One really wonders if such language and tone is called for. It would be stupid for any Singapore agency or the NTU to advocate the learning of dialects, which must be at the expense of English and Mandarin. Many Singaporeans are now fluent in both English and Mandarin. In the letter, the Press Sec not only defended the government’s policy to eliminate dialects but also wrote: Lo and behold, today we have a letter from MM Lee’s Press Secretary to the Straits Times Forum Page (7 March 09). As an academic in an academic symposium, she was making an empirical observation. To my knowledge, she did not advocate Singaporeans re-learning them, nor did she urge schools to teach them. We’re losing the ability to speak dialects. Today, returning for reservist training, I only hear Mandarin, even among the eighteen year old Bengs and Sengs.ĭr Ng has a point. I remember doing NS years ago and the working class language was Hokkien. Well not so much dying off since they are spoken in different parts of the world but to all intent and purpose, dead among young Singaporeans. As world languages homogenize into a select few – English (the West and Asia), Mandarin (Asia), French (parts of Europe and Africa) and Spanish (America and Latin America) – many dialects are rolling off our tongues for the last time.Īnd so too with local ones like Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka or Teochew. Anyone who has a passing familiarity with linguistics can tell you that the estimated 6500 languages in the world are decreasing with each passing generation. She even ventured that it only took one generation for a language to die out. An undeniable fact.ĭr Ng also noted that languages die off quickly when people don’t use them again something pretty obvious. At the Symposium, Dr Ng Bee Chin – head of the Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies – observed that young children are not speaking dialects anymore. The Nanyang Technological University hosted a Language and Diversity Symposium yesterday. “Montero” is a medievalism informed by Black Theology and queer activism to present a queer Black power bottom offering salvation from destructive social structures.We’re destined to be a very mediocre people. Then, compared to medieval constructions of sodomy in Peter Damian’s Liber Gomorrhianus (The Book of Gomorrah) and the Pearl Poet’s Cleanness, “Montero” is identified as a liberatory text that challenges both sexual norms and pervasive ideologies that limit the spiritual and intellectual freedoms of people of color in Western Christian traditions. Beginning with a close reading, I analyze sexual power dynamics in the song lyrics, then the music video, before explaining how these two modes complement a narrative about sexual liberation from shame, particularly regarding the receptive male partner in sodomitic relationships. Lil Nas X’s texts, the lyrics plus the video, empower power bottoms, and in doing so, Lil Nas X defies a long tradition of shaming the receptive male partner-a shame that is rooted in medieval ideologies. I argue that the protagonist of Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” assumes the role of a power bottom for the purpose of delivering audiences who identify with the power-bottom role from shame, which is personified by Satan in the music video.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |