Name: Heema Batool

F. Name : M younus
Sub : Linguistics
Assignment: 02
Assigned to: Mam
Qurratulain Raza
Date: 7 January
When I first took on English as my major, I hadn't thought much about what I wanted to learn
from the class. I simply chose the subject because I thought the language itself was interesting
but since then, I have come to learn so much about not just the language but about the world I
live in as well.

In our linguistics course, our teacher Miss Qurat ul Ain, taught us about what language means.
She taught us that language isn't just a form of verbal communication, but a form of art that
goes unnoticed by most.

Soon after I started learning the course, I noticed that my perception of things has been
changing. Things I would never think twice about, were now looking more and more
dimensional.

I started to figure out things from simple conversations. Things that I would never have figured
out if the logic and patterns behind simple words and sentences, that I had learned from my
linguistics classes, hadn't been taught to me.

There was an assignment that we did that really put things into perspective for me. The goal of
the assignment was to observe what language around us can tell us about the person
writing/speaking it. I noticed blatant language imperialism in our everyday lives thanks to that
assignment.

Linguistics told me a lot about power dynamics in language and communication. I am now
acutely aware of when someone’s intention is to undermine and when someone is being
genuine. It has made life a lot more interesting.

Knowing these little details just from a simple conversation is fascinating to me. Bonus points for
it because it makes people freak out often and that's always entertaining.

My favorite hobby recently has been watching mystery movies and analyzing language and
behavior patterns of the characters and actors. Noticing little tone changes and the use of
certain words and how those little things indicate that character’s future actions. Another fun
thing to notice in movies is how other people's words and tone can dictate the character's
actions.

For example, let me tell you about a novel I was reading recently. A character, let's call him
Ying, was adopted into a martial arts clan by the leader of the clan. The leader treated him
kindly due to a debt owed to Ying's mother. His wife however, saw that kindness as a sign of
adultery and treated Ying harshly like a servant.

One could see the effect that the harsh behavior had on Ying as he got older. He would think
that all the insults hurled at him by the wife and even by other people were all deserved. He
thought that he really was a bastard, even though he was actually the kindest soul one could
find. This treatment became a psychological shadow for him, to the point that he sacrificed
himself in order to save the leader's child because he thought that he owed them that.

While the ending was sad, it was still very interesting for me as I observed how certain insults
dictated his behavior in the future. Like ‘thief’ which was said by the wife when Ying was trying
to sneakily eat food from the kitchen after he was intentionally starved for two days.

This simple insult followed him all the way until he was able to rely on his own self. If everyone
was eating together, he would not touch the food until explicitly given permission so that no one
would think that he was stealing it.

These little details were not highlighted in the novel because Ying was just a side character and
his story was told only after his death. It was after I recently reread it that I noticed these details
in his behavior and it made the entire novel even more interesting for me.

For me, linguistics was a very interesting experience. It has changed my perspective on a lot of
things and I'm sure this experience will continue to accompany me in the future. It is things like
these that really make me enjoy learning new things and I hope will get to have a lot more
experiences like this in the future as well.