Negative Effects Of Puritan Culture On American Society

As the sky mimics the bleakness of ash and the life below it reflects the same somber manner, the air reeks of agony, angst, and anguish. Throughout the town, people wear solemn expressions on their faces as they see their loved ones slaughtered —day after day. They are enduring a nightmare with the fear of being accused of witchcraft. They are living during the corrupt time of the Salem witch trials. Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s oil painting â€Å"The Witch Hill,† which typifies the mood described above, depicts a young woman being escorted to her execution because she has been accused of witchcraft. Looking at this work, it becomes clear that this alleged witch is a regular woman with a regular life. Her soft eyes suggest that she is innocent.†¦show more content†¦Once in the New World, John Winthrop established the Massachusetts Bay Colony (â€Å"The Puritans†). Within this self-governed colony, Puritans continued practicing such religious belief s as predestination—the idea that God has determined everyone’s fate since birth and their damnation or salvation cannot be changed (Campbell). Puritans later used this as justification for the execution of dozens of accused witches. Within this Puritan community, witch hysteria arose in 1692—the Salem Witch Trials. However, the common misconception is that many believed that the witch trials only took place in Salem. In fact, there were more people accused of witchcraft in other towns, such as Andover (Norton). In Salem, the witch crisis began when two young girls, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, suffered from uncontrollable fits and violent behavior, which led to the suspicion of that these children were under Satan’s influence (Frost-Knappman). Paris and Williams accused three women of bewitching them- Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne- who were promptly arrested (Salem Witch Trials and Executions). From there, the witch madness spread wit hin the community. Tituba, a slave, confessed to witchcraft and pointed fingers at other women in the Salem community. Full of fear, the governor of Massachusetts, William Phips demanded trials to be issued for these witchcraft cases. As aShow MoreRelatedIsolation In The Scarlet Letter1220 Words   |  5 PagesIn the 17th century, Puritan society arose in New England as one that was governed by its religious views, and thus was a deterministic one. Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates this in his novel The Scarlet Letter, in which the characters Hester, Dimmesdale, Pearl, and Chillingworth are alienated by society. 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The Pros and Cons of Capital Punishment Essay - 855 Words

The Pros and Cons of Capital Punishment Since the mid 1900’s, capital punishment has brought many individuals into many diverse view points throughout the years. Capital punishment is a way of punishing a convict by killing him or her because of the crime he or she committed. Capital punishment will always have its pros and cons. There are opponents who absolutely disagree with capital punishment. And then there are advocates who support the idea. In the advocates view point, capital punishment is a way to minimize the threat in the world today. In the opponent’s point of view, opponents disagree with capital punishment, because of the high expenses it brings to the states. Also, opponents argue that capital punishment†¦show more content†¦The opponent’s view things quite differently, they disagree with capital punishment because of the amount of money it actually takes to proceed with the procedure. They believe that it is highly expensive and such money is not necessary. They prefer to abolish the capital punishment laws within their government because not only is it too expensive but it also contradicts the government because they are killing their own citizens. California is a state that carries the capital punishment law, and California uses ninety million a year of the government and state’s money to pay for executions annually. Therefore, opponents in the states that do have the capital punishment law believe that they should spend their tax money on other projects rather than millions a year on citizens who commit horrendous crimes. Also, another reason they disagree with capital punishment is because of the innocent individuals that actually wait on death row. There are many innocent people who are consequently found guilty and are sentenced to a death penalty. Some individuals wait on death row for ten to twenty years and waste their life there. This happens to the innocent convicts either because of the lawyers they received. Many are poor and live in low income families where they cannot afford good lawyers, but receive fairly â€Å"green† lawyers. Some lawyers are even found to daze offShow MoreRelatedPros And Cons Of Capital Punishment1608 Words   |  7 Pageswhere capital punishment is legal. As of April 2016, there have been 1,431 executions in the United States, but the number of executions in recent years has been steadily decreasing (Timmons 2017). The death penalty can be put up for moral debate, and one can ask oneself whether the death penalty is ever morally permissible. There are so me pros and cons to having capital punishment. For example, deterrence and prevention are good reasons to have the death penalty, but, in reality, the cons far outweighRead MorePros And Cons Of Capital Punishment1237 Words   |  5 PagesPros and Cons of Capital Punishment INTRODUCTION Each year there are around 250 people added to death row and 35 executed. 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In some of the foreign countries they will kill people that have been given the death penalty by a firing squadRead MoreCapital Punishment Essay667 Words   |  3 PagesAdvent Catholic Encyclopedia, Capital Punishment is the infliction by due legal process of the penalty of death as a punishment for crime. Capital Punishment, also known as, the Death Penalty has been around for centuries. The first established death penalty laws dat e as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org). Not only is Capital Punishment ancient, it is highly controversialRead MoreBureau Of Justice Statistics : The United States Primary Source For Criminal Justice1439 Words   |  6 PagesCapital Punishment. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). U.S. Department of Justice. 25 Nov. 2014. Web. Web. 25 Nov. 2014. Bureau of Justice Statistics is the United States primary source for criminal justice statistics. The website has published information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government. According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, â€Å"The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is a component of the Office

Critical Discourse Analysis free essay sample

In CDA, the concept of ‘critical’ is applied to the engagement with power relations. In this sense the role of CDA is to uncloak the hidden power relations, largely constructed through language, and to demonstrate and challenge social inequities reinforced and reproduced. The term ‘discourse’ is used to talk about language in use, or the way language is used in a social context to ‘enact’ activities and identities (James Gee 1990). In terms of analysis, the critical discourse analyst’s job is not to simply read political and social ideologies onto a text but to consider the various ways in which a text could have been written and what these alternatives imply for ways of representing and understanding the world and to consider the social actions that are determined by these ways of thinking. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse that views language as a form of social practice and focuses on the ways social and political domination are reproduced in text and talk. (http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Critical_discourse_analysis) CDA regards `language as social practice and takes consideration of the context of language use to be crucial (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997; Wodak, 2000c; Benke, 2000). Huckin (1997) defines CDA as â€Å"a relatively new approach to analyzing language or texts available to the second language teacher and researcher†. For Van Dijk (1998), CDA is â€Å"a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context†. Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) argued that CDA needs to be understood as both a theory and a method that offers â€Å"not only a description and interpretation of discourses in social context but also offers an explanation of why and how discourses work†. Before engaging in CDS, it is useful to pay attention to a frequent misconception about CDA which considers CDS as a method of analysis or research. Rather, CDS is: an academic movement of a group of socially and politically committed scholars, or, more individually, a socially critical attitude of doing discourse studies. Thus, discourse analysis is NOT a method of research, but rather a (cross-) discipline. It is no more than the general academic activity of studying discourse. Such a study can be carried by a large number of different methods. Another important point needs to be mentioned here is that CDA is not yet a complete approach, so it cannot by itself produce a complete comprehensive analysis of a text. Fowler (1996) argued that: if linguistic criticism now enjoys a certain academic standing, it is not to say that it is completed as a theory of language or an instrumentality of linguistics or even half-way satisfactory. Van Dijk (1996) also claimed that â€Å"since CDA is not a specific direction of research, it does not have a unitary theoretical framework†. Dijk (1998) also argued that the ideas or tools found in CDA may be found in other disciplines and that CDA is like any analysis depends on our purposes and aims, but what is different about CDA is that â€Å"it aims to offer a different mode or perspective of theorizing, analysis and application throughout the whole field of discourse studies†. Huckin (1997) agreed with Fowler and Dijk as for him CDA is not a linguistic theory and therefore it does not provide a complete grammar of syntactic, phonological, or other linguistic elements for any particular language. Nor does it aim to describe any particular text in exhaustive detail. Instead, it tries to point out those features of a text that are most interesting from a critical perspective. Huckin (1997) also believes that there are no specific tools for doing a critical discourse analysis of a certain text or speech, rather language critics have to choose from the linguistic textbooks or the books of discourse analysis the tools that would help them to reach their critical goals. 2. 1. 3. The functions and aims of CDA: Van Dijk (1993) argued that â€Å"CDA deal primarily with the discourse dimensions of power abuse and the injustice and inequality that result from it†. He (1993) added that CDA criticize â€Å"the power elites that enact, sustain, legitimate, condone or ignore social inequality and injustice† and that CDA focuses on â€Å"real problems, that is the serious problems that threaten the lives or well-being of many†. Such a critique of discourse â€Å"implies a political critique of those responsible for its perversion in the reproduction of dominance and inequality†. He (1996) also clarified that: one of the crucial tasks of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is to account for the relationships between discourse and social power. more specifically, such an analysis should describe and explain how power abuse is enacted, reproduced or legitimized by the text and talk of dominant groups or institutions. Huckin (1997) pointed out that â€Å"the primary activity of critical discourse analysis is the close analysis of written or oral texts that are deemed to be politically or culturally influential to a given society†. Carter (1997) argued that the major aim of CDA is to â€Å"uncover the insinuation of ideology and the imposition of power into texts through uses of language which ordinarily readers of texts do not notice. † (Quoted in Farag, 2003, p. 117). CDA aims to illuminate the ways in which the dominant forces in a society construct versions of reality that favour their interests. By unmasking such practices, CDA scholars aim to support the victims of such oppression and encourage them to resist and transform their lives (Foucault, 2000). The aim of CDA is to investigate hidden power relations in a text and have an especial interest in uncovering inequalities, power relations, injustices, biases, etc. (Corson, 2000). CDA aims at investigating â€Å"the subtle ways in which unequal power relations are maintained and reproduced through language use† (Weninger 2008:145). 2. 1. 4. The main tenets of CDA: Van Dijk (2001) clarified that critical research on discourse needs to satisfy a number of requirements in order to effectively realize its aims: 1. CDA research has to be better than other research in order o be accepted. It focuses primarily on, social problems and political issues, rather than on current paradigms and fashions. 3. Empirically adequate critical analysis of social problems is usually multidisciplinary. 4. Rather than merely describe discourse structures, it tries to explain them in terms of properties of social interaction and especially social structure. 5. More specifically, CDA focuses on the ways discourse structures enact, confirm, legitimate, reproduce, or challenge relations of power and dominance in society. He (2001) mentioned that the typical vocabulary of many scholars in CDA will feature such notions as power, dominance, hegemony, ideology, class, gender, race, discrimination, interests, reproduction, institutions, social structure, and social order, besides the more familiar discourse analytical notions. He (2001) also referred to Fairclough and Wodak’s summary of the main tenets of CDA: 1. CDA addresses social problems 2. Power relations are discursive 3. Discourse constitutes society and culture 4. Discourse does ideological work 5. Discourse is historical 6. The link between text and society is mediated 7. Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory 8. Discourse is a form of social action. While Fairclough (2000) identifies three central tenets of CDA namely, ‘social structure’ (class, status, age, ethnic identity and gender); ‘culture’ (the generally accepted norms of behavior in the society); and ‘discourse’ (the words we use). The goal of CDA is to determine the relationship between these three central tenets.