Subtle racism in English language: A socio-semiotic analysis of black-prefixed English lexicons

The English language has become a global language and as such, it is expected to be devoid of racial discrimination and prejudice. The English language has both verbal and non-verbal systems of communication which often requires semantic and semiotic analyses for the purpose of generating meaning. Most English words with the prefix 'black' have meanings that are either connotative or derogative. Using Jakobson’s transmutation theory, the study establishes the relationship between colour, culture, and racial prejudice in English language black-prefixed lexicons. This is a subtle form of racism when such words are taught in schools. The design adopted for this research was a qualitative, and no variables were manipulated because it was a library research. The study examined the socio-semiotic elements of black-prefixed words in the English language to establish that there is subtle racism in English expressions used and taught in schools. It was concluded that instruction in the language should be revitalized to eradicate racism of any form, especially in the second language classroom.

A NEW TYPE OF MASKED FORM PRIMING

Monolingual English speakers and Chinese–English bilinguals were compared on their lexical decision performance in a masked priming experiment where the prime and target ended in the same embedded word. All primes were nonwords where the letters in addition to the embedded word did not form a morpheme (e.g., the sab of sabagree or the ple of plerough). The targets were of two types. In one condition they were prefixed words (as in sabagree–DISAGREE) and in the other they were nonprefixed words (as in plerough–THOROUGH). With an unrelated prime as the baseline, the native speakers showed priming for the prefixed words but not the nonprefixed words, whereas the nonnative speakers showed priming for both types of word. It was concluded from these results that nonnative speakers focus more on the individual letters of a complex word than do native speakers when reading, and the specific processing mechanisms that might underlie this are discussed.

Lucretius and the Language of Nature

Lucretius’ Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura (‘On the Nature of Things’), written in the middle of the first century BC, made a fundamental and lasting contribution to the language of Latin philosophy. This book is a study of Lucretius’ linguistic innovation and creativity. Lucretius is depicted as a linguistic trailblazer, extending and augmenting the technical language of Latin in order to describe the Epicurean universe of atoms and void in all its complexity and sublimity. A core thesis of the book is that a detailed understanding of Epicurean linguistic theory will bring with it a greater appreciation of Lucretius’ own language. Accordingly, the book features an in-depth reconstruction of certain core features of Epicurean linguistic theory. Elements of Lucretius’ style that are discussed include his attitudes to and use of figurative language (especially metaphor); his explorations, both explicit and implicit, of Latin etymology; his uses of Greek; and his creative deployment of compounds and prefixed words. His practice is related throughout not only to the underlying Epicurean theory but also to contemporary Roman attitudes to style and language.

Calques and Compounds

This chapter is about morphological calquing as a strategy for Lucretian vocabulary formation. The first section of the chapter seeks to enrich and complicate Sedley’s notion of the ‘Empedoclean fingerprint’ by (a) tracing the influence of early Latin diction on the compound-heavy style of DRN and (b) identifying some non-Empedoclean Greek influences on Lucretian compounding. The second section focuses on prefixed words, gathering a number of examples of morphological calques in the technical language of Lucretius that show the direct influence of Epicurus’ own philosophical lexicon. Lucretius’ use of calquing should be considered alongside Sedley’s notion of ‘diversification’ as a fundamental strategy by which Lucretius created for himself an Epicurean lexicon in Latin.

THE PROCESSING OF ENGLISH PREFIXED WORDS BY CHINESE-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

The present study examined whether Chinese-English bilinguals showed morphological sensitivity toward prefixed words. In the experiment, English monolinguals showed masked priming effects in a Transparent condition (disagree-AGREE) and an Opaque condition (mischief-CHIEF), but not in a Form condition (stranger-ANGER). In contrast, bilinguals showed equivalent priming effects across the three conditions. Indeed, the difference between the magnitude of priming in the Form condition relative to that in the other two conditions was statistically smaller for the bilinguals than for the monolinguals. These findings suggest Chinese-English bilinguals are less sensitive to the morphological status of prefixes, compared with monolinguals.

Standard Serbian stress and prefixation of adjectives and verbs

Debate on stress in prefixed words should take into account not only the stress of the basic form of the prefixed lexeme but also the stress in other forms. In this paper, stress in adjectives and verbs is divided into two groups: lexical (comprising the two lexemes: the base word and the prefixed one) and morphological (stress in other forms). Starting with lexical stress, examples are classified into two large groups: the first group includes examples of lexical stress on the stem of the prefixed word, while the second one includes lexical stress on the prefix. Depending on the type of changes in stress, adjectives are further classified into three subgroups: the first subgroup includes examples where no changes in stress occur in either the base or prefixed lexeme, the second includes the ones where change in stress occurs only in the base word, whereas the third subgroup comprises examples where changes in stress occur in both the base and prefixed lexeme. In verbs, only one type of change in stress is found: a change related to both the base and prefixed lexeme. The author analyzes the correlation between lexical and morphological stress in a prefixed word, pointing out that the shift of stress to the prefix is reversible: proclitic (moving from the stem with a falling stress) and prefixal in a narrower sense (moving from the stem with a rising stress).