EAPP Literary Text vs.

Academic Text
English for Academic and Professional Purposes Aspect Literary Text Academic Text
Tone Reflective and personal Serious and impersonal
Academic writing is what scholars do to communicate with other scholars in their
fields of study, their disciplines. Style Symbolic and imaginative Formal and authoritative
It is the research report a biologist writes, the interpretive essay a literary scholar
composes, the media analysis a film scholar produces. Choice of Words Simple but may be Uses specialized
Academic Writing is a process. figurative language of discipline
 Posing a question
 Problematizing a concept Organization of Ideas Flows freely and Follows a pattern of
 Evaluating an opinion spontaneously presenting ideas
 Answering the question/s posed
Academic writing has a specific purpose. Purpose To show/tell unfolding of To inform, to explain, to
 To inform details/events argue/assert
 To argue a specific point
 To persuade Intended Audience Varies, depending on Discipline-specific
Academic writing addresses a specific audience complexity of text
 Teacher (for the most part)
 Peers (read and evaluate the work)
 Academic community (read the work) Activity 1:
Using the text entitled: “Competition and Cooperation”, accomplish the Activity
Academic writing is thinking – we cannot just write anything that comes to our Sheet below.
mind. Aspect Text
 Abide by the set of rules and practices in writing. Title: ________________________
 Write in a language that is appropriate and formal but not too Vocabulary
pretentious. List down Vocabulary found in the
 The sentences in academic writing are often longer and more text.
intricate than the sentences in popular magazines (Lexical
density).
Academic writing considers knowledge and background of the audience Grammar
 Use of jargons – if the readers belong to the same field/discipline List down the language features of the
to which the writer belongs text.
 Use layman’s terms – if the readers are outsiders
Academic writing is backed up/supported with strong and valid evidence.
 deliberate, thorough, and careful thought Field/Profession
 involves research Identify the discipline
(medicine, law, journalism, etc.)
Stating Your Thesis
A thesis is a one-sentence statement about your topic. It's an assertion
about your topic, something you claim to be true. 
Notice that a topic alone makes no such claim; it merely defines an area
to be covered. 
To make your topic into a thesis statement, you need to make a claim
about it, make it into a sentence. Look back over your materials--brainstorms,
Method 2:
investigative notes, etc.--and think about what you believe to be true.
Change the Order of Words
Think about what your readers want or need to know. Then write a
sentence, preferably at this point, a simple one, stating what will be the central
idea of your paper. The result should look something like this:

Original Subject: an important issue in my major field 

Focused Topic: media technology education for communication majors
Thesis: Theories of media technology deserve a more prominent place in this
University’s Communication program

It's always good to have a thesis you can believe in.

NOT a Thesis: This University has a Communication major.

 A thesis is the evolutionary result of a thinking process, not a miraculous

creation.
 Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading the essay Method 3:
assignment.  Use Different Grammar
 You may have a "working thesis," an argument that you think will make
sense of the evidence but that may need adjustment along the way. 

Paraphrasing

• To rewrite something in a different way

• To paraphrase is to say the same thing in another way, using your own
words.
• Can successfully be done using a combination of techniques.

Method 1:
Use Different Vocabulary with the Same Meaning
6 Steps to Effective Paraphrasing Summarizing
• Reread the original passage until you understand its full meaning. • involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the
• Set the original aside, and write your paraphrase on a note card. main point(s).
• Jot down a few words below your paraphrase to remind you later how • Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad
you envision using this material. overview of the source material.
• Check your rendition with the original to make sure that your version Example
accurately expresses all the essential information in a new form. The original passage (the quote):
• Use quotation marks to identify any unique term or phraseology you have Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a
borrowed exactly from the source. result they overuse quotations in the final paper. Probably only about 10% of your
• Record the source (including the page) so that you can credit it easily if final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should
you decide to incorporate the material into your paper. strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking
Writing an Outline notes.
An outline is a tool for improving writing. An outline can help you: Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976): 46-47.
• determine a logical organization (sequence) of your main ideas and
supporting evidence and explanation An acceptable summary:
• check that all your ideas and information are on-task and relevant to your Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to
thesis help minimize the amount of quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46-47).
• see at a glance where you need more evidence to make your point
An outline also saves you time and frustration. It provides a “picture” of your Summarizing Strategies:
essay which allows you to predict many of its strengths and weaknesses before Precis Abstract Summary Overview Synopsis
you write it. A concise A summary A condensed A brief A brief
summary most presentation summary, as summary of
Writing an Outline Gives the commonly of the of a book the major
Title:__________________________ 10% gist or used in substance of presentation points of a
Thesis Statement: ___________________________________________________ most scientific and a body of written work
Main Idea #1 _______________________________________________________ important technical material
 Support________________________________________ part of the context
 Support _______________________________________ text Restating the
 Support _______________________________________ author’s main
Main Idea #2 _______________________________________________________ Using one or points of a
 Support _______________________________________ two concise text in your
 Support _______________________________________ sentences to own words. It
 Support _______________________________________ give the omits all
Main Idea #3 _______________________________________________________ essence of an examples and
 Support _______________________________________ entire text evidences
 Support _______________________________________ used.
 Support _______________________________________
Conclusion:________________________________________________________
Activity 2: plum, gem, bishop, church were borrowed at this times. They show of the
Write an outline of the academic text entitled “Brief History of English” relationships of the Anglo-Saxons with the Romans. The Anglo-Saxons were
learning, getting their first taste of civilization.
Activity 3:
(5) They still had a long way to go, however, and their first step was to help smash
Using the same text “Brief History of English”, write a summary of it in a whole
the civilization they were learning from. In the fourth century the Roman power
sheet of paper. Please be guided with the following criteria in writing a summary:
weakened badly. While the Goths were pounding, away at the Romans in the
 Thesis statement
Mediterranean countries, their relatives, he Anglo-Saxons, began to attach
 Supporting Details
Britain.
 Analysis of Content
 Proper Use of Quotes
(6) The Romans has been the ruling power in Britain since 43 C.E. They have
 Organization/ Logical Order
subjugated the Celts whom they found living there and had succeeded in settling
 Paraphrasing
up a Roman administration. The Roman influence did not extend to the outlying
 Mechanics/ Format
parts of the British Isles. In Scotland, Whales, and Ireland the Celts remained free
and wild, they made periodic forays against the Romans in England. Among other
A Brief History of English defense measures, the Romans build the famous Roman Walls to ward off the
Paul Roberts tribes in the north.
(1) No understanding of the English language can be very satisfactory without the
notice of the history of the language. But we have to make do with just a notion. (7) Even in England the Roman power was thin. Latin did not become the
The history of English is long and complicated, and we can only hit the high spots. language of the country as it did in Gaul and Spain. The mass of people continued
to speak Celtics, with Latin and the Roman civilization it contained in use as a top
(2) The history of our language begins a little after 600 C.E. Everything before that dressing.
was pre-history, which means that we can guess at it but can’t prove much. For a
thousand years or so before the birth of Christ, our linguistic ancestors were (8) In the fourth century, troubles multiplied for the Romans in Britain. Not only
savage wandering through the forest of Northern Europe. Their language was did the untamed tribes of Scotland and Whales grow more and more restive, but
part of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family. also the Anglo-Saxons began to make pirate raids on the eastern coast.
Furthermore, there was growing difficulty everywhere in the Empire, and the
(3) At the time of the Roman Empire-say, from the beginning of the Christian era legions in Britain were siphoned off to fight elsewhere. Finally, in 410 C.E. the last
to around 400 C.E/- the speakers of what was to become English were scattered Roman ruler in England, bent on becoming the emperor, left the island and took
along the north coast of Europe. They spoke a dialect of Low German. More the last legions with him. The Celts were left in possession of Britain but almost
exactly, they spoke several different dialects, since they were several different defenseless against the impending Anglo-Saxons attack.
tribes. The names given to the tribe who got to English are Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes. For convenience, we can refer to them all as Anglo-Saxons. (9) Not much is surely known about the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in England.
According to the best early source, the eighth-century historian Bade, the Jutes
(4) Their first contact with civilization was a rather thin acquaintance with the came in 449 in response to a plea from the Celtics king, Vortigern, who wanted
Roman Empire on whose borders they lived. Probably some of the Anglo-Saxons their help against the Picts attacking the north. The Jutes subdue the Picts, but
wondered into the empire occasionally, and certainly Roman merchants and then quarreled and fought with Vortigern, and with reinforcement from the
traders travelled among the tribes. At any rate, this period saw the first if our so continent, settled permanently in Kent. Somewhat later the Angles established
many borrowing from Latin. Such words as kettle, wine, cheese, butter, cheap,
themselves in the eastern England and the Saxons in the south and west. Bede’s
account is plausible enough, and these were probably the main lines of the (14) In the Eighth century, Northumbian power declined, and the center of the
invasion. influence moved southward to Mercia, the kingdom of Midlands. A century later
center shifted again, and Wessex, the country of the West Saxons, became the
(10) We don’t know, however, that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were long time leading power. The most famous king of the West Saxons was Alfred the Great,
securing themselves in England. Fighting went on for as long as a hundred years who reigned in the second half of the ninth century, dying in 901. He was famous
before the Celts in Celts were all killed, driven into Wales, or reduced to slavery. not only as a military man and administrator but also as a champion of learning.
This is the period of King Arthur, who was not entirely mythological. He was a He founded and supported schools and translated or caused to be translated
Romanized Celt, a general, though probably not a king. He had some success many books from Latin into English. At this time also much of the Northumbian
against the Anglo-Saxons, but it was only temporary. By 550 or so the Anglo- literature of two centuries earlier was copied in West Saxons. Indeed, the great
Saxon were finally established, English was in England. bulk of Old English writing which has come down to us is the West Saxon dialect
of 900 or later.
(11) All this is pre-history, so far as the language is concerned. We have no record
of the English language until after 600, when the Anglo-Saxon were converted to (15) In the military sphere, Alfred’s great accomplishment was his successful
Christianity and learned the Latin alphabets. The conversion began, to be precise opposition to the Viking invasion. In the ninth and tenth centuries, the Norsemen
in 597 within thirty to forty years. The conversion was a great advance for the emerged in their ships from their homeland in Denmark and the Scandinavian
Anglo-Saxons, not only of the spiritual benefits but also because it re-established Peninsula. They travelled and attacked and plundered at their will and almost
contact with what remained of Roman civilization. The civilization didn’t amount with impunity. They ravaged Italy and Greece, settled in France, Russia and
to much in the year 600, but it was certainly, superior to anything in England up Ireland, colonized Iceland and Greenland, and discovered America several
to the time. centuries before Columbus. Nor they overlooked England.

(12) It is customary to divide the history of the English language into three (16) After many years of hit-and-run raids, the Norsemaen landed an army on the
periods: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Old English runs from east coast of England in the year 886. There was nothing much to oppose them
the earliest record-i.e. seventh century- to about 1100: Middle English from 1100 except the Wessex power led by Alfred. The long struggle ended in 877 with a
to 1450 or 1500; Modern English form 1500 to the present day. Sometimes treaty by which a line was drawn roughly from the northwest of England to the
Modern English is further divided into Early Modern, 1500-1700, and Late southwest. On the eastern side of the line, Norse rule was to prevail. This was
Modern from 1700 to the present. called the Danelaw. The western side was to be governed by Wessex.

(13) When England came into history, it was divided into several more or less (17) The linguistic result of all this was a considerable injection of Norse into the
autonomous kingdoms, some of which at times exercised a certain amount of English language. Norse was at this time not so different from English as
control over the others. In the century after the conversion the most advanced Norwegian or Danish is now. Probably the speakers of English could understand,
kingdom was Northumbrians, the area between the Humber River and the more or less, the language of the new comers who had moved into eastern
Scottish border. By 700 C.E the Northumbrians had developed a respectable England. At any rate, there was considerable interchange and word borrowing.
civilization, the finest in Europe. It is sometimes called the Northumbian Examples of Norse words in the English language are sky, give, law, egg, outlaw,
Renaissance, and it was the first of the several renaissance through which Europe leg, ugly, scant, crawl, scowl, take, thrust. There are hundreds more. We have
struggled upward out of the ruins of the Roman Empire. It was in this period that even borrowed some pronouns from Norse-they, their, and them. These words
the best of the Old English literature was written, including the epic poem were borrowed first by the eastern and northern dialects and then in the course
Beowulf. of hundreds of years made their way into English generally.
 different. “urne gedaeghwamlican half syle us” in place of “Give us our daily
(18) It is supposed also-indeed, it must be true-that the Norsemen influenced the bread.” And so on.
sound structure and the grammar of English. But this is hard to demonstrate in
detail. (23) In vocabulary Old English is quite different from Modern English. Most of the
Old English words are what we may call native English; that is, words which have
(19) We may now have an example of Old English. The favorite illustration is the not been borrowed from other languages but which have been a part of English
Lord’s Prayer, since it needs no translation. This has come to us in several ever since English was a part of Indo-European. Old English did certainly contain
different versions, Here is one: Faeder ure [thorn] u[eth]e eart on heofonum si borrowed words. We have seen that many borrowing were coming in from Norse.
[thorn] in nama gehalgd. Tobecume [thorn]in rice. Gewur[eth]e [thorn]in willa on Rather large numbers had been borrowed from Latin, too. Some of these were
eor[eth]an swa swa on heofonum. Urne gedaeghwamlican half slye us to daeg. An taken while the Anglos-Saxons were still in the continent (cheese, butter, bishop,
forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfa[thorn] urum glytendum. And ne gelaed kettle, etc.); a large number came into English after Conversion (angle, candle,
[thorn]u us on cost nunge ac alys of yfele. So[eth]lice. priest, martyr, radish, oyster, purple, school, spend, etc.). But the great majority
of Old English words were native English.
(20) Some of the differences between this and Modern English are merely
differences in orthography. For instance, the sign æ is what Old English writers (24) No on the contrary, the majority of words in English are borrowed, taken
used for a vowel sound like that in modern hat or and. The th sounds of modern mostly from Latin and French. Of the words from The American College Dictionary
thin or then are represented in Old English by [thorn] or [eth]. But of course there only about 14 percent are native. Most of these to be sure, are common, high
are many differences in sounds too. Ure is the ancestor of modern our, but the frequency words-the, of, I, and because, man, mother, road, etc.; of the thousand
first vowel was like that in too or ooze. Hlaf is modern loaf; we have dropped the most common words in English, some 62 percent are native English. Even so, the
h sound and changed the vowel, which in half was pronounce something like the modern vocabulary is very much Latinized and Frenchified. The Old English
vowel in father. Old English had some sounds which we do not have. The sound vocabulary was not.
represented by y does not occur in Modern English. If you pronounced the vowel
in bit with your lips rounded, you may approach it. (25) Sometime between the year 1000 and 1200 various important changes took
place in the structure of English, and Old English became Middle English. The
(21) In grammar, Old English was much more highly inflected than Modern political event which facilitated these changes was the Norman Conquest. The
English is. That is, there were more case endings for nouns, more person and Normans, as the name shows, came originally from Scandinavia. In the early tenth
number ending for verbs, a more complicated pronoun system, various endings century they established themselves in Northern France, adopted the French
for adjectives, and so on. Old English nouns had four cases –nominative, genitive, language, and developed a vigorous kingdom and a very passable civilization. In
dative, accusative. Adjectives had five-all these and an instrumental case besides. the year 1066, led by Duke William, they crossed the Channel and made
Present day English has only two cases from nouns-common case and possessive themselves master of England. For the next several hundred years, England was
case. Adjectives now have no case system at all. On the other hand, we now use ruled by kings and whose first language was French.
more rigid word order and more structure words (preposition, auxiliaries, and the
like) to express relationships than Old English did. (26) One might wonder why, after the Norman Conquest, French did not become
the national language, replacing English entirely. The reason is that the conquest
(22) Some of this grammar we can see in the Lord’s Prayer. Heofonum, for was not a national migration, as the early Anglo-Saxons invasion had been. Great
instance is a dative plural; the nominative singular was heofon. Urne is an numbers of Normans came to England, but they came as rulers and landlords.
accusative singular; the nominative is ure. In urum gyltendum both words are French became the language of the court, the language of nobility, the language
dative plural. Forgyfap is the third person plural form of the verb. Word order is of the polite society, the language of literature. But it did not replace the English
language as the language of the people. There must be hundreds of towns and (30) All these and thousands more poured into English vocabulary between 1100
villages in which French was never heard except when visitors of high station and 1500, until at the end of that time, many people must have had more French
passed through. words than English at their command. This is not to say that English became
French. English remained English in sound structure and in grammar, though
(27) But English, though survived as the national language, was profoundly these also felt the ripples of the French influence. The very heart of the
changed after the Norman Conquest. Some of the changes-in sound structure and vocabulary, too, remained English. Most of the high frequency words-the
grammar-would no doubt have taken place whether there had been a conquest pronouns, the prepositions, the conjunctions, the auxiliaries, as well as a great
or not. Ever before 1066 the case system of English nouns and adjectives was ordinary nouns and verbs and adjectives-were not replaced by borrowing.
becoming simplified; people came to rely more on word order and prepositions (31) Middle English, then, was still Germanic language, but it differed from Old
than on inflectional endings to communicate their meanings. The process was English in many ways. The sound system and the grammar change a good deal.
speeded up by sound changes which caused many of the endings to sound alike. Speakers made less use of case systems and other influential devices and relied
But no doubt the conquest facilitated the changes. German, which did not more on word order and structure words to express their meanings. This is often
experience a Norman Conquest, is today rather highly inflected compared to its said to be simplification, but it isn’t really. Languages don’t become simpler; they
cousin English. merely exchange one kind of complexity for another. Modern language is not a
simple language, as any foreign speakers who try to learn it will hasten to tell you.
(28) But it is in the vocabulary that the effects of the Conquest are most obvious.
French ceased, after a hundred years or so, to be the native language of very (32) For us, Middle English is simpler than the Old English just because it is closer
many people in England, but it continued-and continues still- to be a zealously to Modern English. It takes three or four months at least to learn to read Old
cultivated sound language, the mirror of elegance and civilization. When one English prose and more than that for poetry. But a week of good study should put
spoke English, on introduced not only French ideas and French things but also one touch with the Middle English poet Chaucer. Indeed, you may be able to
their French names. This was not only easy but also socially useful. To pepper make some sense of Chaucer straight off, though you would need instruction in
one’s conversation with French expressions was to show that one was well bred, pronunciation to make it sound like poetry. Here is a famous passage from the
elegant, au courant. The last sentence shows that the process was not yet dead. General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, fourteenth century: Ther was also a
By using au courant instead of, say, abreast of things, the writer indicates that he Nonne, a Prioresse. That of hir smyling was ful simple and coy; Hir gretteste oot
is no dull clod who knows only English but an elegant person aware of how things was but by Seint Loy; And she was cleped madame Eglentyne. Ful weel she soong
are done in le haut monde. the service dyvyne. Entuned in hir nose ful seemly, And Frenshe she spak ful faire
and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe, For Frenshe of Parys was to
(29) Thus French word came into English, all sorts of them. There were words to hirse unknowe.
do with government; parliament, majesty, treaty, alliance, tax, government;
church words; parson, sermon, baptism, incense, religion; words for foods; veal, (33) Sometime between 1400 and 1600 English underwent a couple of sound
beef, mutton, bacon, jelly, peach, lemon, cream, biscuit; colors; blue, scarlet, changes which made language of Shakespeare quite different from that of
vermilion, household words; curtain, chair, lamp, towel, blanket, parlor; play Chaucer. Incidentally, these changes contributed much to the chaos in which
words; dance, chess, music, leisure, conversation; literary words; story, romance, English spelling now finds itself.
poet, literary; learned words; study, logic, grammar, noun, surgeon, anatomy,
stomach; just ordinary words of all sorts; nice, second, very, age, bucket, gentle, (34) One change was the elimination of a vowel sound in certain unstressed
final, fault, flower, cry, count, sure, move, surprise, plain. positions at the end of words. For instance, the words name, stone, wine, dance
were pronounced as two syllables by Chaucer but as just one by Shakespeare. The
e in these words became, as we say, “silent”. But it wasn’t silent for Chaucer, it
represented a vowel sound. So also the words laughed, seemed, stored would ideas meant new languages. Englishmen had grown accustomed to borrowing
have been pronounced by Chaucer as two-syllable words. The change was an words from French as a result of the Norman Conquest; now they borrowed from
important one because it affected thousands of words and gave different aspects Latin and Greek. As we have seen, English have been raiding Latin from Old
to the whole language. English times and before. But now the floodgates really opened, and thousands of
words from the classic languages poured in. Pedestrian, bonus, anatomy,
(35) The other change is what is called the Great Vowel Shift. Thus was a contradict, climax, dictionary, benefit, multiply, exist, paragraph, initiate, scene,
systematic shifting of half a dozen vowels and diphthongs in stressed syllables. inspire are random examples. Probably the average educated American today has
For instance, the word nam had in Middle English a vowel something like that in more words from French in his vocabulary than from the native English source
the modern word father; wine, had the vowel of modern mean; he was and more from Latin than the French.
pronounced something like modern hey; mouse sounded like moose; moon had (39) The greatest writer of the Early Modern English period is of course
the vowel of moan. Again the shift was through going and affected all the word in Shakespeare, and the best-known book is the King James Version of the Bible,
which these vowels sounds occurred. Since we still keep the Middle English published in 1611. The bible (if not Shakespeare) has made many features of Early
system of spelling these words, the differences between Modern English and Modern English perfectly familiar to many people down to present time, even
Middle English are often more real than apparent. though we do not use these features in the present-day speech and writing. For
instance, the old pronounce thou and thee have dropped out of use now,
(36) The vowel shift has meant also that we have come to use an entirely together with their verb forms, but they are still familiar to us in prayer and in
different set of symbols for representing vowel sounds that is used by the writers Biblical quotation. “Whither thou goest, I will go” Such form as hath and doth
of such languages as French, Italian or Spanish, in which no such vowel occurred. have been replaced by has and does, “Goes he hence tonight? Would now be “Is
If you come across a strange word-say, bine-in an English book, you will announce he going away tonight?” Shakespeare’s “Fie o’nt, sirrah” would be “Nuts to that,
it according to the English system, with the vowels of wine or dine. But if you read Mac.” Still, all these expressions linger with us because of the power of the works
bine in the French, Italian, or Spanish book, you will pronounce it with the vowel in which they occur.
of mean or seen.
(40) It is not always realized, however, that considerable sound changes have
(37) These two changes, then, produced basic differences between Middle English taken place between Early Modern English and the English of the present day.
and Modern English. But there were several other developments that had an Shakespearean actors putting on a play speak the words, properly enough, in
effect upon the language. One was the invention of printing, an invention their modern pronunciation. But it is very doubtful that this pronunciation would
introduced to England by William Caxton in the year 1472. Where before books be understood at all by Shakespeare. In Shakespeare’s time, the word reason was
had been rare and costly, they suddenly become cheap and common. More and pronounced raisin; face had the sound of the modern glass; the l in would,
more people learn to read and write. This was the first of many advances in should, palm was pronounce. In these points and a great many others, the English
communication in which have worked to unify languages and to arrest the language has moved a long way from what it was in 1600.
development of dialect difference, though of course the printing affects writing
principally rather than speech. Among other things it hastened the (41) The history of English since 1700 is filled with many movements and counter
standardization of spelling movements, of which we can notice only a couple. One of this is the vigorous
attempt made in the eighteenth century, and rather the half-hearted attempts
(38) The period of Early Modern English- that is, the sixteenth and seventeenth made since, to regulate and control the English language. Many people of the
centuries-was also the period of the English Renaissance, when people eighteenth century, not understanding very well the forces which govern the
developed, on the other hand, a keen interest in the past and, on the other, a language, proposed to polish and prune and restrict English, which they felt was
more daring and imaginative view of the future. New ideas multiplied, and new proliferating too wildly. There was much talk on an academy which would rule on
what people could and could not say and write. The academy never came into differences are considerable. The American cannot go to England, or the
being, but the eighteenth century did succeed in establishing certain attitudes Englishman to America confident that he will always understand and be
which, though they haven’t had much effect on the development of the language understood. The Alabaman in Iowa or the Iowan in Alabama shows himself a
itself, have certainly changed the native speaker’s feeling about the language. foreigner every time he speaks. It is only because the communication has become
fast and easy that English in this period of its expansion has not broken into a
(42) In part a product of the wish to fix and establish the language was the dozen mutually unintelligible languages.
development of the dictionary. The first English dictionary was published in 1603;
it was a list of 2,500 words briefly defined. Many others were published with
gradual improvement until Samuel Johnson published his English Dictionary in
1775. This steadily revised, dominated the field in England for nearly a hundred
years. Meanwhile in America, Noah Webster published his dictionary in 1828, and
before long dictionary publishing was a big business in this country. The last Competition and Cooperation
century has seen the publication of one great dictionary; the twelve volume
Oxford English Dictionary, compiled in the course of seventy-five years through (1) Explanations of the interrelation between competition and cooperation have
the labour of many scholars. We have also, of course, numerous commercial evolved over the time. Early research into competition and cooperation defined
dictionaries which are good as the public wants them to be if not, indeed, rather each of them in terms of the distribution of rewards related to each. Competition
better. was defined as a situation in which rewards are distributed unequally on the basis
of performance, cooperation on the other hand, was defined as a situation in
(43) Another product of the eighteenth century was the invention of “English which rewards are distributed equally on the basis of mutual interactive
Grammar”. As English came to replace Latin as the language of scholarship it was behaviour among individuals. By this definition, a competitive situation requires
felt that one should also be able to control and dissect it, parse and analyse it, as at least on competitor to fail for each competitor that wins, while a cooperative
one could Latin. What happened in practice was that the grammatical description situation offers a reward only if all members of the group receive it.
that applied to Latin was removed and superimposed on English. This was silly,
because English is an entirely different kind of language, with its own forms and (2) Researchers have found definitions of competition and cooperation based
signals and ways of producing meaning. Nevertheless, grammar on the Latin upon rewards inadequate primarily because definitions of these two concepts
model were worked out and taught in the schools. In many schools they are still based upon rewards depict them as opposite. In current understanding,
being taught. This activity is not often popular with school children, but it is competition is not viewed as opposite of cooperation, instead, cooperation is
sometimes an interesting and instructive exercise in logic. The principal harm in it viewed as integral component of competition. Cooperation is necessary among
is that it has tended to keep people from being interested in English and has team members, perhaps in a sporting event or in a political race, in order to win
obscured the real features of English structure. the competition, it is equally important to understand that cooperation is of great
importance between teams in that same sporting event or ground rules of the
(44) But probably the most important force in the development of English in the game or election in order to compete.
modern period has been the tremendous expansion of English-speaking peoples.
In 1500 English was minor language, spoken by a few people on a small island. (3) Interestingly, the word competition is derived from a Latin verb which means
Now perhaps the greatest language of the world, spoken natively by over a “to seek together.” An understanding of the derivation of the word competition
quarter of a billion people and as a second language by many millions more. supports the understanding that cooperation, rather than evoking a characteristic
When we speak of English now, we must specify whether we mean American at the opposite extreme of human nature from competition, is in reality a
English, British English, Australian English, Indian English, or what, since the necessary factor in competition.