Middle Ages Literature Essay

The Middle Ages had many interesting characteristics concerning the literature of that time period. The important literary works â€Å"incorporated elements and values drawn from different and conflicting traditions (Patterson 1143). For every opinion, there was another opinion to counter it. Many of the pieces of literature at this time had contradictory ideas in them or had competing interests (Patterson 1144). The literature of this time shows us that â€Å"many people took the central doctrine of Christianity so much for granted that their daily lives seem largely untroubled by the moral and spiritual demands of religion† (Patterson 1144). Another characteristic of the literature was that it alerts us to the â€Å"complexities and dilemmas that any faith poses† (Patterson 1144). The Middle Ages is also called the â€Å"age of chivalry† (Patterson 1144). The literature mainly â€Å"expresses the values of the most powerful members of society, the aristocracy† (Patterson 1144). The aristocracy achieved their power through â€Å"military might† (Patterson 1144). There was also an â€Å"explicit code of chivalry† (Patterson 1145). The values were â€Å"never entirely consistent with each other† (Patterson 1145). Characters of literature had to choose whether to be a lover or a warrior (Patterson 1145). The main concerns of the literature were â€Å"the demands of religious faith and appropriate use of physical force, and the individual human being working out his or her individual destiny† (Patterson 1145). The literature during this time contributed to a list of vivid characters to the world of literature (Patterson 1145). Writers created unforgettable, complex literary characters to deal with the themes (Patterson 1145). The Middle Ages contrasted to the Renaissance because the Renaissance’s characters had â€Å"greater autonomy and fully realized personalities† (James 1883). The Renaissance’s literature did not judge â€Å"human action by right and wrong but by beauty, memorability, and effectiveness† (James 1886). During the Renaissance, the presence of God was much less dominating (James 1887). Medieval men and women were more concerned with the afterlife, while in the Renaissance they had a preoccupation with this life (James 1886). The Canterbury Tales fits into the Middle Ages well with some characteristics and not quite as well concerning others. For example, the Pardoner in The Canterbury Tales preaches the word of God on a daily basis, yet he is morally corrupt in his everyday life (Chaucer 1759). He preaches of greed, yet is greedy himself (Chaucer 1759). The Pardoner steals from the church, as well as innocent people (Chaucer 1758). Chaucer showed us that people took the doctrine of the church for granted. Other characters in The Canterbury Tales spoke of God and were Christians, yet didn’t bother with feeling morally obligated to act right. The dilemmas of being a Christian in real-life are seen. Some of the characters are Christian but it is more complex and takes an effort to be a Christian. The Canterbury Tales didn’t seem to have contradictory themes necessarily. Chaucer makes his views of various social ranks known through a use of satire. The characters themselves are contradictory, as we see with the Pardoner once again (Chaucer 1758). Since Chaucer has every type of social rank represented, we see his view of these ranks, which does contradict some of the jobs or moral obligations of various people. The characters in the story itself did compete for various interests. They all held different values or beliefs about the world. Chaucer lived during this time period, so it is in a way a more realistic view rather than contradictory. The explicit code of chivalry isn’t necessarily a large component of The Canterbury Tales except for perhaps the Knight and his tale. Chaucer shows that some people were focused on the chivalry act during this time. The Canterbury Tales doesn’t focus on pleasing the aristocracy either. Chaucer wrote from the perspective of every social rank so his book was meant for the poor and rich. Its subject matter was meant to be appealing to all Medieval people. The final characteristic that The Canterbury Tales does follow is the well developed characters. Chaucer had a whole list of realistic, complex characters. These characters could rival the Renaissance’s characters to me. I enjoyed reading about the characters and reading even more of The Canterbury Tales online. The Canterbury Tales fits well with the characteristics of the Middle Ages for the most part. The individual characters do have an individual goal in mind. Chaucer seemed as if he cared about his characters and wanted readers to his get to know them on an individual level, which seems more ahead of his time.

The Mega Manufacturing

Mega Manufacturing is a manufacturer of sports shoes for men and women. They are investigating each department in order to cut back on spending in order to eliminate wastes of resources. One potential waste is coming from the cutting department. The waste of material is costing the company monitory resources that could further benefit the company if allocated elsewhere. Several solutions have been discovered with the cutting process but if the problem were to be solve d there is both a salary saving and the elimination of waste, in this particular department. However the solution lies with the employees of this department and the solution will cost some of them their jobs. The variables effecting the disclosure of this information vary from one's need for monitory income, to the esteem of the position. Management is facing several possible decisions that include employee employment assurance to cost savings and company bottom line figures. Their decisions are founded on management decisions, employee motivations and resistance to innovations and the notion of getting these resistant employees to adopt the innovations. First, the management decisions regarding the cutting process and the problems that are associated with them. The notion that the skilled workers of the cutting department are aware of a solution to the problem with the breaking dies indicates that there is a solution to the problem. On the standpoint of the company, investigation into the proper use and successful completion of the cut using the die needs to be resolved. The die eliminates wastage and will speed up productivity of the cutting process. It will also make the individual machine operator more efficient which will conclude with the elimination of several positions may allocated more resources previously spent on employee salaries. This cost savings will free up allocations previously spent on overhead and allocated to other departments that may increase spending in order to increase sales, or add more to the stockholders bottom line. As a machine operator aware of this notion that relinquishing this information could cost him/her their job, there needs to be some cause for hesitation. The workers are paid on an hourly base so the increase of efficiency will also allow management the ability to cut hours, which will also hurt the workers. If faced with this dilemma I would have to first find out if the solution the breaking dies were legit. Because of the two-month time delay in the manufacturing of the dies I also have to worry about the productivity of the department on the half of the workers if future layoffs were in sight. I would also have to know if the cost savings would be passed on the consumer and how these variables will effect sales. If demand for the product were to increase there may be no need for lay offs. However if there was a need to make cuts in the workforce there would be need to evaluate each individual on the grounds of seniority and skill level to insure proper staffing of the department and explore options of moving personal to other departments. So my conclusion to the dilemma facing this question has to many variables but I have explored decisions with regards to time and company proposals of use of the freed resources. There are two motivating factors that our cutters face in the dilemma with regards to the die cutting information they include the following: Maslows Hierarchy of Needs, and Herzberg's Two- factor Theory. First, Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. The worker is at a job that provides substance for himself and possibly a family. The information and innovation that the die implantation brings may disrupt his/her ability to provide so without so assurance of the continued employment and income potential; the worker will not relinquish the information needed for successful inauguration of the die cutting process. However, if that assurance were provide their would be increased productivity in the department and successful integration of the project will fill Maslows notion that people thrive for accomplishment, and the efficiency of the department will bring this idea to reality. There may also be negative connotations that may be brought about As well. If there were that worker who was fearful for their job might relinquish this vital information to management for assured employment, this also demonstrates Maslows basic survival needs theory. Second is Herzbergs two-factor theory, called dissatisfies or hygiene factors. They include such notions of working condition, benefits recognition and possible promotional opportunities. The employee is unwilling to do anything that may jeopardize their livelihood. Implication of this process will result in lay offs that may damage this security. This will also pose a threat to the workers acceptance among peers. If layoffs are inevitable there may develop groups within the department of loyal skilled labors who pose a greater chance of employment after the downsizing. This is a possible threat even if the project is just in consideration, which may impose productivity problems while implication is in the process, and future problems if the project is discarded due to the already imposed loyalty among the divided department. There is also the factor if employees resistance to change with the implication of the new cutting process. There are several factors of habit, security, economic factors, fear of the unknown and lastly selective information processing that influence these factors of resistance. Employees develop habits in the work place that become routine and habitual and allow the worker to become part of the department and allow the worker develop routines that increase productivity. Security issues factor in the employee's unwillingness to change, in fear of loosing their jobs. Economic factors develop when the worker fears that change will lower their income, tying into the security concerns. Fear of the unknown indicates that humans are unwilling to change when the ends of the means is unknown. Selective information processing is the individual perception of the relevance of the change. If the individual feels that the change is unnecessary they are reluctant to change.

Research Paper on the Language Used to Talk About Sex.

Mitigating the Discomforts of Sexuality How do women talk about sex? This is the question that drives the heart of this research. In the proposed ethnographic research, I will investigate the linguistic tools that women use to mitigate the discomfort in talking about sex. The selected field of study is a passion party, in which a group of friends and family members gather at a private residence with the explicit purpose to learn and talk about sex. A passion party consultant is invited to demonstrate sexual products, sell the products to the guests, and stimulate talk.Nevertheless, with the foremost purpose to educate women about sex. Passion parties are often part of a bacholorette party. Therefore, the data that I will later analyzed is derived from a friend’s bacholorette passion party and video recordings posted online. Subsequently, the data will be analyzed with a focus on the linguistic semiotic process that index sexuality and the linguistic construction of humor that serve to alleviate embarrassment of talking about sex among women and overcome linguistic ideologies of female sexuality.First, lets explore the linguistic inequalities that exist in gender which provide the building blocks of the construction of the linguistic ideology that places female sex talk as a taboo subject. â€Å"At the heart of language and social inequality is the idea that some expressions of language are valued more than others in a way that is associated with some people being more valued than others and some ideas expressed by people through language being more valued than others (Philips, 474). † Susan U.Philips argues that social and language inequality is the outcome of the ideologies that value features of language and society over others, in which the people with the dominant feature or trait is valued more than others and thus the ideas of the less valued individuals are suppressed through the suppression of their forms of speech. Furthermore, Philips st ates women are often placed in linguistic ideologies like the idea that women‘s language is perceived powerless compare to the male counterpart which indexes them as the marked gender .I will expand her argument by stating that American Culture has a linguistic ideology that places female sex talk as a taboo subject and suppresses forms of speech in which women communicate about sex. As described by Phillips, women frequently speak freely in the privacy of their own home, but sometimes there is denial of complete access of the public sphere through a silencing process. For instance, as illustrated by Philips in the Tonga culture women are not allowed to participate in political and authoritative decisions and therefore their opinions are silenced. I will further expand Philips argument by applying it to American culture.In which, the ideology of no sex talk limit women to the private spheres to talk about sex and in the public sphere women are not supposed to talk about sex, e xplicitly sexual experience and experimentation. Second, I will investigate further how the linguistic ideology of no-sex talk develops in young adults specifically young women and subsequently into adulthood. According to West, sex education is salient in the development of the youth, but the subjects most ignored because of their taboo content are masturbation, pleasure, wet dreams, and other explicit sexual experiences.She argues that sex education in school is limited to reproduction and abstinence that warns students in particularly females about the risk of having sex and often in the public environment men are encourage to have sex while young women are warned of the consequences. Furthermore, West states that legal rights that give the right to parents to withdraw their children from sex education illustrates how sex education in youth is not universally accepted.West’s argument functions as the backbone to my argument that of the construction of the language ideology in American culture in which women are not supposed to talk about sex, because women are proscribed from having and talking about sex. Finally, humor is used to mitigate the discomfort when women talk about sex. According to Norrick, humor can be used to overcome taboo subjects. Furthermore, he illustrates that irony flaunts Grice’s maxims and â€Å"irony can elicit laughter, disrupt conversations and lead to further joking (Norrick, 233). I argue that women can use techniques that flaunt Grice’s maxims like irony that save face and then triggers humorous language that can be framed with linguistic semiotic features such as intonation and embodied communication. Additionally, I will argue that women utilized this linguistic tool when confronted with sex talk as a form of coping mechanism. In the following data I will illustrate my argument that states that in American Culture the linguistic ideology that places female sex talk as a taboo subject suppresses forms of s peech in which women communicate about sex.For instance, women form private spheres like a passion parties to explicitly explore sexuality and in these spheres women use specific language that mitigate the discomfort of sex talk. For instance, the following data illustrates the usage of indexicality to alleviate discomfort. (1) While bride maid’s mother eats a chocolate covered banana 1 G: Hey(. )Your mother likes to SWALLOW? ((pointing towards the BM)) 2 FB : Mother ((puts her hands over her eyes)) 3 BM: What (. I love^ chocolate covered b-a-nanas ((then takes a big bite out of the banana everyone laughs)) [G: guess, FB: future bride, BM: bride’s mother] During this conversation, the reference to chocolate covered bananas indexes sexuality based on its pragmatic context rather then referring to an actual chocolate covered banana. Although the banana is part of the discourse during the conversation, the banana is used as the mediator to facilitate communication of a se xual reference. Furthermore, the semantic meaning on the utterance is dependent upon the pragmatics of the context.The following examples further exemplifies indexicality as a form of mitigating sex talk. (2) Party consultant rubbing lotion upon the forearm of a guess 4 PC: Its Good to eat (. ) Rub on it and lick it? 5 G : Hmm then its good with eggs and SAUSAGE [G: guess, PC: party consultant] As the party consultant rubs an eatable lotion upon the forearm of the guess, in line 5 the guess responds with a reference to eggs and sausage. Like I mention previously, the semantic meaning of the utterance is dependent on the context.Therefore, the eggs and sausage are do not index actual food, but it indexes a sexual reference. Like Ochs illustrates in â€Å"Indexing Gender†, Indexes have constitutive property in which there is an indirect index and an direct index to social reference that comes from linguistic features. For instance, the direct index of eggs and sausage in line 5 is the actual food and the indirect index would be the sexual reference. This is a very ingenious way in which women play with linguistic tools to facilitate the discourse of sex talk.In addition, it can be seen as a linguistic limitation in which women feel the need to facilitate conversation using indexes rather than directly conveying sexual references. The linguistic construction of humor is a linguistic tool women use to alleviate embarrassment of talking about sex among women and overcome linguistic ideologies of female sexuality. Furthermore, humor is a methodology in which women’s sexual expression is bound by linguistic ideology in the United States that prevents women to sexually express themselves freely.The following data would look at the framework of humor and the way in which is linguistically constructed by flaunting Grice’s maxims. The following data was extracted from an online video taped data. (3) Party consultant rubbing lotion upon the forearm of the guess 6 PC: Its very [moisturizing 7 GM: I got one] in every room? ((sarcasm)) 8 PC: Ohh (. ) Dats So GOOD? ((explosion of laughter)) 9 GM: (2) soo I think it would of helped a lot 10 GM: ? maybe not in my marriage but with a boyfriend or somthn? 11 GD: Grand MAMA? ((explosion of laughter)) 12 GM: I know? ((smiling but slightly irritated)) PC: party consultant, GM: grand mother, GD: grand daughter] The above data reflects my argument that women can use techniques that flaunt Grice’s maxims to save face and then triggers humorous language that can be framed with linguistic semiotic features such as intonation and embodied communication. In line 7, the grand mother cuts off to the party consultant with a sarcastic response. â€Å"I got one in every room†. This exemplifies how Grice’s Maxim of Manner is flaunted by the grandmother because she is purposely disobeying and creating obscurity of expression with sarcasm.This violation of the maxim triggers a humor which in turn triggers further humor. The humorous utterances are framed with intonation that accents humor lines like Grand MAMA and high pitch on the end of senses. Embodied communication accents humor in which silly facial expression and gestures that index sexual references. For instance, In line 11 the grand daughter hears her grandmother speak so explicitly about sex that triggers her to respond with wide eyes that express shock which contradict her smiling face.Although the grand daughter is shock by her grandmother’s comment, she accepts it because it was put in a humorous context. Therefore, humor is a linguistic tool that women specifically can used to linguistically express sexually by mitigating the discomfort that comes with sex talk. How do women talk about sex? This is the proposed question that drives the heart of this research. Attempting to answer the question, I have argued that American Culture has a linguistic ideology that places female sex talk as a tab oo subject and suppresses forms of speech in which women communicate about sex and limit women to talk about sex privately.Women find private outlets like passion parties, but the form in which they communicate is limited with method that mitigate discomfort. For instance, indexicallity is used to indirectly index sexual references that facilitates communication. Furthermore, flaunting Grice’s maxims as a linguistic tool to mitigate sex talk, a trigger of humorous responses that open the channels of communication through humor. Works Cited Duranti, Alessandro. â€Å"Language and Social Inequality by Susan U. Philips. A companion to linguistic anthropology . Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. , 2004. 474-495. Print. Norrick, Neal R.. â€Å"Humor in Interaction. † Language and Linguistics Compass 4. 4 (2010): 232-244. Print. West, Jackie. â€Å"(Not) talking about sex: youth, identity and sexuality. † The Sociological Review 47. 3 (1999): 525-547. Print. Ochs, Elinor. â €Å"Indexing Gender. † . † Rethinking Context: language as an interactive phenomenon, ed. by A. Duranti & C. Goodwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1992)pp. 335-358. Print

The University of Pennsylvania Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The University of Pennsylvania - Essay Example I also respect the University of Pennsylvania’s philosophy in education which is concerned with the preparation of dental students in many roles of dental practitioners such as; â€Å"scientist, clinician, artist, teacher, engineer, and business manager.† I believe this philosophy will allow me to receive an all encompassing education in dentistry which will provide me with the background needed to succeed in dentistry and achieve my goals as a health professional. The wide network of the institution reflects its commitment to reach and provide a quality health care to the surrounding community at large as well as provide an opportunity to the students to be compassionate with the patients, develop leadership skills and professionalism while at the same time building up creativity and love in a just way. It serves as a center for training students to become outstanding dentists who can influence the community with goodwill, passion and commitment.The institution also em braces and encourages an environment of discovery and promotes a global view of dentistry which is increasingly important for dental practitioners. Since the 21st century, there have been various technical developments in every field and the dentistry field has also benefitted from this advancement in technology. The students at this institution are given the opportunity of doing research and the results of various researches have helped America to be a force to reckon with in giving good oral health to its citizens.

In the event of peace, and a Palestinian state being formed, Palestine Essay

In the event of peace, and a Palestinian state being formed, Palestine would suffer massive economic repercussions due to lack of competitiveness and underdevel - Essay Example The current economic scenario in Palestine is not very encouraging. In the second quarter of 2007, the GDP of Palestine grew by 6.5%. The largest increases in gross value added were registered the following sectors: education (+32.1%), hotels (+24.9%), health ( +15.2%), construction (+13.9%) and agriculture (+12.8%). There was a decline however in sectors like mining, water and electricity and manufacturing. However in Gaza, due to political problems, 95% of the factories in Gaza had closed down leading to 32000 job losses. Many of these factories were approaching a point of 'no return' where owners were likely to sell their assets and shut down completely. (The Portland trust, Nov, 2007) In the previous years, between 2005 and 2006, the GDP in Palestine fell by 8.8%. In the first quarter of 2007, the GDP fell by 4.2%. This was 13.2% lower than the GDP for the first quarter of 2006.(The Portland Trust, July 2007) Besides the negative growth of the economy, it is the composition of the GDP that remains a cause for concern. The GDP is driven by Government and private consumption from aid rather than investment or production. Public sector employment for instance has increased by 60% between 1999 and 2006. Much of the foreign aid which could e used in infrastructure building is spent on salaries of government employees. (World Bank, 2007) Fig:2 Source: (World Bank Document, 2007) Even among Palestinians, the condition of those living in Gaza is particularly bad. Despite receiving aid, the number of people in Gaza living below the poverty line has increased from 21.6% in 1998 to nearly 35% in 2006. Without aid, the figure is likely to be around 67%. (World Bank, 2007) Fig:3 Source: (World Bank Document, 2007) Given the current economic scenario, it is likely that an independent Palestine face the immense challenge of managing the repercussions of years of negative economic growth and political instability. In the context of Palestine, the concept of 'peace' is crucial to the economy. According to a World Bank report, in 1968, an average Israeli was approximately 10 times richer than the average Palestinian. Today the situation is far worse. The GDP of Israel is almost 20 times that of Palestine and over 2/3rds of Palestinians live below the poverty line. (2007). This disparity in income level and lifestyle is a cause for concern. As Moshe Alamaro, a research scientist at the University of Massachusetts points out there can be no lasting peace if a destitute third world nation stress across the border to find a prosperous modern democracy. Alamaro compares the relationship between Japan and North Korea to that between in Israel and Palestine and says that Japan helped fuel economic growth in South Korea and thereby avoid any friction between the two states. Similarly, he believes that the west along with Israel needs to fuel economic growth in Palestine and thereby establish a mutually beneficial socio-economic relationship.(Alamaro, 2002) From the Palestinian perspective however, it is important to break free from the dependence on Israel. The Palestine National authority has charted a framework for Economic development. The framework suggests that dependence on Israel can be reduced by diversifying the export markets and

Team Performance Measurement in the Health Care Services Essay

Team Performance Measurement in the Health Care Services - Essay Example These periodic performance assessments are deemed important in every line of work, even more so in jobs that deal with life and death situations, as methods of bringing care to the sick and injured can be improved by taking the outcomes of previous performance assessments into consideration (Sundar, Sundar, Pawlowski, Blum, Feinstein, & Pratt, 2007). By creating clear and realistic goals based on the attainability of meeting or exceeding previous goals, patients and members of the community can get an assurance that the services being given by health care personnel in health facilities can either remain as satisfactory as before or become even better. Thus, it is important that there is a proper monitoring of the performance of teams and their members to maintain quality services to all stakeholders. However, while monitoring of performance measures and keeping track of goals sounds fairly simple, doing the actual thing can be daunting and even labor-intensive. It can be expected that some problems and challenges could arise during the evaluation itself, such as questioning the reliability of performance measures as well as the accuracy of goals which depend on quantitative characteristics and could bring challenges in the appropriate assessment of a team’s performance (Zeiss, 2002). Self-monitoring for each member normally does not pose a problem, even among team members that have other ancillary functions apart from their specific job functions, but when it comes to feedback from other members of the team, interpersonal problems between the evaluated party and the evaluating party could affect the outcomes of total scoring such as supervisory and peer evaluations, which could lead to resentments with each other if not addressed promptly (Reader, Flin, Mearns, & Cuthberts on, 2009; Shi, 2010).

Report of business analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Report of business analysis - Essay Example According to Kanter (1995) such an action will not constitute an adequate response. This is so because success is based on an organization’s ability to create, rather than predict the future by developing those products that will literally transform the way the world thinks and view it self and the needs (Kanter 1995:71). Within the context of today’s global competition, businesses and firms no-longer compete as individual companies but try to corporate with other businesses in their activities (Wu & Chien 2007:2). These researchers went further to argue that, this strategy has become quite common in many businesses including the retail chain stores. The conventional vertical integrated company based business model is gradually being replaced by collaborative relationship between many fragmented, but complementary and specialized value stars and constellation (Wu & Chien: 1). In today’s global business environment it is no longer sufficient simply to meet customers demand as time quality and cost have become increasingly important in the phase of increasing competition (Petts 1997:551). According to Higgins (1998:2), â€Å"customers don’t always know what they need or even that there is a problem to be solved.† Success awaits those companies that recognize the fact that, to be successful and satisfy customers, it is often necessary to lead customers into recognizing these needs (Higgins 1998:2-3). Against this background, this paper focuses on the United Kingdom (UK) retail industry using certain analytical models such as the five forces, the PESTLE framework and the SWOT analysis. Focusing on this sector has a number of important advantages. Firstly, government regulations and control in this sector are quite strict. In addition, the retail sector represents one of the principal sectors of the UK economy, having one of the biggest employer and biggest multinational in the