Events Management_Evaluate the current level of understanding of Essay

Events Management_Evaluate the current level of understanding of Events Impact and Events Stakeholder Management and how it int - Essay Example Conversely, changing circumstances in each of the phases may require the events coordinator to re-visit previously completed duties. Stakeholders The complicated business environment compels event organisers to create relations with numerous stakeholders. These stakeholders each have their own desires, positions, and expectations, and businesses are confronted with stakeholder reputation risk if these requirements and expectations are not adequately addressed. Stakeholders can bring threats as well as opportunities for businesses. For example, if an organisation is well respected, stakeholders may give it more latitude to function. Conversely, a bad or lacklustre reputation can cause stakeholders to pass rules that make it harder for the organisation to carry out basic functions. Knowledge, reflection, and a basic comprehension of the desires of the organisation’s stakeholders and the reputation management procedures will profit any institution, in spite of its size or stature . There is no company that does not have stakeholders. The term ‘stakeholder’ refers to any individual or group that can somehow influence or is influenced by an institution’s actions, behaviour and performance. ... It is such reactions that are important. The positive reaction of consumers is crucial as it allows the institution to be able to depend on the consumers when it requires some financial assistance. The word ‘stakeholder management’ defines the execution and development of organisational strategies, along with practices that take into account the objectives of the institution’s stakeholders. Stakeholder Management also includes discussion, process generation, and relationship formation that occur between a business and its numerous stakeholders. Any of the stakeholders can negatively or positively affect a business’s reputation, and therefore require varied strategies to balance the situation. Research studies in the past have proven that there is much that institutions can do to constructively cater to the needs of stakeholders (McKercher, 2006). The supervision of, and relations with stakeholders require careful attention if a firm wishes to make the most of its chances, while diminishing any existing threats when handling their stakeholders. Research studies have shown that when a business initiates relationships with important stakeholders, it actually saves on future expenses by eliminating litigation costs, boycotts, pressure campaigns, or even lost income as a result of bad relationships. Good relations with workers also increase the probability that they will be contented with the business as well as their jobs (Jones, 2005). This makes them more likely endorse organisational practices while avoiding interferences in company policies. The assessment of relationships includes a two-way communication procedure with the outcome, whether positive or negative, affecting both

Speech Act Theory Implications For English Language English Language Essay

Speech Act Theory Implications For English Language English Language Essay Speech act theory was introduced by J.L Austin in How to Do Things with Words. Later John Searle further expanded on the theory, mostly focusing on speech acts in Speech Acts: An Essay In The Philosophy Of Language (1969) and A Classification Of Illocutionary Acts (1976). Searle further defined speech acts and categorised them. First of his five classifications were Representatives, where the speaker asserts a proposition to be true, using such verbs as affirm, believe, conclude, deny, and report. The second category is Directives, when the speaker tries to make the hearer do something, with such words as ask, beg, challenge, command, dare, invite, insist, request. The third is Commissives, where the speaker commits to an action, with verbs such as guarantee, pledge, promise, swear, vow, undertake, warrant. The next category is Expressives, where the speaker expresses an attitude to or about a state of affairs, using such verbs as apologize, appreciate, congratulate, deplore, detest, regret, thank, welcome. And the last category is Declarations, where the speaker alter the external status or condition of an object or situation, by making the utterance, for example: I now pronounce you man and wife, I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you be dead, I name this ship.and so on. (Searle, 1976 ) There have been additions to this list, however, the focus of this essay is on how meaning is communicated from the speaker to the listener(s), how it is interpreted and how they are related to TEFL. It will focus on the three types of meaning an utterance has, but it will not explain the types of speech acts in detail. According to Austin (1962) speech act is a functional unit in communication. Its an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance. (LinguaLink website) Utterances have three kinds of meaning (ibid) which are Locutionary, Illocutionary and Perlocutionary. (Schmidt, R. Richards, C. 1980, Cohen, 1996) Locutionary act is saying something with its literal meaning. (Searle, 1969) For example, in saying I am cold. the locutionary meaning is that I feel cold. Illocutionary meaning is the social function of the words or the way they are intended to be understood (Ibid). For example I am cold. may actually be a way of asking the other person to close the window. If this is the intention an Indirect Speech Act (Austin 1962 Searle 1975) had been performed because the meaning is dependent on the hearers interpretation of what has been communicated. The Perlocutionary meaning (ibid) is the effect or the aim of the utterance on the feelings, thoughts or actions. The Perlocutionary force of the utterance I am cold. could be that the listener closes the window. If it was the intended outcome from the words the perlocutionary force (result or aim) matches the illocutionary meaning (intention). This may not always be the case, which is called Perlocutionary failure (Leech, 1983: 204-5). A very c ommon example is that Could you pass the salt? (Searle, 1969) is a request rather than asking about ability (Fraser 1983: 29). Also the sentence Why are you so sensitive? is more likely to be a criticism rather than a question. (Pinner, 2008). There are a number of empirical research on practical applications of speech acts for language teaching. Bardovi-Harlig Hartford, Blum-Kulka Kasper, Olshtain Cohen, Schmidt Richards and Wolfson researched and evolved the implications of speech acts for English language teaching. The teaching of speech acts becomes more intriguing regarding cross-cultural pragmatics. The findings from a cross-cultural study by Cohen, Olshtain, and Rosenstein (1986) showed that non-native speakers (NNS) were not aware to certain sociolinguistic distinction that native speakers (NS) make, for example excuse me versus sorry or really sorry versus very sorry. One of the first studies that focused on first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers while performing speech acts was The Cross Cultural Speech Act Research Project (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper 1989). It was observing and analysing the differences of seven languages in how they use the speech act of request and apology. (1989: 11). The study looked at social distance and dominance (Wolfson, Marmor and Jones, 1989: 191). The findings revealed that the foreign speakers responses were quite different from native speakers answers and that not just low but advanced level learners can make sociolinguistic errors. Furthermore according to Boxer Pickering (1993: 56) sociolinguistic errors are gaps in etiquette or as Bachman terms in sociolinguistic competence(1990). He states that these errors are more serious than grammatical errors (Crandall Basturkmen 2004: 38) Hence explicit teaching of pragmatics would be beneficial to language learners, (Rose Kasper, 2001) because acquisition of native like production by non-native speakers may take many years even if they are in the target culture (Schmidt, 1993: 25-6). There is a divergence between the responses of native and second language speakers of English, therefore the explicit teaching of illocutionary meaning and conducting certain types of speech acts has value for s tudents (Blumka-Kulka, House, Kasper 1997, Schmidt ,1996, Bardovi-Harlig,1999). Cohen (1998: 66-7) also advocates the need for explicit teaching and notes that it does not take a long time for students to put the knowledge from speech act training into use, if the learners want to fit in and to be accepted in the target culture. Cultural contrast does not only exist between speakers of different languages. There can be also a cultural contrast when the native language of the speaker is the same but the culture is different. For example, Creese (1991) discovered differences between American and British speakers of English in dealing with compliments. Gumperz (1982) looked at variations between British-English and Indian-English speakers when performing speech acts in institutional settings. These studies have implications for TEFL and for English as a Global Language .They also introduce the limitations of appropriateness. A number of studies (e.g., Boxer Pickering, 1995; Bouton, 1994; Kasper 1997, DÃ ¶rnyei, 1997 Bardovi-Harlig, 2001) have shown that language learners with high grammatical proficiency are not always competent in pragmatic aspects of the foreign language (FL). As Boxer Pickering (1995) point out grammatically advanced learners may not know how to use appropriate language in different situations and digress from pragmatic norms of the target-language. They might directly translate speech acts from their mother tongues into the target language when they are trying to get the intended meaning across. Teachers often disregard pragmatic failures and they sometimes assign them to other causes, for example to disrespect. (p. 47) The contrast in cultural norms may reduce speech act theory being universally relevant to language, but there is a definite need for teaching them in the language classroom. Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford point out that theories related to teaching and learning are cultural and they are usually not shared when teacher and students have different backgrounds (1997: 129). Boxer and Pickering (1993:45) states that the appropriate speech behaviour depends on the rules of the societies. On the side of overtly teaching illocutionary force and meaning Schmidt (1993: 25-26) discusses the value of making learners conscious of the meanings or functions of various speech acts. He talks about consciousness perception and lists examples from his acquisition of Portuguese. He observed how to end a phone conversation. Before this observation he was not confident of what to say when finishing a phone conversation, but after he was able to make use of this new knowledge (Ibid: 29). From my own experienc e it was really useful when someone explained the different phrases to me that I should use in English, because I came across as being rude at many times without me intending to be rude or even knowing about it. It is important to make the students aware of expressions and phrases, such as Id better let you get back for saving face of both parties when closing a conversation as learners often express difficulty.(Schmidt 1993: 29).Cohen (1996: 411) also states that explicit teaching of speech acts helps learners in communicating with native speakers in real life. Widdowson (2003: 04) points out that theory and practice in ELT should not be separated. Teachers should not go into explaining the theory in details, but this does not mean the two should be separated. If learners are to be effective in acquiring a language they need to have a certain amount of sociolinguistic competence (Bachman 1990) of the learnt language or they would fail using for example English language as they will not be able to communicate their real intentions without a loss of face (Brown and Levinson, 1978). I agree with the above mentioned theories of Cohen and Schmidt that speech acts and particularly the illocutionary meaning behind them can help language learners in becoming more skilled speakers and avoid them from losing face. I also think that it is important to give the student a chance to make some observations and come to their own conclusions, without telling them what is right or wrong. As Ellis (1998) states let the student be the researcher. This way the students learn to make their own decision based on their own observations of what is appropriate. McConachy (2007) analysed the dialogues which contain speech acts in several English language course books. For example, dialogues which present the speech act of suggestions, but without any contextual information. He suggests that the teacher need to add to these the dialogues by asking questions about the speakers relationship to one and other and asking students to guess any illocutionary information. This asks the students to make their own judgement on the situation and it makes them aware of illocutionary meaning. It seems that speech acts are finding their way into classroom materials (Bardovi-Harlig MayhanTaylor, 2003), but there is still a lot that teachers need to add to make them more comprehensible. At first teaching speech acts it is important to determine the students level of awareness in general by eliciting. Dialogues are useful to show student how speech acts are used, also the evaluation of a situation is a good technique to reinforce the awareness of the learners. Activities such as role plays are good for practicing speech acts. At the end feedback and discussion are useful so students can tell their understanding. Again the idea is to encourage the learner as researcher (Ellis, Bardovi-Harlig et al, 1989) approach and assist students to make their own observations. The most practical implication of speech act theory in teaching is the idea that the literal meaning of the words might not agree with the intended meaning. As I understand speech acts focus on communicative intentions in a language. It is useful for language learners to teach them, because they provide an insight into the study of language as it is used in a social context, and also because they can be applied when learners need to discuss different meanings in a certain context. Bardovi-Harlig Hartford (1997: 114) report that the difference between speech acts and language functions is not always recognised in language teaching, and that the two have a distinct difference. This point might be argued because the study of speech acts comes from the idea that communication is a performance of certain acts, such as making statements, thanking, asking questions, apologizing, complaining and so on (Blum-Kulka, House Kasper 1989: 2). These are functions within a language, which means that speech act theory is about teaching functional units of language with the aim of an understanding of possible illocutionary meaning present. Materials do not always follow this, however there is a progression towards presenting speech acts with contextual information. Teachers need to simplify the speech acts and the sociolinguistic norms around them by breaking them down into easy terms, so the language learners can use them. Although this does not mean it should be separated from the theory. The best way to teach speech acts might be to make students more aware of pragmatic variables and to give them enough information to be able to make their own observations. This allows learners to work out themselves the best way to perform a speech act in any given situation.

War of 1812 Essay -- essays research papers

The War of 1812 American frigates won a series of single-ship engagements with British frigates, and American privateers continually hurried British shipping. The captains and crew of the frigates constitution and United States became renowned throughout America. Meanwhile, the British gradually tightened a blockade around America's coasts, ruining American trade, threatening American finances, and exposing the entire coastline to British attack. U.S. forces were not ready for war, and American hopes of conquering Canada collapsed in the campaigns of 1812 and 1813. The initial plan called for a three-pronged offensive: from Lake Champlain to Montreal; across the Niagara frontier: and into Upper Canada from Detroit. The attacks were uncoordinated, however, and all failed. In the West, General William Hull surrendered Detroit to the British in August 1812 and on the Niagara front, American troops lost the Battle of Queenston Heights in October. Also along Lake Champlain, the American forces withdrew in late November without seriously engaging the enemy. There was a standoff at Niagara, and an elaborate attempt to attack Montreal by a combined operation involving one force advancing along Lake Champlain and another sailing down the Saint Lawrence River from Lake Ontario. That operation failed at the end of the year. The only success was in the West. The Americans won control of the Detroit frontier region when Oliver Hazard Perry’s ships destroyed the British fleet on Lake Er...

Big five Personality Traits and Effective Leaders Essay

Q.1) What do you think Terry Leahy’s personality traits are for each of the Big Five dimensions of personality? Identify and justify with reference to the case. Q.2) Considering the 9 narrow personality traits required of effective leaders, how would you rate Terry Leahy on all these 9 narrow traits (i-e which ones he rate high, medium and low)? Why? Justify? Q.3) The first weakness he mentioned was his â€Å"Irish Temper†. Explain and justify whether Terry Leahy has a bad temper or not. Q.4) Is Terry Leahy really modest. How do you remain that modest in spite of the success and the accolades? Does this man have no Ego? Q.5) What type of Self concept does Terry Leahy have and how does it affect his business success? Does Terry Leahy posses a theory X or theory Y attitude? Q.6) According to McClelland’s Achievement motivation theory, which of three needs Terry Leahy rates high, medium and low on? Justify. Q.7) According to the 3M Leadership competency framework there are 12 competencies required of effective leaders (i-e 1) Ethics and Integrity 2) Intellectual Capacity 3) Maturity and Judgment 4) Customer Orientation 5) Developing People 6) Inspiring People 7) Business health and results 8) Global Perspective 9) Vision and Strategy 10) Nurturing Innovation 11) Building Partnerships and Alliances 12) Organizational Agility). Considering the above 12 competencies for effective leaders which ones Terry Leahy good at and which ones he is less good at and Why? Q.8) Effective Leaders need to have skills and take actions on three different fronts i-e as strategists, as architects and as mobilizers (both internally and externally). Working through the case how would define Terry Leahy’s role as a strategist, as an architect and as a mobilizer. Q.9) What evidence is there that Terry Leahy’s leadership has evolved over time? How has he developed his career? Q.10) Identify some of challenges (or dangers) facing Terry Leahy today and in coming years.

Heroun and the Sea of Stories

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a magical realism novel in which elements of Salman Rushdie’s imagination are put together to demonstrate the importance and significance of storytelling. Through the story, Rushdie conveys to the reader what his notion of good story elements are. One of these elements is a story’s ability to possess antithetical relationships. Haroun and the Sea of Stories contains many symbols alluding to the value of complementary elements of a story; these symbols also being a representation of these values in life.One of the initial contrasts we encounter is in Rashid Khalifa’s two titles. Those who are opposed to his story telling have bestowed upon him the name, â€Å"The Shah of Blah. † The others, who enjoy Rashid’s stories, refer to him as â€Å"The Ocean of Notions. † (13) The less flattering of the two titles denotes disdain for Rashid because of the belief that he is a man who is a source of useless tales and endl ess revelry in his storytelling. The latter brings forth connotations of admiration of boundless imagination and creativity.Such dissimilarities are bound to occur with a man of Rashid’s interest. These titles are fairy different, but they complement each other in a certain way that makes Rashid’s character slightly more complex. If he was a character who was met with universal respect or contempt, then he would not be as dynamic, ergo less interesting. Another major aspect of the story that demonstrates this notion is the relationship between the Chupwalas and the Guppies.In the beginning each group had its own way of living, which they believed to be the most respectable. Then on page 191, after Khattam-Shud has been defeated the Guppies and the Chupwalas live together in a peace where â€Å"Night and Day, Speech and Silence, would no longer be separated into zones by Twilight Strips and Walls of Force. † Prior to this, each group was a sovereign entity, keepi ng to their traditions without much success. Then, when the barriers were broken, they were able to appreciate each other’s corresponding differences.The light and dark as well as the silence and the speech accompanied each other and made for a more vibrant society. Through examples like these, Salman Rushdie was able to portray the value of antithetical elements in stories. His examples showed that opposing ideas can fuse sometimes and create a more diverse concept. Rashid’s names showed that he was a very imaginative story teller, but sometimes he was not aware of how people could view his perception of reality and this creates a multifaceted character in which people can show more interest.The relationship between the guppies and the chupwalas was an illustration of the harmonization of two juxtaposing concepts and how different ideologies come together to create a much more fascinating society. All of these models can be carried over to the world of storytelling, w here the story is much more entertaining when there is a slew of events that are totally different in occurrence and tone, but these events make for great amusement.