U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks that hold reserves are eligible to borrow under the same general terms and conditions that apply to domestic depository institutions† (Federal Reserve 1). Why Did Not the Federal Reserve Allow Lehman Brothers to Use the Discount Window in 2007? The Federal Government did not want to bail out Lehman brothers, as it had had already drawn the line somewhere, and other financial firms cou ld not stay connected with Lehman assets on the spot (Siris 1). At the same time, many financial institutions â€Å"could not get comfortable with Lehmans assets in an instant† (Siris 1). Federal Government hoped that Lehman had enough assets to recover from crisis and stabilize the situation. The theoretical ability of Lehman to keep the company afloat was one of the main reasons why it was refused in discount window program. Still, the firm suffered more than it was expected and there was a threat Lehman’s bankruptcy impacted each organization at the Wall Street (Siris 1). In conclusion it should be stated that discount window programs provided by the Federal Reserve Bank were effective and they made it possible for many different companies remain afloat. At the same time, the inability of the programs to fund each organization and cover the expenses or each company made the Federal Reserve Bank draw the line which did not satisfy the expectations of many financial i nstitutions at the Wall Street. But, in general, the activity was successful. Bogle, John. The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism. London: Yale University Press. 2005. Print. â€Å"Chronology – Fed funds rate changes since 1994.† Reuters. June, 2010. Web. Dozark-Frideres, Taryn. How Did the Central Banks in the U.S. and Europe React to the Global Financial Crisis? 2010. Web. FDIC. FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile. 2008. Web. Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve Discount Window. 2010. Web. Siris, Peter. Government Did Not Want To Bail Out Lehman Brothers. 2008. Web. Wright, Robert E. and Vincenzo Quadrini. Money and Banking. Irvington, NY: Flat World Knowledge 2009. Web.

Why All Children Should Play Team Sports Research Paper

Why All Children Should Play Team Sports - Research Paper Example One of the benefits that are commonly attributed to team sports is that such sporting activities teach children how they can best work well with others. As long as they are on a team, team sports teach children that it is imperative for them to think as a whole instead of just themselves as individuals (Dunlap, 24). They are able to learn how to be happy or their teammates’ successes in addition to their own; this is because every person’s success is of great benefit to the team. A team sport can teach children how to interact with their peers and instills in them the value of respecting their coaches and fellow teammates. They are also able to learn empathy for others. Playing team sports is an avenue through which children can be able to learn from a number of other positive mentors other than their parents. While on a team, children are able to learn how to respect the coach and honor his final decision. By noticing the various strengths that each individual player i s able to bring to the team, children are able to learn how to respect and appreciate each other’s talents. This sense of teamwork, organization and following skilled leaders not only helps children in the classroom but also in their work as they continue to grow. Another benefit that children stand to benefit from as a result of participating in team sporting activities is that even though their athletic prowess might not be quite impressive, children that participate in team sporting activities are often more likely to be hardworking, active students and better future leaders. This is because organized athletics often require that these children learn how to lead others and be disciplined during practice.

Identify failures of the now discontinued brand Ralph Lauren Rugby and Essay

Identify failures of the now discontinued brand Ralph Lauren Rugby and propose a marketing strategy for the re-launch of that brand - Essay Example The company even uses various advertisement campaigns to position the brand in minds of the targeted audience. The store layout is also re-structured. The marketing strategy developed is proposed to Mr. Ralph Lauren in order to persuade him to re-launch the brand. The Ralph Lauren Corporation was incorporated in the year 1967 and was a world renowned clothing brand that defined the American lifestyle. Mr. Ralph Lauren started this company by selling ties which was completely different in design to the tradition design of ties used by men in America. His range of colourful ties gave birth to a brand called Polo. In the later years the product range of the brand widened which included footwear, luxury accessories, apparel, and home furnishings. The company comprised of various brands apart from Polo such as Pink Pony, Chaps, Club Monaco, Black Label, RRL and RLX, American Living, Purple Label, and Rugby. The brand Rugby was launched in the year 2004. Despite of the success of the company this Rugby brand failed miserably in the market place and finally the brand was closed in the year 2012. The common reasons for failure of a fashion brand are its incapability to maintain a leading edge or to remain as trendy in order to meet the demand of the customers. In the years when Rugby was launched there exist a lot of competition in the preppy brand market space. The high priced products had made the brand unable to capture the maximum of the market share. The preppy style of the brand was very fashionable from the starting years of its launch but somewhere the other offerings of the brand were really absurd even for its target market. The offerings of the brand were such as a pair of sweat pants with English style classic boating blazer or herringbone three-row-two sport jacket. The combinations offered by the brand were no doubt fashionable but at the same time they were not that much appealing

Green engineering Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Green engineering - Essay Example In the contemporary world, many people have installed the technologies to maximally benefit from solar energy. It is not only efficient, but a sustainable energy that can be relied on even in the future. The sun provides energy in two ways; by heating and through lighting. It radiates great amount of energy that travels through space and spreads all through the earth’s surface. Naturally, the inner core of sun produces the energy through a nuclear fusion of the hydrogen and helium atoms, radiates onto the sun’s surface, and consequently emits electromagnetic radiation onto the earth using a wide variety of wavelengths (â€Å"Alternative energy† kennesaw.edu). Upon reaching the earth surface, it is harvested for greater use in various processes. Solar energy is of great importance in supporting the life and processes of plants, as well as those of humans. Specific Aspects of how Solar Energy works There are two specific technologies of converting solar energy into electricity. These are the commonly known photovoltaic systems and solar thermal systems. They both employ very distinct mechanisms to produce power from the suns light. Photovoltaic energy This system of sunlight conversion uses solar panel technologies with the photovoltaic cells as the core element in generation of power (European communities 5). Solar panels are devices or modules of a connected assembly of photovoltaic cells, with the capability of collecting the sunlight photons for conversion. The solar panels are developed in different sizes of rectangular shape, from which several can be used as a combination to produce enough electricity. The solar cells in the panels are made up of semiconductor materials (silicon is very common), whose conductivity can be increased by introducing impurities (European communities 5). Basically, in the presence of light or sunshine, some of the radiant energy that hits PV cells is absorbed and transferred to the electrons within the atoms of the semiconductor. Because of the continuous transmitting energy from the sun, electrons of the cells tend to shift from their positions as they move towards a preferential side of attraction in the cells, creating an electric voltage that can be collected and channeled (â€Å"How do solar† nwwindandsolar.com). As the electrons move, they create space for others to move into, and hence generating the current in the electrical circuit (direct conversion of sunlight into electricity). Generally, once the energy as electricity is produced, the direct current generated and collected is converted through an inverter, into alternating current required to run most electronic appliances. The electricity can also be used by connecting the inverter to any load, or connect to the battery banks to store energy for further use. Suppose one switches into solar generated electricity using this technology, he has to enquire and seek suitable number and sizes of the solar panels that can be placed on the roof s, away from shade, and in a suitable position (South facing installations on the roof recommended), with correct angle inclinations to benefit

The American Flatbread Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The American Flatbread - Case Study Example They believe in taking care of the customer and the employee, and always looking out for the best interests of the people, not the business, while maintaining a healthy, fresh, and fun-filled environment to work and eat in. George Schenk is the founder of American Flatbread. He not only owns the business but takes a large role in the daily activities of running the company along with his management team. One of his beliefs is that it does not matter who thought of the best idea; the best idea will be the chosen course of action. In the video, he mentioned that at times there are arguments between the management team, but that each person must swallow their pride for the betterment of the company. He also stated that by giving each employee a voice in the company, it leads to better ideas; and employees take an ownership role in doing the best job they can because they know their opinions matter. Schenk established the Medicine Wheel Project and Organic Food for Public Schools projects that has helped build his name and food philosophies nationwide. He has also written many different articles stating his philosophies and beliefs to the culinary community as well as taking a strong stance in political ac tivities in the state of Vermont. American Flatbread practices many different socially responsible activities that have made it well-renowned. The American Flatbread restaurants hold â€Å"Benefit Bakes†, which are fund raising events to raise money for social causes such as public health clinics and the preserving nature habitats. The company also serves food to medical patients, medical personnel and all of their families through the â€Å"Medicine Wheel† program. Schenk has also demanded that members of the community that are facing tough times can come to American Flatbread and they will have flatbreads on the house. It is important for small businesses to intimately connect with their communities so that as one struggles,

Fine Foods Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Fine Foods - Essay Example Advertisements are placed on websites and local media and some are displayed through a company intranet. One of the best things about their policy is that they try to hire from within the company. That means that employees are familiar with the operations and the culture. However, if a company becomes to reliant on this method of hiring they will find that they rarely have new blood or ideas. It is important not to over-prioritize internal hiring as it can lead to redundant thinking and tiredness. Kudler’s training program is substantial. One of the best things about it is the 60 day buddy period which allows new employees to be supervised and gently acculturated to the company. However, 60 days is a long time to have a buddy and surely that â€Å"buddy’s† productivity will be reduced if he spends all his time with the new employee. If too many employees are hired at once, too many buddies will be spending all their time training. It’s important to keep this in mind. All payroll data is outsourced by Kudler. In some respects this is a good idea because it frees up HR resources in the company and saves a certain amount on personnel and the data system. However, one possible drawback of this method is the security of the employees data. By outsourcing the system to another company it is possible that confidentiality might be breached. No one wants that. A thread that runs through all these aspects of Kudler’s human resource management is a culture of respect for the employees. Management is a complex art. It involves a lot of angles relating to competition, performance and commitment. It also has a lot to do with competition. Kudler is hardly the only fine foods company in town and they must constantly be monitoring their competition to see how they are performing. Their prices and services change depending on the successes and failures of the competition. Training and

Othello Race Journal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Othello Race Journal - Essay Example This can be seen in the language which is used to describe the character. For instance, throughout the play he is refereed to as â€Å"this Moor†, â€Å"the thick lips†, or more pejorative as â€Å"Barbary horse†, and â€Å"Devil†. ("Elizabethan Thater: Skakespeare in Context" ) Moreover, characters in the play are more prone to believe that Desdemona was poisoned or somehow bewitched and in this way, forced to love Othello than to believe that their relationships are natural. â€Å"Did you by forced courses subdue and poison this young maids affections?† ("Elizabethan Thater: Skakespeare in Context") Obviously, race becomes the crucial feature that sets him apart. Throughout the play, the attitudes towards Othello are much influenced by that fact that he is racially different from the majority in the society. The following creates the tension between the characters and drives the development of the conflict. As a whole, the play reflects the existing at those time anxieties and prejudices relating to interracial marriages and the belief in the white superiority that define the place of Othello among others. In this context, Othello fulfill the role of an outsider in the society which is guided by racial stereotypes and

The American Flatbread Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The American Flatbread - Case Study Example They believe in taking care of the customer and the employee, and always looking out for the best interests of the people, not the business, while maintaining a healthy, fresh, and fun-filled environment to work and eat in. George Schenk is the founder of American Flatbread. He not only owns the business but takes a large role in the daily activities of running the company along with his management team. One of his beliefs is that it does not matter who thought of the best idea; the best idea will be the chosen course of action. In the video, he mentioned that at times there are arguments between the management team, but that each person must swallow their pride for the betterment of the company. He also stated that by giving each employee a voice in the company, it leads to better ideas; and employees take an ownership role in doing the best job they can because they know their opinions matter. Schenk established the Medicine Wheel Project and Organic Food for Public Schools projects that has helped build his name and food philosophies nationwide. He has also written many different articles stating his philosophies and beliefs to the culinary community as well as taking a strong stance in political ac tivities in the state of Vermont. American Flatbread practices many different socially responsible activities that have made it well-renowned. The American Flatbread restaurants hold â€Å"Benefit Bakes†, which are fund raising events to raise money for social causes such as public health clinics and the preserving nature habitats. The company also serves food to medical patients, medical personnel and all of their families through the â€Å"Medicine Wheel† program. Schenk has also demanded that members of the community that are facing tough times can come to American Flatbread and they will have flatbreads on the house. It is important for small businesses to intimately connect with their communities so that as one struggles,

Othello Race Journal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Othello Race Journal - Essay Example This can be seen in the language which is used to describe the character. For instance, throughout the play he is refereed to as â€Å"this Moor†, â€Å"the thick lips†, or more pejorative as â€Å"Barbary horse†, and â€Å"Devil†. ("Elizabethan Thater: Skakespeare in Context" ) Moreover, characters in the play are more prone to believe that Desdemona was poisoned or somehow bewitched and in this way, forced to love Othello than to believe that their relationships are natural. â€Å"Did you by forced courses subdue and poison this young maids affections?† ("Elizabethan Thater: Skakespeare in Context") Obviously, race becomes the crucial feature that sets him apart. Throughout the play, the attitudes towards Othello are much influenced by that fact that he is racially different from the majority in the society. The following creates the tension between the characters and drives the development of the conflict. As a whole, the play reflects the existing at those time anxieties and prejudices relating to interracial marriages and the belief in the white superiority that define the place of Othello among others. In this context, Othello fulfill the role of an outsider in the society which is guided by racial stereotypes and

Child and Young Person Development Essay Example for Free

Child and Young Person Development Essay †¢Schools/starting nursery is a part of everyday life the child/ young person will have to make this transition many times in their life. The transition that most children/ young people experience is moving from one school or care setting to another will happen a number of times over a child’s life for many different reasons and the challenges of the transition will change each time and will have to be handled in different way. †¢Toilet training is a big step for most children/ young people as they have to learn to read their own body signals and to understand what they should do at this point. †¢Sibling. It is common for children to have younger brothers and sister and they will have to learn to deal with the transition of having a baby in the house. †¢A parent starting a new job or doing more hours at work so the parent is not around when the child expects them to be or may not understand where the parent is going. †¢Moving house to accommodate a growing family or due to parent separation/ loss there are many other reason to move house also all of which with effect the transition progress of the child differently †¢ Separations/ divorce can be very difficult on children and young people of all ages as it can lead to many other transitions that take place moving house changing schools feeling of loss and confusion all of which can be very difficult for a young person to understand and cope with. †¢Puberty can be very difficult for some young people to cope with the mood swings, confident issues or low self -esteem, how the body changes, how it can affect their relationships with others and how others may see them. Children and young people mostly learn to cope with a number of different changes or transition in their life time and they will develop their own ways of dealing with the transitions, children and young people will still need to helped and guided

Hank Green Biography

Hank Green Biography William Henry â€Å"Hank† Green was born on the 5 May 1980, he is an entrepreneur, musician and vlogger (goodreads, n.d). In 2007, Hank Green uploaded his first video onto the YouTube channel VlogBrothers as part of a project called Brotherhood 2.0. The goal of this was to communicate with his brother John solely through video blogs for a year, with the possible exception of phone calls (Green, 2007). After brotherhood 2.0 ended, Hank and John agreed to continue producing video blogs (Burgin, 2013). As of today they have over 2.5 million followers, and 1300 video uploads (VidStatsx, 2015). Green is also involved in numerous other channels. He and his brother John created and developed the educational YouTube channel Crash Course (PBS, n.d), he is the creator (Green, n.d) and a host of SciShow, a science education YouTube channel (Stone, 2014), and a developer of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries (LBD), a web series adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (Pemberly Digital, n.d). Green creat ed Vidcon, a conference for fans of online video in 2010 (Green, n.d), and is a co-creator of the Foundation to Decrease World Suck (Kliger-Vilenchik, 2013, p. 10), a non-profit fundraising foundation for other non-profit organisations (The Foundation to Decrease World Suck, n.d). Additionally, Green interviewed the president along with two other YouTubers after the State of the Union address (Colin Megan, 2015). Hank Green’s career would not exist without the significant influence of media convergence on the platforms through which media is distributed, created and consumed.. Jenkins defines media convergence as, â€Å"more than simply a technological shift. Convergence alters the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genre and audiences† (Jenkins, 2004, p. 33). The most distinguishable form of media convergence in Green’s career is technological convergence, which can be defined as the amalgamation of technology facilitating the distribution of information (Drula, 2014, pp. 47-51) Technological Convergence has provided the social platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr and Twitter through which Green has amassed his audience. As a result, he is able to engage with and distribute content to his substantial online following. In conjunction with technological convergence, Industry and Content Convergence have likewise influenced Green’ s career. Industry Convergence refers to â€Å"the blurring of boundaries between industries, induced by technologies and markets† (Brà ¶ring, et al., 2006, p. 487). Green’s YouTube channels, Crash Course and SciShow were originally funded through a YouTube grant (Mayrer, 2012), however, they have now partnered with the Television Network PBS Digital (Gutelle, 2014). Furthermore, Crash Course is now available on DVD (DFTBA Records, n.d) as well as SciShow (DFTBA Records, n.d), a demonstration of Content Convergence. In addition to this, The LBD web series likewise exhibits components of Convergence, evident within its transmedia narrative. Transmedia is a mode in which fans are encouraged to observe characters from a narrative beyond the constructed barriers, resulting in access to more information and further immersion in the story (Stanfill, 2013). LBD portrays Lizzie Bennet and her sister Lydia Bennet as vloggers, and Jane Bennet as a fashion blogger, with the story taking pl ace over a wide range of social media platforms (Stein, 2013). As well as Media Convergence, Globalisation has additionally impacted on Green’s Career. The increasingly globalised nature of the media and technology industries have enabled Green’s significant contributions to charity and education throughout his career. Globalisation refers to the growing scale and effect of â€Å"transcontinental flows and patterns of social interaction (†¦) a shift or transformation in the scale of human organization that links distant communities and expands the reach of power relations across the worlds regions and continents† (Held and McGrew quoted in Flew, 2007). Moreover, Warlaumont brings attention to the internet’s role in globalisation due to its ability to connect individuals through digital mediums, allowing communication between groups of people from different cultural backgrounds and lifestyles (Warlaumont, 2010). Hank Green has utilised the potential impact of his global audience, through advocating his support of numerous charities, and co-founding organisations such as the Foundation to decrease World Suck. Not only is Hank Green’s career one I would wish to emulate, but his passion for the YouTube platform, as well as his audience, is inspiring. Hank Green started video blogging in 2007, originally when there was no way to monetise content. Throughout Google’s acquisition of YouTube, and YouTube providing grants to channels with the goal of creating additional content, Green’s goal remained the same, to provide content that is engaging and rewards viewers with an enriching and educational experience (http://www.usnews.com/news/stem-solutions/articles/2015/03/11/hank-green-loves-science-and-wants-others-to-love-it-too). Furthermore, the community that has developed around Nerdfighteria has provided a safe space for individuals and groups to discuss ideas and values without judgement. Vidcon, is a physical representation of the public sphere, in the sense that it is a space where individuals can gather out of a shared desire to debate, discuss and arrive at a deeper understanding of the ideologies surrounding the YouTube community, and broader communities as a whole (http://capitalistcreations.com/the-vlogbrothers-have-turned-passion-into-profits-and-popularity/). Furthermore, he has brought attention to media bias, as a result of the negative press regarding his interview with President Obama. In publicly condoning the bias of organisations such as Fox News and CNN, he has essentially acted as a watchdog for the watchdogs, through policing the organisation that is designed to hold those in power accountable. Hank Green is a forefather, and driving force in the YouTube community (http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/hank-greens-business-is-just awesome/Content?oid=1582736).He represents not only what an individual can achieve, but of the possibilities attainable from collaboration. References Brà ¶ring, S., L, M. C. Leker, J., 2006. The front end of innovation in an era of industry convergence: evidence from nutraceuticals and functional foods. R D management, 36(5), p. 487. Accessed April 2, 2015 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2006.00449.x Burgin, R., 2013. A Brief History Of The Vlogbrothers. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk05_6Mf1GU [Accessed 2 April 2015]. Colin, D. Megan, S., 2015. http://mashable.com/2015/01/22/youtube-obama-video-live/. [Online] Available at: http://mashable.com/2015/01/22/youtube-obama-video-live/ [Accessed 2 April 2015]. DFTBA Records, n.d. CrashCourse. [Online] Available at: http://store.dftba.com/collections/crashcourse [Accessed 2 April 2015]. DFTBA Records, n.d. SCISHOW: THE APOCALYPSE COLLECTION DVD. [Online] Available at: http://store.dftba.com/products/scishow-the-apocalypse-collection-dvd [Accessed 2 April 2015]. Drula, G., 2014. Media Convergence and Mobile Technology. Journal of Media Research, 7(3), pp. 47-51. Accessed April 2, 2015. url: http://search.proquest.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/docview/1649753314?pq-origsite=summon Flew, T., 2007 Understanding Global Media, N.A, N.A pp. 67. Accessed April 4, 2015. N.A goodreads, n.d. Hank Green. [Online] Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7023543.Hank_Green [Accessed 2 April 2015]. Green, H., 2007. Brotherhood 2.0: January 1st. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtyXbTHKhI0 [Accessed 02 April 2015]. Green, H., n.d. Hank Green. [Online] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hankgreen [Accessed 2 April 2015]. Gutelle, S., 2014. Hank Green, John Green Team With PBS For More Crash Course Episodes. [Online] Available at: http://www.tubefilter.com/2014/11/06/hank-john-green-pbs-digital-studios-crash-course/ [Accessed 2 April 2015]. Jenkins, H., 2004. The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(I), p. 33. Accessed April 2, 2015. doi: 10.1177/1367877904040603 Kliger-Vilenchik, N., 2013. Decreasing World Suck: Fan communities, Mechanisms of Translation, and Particpatory Politics, N/A: N/A. Accessed April 2, 2015 url: http://ypp.dmlcentral.net/sites/default/files/publications/Decreasing_World_Suck_6.25.13_0.pdf Mayrer, J., 2012. Hank Greens business is just awesome. [Online] Available at: http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/hank-greens-business-is-just-awesome/Content?oid=1582736 [Accessed 2 April 2015]. PBS, n.d. PBS DIGITAL STUDIOS AND HANK AND JOHN GREEN ANNOUNCE NEW PARTNERSHIP TO EXPAND POPULAR â€Å"CRASH COURSE† YOUTUBE SERIES. [Online] Available at: http://www.pbs.org/about/news/archive/2014/crash-course-library/ [Accessed 2 April 2015]. Pemberly Digital, n.d. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. [Online] Available at: http://www.pemberleydigital.com/the-lizzie-bennet-diaries/ [Accessed 2 April 2015]. Stanfill, M., 2013. Fandom, Transmedia and Consumption 2.0. Selected Papers of Internet Research 14.0,. Accessed: 2, April 2015. url: http://spir.aoir.org/index.php/spir/article/viewFile/911/pdf Stein, L., 2013. Stay Square!: Fan Address In the Web Series. Selected Papers of Internet Research 14.0. Accessed: 2, April, 2015 url: http://spir.aoir.org/index.php/spir/article/viewFile/911/pdf Stone, M., 2014. How A YouTube Channel That Answers Weird Science Questions Amassed Millions Of Fans. [Online] Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-scishow-and-hank-green-landed-a-national-ad-campaign-from-youtube-2014-10 [Accessed 02, April 2015]. The Foundation to Decrease World Suck, n.d. The Foundation to Decrease World Suck. [Online] Available at: http://fightworldsuck.org/ [Accessed 2 April 2015]. VidStatsx, 2015. http://vidstatsx.com/vlogbrothers/youtube-channel. [Online] Available at: http://vidstatsx.com/vlogbrothers/youtube-channel [Accessed 2 April 2015]. Warlaumont, H. G., 2010. Social networks and globalization: Facebook, YouTube and the impact of online communities on Frances protectionist policies. N.A, 8(2), p. 207. Accessed: 2/04/2015 doi: 10.1057/fp.2010.8

Writing Response To A Short Guide to Writing About Film :: essays papers

Writing Response To A Short Guide to Writing About Film The words â€Å"writing about film†, to my mind, conjure up the Siskel & Ebert-like desiccation of film that one usually finds in a review column. Needless to say, such â€Å"writing† can hardly be found appealing to one who looks for more than the appreciation or dislike of a performance or the absurdity of story. In â€Å"A Short Guide to Writing About Film,† I discovered that writing on film should and can be a far cry from such drivel. It is a staunch review of technique in relation to writing specifically on film. Obvious technique, to be sure, but if approached the proper manner, these reminders can be quite useful in articulating the often hard-to-capture meaning or imagery in film. The author states that the goal of his book is three-fold. The primary two are; that it would be a time-saver for instructors who have difficulty dealing with the common writing problems of their students, and that it would help to alleviate students anxiety about writing by clarifying points that many instructors presume their pupils all know. He does this by setting down guidelines for approaching writing, doing pertinent research, and conveying it, along with analysis, in the medium of stylistic film essays. He provides an abundance of examples of structures, styles, and terms used in this area of writ. The guidelines I found to be extremely useful, for they pertain not just to writing about film, but to any sort of analytical writing. They helped me realize the qualities that my own writing lacks, and I must come to master if I am to articulately present my own subjective experience on paper. The third part of the book’s purpose is that by attaining the first two, â€Å"it would encourage more enjoyable and articulate communication between the two [Professor and pupil]† (pg. X). To do so, Corrigan endeavors to excite readers with the possibilities that lay in writing: sharing experiences, analyzing themes and imagery, and simply writing about the most popular and entertaining medium around.

The American Banking System from 1800-1810 Essay -- Banks Finances Mon

The American Banking System from 1800-1810 Looking back to the outset of the 19th century, it is impossible to say that any real banking system had really been developed in the US. This is to say that, though there were roughly 120 private commercial banks that had been chartered by new state governments, the so-called system was scarcely organized. It was ad hoc in nature and directly linked to the merchant banking practices of the pre-independence period. The years preceding the turn of the century were important because they brought a central banking authority onto the scene. In 1789 the new federal government established a position for the Secretary of the Treasury. As we know, the first to hold this prestigious title was Alexander Hamilton. He accomplished a great deal in the 11 years leading up to the year 1800. Most notably his actions were largely responsible for the creation of the First Bank of the United States, which was given a charter in 1791. This thrust towards central banking was only to last 20 years, howeve r. Up for review in 1811, the bank’s charter was not renewed. This paper will argue that the failure to renew the First Bank of the United State’s charter was a direct result of the strong ideological differences between state centered and federalist politics. Many were very skeptical about a strong centralized banking system, while others believed that the only way to create unity in the country was through a highly focused central banking system. Despite the relative efficiency of the First Bank of the United States, and despite the fact that it is widely considered to be a success by economic historians, the general suspicion of banking led to its demise. In other words, this paper will argue that the 1800-1810 period was one of exhaustive tension between centralists and de-centralists. This had important and lasting effects on the banking system, the most obvious being that, in the following century, state banks proliferated to the point where they were chartered with abandon. As John K. Galbraith noted, â€Å"every location large e nough to have a church, a tavern, or a blacksmith shop was deemed a suitable place for setting up a bank. These banks issued notes, and other, more surprising enterprises, imitating the banks, did likewise. Even barbers and bartenders competed with banks in this respect† (Flaherty, 1997: http://odur.let... ...institution, and based on the bitter conflicts between Madison and Hamilton over state vs. federal power, the bank itself became politicized. As state-led forces increased their popularity, it is wholly unsurprising that the First Bank of the US was one of the first things to go. References DeCarolis, Lisa Marie. The Precipice of Power (accessed 12-12-99) Del Mar, Alexander. â€Å"History Of Monetary Systems: Chapter XVII: Bank Suspension Since The Era Of Private Coinage† History of the World, 01-01-1992 Foner, Eric., Garraty, John A (eds) â€Å"Banking† The Reader’s Companion to American History, Houghton Mifflin: New York, 1991., pg. 191 Flaherty, Edward. 1997. A Brief History of Banking in the United States (accessed 12-12-99) â€Å"James Madison Debates the Constitutionality of a National Bank† (accessed 12-12-99)

Linguistics and Interjections Essay

In Western philosophy and linguistic theory, interjections—that is, words like oof, ouch, and bleah—have traditionally been understood to indicate emotional states. This article offers an account of interjections in Q’eqchi’ Maya that illuminates their social and discursive functions. In particular, it discusses the grammatical form of interjections, both in Q’eqchi’ and across languages, and characterizes the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections in Q’eqchi’ in terms of a semiotic framework that may be generalized for other languages. With these grammatical forms, indexical objects, and pragmatic functions in hand, it details the various social and discursive ends that interjections serve in one Q’eqchi’ community, thereby shedding light on local values, norms, ontological classes, and social relations. In short, this article argues against interpretations of interjections that focus on internal emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. p a u l k o c k e l m a n is McKennan Post-Doctoral Fellow in Linguistic Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College (Hanover, N. H. 03755, U. S. A. [paul. kockelman@dartmouth. edu]). Born in 1970, he was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B. A. , 1992) and the University of Chicago (M. S. , 1994; Ph. D. , 2002). His publications include â€Å"The Collection of Copal among the Q’eqchi’-Maya† (Research in Economic Anthropology 20:163–94), â€Å"Factive and Counterfactive Clitics in Q’eqchi’-Maya: Stance, Status, and Subjectivity,† in Papers from the Thirty-eighth Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (Chicago: Linguistics Society, in press), and â€Å"The Interclausal Relations Hierarchy in Q’eqchi’ Maya† (International Journal of American Linguistics 69:25–48). The present paper was submitted 1 vi 01 and accepted 27 xii 02. 1. A longer version of this article was presented at the workshop â€Å"Semiotics: Culture in Context† at the University of Chicago in January 2001. Chris Ball, Anya Bernstein, John Lucy, and Michael Silverstein all provided very helpful commentary. This article also greatly bene? ted from suggestions made by Benjamin S. Orlove and several anonymous referees. Western philosophy and linguistic theory have traditionally considered interjections at the periphery of language and primordially related to emotion. For example, the Latin grammarian Priscian de? ned interjections as â€Å"a part of speech signifying an emotion by means of an unformed word† (Padley 1976:266). Muller (1862) ? thought that interjections were at the limit of what might be called language. Sapir (1921:6–7) said that they were â€Å"the nearest of all language sounds to instinctive utterance. † Bloom? eld (1984[1933]:177) said that they â€Å"occur under a violent stimulus,† and Jakobson (1960: 354) considered them exemplars of the â€Å"purely emotive stratum of language. † While interjections are no longer considered peripheral to linguistics and are now carefully de? ned with respect to their grammatical form, their meanings remain vague and elusive. In particular, although interjections are no longer characterized purely in terms of emotion, they are still characterized in terms of â€Å"mental states. † For example, Wierzbicka (1992:164) characterizes interjections as â€Å"[referring] to the speaker’s current mental state or mental act. † Ameka (1992a:107) says that â€Å"from a pragmatic point of view, interjections may be de?ned as a subset of items that encode speaker attitudes and communicative intentions and are contextbound,† and Montes (1999:1289) notes that many interjections â€Å"[focus] on the internal reaction of affectedness of the speaker with respect to the referent. † Philosophers have offered similar interpretations. For example, Herder thought that interjections were the human equivalent of animal sounds, being both a â€Å"language of feeling† and a â€Å"law of nature† (1966:88), and Rousseau, pursuing the origins of language, theorized that protolanguage was â€Å"entirely interjectional† (1990:71). Indeed, such philosophers have posited a historical transition from interjections to language in which the latter allows us not only to index pain and express passion but also to denote values and exercise reason (D’Atri 1995). 2 Thus interjections have been understood as a semiotic artifact of our natural origins and the most transparent index of our emotions. Such an understanding of interjections is deeply rooted in Western thought. Aristotle (1984), for example, posited a contrastive relationship between voice, proper only to humans as instantiated in language, and sound, shared by humans and animals as instantiated in cries. This contrastive relation was then compared with other analogous contrastive relations, in particular, value and pleasure/pain, polis and household, and bios (the good life, or political life proper to humans) and zoe (pure life, shared by all living things). Such a contrast is so pervasive that modern philosophers such as Agamben (1995) have devoted much of their scholarly work to the thinking out of this tradition and others built on it such as id versus ego in the Freudian paradigm. In short, the folk distinction made between interjections and language 2. D’Atri (1995:124) argues that, for Rousseau, â€Å"interjections . . . are sounds and not voices: they are passive registerings and as such do not presuppose the intervention of will, which is what characterizes human acts of speech. † 467 468 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 4, August–October 2003 proper maps onto a larger set of distinctions in Western thought: emotion and cognition, animality and humanity, nature and culture, female and male, passion and reason, bare life and the good life, pain and value, private and public, and so on (see, e.g. , Lutz 1988, Strathern 1988). In this article I avoid such abstracting and dichotomizing traps by going straight to the heart of interjections: their everyday usage in actual discourse when seen in the context of local culture and grounded in a semiotic framework. I begin by characterizing the linguistic and ethnographic context in which I carried out my research and go on to relate interjections to other linguistic forms, showing how they are both similar to and distinct from other classes of words in natural languages. Next I provide and exemplify a semiotic framework, generalizable across languages, in terms of which the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections can best be characterized. Then I detail the local usage of the 12 most commonly used interjections in Q’eqchi’ and show the way in which they are tied into all things cultural: values, norms, ontological classes, social relations, and so on. I conclude by discussing the relative frequency with which the various forms and functions of interjections are used. In short, I argue against interpretations of interjections that focus on emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. Linguistic and Ethnographic Context While I am attempting to provide as wide a theoretical account of interjections as I can, thereby providing a metalanguage for speaking about similar sign phenomena in other languages, I am also trying to capture the grammatical niceties of Q’eqchi’ Maya and the discursive and social particularities of one Q’eqchi’-speaking village in particular. Before I begin my analysis, then, I want to sketch the linguistic and ethnographic context in which I worked. Q’eqchi’ is a language in the Kichean branch of the Mayan family, spoken by some 360,000 speakers in Guatemala (in the departments of Alta Verapaz, Izabel, and Peten) and Belize (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980). 3 Lin? guistically, Q’eqchi’ is relatively well described: scholars such as Berinstein (1985), Sedat (1955), Stewart (1980), Stoll (1896), and Chen Cao et al. (1997) have discussed its syntax, morphology, phonology, and lexicon, and I have detailed various morphosyntactic forms (encoding grammatical categories such as mood, status, evidentiality, taxis, and inalienable possession) as they intersect with sociocultural values and contextual features and as they illuminate local modes of personhood (Kockelman 3. Typologically, Q’eqchi’ is a morphologically ergative, head-marking language. In Q’eqchi’, vowel length (signaled by doubling letters) is phonemic; /k/ and /q/ are velar and uvular plosives, respectively, and /x/ and /j/ are palato-alveolar and velar fricatives, respectively. All other phonemes have their standard IPA values. 2002, 2003a, b). This article is therefore part of a larger project in which I examine how intentional and evaluative stances are encoded in natural languages and the relations that such stances bear to local modes of subjectivity. Alta Verapaz, the original center of the Q’eqchi’-speaking people who still make up the majority of its population, has had a unusual history even by Guatemalan standards. In 1537, after the Spanish crown had failed to conquer the indigenous peoples living there, the Dominican Friar Bartolome de Las Casas was permitted to ?pacify the area through religious methods. Having succeeded, he changed the name of the area from Tezulutlan (Land of War) to Verapaz (True Peace), and the Dominicans were granted full control over the area—the state banning secular immigration, removing all military colonies, and nullifying previous land grants. In this way, for almost 300 years the area remained an isolated enclave, relatively protected by the paternalism of the church in comparison with other parts of Guatemala (King 1974, Sapper 1985). This ended abruptly in the late 1800s, however, with the advent of coffee growing, liberal reforms, and the in? ux of Europeans (Cambranes 1985, Wagner 1996). Divested of their land and forced to work on coffee plantations, the Q’eqchi’ began migrating north into the unpopulated lowland forests of the Peten ? and Belize (Adams 1965, Carter 1969, Howard 1975, Kockelman 1999, Pedroni 1991, Saa Vidal 1979, Schwartz 1990, Wilk 1991). In the past 40 years this migration has been fueled by a civil war that has ravaged the Guatemalan countryside, with the Q’eqchi’ ? eeing not just scarce resources and labor quotas but also their own nation’s soldiers—often forcibly conscripted speakers of other Mayan languages (Carmack 1988, IWGIA 1978, Wilson 1995). As a consequence, the past century has seen the Q’eqchi’ population spread from Alta Verapaz to the Peten and ? nally to Belize, Mexico, and even the ? United States. Indeed, although only the fourth largest of some 24 Mayan languages, Q’eqchi’ is thought to have the largest percentage of monolinguals, and the ethnic group is Guatemala’s fastest-growing and most geographically extensive (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980). The two key ethnographies of Q’eqchi’-speakers have been written by Wilk (1991) and Wilson (1995), the former treating household ecology in Belize and the latter upheavals in village life and identity at the height of the civil war in highland Guatemala during the 1980s. In addition to these monographs, there are also a number of dissertations and articles on the history (King 1974, Sapper 1985, Wagner 1996), ecology (Carter 1969, Secaira 1992, Wilson 1972), and migration (Adams 1965, Howard 1975, Pedroni 1991) of Q’eqchi’-speaking  people. The data for this article are based on almost two years of ethnographic and linguistic ? eldwork among speakers of Q’eqchi’, most of it in Ch’inahab, a village of some 80 families (around 650 people) in the municipality of San Juan Chamelco, in the department of Alta Verapaz. At an altitude of approximately 2,400 m, Ch’inahab is one of the highest villages in this area, with an annual precipitation of more than 2,000 mm. It is also one of k o c k e l m a n The Meanings of Interjections in Q’eqchi’ Maya F 469  the most remote, access to the closest road requiring a three-hour hike down a steep and muddy single-track trail. Its relatively high altitude and remote location provide the perfect setting for cloud forest, and such a cloud forest provides the perfect setting for the resplendent quetzal, being home to what is thought to be the highest density of such birds in the world. Because of the existence of the quetzal and the cloud forest in which it makes its home, Ch’inahab has been the site of a successful eco-tourism project the conditions and consequences of which are detailed in my dissertation (Kockelman 2002). While the majority of villagers in Ch’inahab are monolingual speakers of Q’eqchi’, some men who have served time in the army or worked as itinerant traders speak some Spanish. All the villagers are Catholic. Ch’inahab is divided by a mountain peak with dwellings on both of its sides and in the surrounding valleys. It takes about 45 minutes to hike across the village. At one end there is a biological station kept by the eco-tourism project and used sporadically by European ecologists, and at the other there is a Catholic church and a cemetery. In the center there is a small store, a school for primary and secondary grades, and a soccer ? eld. The surrounding landscape is cloud forest giving way to scattered house sites, agricultural parcels, pasture, and ? elds now fallow. All villagers engage in corn-based, or milpa, agriculture, but very few have enough land to ful? ll all of their subsistence needs. 4 For this reason, many women in the village are dedicated to chicken husbandry, most men in the village engage in seasonal labor on plantations (up to ?ve months a year in some cases), and many families engage in itinerant trade (women weaving baskets and textiles for the men to sell) and eco-tourism (the women hosting tourists and the men guiding them). Dwelling sites often contain a scattering of houses in which reside an older couple and their married sons, all of whom share a water source and a pasture. The individual families themselves often have two houses, a relatively traditional thatched-roof house in which the family cooks and sleeps and a relatively new house with a tin roof in which they host festivals and in which older children and ecotourists may sleep. Because of eco-tourism and the in? ux of money and strangers that it brings, there has been an increase in the construction of such tin-roofed houses, and, as will be seen, many of my examples of interjections come from such construction contexts. My data on the use of interjections among villagers in Ch’inahab comes from 14 months of ? eldwork carried out between 1998 and 2001. The data collection con4. Before 1968, what is now Ch’inahab was owned by the owner of a plantation. Q’eqchi’-speakers who lived in the village of Popobaj (located to the south of and lower than Ch’inahab) were permitted to make their milpa in this area in exchange for two weeks of labor per month on the ? nca (Secaira 1992:20). Only in 1968, when a group of villagers got together to form a land acquisition committee, were some 15 caballer? as (678 ha) of land purchased from the owner ? for 4,200 quetzals (US$4,200). This land, while legally owned by the entire community, was divided among the original 33 villagers as a function of their original contributions.  sisted in part of characterizing tokens of usage when I heard them and in part of tracking tokens of usage through recordings of naturally occurring conversations. 5 In particular, given the fact that many interjections occur in relatively nonconversational, task-engaged situations (house building, planting, playing, cooking, etc. ), trying to record them in such contexts was futile. Luckily, as will be seen, they often occur in modes of disruption (when some goal-directed action goes awry), which makes them relatively easy to notice in real-time context and their contextual regularities relatively easy to stipulate. In addition, I tape-recorded naturally occurring conversations in the households of three families once a week over several months, usually at dinnertime. 6 After I describe the forms and meanings of the interjections I will discuss the relative frequency of the various tokens collected and thereby illuminate which forms and meanings are most often used by whom. The Grammatical Form of Interjections There are four criteria by which interjections may be differentiated from other linguistic forms within a particular language and generalized as a form class across languages (Ameka 1992, Bloom?eld 1984[1933], Jespersen 1965, Wilkins 1992). First, all interjections are conventional lexical forms, or words, that can constitute utterances on their own (Wilkins 1992). They are conventional in that their sign carriers have relatively standardized and arbitrary phonological forms, and they can constitute utterances on their own because their only syntagmatic relation with other linguistic forms is parataxis—in which two forms are â€Å"united by the use of only one sentence pitch† (Bloom? eld 1984[1933]:171). They can therefore stand alone as perfectly sensible stretches of talk before and after which there is silence. Second, with few exceptions, no interjection is simultaneously a member of another word class (Ameka 1992a, Wilkins 1992). Almost all of them are what Ameka (1992a:105), following Bloom? eld (1984[1933]), calls primary interjections: â€Å"little words or non-words which . . . can constitute an utterance by themselves and do not normally enter into constructions with other word classes. † In Q’eqchi’, the main exceptions are interjections built, through lexical extension, from the primary interjection ay. In the case of ay dios, the additional 5. I also include several examples of interjection usage that occurred in the context of ethnographic interviews about topics other than interjections, for these often indicated that an ethnographic question was poorly posed or inappropriate in the local context. I also carried out extensive interviews about the meanings of interjections with native speakers (see Kockelman 2002 for an extended discussion of the relationship between form, usage, and speakers’ re? ections). 6.  Indeed, the best two accounts of interjection-like things— â€Å"response cries† in Goffman (1978) and â€Å"emblematic gestures† in Sherzer (1993)—explicitly take into account social interaction and ethnographic description. Good accounts of the discursive use of interjections are offered by De Bruyn (1998), Ehlich (1986), Gardner (1998), and Meng and Schrabback (1999). 470 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 4, August–October 2003 element, dios, is a loan noun from Spanish, meaning â€Å"god. † In the case of ay dios atinyuwa’, besides the Spanish loanword there is a Q’eqchi’ expression, at-in-yuwa’ (you [are] my father). Interjections of this latter kind, which are or involve forms that belong to other word classes, will be called secondary interjections (again following Ameka and Bloom? eld). Similarly, the English secondary interjections damn and heavens may be used as both interjections and verbs or nouns. Third, with few exceptions, an interjection consists of a single morpheme and undergoes neither in? ectional nor derivational processes (Wilkins 1992). Interjections cannot be in? ectionally marked for grammatical categories such as tense or number, and they cannot be further derived into another form class such as noun or verb. Such forms are often classi? ed as a subclass of â€Å"particles† or discourse markers (see Ameka 1992a, Fraser 1999, Jespersen 1965, Schiffrin 1987, Wilkins 1992, and Zwicky 1985). In Q’eqchi’ there are three exceptions to this characterization. First, uyaluy is what I will call a reduplicative interjection, being composed, through syllabic reduplication, from the interjection uy. Second, ay dios and ay dios atinyuwa’ are what I will call extended interjections, being composed, through lexical extension, from the interjection ay. And lastly, the interjection ay may undergo further derivation into a delocutionary verb (becoming ayaynak, â€Å"to cry or yell continually,† often said of dogs howling), which may then undergo normal verbal in? ection for grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, person, and number. Lastly, although it is not a criterial feature, many of these forms are phonologically or morphologically anomalous, having features which mark them as odd or unique relative to the standard lexical forms of a language. For example, unlike most Q’eqchi’ words, in which stress falls on the last syllable (Stewart 1980), the interjection uyaluy has syllable-initial stress. Similarly, while reduplication is a common morphological process in Q’eqchi’ (Stewart 1980), the reduplicative interjection uyaluy is derived through a nonstandard morphological form. While many Q’eqchi’ words involve a glottalized alveolar stop, the interjection t’ is also implosive. 7 Whereas the Spanish loanword dios is usually phonetically assimilated in Q’eqchi’ as tiox when used as a noun, in the interjection ay dios there is no devoicing of the initial consonant of this noun (i.e. , /d/ does not become /t/) or palatization of its ? nal consonant (i. e. , /s/ does not become /x/). And the interjection sht differs from ordinary Q’eqchi’ words in using /sh/, rather than a vowel, as a syllabic (see Bloom? eld 1984[1933]:121). In short, it is clear from the number of quali? cations that interjections, like most linguistic forms, are dif? cult to characterize with necessary and suf? cient conditions (see Taylor 1995, Zwicky 1985). Nevertheless, they may simultaneously be differentiated from other form classes within a particular language and generalized as a form class across languages. 7. Often called a â€Å"dental click† (Wilkins 1992) or a â€Å"suction stop† (Jespersen 1965:90). Readers who speak some Spanish may have noticed that many Q’eqchi’ interjections look similar to Spanish interjections—ay (dios), uy, ah, eh, sht—and even to English interjections (sh[t] and t’). While I have no historical data that would attest to such a claim, given the history of sustained linguistic contact between speakers of Spanish and Q’eqchi’ via the colonial encounter and between speakers of Spanish and English this should come as no surprise. The one good account of interjections in Spanish (Montes 1999) discusses only a small range of the discursive functions of interjections and focuses on the internal state of the speaker. As I will show, however, the meanings of some of these interjections in Q’eqchi’ seem to bear a resemblance to their meanings in Spanish, as far as can be discerned from the comparative data. In this way, these â€Å"loan interjections† show that almost any linguistic form may be borrowed (see Brody 1995) with some maintenance of its meaning. The Meanings of Q’eqchi’ Interjections  Although interjections are relatively easy to characterize from the standpoint of grammatical form, there is no framework in terms of which one may order and compare their meanings—that is, the classes of objects and signs that they index (and thereby stand in a relationship of contiguity with) and the types of pragmatic functions they serve (and thereby may be used as a means to achieve). In what follows, I frame their use in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. I will begin with an extended example through which the framework will become clear. The Q’eqchi’ interjection chix indexes loathsome objects in the situational context. For example, when picking up his bowl of food from the ground, a man notices that he has set it in chicken feces. â€Å"Chix,† he says, scraping the bowl on the dirt to wipe off the feces. His wife, herself responsible for the chicken, then takes his bowl for herself and gives him a new one. Similarly, when opening the door to her house early one morning, a woman notices that the dog has vomited right outside the doorway. â€Å"Chix,† she says, and her ? ve-year-old son comes over to look. She tells him to scrape it away with a machete. Like most interjections that have indexical objects in the situational context, this interjection serves to call another’s attention to the object. 8 Relatedly, and as a function of responsibility assessment (husband 1 wife 1 child), it directs another’s attention to what must be cleaned up, avoided, etc. The interjection chix may also be transposed to index a sign denoting or characterizing a loathsome object (see Buhler 1990). In such cases of sign-based transposition, ? the interjection is in a relationship of contiguity with a 8. Montes (1999:1293) notes that most of the Spanish interjections she examined â€Å"seem to be associated with seeing. We ? nd that a large number of the interjections [ah, oh, uh, ay, oy, uy] used in the conversations examined co-occur with directives to ‘see’ or ‘look at’ or as a response to these directives. † k o c k e l m a n The Meanings of Interjections in Q’eqchi’ Maya F 471 sign that denotes or characterizes the object or event in question (rather than being in contiguity with the actual object or event, as in the usage of chix just discussed). In other words, it is as if the speaker were inhabiting the frame of the narrated event (Buhler 1990). In this way, ? the interjection chix indexes not just loathsomeness but also signs that refer to or predicate qualities of loathsome objects. Insofar as the denotatum of such a sign has the same qualities and values as the object itself, the modality of contiguity (being able to taste, touch, see, or smell the object in question) is suspended while the ontological class of the object (loathsomeness) is maintained. For example, in telling a story to a group of  men about a friend who was bitten by a poisonous spider while working on a plantation in the lowland area of Guatemala, the speaker describes the pus blisters that rose up on his friend’s arm. â€Å"Chix,† says one of the men listening. The other men laugh, and before continuing his story the speaker adds that the pus blisters took two weeks to heal. Like most interjections that undergo signbased transposition, such usage often serves as a backchannel cue, indicating that the speaker is listening but cannot or does not want to contribute to the topic at hand (Brown and Yule 1983:90–94; Duncan 1973; compare the usage of mmm or jeez in English). Lastly, the interjection chix may be transposed to index an addressee’s relation of contiguity with a loathsome object. In such cases of addressee-based transposition, the situational indexical object is transposed to a person other than the speaker. The speaker’s sign is audible (a relation of contiguity) to the addressee, who is in a relationship of contiguity with the object. In other words, it is as if the speaker were inhabiting the ad? dressee’s current corporal?  eld (see Buhler 1990, Hanks 1990), and, again, the modality of contiguity is suspended while the ontological class is maintained. For example, a mother watching her three-year-old son approach a dog that is defecating wormy stool calls out to him â€Å"Chix. † The child stops his advance and watches from a distance. In this most addressee-focused way, the sign is used by a parent to index that a child is within reach (typically tactile) of a disgusting object and serves as an imperative not to touch the object. Interjections are primarily indexical (see Peirce 1955) in that they stand for their objects by a relationship of contiguity rather than by a relationship of convention (as in the case of symbols) or similarity (as in the case of icons). 9 Although the indexical modality of interjections is emphasized in this article, the symbolic modality is always present in at least two interrelated ways. First, and trivially, the interjection itself has a standard9. If interjections were iconic, then they would be expected to resemble their objects. The problem with this, as exempli?  ed by Kryk-Kastovsky’s (1997) argument that interjections are the most iconic of all linguistic elements expressing surprise, is that one needs to know what â€Å"surprise† looks like when usually our only indication of surprise is the interjection or behavior itself. However, interjections as indexical of situational and discursive objects do in certain cases have iconic modalities of meaning (see, e. g. , the discussion of ay, ay dios, and ay dios atinyuwa’ below). ized but relatively arbitrary form that is conventionally used by members of a given linguistic community. Second, interjections conventionally stand in a relation of contiguity with particular classes of objects. These conventional classes of indexical objects are present in two ways. First, across interjections, one may characterize what semiotic class of objects is being indexed. Second, in the case of any particular interjection, one may characterize what ontological class of objects is being indexed. Besides indexing objects or signs in the immediate context, interjections have pragmatic functions: they serve as a means to achieve certain ends. For example, chix variously serves as an attentative (when nontransposed), a back-channel cue (when undergoing sign-based transposition), and an imperative (when undergoing addressee-based transposition). Both the objects indexed and the pragmatic functions served (see Silverstein 1987) are integral aspects of the meanings of interjections. Finally, interjections may index more than one object at once. In particular, they may index objects, signs, internal states, and social relations. In what follows, I will refer to these distinct types of indexical objects as situational, discursive, expressive, and social, respectively. Situational indexical objects are the objects or events in the immediate context of the speech event. Discursive indexical objects are the signs that occur in the speech event. 10 Together, situational and discursive indexical objects are the most stable co-occurrence regularities that interjections possess and therefore the only ones that are easy to tabulate. Expressive indexical objects are the intentional stances of the speaker—the putative mental states, whether construed as â€Å"cognitive† or â€Å"emotive. †11 Lastly, social indexical objects are the various social roles inhabited by the speaker or addressee (gender, ethnicity, age, etc. ) or the social relations that exist between the two (status, deference, politeness, etc. ). For example, chix may index not only a loathsome object in the situational context but a social relation (parentchild, husband-wife, raconteur–appreciative listener) and, in many cases, an internal state (â€Å"disgust†). And the interjection ay not only indexes a painful object in the situational context or an unexpected answer in the dis10. This is not quite the standard distinction between â€Å"text† and â€Å"context† (Montes 1999 and Wilkins 1992). For example, while it is tempting to put sign-based transposition into the discursive context for the purposes of schematizing the data, sign-based transpositions make sense only in terms of the qualities of the objects referred to by the sign indexed by the interjection. In contrast, an unsolicited response such as a dubitive is directed at the truth of another’s assertion rather than at any particular quality of the state of affairs predicated by that assertion. For this reason, dubitives belong to the discursive context and sign-based transpositions to the situational context. 11. Whereas interjections creatively index expressive indexical objects in that the interjection is often the only sign of the internal state in question, they presupposedly index situational and discursive indexical objects in that both interjection and indexical object are simultaneously present in context (see Silverstein 1976 for this distinction). This difference in semiotic status (presupposing/creative) maps onto a putative difference in ontological status (world/mind). 472 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 4, August–October 2003 cursive context but also an internal state (pain) in the expressive context and a role in the social context (in particular, female gender). Many interjections index signs in the discursive context in that they co-occur with (or serve as) a response to an addressee’s previous utterance or a nonresponse. In the case of a response, the use of an interjection occurs after and makes sense only relative to the addressee’s previous utterance. For example, the interjection ih indexes an addressee’s previous statement and serves as a registerative, indicating that the speaker has heard and understood the statement. In the case of a nonresponse, the interjection may either elicit an addressee’s utterance (and thereby occur before it) or occur in the midst of the speaker.