Working Girl Essay Example

Working Girl Essay Example Working Girl Essay Working Girl Essay Name: Course: Instructor: Date: Working Girl The motion picture, Working Girl, is a romantic comedy movie produced in 1988. The picture, whose director was the talented Mike Nichols, recounts the stirring account of a stockbroker’s secretary with big dreams and aspirations. The secretary works in the Mergers and Acquisition subdivision in an investment bank. She is called upon to fill the shoes of her immediate boss, who injures her leg during skiing, and begins developing and creating novel business opportunities. The movie was nominated for the role of Best Picture during the 61st session of the Academy Awards that took place in March 29, 1989. Tess McGill is an astute, formally employed individual having just graduated from university with a Business Degree. From Staten Island, Tess dreams of becoming an executive in a company. However, she finds herself in trouble when she insults her colleague and finds that she is given a different assignment. She thereby becomes the assistant to a different financial executive who is known as Katherine Parker. Coming off as a supportive person, Parker persuades Tess to contribute her ideas actively. However, Katherine Parker fractures her leg while on a skiing trip in Europe and requests Tess to fill in for her while she is recuperating. Later, she accidentally finds out that Katherine plans to steal one of her ideas. Consequently, she finds her boyfriend sleeping with another woman. Afterwards, she decides to organize a conference with another executive, Jack Trainer, whom she unknowingly sleeps with after taking alcohol and valium while suffering a panic attack. To her advantage, Tra iner is positive with her idea and helps Tess have a meeting with another executive, Trask. Additionally, she discovers that Trainer was in a relationship with Katherine. A scuffle erupts between Katherine and Tess after arriving on the day of meeting. She lays the blame on Tess, arguing that Tess has stolen her idea. However, Trask confronts Katherine after being convinced by Jack and Tess that it was Tess’ idea. Katherine stumbles and is fired by Trask who offers Tess an executive job in the company. There are various themes that the movie exalts especially pertaining to issues affecting women. In the past, women never had any right to work; instead, they were discarded as homemakers and mothers without any involvement in financial matters and decision making in the family. Consequently, men were the ones responsible for discriminating women. According to John Stuart Mill, men hindered women from taking part in jobs believing that they were protecting them from hurting themselves. He further asserted that, in real sense, men were afraid of what women could accomplish if allowed to pursue other opportunities (Mill, 54). The discrimination of women further accentuated the rise of women civil rights movement. The movements characterized feminism, which championed the rights of women. Despite the movements taking place in different time eras, they similarly advocated for economic equity, equal political power, sexuality freedoms, reproductive privileges, family issues, equity in educ ations and employment equality as brought out in the film (Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 201). The film is an interesting piece to watch especially the calculative and manipulative nature of Katherine Parker and the resilience. However, it should be noted that the movie does not only connect with women’s intricacies in the job sector, but also on upward mobility. This is indicated by the appraisal of Tess McGill’s status from an ordinary secretary to a corporate executive. Furthermore, the movie portrays the competitive nature in companies and businesses in order to move up the social ladder. This is indicated by the manipulation of Tess McGill by her former figurehead, Katherine Parker, by stealing her ideas and causing her failure, which will eventually lead to a disastrous outcome. There have also been instances of sexual connotations, which have mostly ensued between McGill and another figurehead, Jack Trainer that still portrayed the use of manipulative techniques to ensure upward mobility. Flexner, Eleanor, and Ellen F. Fitzpatrick. Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2000. Print. Mill, John S. The Subjection of Women. Lexinton, Kentucky: CreateSpace, 2012. Print.

Definition and Examples of Nominalization in Grammar

Definition and Examples of Nominalization in Grammar In English grammar, nominalization is a type of word formation in which a verb or an adjective (or another part  of speech) is used as (or transformed into) a noun. The verb form is nominalize. It is also called nouning. In transformational grammar, nominalization refers to the derivation of a noun phrase from an underlying clause. In this sense, an example of nominalization is the destruction of the city, where the noun destruction corresponds to the main verb of a clause and the city to its object (Geoffrey Leech, A Glossary of English Grammar,  2006). Examples and Observations English is truly impressive . . . in the way it lets you construct nouns from verbs, adjectives, and other nouns; blogger and blogosphere are examples. All you have to do is add one of an assortment of suffixes: -acy (democracy), -age (patronage), -al (refusal), -ama (panorama), -ana (Americana), -ance (variance), -ant (deodorant), -dom (freedom), -edge (knowledge), -ee (lessee), -eer (engineer), -er (painter), -ery (slavery), -ese (Lebanese), -ess (laundress), -ette (launderette), -fest (lovefest), -ful (basketful), -hood (motherhood), -iac (maniac), -ian (Italian), -ie or -y (foodie, smoothy), -ion (tension, operation), -ism (progressivism), -ist (idealist), -ite (Israelite), -itude (decripitude), -ity (stupidity), -ium (tedium), -let (leaflet), -ling (earthling), -man or -woman (Frenchman), -mania (Beatlemania), -ment (government), -ness (happiness), -o (weirdo), -or (vendor), -ship (stewardship), -th (length), and -tude (gratitude). . . . At the present moment, everybody seems to be going a bit nuts with noun creation. Journalists and bloggers seem to believe that a sign of being ironic and hip is to coin nouns with such suffixes as -fest (Google baconfest and behold what you find), -athon, -head (Deadhead, Parrothead, gearhead), -oid, -orama, and -palooza. (Ben Yagoda, When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It. Broadway, 2007) Nominalization in Scientific and Technical Writing The forces which operate to encourage nominalization are understandable. Dealing continually in concepts, scientific and technical writers tend to isolate activities such as experimenting, measuring, and analysing as abstract conceptual units in their minds. They are also pushed towards passive constructions, both by tradition and by their own desire to step aside and allow their work to speak for itself. These forces produce characteristic constructions such as: A similar experiment was carried out using the material . . .Sigma preparation was carried out as described . . . So common has carried out become as a general purpose verb that it is a recognized marker of scientific reporting, and television news bulletins commonly adopt the construction when reporting scientific work. . . .Once recognized, nominalization is easy to correct. Whenever you see general-purpose verbs such as carry out, perform, undertake, or conduct look for the word which names the action. Turning the name of the activity back into a verb (preferably active) will undo the nominalization, and make the sentence more direct and easier to read.(Christopher Turk and Alfred John Kirkman, Effective Writing: Improving Scientific, Technical, and Business Communication, 2nd ed. Chapman Hall, 1989) The Dark Side of Nominalization It’s not just that nominalization can sap the vitality of one’s speech or prose; it can also eliminate context and mask any sense of agency. Furthermore, it can make something that is nebulous or fuzzy seem stable, mechanical and precisely defined. . . .Nominalizations give priority to actions rather than to the people responsible for them. Sometimes this is apt, perhaps because we don’t know who is responsible or because responsibility isn’t relevant. But often they conceal power relationships and reduce our sense of what’s truly involved in a transaction. As such, they are an instrument of manipulation, in politics and in business. They emphasize products and results, rather than the processes by which products and results are achieved. (Henry Hitchings, The Dark Side of Verbs-as-Nouns. The New York Times, April 5, 2013) Types of Nominalization Nominalization types differ according to the level of organization at which the nominalization takes place (see also Langacker 1991). . . . [T]hree types of nominalizations can be distinguished: nominalizations at the level of the word (e.g. teacher, Sams washing of the windows), nominalizations which nominalize a structure that lies in between a verb and a full clause (e.g. Sams washing the windows) and, finally, nominalizations consisting of full clauses (e.g. that Sam washed the windows). The latter two types deviate from the normal rank scale of units in that they represent nominals or phrases which consist of clausal or clause-like structures. They have therefore been regarded as problematic, and it has even be claimed that that-structures are not nominalizations (e.g., Dik 1997; McGregor 1997). (Liesbet Heyvaert, A Cognitive-Functional Approach to Nominalization in English. Mouton de Gruyter, 2003) Nominalizations properly refer to third-order entities, e.g. Cooking involves irreversible chemical changes, in which cooking refers to the process as a generic type, abstracted from a particular token instance at a specific time. A second kind of nominalization involves reference to second-order entities. Here reference is to particular countable tokens of processes, e.g. The cooking took five hours. The third kind of nominalization has been called improper (Vendler 1968). This refers to first-order entities, things with physical substance and often extended in space, e.g. I like Johns cooking, which refers to the food which results from the cooking, (the RESULT OF ACTION AS ACTION metonymy). (Andrew Goatly, Washing the Brain: Metaphor and Hidden Ideology. John Benjamins, 2007)