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.