POSTMODERNISM IS EVERYWHERE (B Ed 1st Year Compulsory English)

POSTMODERNISM IS EVERYWHERE 

            The term postmodernism has been widely used for three decades. It started as an academic category related to certain developments in arts but immediately the term spread to show all sorts, shifts and changes in contemporary society and culture. By the mid-1980s, the term postmodernism had fully blossomed extensively in most of areas such as architecture, politic, literature, etc. Nowadays, it is not taken as a new concept. It has been included in humanities courses in the Western world. And it has been found to be the part of everyday speech all over the world.

            Some major points belonging to postmodernism are given below.

1.       Multiplying meanings: postmodernism is not, strictly speaking, a school of thought. It is not a unified intellectual movement with a define goal or perspective. It does not have a single dominant theoretician. The ideas about postmodernism have been taken from every discipline. Each area has its own term. Postmodernism has been increased. The meaning of post modernism in one discipline may be different from its meaning in other discipline. The concept of postmodernism has been complicated because there are multiple postmodernisms in existence. It is also a controversial subject in academic books. It has developed, ironically, a popular culture. Nowadays it has substantially contributed to a range of social and cultural transformations.it is hard to get to its bottom.

2.       A flexible term: postmodernism is a very flexible term. Perhaps three is a little truth in it. postmodernism can be:

i    an actual state of affairs in society.

ii.  the set of ideas which tries to define or explain this state of affairs.

iii. an artistic style, or an approach to the making of things.

iv. a word used in different contexts to cover many different aspects of all the above.     

            In addition to the above-written ways of thinking about postmodernism, there can be others, too. Postmodernism is the set of concepts and debates about postmodernism itself.

3.      New times: Although postmodernism is greatly flexible, it is not meaningless. It has the connotations of obscurity(insignificance)and elitism connected to so-called intellectual origin.

There are multiple themes of postmodernism in the new times. Some of them are.

i.                    Present society, culture and life style are different from the past ones.

ii.                  The themes are concerned with concrete subjects like the development in mass media, the consumer society and information technology.

iii.                The development of these concrete subjects have an impact on our understanding of more abstract matters such as meaning identity and reality.

iv.                 These themes claim that old styles of analysis are no longer useful. Therefore, new approaches and new vocabularies need to be created in order to understand the present.

Summary in English

            The essay 'Arriving at shared Ground Through difference' written by Daphne Marlatt shows a form of colonism at work within the family. The writer was taught the king's English to behave and speak properly although she was exposed to other language there. At that time, she was a white colonial child there. She was troded, scolded and ignored by others who spoke the Cantonese, Malay and Thai language. She wanted to understand their laughter, jokes, calls, exclamation, comfort and humming. She found that her English and her Amahs' (mother-substitutes') English were different although they understood each other. She realized that she grew up in loving the emotive sound of women's voices i.e Amah voices. But their experience was not considered crucial although they were devoted to take care of their Mem's children.

            The writer found differences between her English and her mother's English which had many intensifiers (e.g very, terribly, awfully, completely, etc.) emphatic sentence pitches and rising tones. She was taught to speak correctly but couldn't and felt embarrassed. She felt that the words she learnt there sounded funny in her mouth as if she were trying to speak counterfeit (false/fake) words. She realized that there was now a whole new level of her own vocabulary which sounded strange on the street. she had a long battle with her mother was trying to correct the daughter's the purity/accuracy of the origin but the daughter was correcting the mother's for common usage. Thus, they focused on two different versions (e.g formal and common usage forms) of the same language. Words were very seriously taken in her house because they were the weapons of their struggle on language. The writer thought that children are directly influenced by their mother's language but she found it different there. Her mother's words, her very style of speaking derided her own children. The writer's English was Canadianized. She denied her mother's English. Therefore, the mother withdrew into chronic depression and hypochondria. Thus, the writer finds a form of colonialism at work within the family.