Saudi arabia culture and customs Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Saudi arabia culture and customs - Assignment Example There are various shapes and kinds of clothes which usually vary from one region to another and also from a particular environment to another one within the same region. Due to the social and cultural harmony amongst the Kingdom’s regions, the clothing techniques and accessories blueprints have grown to be similar to one another in most of the regions. Some kinds of Saudi foods have grown to become dominant throughout the region despite the various economic and social segments of the region. Different beverages and cuisines do exist and have got several nutritional benefits together with high calories that provide the body with the energy to work. Folklore- Saudi Arabia’s folklore is on the basis of such themes as groups and unity. It is composed of songs and games that are enthusiastic, expressing Arab traditions and customs. Folklore is considered by citizens as a source of pride inherited from one age group to the next. Customs and traditions-There are several customs in Saudi and one of the most striking is Al-Janadriyah.It is usually a heritage village constructed near Riyadh to mirror the real representation of Saudi’s heritage. It is done yearly when weather conditions are mild within the starting months of the year of Gregorian. It stays for 2 weeks and comprises of heritage activities that restore the Kingdom’s heritage via handicraft events, traditional buildings and contemporary audio-visual expertise utilized mostly in displaying various activities and so on. In addition, the village also comprises of performance halls, theater together with model buildings representing the constructed heritage of all cities within the Saudi

Dispatches Paper Essay Example for Free

Dispatches Paper Essay As I read Dispatches by Michael Herr, there is an overwhelming sense of fear and horror. His dispatches are populated by soldiers called grunts, whose enemy was everywhere and nowhere. Their maps were blank; their names for the enemy, Charlie or VC, told them nothing. How do you recognize them? They all wear black pajamas; they are all alien to us. They are everywhere. Thats where the paranoia began. Herrs dispatches are disturbing because he writes from inside the nightmare, with all the tension and terror that turned these young men into killing machines. It is all the more frightening because, emptied of any concerns for justice, or ethics, or solidarity, they opened fire anywhere, everywhere. After all, who could know where or who the enemy was? Herrs use of brutal imagery absorbed me into his savage surroundings. From the soldier who cant stop drooling as a result of a particularly dreadful gun battle, to the scenes of the dead, American and Vietnamese, adult and infant, on battlefields and village streets. The characters are real people in a situation that most of them neither like nor understand. They are young men who invoke the same shortcomings we all have. They are professional soldiers and act that way despite their misgivings. They push past the boundaries of fear and into the realms of heroism or insanity or death. Everyone that he introduces is individual. There are no carbon copy soldiers here. They are funny or musical or religious or delusional. I felt as though I was being introduced to people I knew throughout the book. From time off in Saigon and Hong Kong to his time spent in a bunker during the siege of Khe Sanh, Herr covers every aspect of the war. He shows how so many soldiers were so drastically affected by the war. He describes the strange, fearful moments when at night the jungle suddenly goes silent. Herr tells tales of Marines throwing themselves on top of him with incoming fire, people he has only just met minutes or hours before that are risking their lives to protect his. This book is very descriptive and one of the best examples of this is this sentence, Every fifth round was a tracer, and when Spooky was working, everything stopped while that solid stream of violent  red poured down out of the black sky. In this sentence Herr is retelling the feelings felt by everyone as they watched the gunships flying overhead, unleashing the fury of gatling-guns that could fire thousands of rounds per minute. Not only does Herr convey the impact of such a sight; he does it in such a manner that a vivid image is formed in the readers mind. One of the more disturbing and insightful quotes in the book comes when a Marine at Khe Sanh learns that his wife is pregnant, but not with his child. Herr retells with this account, Oh dont worry, Orrin said. Theres gonna be a death in my family. Just soons I git home. And then he laughed. It was a terrible laugh, very quiet and intense, and it was the thing that made everyone who heard it believe Orrin. This quote shows how badly some soldiers were transformed during the war. A man who used to be very peaceful and calm would now snap at the slightest provocation. He would now plan the death of his wife for cheating on him. With these examples I would definitely say that one of the strengths of this book is its vivid descriptions. The other strength of this book is probably how it covers the emotional and physical aspects of the war. Still it is difficult to reconcile Herrs disregard for the grunts brutality and his apparent admiration that surfaces. Herr feeds on the death and carnage of the battlefield. It is difficult to grudge a person for their attachment to the most exciting times of their life. Herrs is almost an addiction to the life of the thrill seeker, but as he frequently mentions, unlike the grunts, he could always take the next chopper back to an air-conditioned hotel room in Saigon, or leave altogether. (Not that an air-conditioned room in Saigon would be necessarily safer than Khe Sahn) He describes Vietnam as a jumbled, confused, mess of a living hell. Herr also wrote the narration for Apocalypse Now, so what more do you need to know? It is crucial to understand that this book is not a political or military history of the war. Instead, Herr tried to portray the experience of what it was like to be in Vietnam; you wont find a handy map and glossary in the back. (If you honestly dont know what words like di di, zip, grunt, 16, and DMZ mean, I suggest you bone up on your history.) There are two major downfalls to this book: rambling and fiction. His writing style, disjointed and confused, makes the book a little hard to get used to. But when you do get used to it only then can you see that Herr is trying to give the reader an accurate account rather than a moral lecture. In terms of fiction the problem with writers is that they are writers. As such they are basically dishonest. This is not Vietnam as told by a soldier. This is Vietnam as told by a journalist who is in-country to the precise extent he cares to be and hotfoots it out of there when the going gets rough. In the beginning of the book Herr describes the horrors of night patrol by describing his own fear. He then informs the bewildered reader that this is a bit too much for him and therefore takes his journalistic eye somewhere else. The difference between a journalist and a soldier is that the soldier cant leave when he feels like it and so he doesnt have the luxury of drama. Unfortunately, most of this book is drama.

Phonological Neighborhood Size on Verbal Short-term Memory

Phonological Neighborhood Size on Verbal Short-term Memory NG LI JIA For several decades, researchers tried to understand the dynamics of short-term memory in speech processing and word recall. However, data were contradictory due to different lines of inquiry using varying methodologies. Understanding the underlying mechanisms of word recall and short-term memory remains an elusive, but not an impossible task. It is important to pinpoint how short-term memory and long-term memory interact so that light can be shed on illnesses which can affect speech articulation (Caplan, Michaud, Hufford, 2013). Current research focused on neighborhood size effect on the serial recall of words. Neighborhood size refers to the number of phonologically-similar words on a list that is serially recalled. Many experiments have shown that word recall was worse using lists with many phonologically similar words, i.e. words with a large neighborhood size. Roodenrys (2009) concluded the efficacy of word recall was more affected by large neighborhood size and frequency due to phonological similarities. However, when Roodenrys replicated Goh Pisonis (2003) experiments using words that were not neighbors on the same list, no effects were found for either large or small populations. The following experiment utilize lists where neighbors are present in set but not on same lists. It will also utilize lists where neighbors are present in list but not present in set. Therefore, hypothesized that serial recall will be more significantly than small neighborhood sizes as opposed to large neighborhood sizes where words are present in list but not in same set. In addition, it is hypothesized that significant effects will be noted by small neighborhood sizes on serial word recall when no neighbors appear in the set. Examination of past experimental methodologies is in order to determine where errors were made and how to navigate the best approach to prove or disprove the aforementioned hypotheses. Jalbert, Neath Suprenant (2011) showed that word length and concurrent articulation negated neighborhood size effects in mixed lists. Concurrent articulation is defined as when a word that is to be recalled is spoken or articulated almost simultaneously, adding a so-called cognitive load as well as noise to the to-be-remembered items (Jalbert et al., 2011). This study demonstrated that small neighborhood size was affected very little by concurrent articulation. The studys design was marred by the fact that such small sample was used. That is, only ten subjects were tested small number from which to collect meaningful data. Furthermore, it stands to reason that studies should use subjects who have similar educational backgrounds and/or similar ages, thereby eliminating confound. Older people may show quicker decay time when shown a word, thus slowing down process of redintegration. However, recalling longer words from larger neighborhood sizes, higher-educated people would be more familiar with lists and/or sets of words of longer lengths. In this study, English was native language of the subjects. However, they failed to mention whether subjects had proficiency in second language, a skill which could help recalled CVC (consonant-verb-consonant) words, or even with longer nonsense words. Example, if a subject was shown the nonsense word geto, subject may use secondary language to recall similar word gato which, in Spanish, means cat, or homonyms such as paro (a nonsense word) and pero, meaning but in Spanish, assisting in a different mechanism of recall other than a phonological loop. Goh and Pisoni (2008) used 56 subjects of roughly the same age and educational level in the first experiment of their study, thus potentially eliminating age and educational level variability and gathered more data from the subjects. Goh and Pisoni (2008) also considered short-term memory span (STM) and measured this variable accordingly, using the nine-digit span. The researchers found that all subjects scored about the same. However, this studys aim to measure lexical competition based on frequency and density of neighborhood sizes. They found that lexical competition among item-specific information for easy versus hard words in non-repeated lists was performed mainly in long-term memory (LTM) (Goh and Pisoni, 2008). The researchers assumed LTM and STM are static entities and they are not in flux. Moreover, their definitions of experimental effects fit STM versus LTM are ambiguous. The abovementioned researchers did not use nonsense words in their experiments, which would have served as a significant variable for determining boundaries of LTM and STM, because nonsense words are less frequent in large populations. Nonsense words would help eliminate lexical density in neighborhood populations and further define process of redintegration, i.e. how words decay into STM traces are somehow retrieved and reconstructed. Roodenrys et al. (2002) conducted similar study using 24 Australian subjects, all of them native English speakers. Roodenrys et al.s (2002) contradicted other findings that found speech perception in lexical properties playing a role in redintegration of words. Rather, these experiments pointed squarely to phonological processing rather than speech perception. While the design and methodology were sound, researchers failed to account for cultural. The results of all four experiments revealed a counterintuitive result, i.e. effects of neighborhood frequency had little impact on word recall. Roodenrys (2002) stressed that most of the word recall effects in their experiments were mediated by speech-production mechanisms. Researchers especially Roodenrys contended lexical memory equates with LTM. However, their line of reasoning is unsound. It seems the time elapsed between seeing a word and its recall should constitute one definition of how STM of word lists and intrusion errors across sets could delineate the boundary between STM and LTM. Another consideration, is the effect of pattern recognition on recall accuracy as well as the potential effect on LTM. Furthermore, there may not be a universal wiring schematic for individual. Finally, many of these questions will be investigated in this experiment and variables will be held constant to accurately calculate the effect of independent variable(s), and conclusive data will be collected to prove or disprove hypotheses that predict significant effects of small neighborhood sizes when no neighborhood words are on list but in a set and predicting significant effects of small neighborhood sizes (as opposed to large neighborhood sizes) when no neighborhood words appear in the set. References Caplan, D., Michaud, J., Hufford, R., (2013). Short Term Memory, Working Memory, and Syntactic Comprehension in Aphasia. Cognitive Neuropsychology 30(2). doi: 10.1080/02643294.2013.803958. Goh, W. D., Pisoni, D. B. (2003). Effects of lexical competition on immediate memory span for spoken words. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56A, 929-954. Jalbert, A., Neath, I. Suprenant, A.M. (2011). Does length or neighbourhood size cause the word length effect. Memory Cognition, 39, 1198-1210. Roodenrys, S., Hulme, C., Lethbridge, A., Hinton, M., Nimmo, L.M., (2002). Word-Frequency and Phonological-Neighborhood Effects on Verbal Short-Term Memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 28(6): 1019- 1034. Roodenrys, S., (2009). Explaining Phonological Neighbourhood Effects in Short-Term Memory. Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences. Retrieved from http://ro.uow.edu.au/hbspapers/1693/

Biography of Alain Locke :: essays research papers

During the 1920's, many African Americans migrated to Harlem, New York City in search of a better life a life which would later be better than what they had in the South. This movement became known as the Harlem Renaissance. It was originally called the New Negro Movement. Black literature during this era began to prosper in Harlem. The major writers of the Harlem Renaissance were many, such as, Sterling A. Brown, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston and others. The main person, however, was a scholar named Alain Locke. Locke would later be known by many authors and artists as the â€Å"father of the Harlem renaissance.† Alain Leroy Locke was born to S. Pliny and Mary Hawkins Locke on October 13, 1886 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were both teachers. Alain Locke’s father died when he was six years old, and his mother raised him alone. â€Å"She was determined that he receive the best education† (Hardy 34). He did receive what his mother wanted. He earned a scholarship to Harvard University and in 1907, graduated magna cum laude in philosophy. That same year he became the first African American to win a Rhodes scholarship, which allowed him to continue studying in Oxford, England. He studied at Oxford from 1907 to 1910 and then went to University of Berlin from 1910-1911. Locke received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1918. Philosophy was the subject that attracted Locke the most at Oxford. This was the study of why people and cultures act the way they do. While studying in college, he became acquainted with a number of other well educated African Americans. Through them he gained a new view on America’s racial problems and learned a great deal about Africa and its history. Locke and his African American college friends then founded the â€Å"African Union Society†. The goal of this group was to develop a sense of brotherhood between each other and learn about its members so they could be the future â€Å"leaders of the African Race† (Hardy 34). The members usually discussed about how people believe that blacks and Asians were inferior to whites. Locke started his career teaching English at Howard University. Later on however, he became head of the Department of Philosophy. While he was working, he had developed some other interests in other fields as well. He liked music, art, literature, political theory, and anthropology to name a few. Biography of Alain Locke :: essays research papers During the 1920's, many African Americans migrated to Harlem, New York City in search of a better life a life which would later be better than what they had in the South. This movement became known as the Harlem Renaissance. It was originally called the New Negro Movement. Black literature during this era began to prosper in Harlem. The major writers of the Harlem Renaissance were many, such as, Sterling A. Brown, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston and others. The main person, however, was a scholar named Alain Locke. Locke would later be known by many authors and artists as the â€Å"father of the Harlem renaissance.† Alain Leroy Locke was born to S. Pliny and Mary Hawkins Locke on October 13, 1886 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were both teachers. Alain Locke’s father died when he was six years old, and his mother raised him alone. â€Å"She was determined that he receive the best education† (Hardy 34). He did receive what his mother wanted. He earned a scholarship to Harvard University and in 1907, graduated magna cum laude in philosophy. That same year he became the first African American to win a Rhodes scholarship, which allowed him to continue studying in Oxford, England. He studied at Oxford from 1907 to 1910 and then went to University of Berlin from 1910-1911. Locke received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1918. Philosophy was the subject that attracted Locke the most at Oxford. This was the study of why people and cultures act the way they do. While studying in college, he became acquainted with a number of other well educated African Americans. Through them he gained a new view on America’s racial problems and learned a great deal about Africa and its history. Locke and his African American college friends then founded the â€Å"African Union Society†. The goal of this group was to develop a sense of brotherhood between each other and learn about its members so they could be the future â€Å"leaders of the African Race† (Hardy 34). The members usually discussed about how people believe that blacks and Asians were inferior to whites. Locke started his career teaching English at Howard University. Later on however, he became head of the Department of Philosophy. While he was working, he had developed some other interests in other fields as well. He liked music, art, literature, political theory, and anthropology to name a few.

Man Crazy by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates, a critically acclaimed story teller of our time, now with her new novel â€Å"Man Crazy† is ready to amaze us for the last time with her unique style of writing. Man Crazy, unlike the traditional kind of novel, will surely suite one person’s taste of thrill, suspense, and excitement. The novel showed some of the darkest side of being a woman. It is depressing in a way but will truly catch your emotion, you will be stunned, astonished, and will be surprised of new discoveries in human behaviors. The author used the main character, Ingrid Boone, to show what most women experienced in their every day life. Most part of the novel will make you uneasy, it is a collection of horrifying, sickening, and traumatic events in a women’s life. Through this unusual style of writing, the author was able to unmasked several mysteries residing in every man, especially women. Female reader will surely relate their experiences to what the main character have experienced in the novel. In our time where women are given equal rights, the novel contents are shocking in a way because it showed that women are still abused intentionally or unintentionally in our society. The story sets on the city of New York where a young and beautiful mother named Chloe Boone with her daughter Ingrid are hiding from a vet veteran Luke. Luke is Ingrid’s father who has been abusive to Chloe. Since they left Luke, Ingrid have been longing for a love of a father. Growing without a father, seeing her mother work to death as a prostitute, and living a miserable life without true friends, Ingrid have become destructive to herself to overcome her misfortune in life. She looks at her self as the ugliest person in the world that is why she do unusual things just to change her appearance. There have been too much scratching, too much picking of pimples, and other things which almost destroyed her young body. Deprived of man’s love, that what’s Ingrid is that is why she let different boys to abuse her through sex, drugs, and alcohols. Even the satanic cult has passed through her life that almost led her to her death. The cult abused her in ways hard to imagine. She has been raped, beaten, starved, and left to die. These traumatic events have led her to spend two years in rehabilitation. There, she has found the love she has been looking for. She has found it in one the psychiatrist who attended to her therapy. After her sad journey to life, Ingrid has been able to continue living and heal her broken heart. â€Å"It's the men who treat you like shit you're crazy for. For only they can tell you your punishment is just. † and â€Å"This is not the testimony I would give to the police, and at the trial. This is the secret testimony only you may know. † excerpt from the novel which clearly tells you what the author wants the reader to learn in her novel. (Muldoon) Ingrid, the main character, is the â€Å"tick†. Like the tick, Ingrid is full of insecurities; she is ugly as a tick. Like a tick, she suffers discriminations; she lives in a harsh world. Her transformation is caused by her environment. People around her as well as the events happening have caused her to become what she is. She is molded by violent and unfair world but that the same world has help her recovered and lived life as the others do. To sum up, the novel is entertaining, shocking, and worth reading. Most critique will agree that the piece showed Oates’ expertise, passion, and superb talent. It is evident in the novel how the author becomes unconventional in her own ways. She has a very deep expression on women and their experiences. The author, with her craft, has truly made an impression that novel has many faces. She took the risk of having this story be the tool to expose women’s deepest secret. This secret is hunting them but through this novel, they have the chance to face it and admit to themselves that such things really happen in life.

Analysis of “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan: DRAFT Essay

Mother Tongue is about the authors struggles with her linguistic identity, her mothers â€Å"fractured† or â€Å"broken† variation of english and the relationship with her mother. At the beginning of the piece we are told about the different types of english she would speak with her mother and with everyone else; we are then told how english wasn’t Amy’s strongest subject and later on we are told about the difficulties her mother experienced because of the way she spoke english and the prejudice she faced. In the text Tan uses a variety of stylistic devices to express herself, tans use of parallel structures is used frequently throughout the piece, for example she starts the first paragraph with the phrase â€Å"i am not a scholar of english† and the second with â€Å"i am a writer†; this contrast implies to the audience that you don’t have to know everything about english to be a writer. She also uses personification in the second paragraph when she says † language is the tool of my trade†. This might suggest that the use of language through writing is the way she expresses herself or gets her point across. She then goes onto saying † And i use them all- all the Englishes i grew up with† and in the next paragraph she says â€Å"Recently, i was made keenly aware of the different Englishes i do use.† She uses repetition in this instance to emphasize how, in her opinion, there is no right way or one way of speaking english there are different variations, in this instance the English with her mother is very different from how she speaks english to her teachers or classmates, this can refer back to the title of the text â€Å"mother tongue†. Mother tongue is usually reffered to the first language a person is taught, however i think Tans use of the word mother tongue is much more intimate in a sense that she feels that her english or her mother tongue is unique to her, and that the variation of english she speaks to her mother is her mother tongue. Moreover she also uses repition when she uses the words â€Å"broken†, â€Å"fractured† and â€Å"limited† as it is shown numerous times throughout the text, these words suggest what other people may view of her mothers english, however Tans use of an antithesis when she uses the phrase â€Å"impeccable broken english† really grasps the readers attention, as the concept of something being broken but yet impeccable is very strange. This phrase may imply that although Tans mothers english might be â€Å"limited†, but  in her opinion it does not strike her as being wrong as so many would think; she clearly states this when she says â€Å"Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mothers English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural†. Moreover She uses personification again to emphasize the variation of English she speaks when she says â€Å"the intersection of memory upon imagination†. Towards the fifth paragraph Amy uses many anecdotes or personal experiences to give the audience a bit more of an insight with the troubles she faced when she was younger with her mother and the prejudice she faced. Furthermore Amys use of dialogue throughout the text lets the audience experience her mother tongue. I think that the main purpose of this article is to show people that there is no right type of english, and that english comes in many forms therefore there should be no prejudice. She shows this by putting emphasis on the word â€Å"English† and â€Å"Englishes† throughout the text. Tan implies that many people have very narrow minded and misconceived views of people from a different culture or language background, she uses the example of her personal experience and mother to show this, for example people would take her mother seriously due to her â€Å"broken† english, as it suggests that her mother might be uneducated. However Tan also mentions how her mother â€Å"reads the Forbes repot, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker and reads all of Shirley MacLaine books with ease- all kind of things i can’t begin to understand†, most of the audience might be quite surprised with this, as it seems very unusual for a women fr om China and who has â€Å"watered-down† english to understand things of such complexity. This in itself proves Tans point of society’s misconception and generalisation of people with different language backgrounds. In this text we notice that Tan uses very simple and easy to read english, however at the same time we are able to understand the complexity of her argument. The last paragraph emphasis how Tan is more concerned about her audience rather than the approval of critics and she doesn’t need to write like a professor to get her point across. Moreover throughout the text has a pattern of using a personal experience then expanding on it.