EL1101E The Nature of Language Individual Essay Guidelines Semester 1, AY2025/2026, Singapore

Assignment brief

The objectives of this assignment are:

a. to help you realize that you are surrounded by interesting linguistic data, and that you can make sense of these data using the concepts and tools discussed in class;

b. to provide you with an opportunity to discuss language issues in a more informed and sophisticated manner than someone who has not taken a linguistics class (but yet think they know a lot about language by virtue of speaking one – they exist everywhere).

Instructions 

a. Find some original data and discuss the data from the perspective of what we have learnt about semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, or ethnolinguistics, or a combination of these perspectives.

• For example, you may find some spoken or written data (e.g. advertisements, Internet memes, cartoons, YouTube/TikTok clips, personal text messages/anecdotes/reflections, MRT announcements, public signages) with some interesting linguistic property that you think can be discussed through the lenses of the topics listed above.
• Or, you may choose to respond to a media article or opinion piece discussing some property of language related to one or more of the topics listed above. In this case, the article/opinion piece will constitute your data.
• Regardless of your chosen data, you should make sure to relate your discussion to concepts covered in semantics/pragmatics/sociolinguistics/ethnolinguistics. You may bring in related concepts from the other topics covered in class, but your focus should be on (at least) one of these four topics.
• Your discussion should be no more than 1000 words. If you find that your discussion of one example is too brief, you may bring in (an)other related example(s) for discussion – e.g. relevant to the same linguistic concept, or related to the same type of real-world phenomenon (e.g. bilingualism, COVID-19, Singlish, Chinese privilege, gender, sexuality, discrimination, etc.) – and perhaps compare/contrast the examples. You should not discuss completely unrelated examples, and you should make the connections/relationship between your examples clear, i.e. your essay should be coherent.
• Your discussion should not be a mere technical analysis of the linguistic properties of your data, but should incorporate your insights/reflections on the effects of the linguistics properties you identified.
• Relatedly, an essay needs to have a thesis/central point that you want to make. It is entirely up to you to decide what you think is an interesting point to make.
• Your examples need not come from English, but if you use examples from another language, be sure to provide adequate translation and explanation for an English audience.

b. You are not required to do library research, but if you do refer to external sources, be sure to cite them properly and include a list of references (any style of referencing is fine).

c. If you use AI for this assignment, please make sure you identify the following:

• sections that were generated directly by AI
• sections that you paraphrased based on the output of AI, as well as – sections that you wrote based on ideas generated by AI.

• d. Any student found to have submitted work generated by AI but failed to acknowledge their use of AI will be considered to have plagiarized. Such a student has committed academic dishonesty in misrepresenting the nature and source of their work.

e. Students found guilty of plagiarism (AI-related or otherwise) will receive an ‘F’ grade for the entire course.

f. Feel free to contact me if you require further clarifications on the assignment.

Assessment criteria 

a. Richness and relevance of discussion

• How rich and interesting is the discussion?
• Did you relate your discussion to one of the relevant topics, and in a sensible way?
• How relevant is the example to the concepts discussed?
• If more than one example is presented, are the examples related in some way?

b. Originality of selected data and discussion

• Are you reusing an example that had already been discussed in class?
• Are you using an example that can be easily found in the literature or that has been discussed extensively on the Internet (without making any original contribution)? – Proper citation of sources (when used).

c. Clarity and coherence of exposition

• How easy/difficult is it to follow your discussion?
• Are the connections between different parts of your discussion clear?

Submission 

Any violation of the following will lead to penalties.  •          Deadline: Nov 16, 2025, Sunday, 23:59

• This is already the latest possible date for submission, i.e. no extensions will be granted.

Online submission on Canvas (Assignments).

Formatting;

• Any reasonably-sized font, double-spaced, 1inch/2.54cm margin all around.
• Please include a cover page with the following information: your name, your tutorial group, word count (main text only, excluding data and any tables/figures/captions/headings).
• You should include your data (or a link to your data) together with your write-up. You may put your data in an appendix.
• Submit your file as a PDF with your tutorial group and name as the file name, e.g. TW1_Leslie_Lee.pdf.