Approaches to Climate Change and Energy Crisis Essay Example for Free

Approaches to Climate Change and Energy Crisis Essay The acclaim and mass appeal that was garnered by the An Inconvenient Truth, no to mention Al Gore’s Noble Prize win, is a testament to the interest on the issue of climate change (Lawrence Bender Productions Guggenheim, 2006). One of the main areas of concern is the development of industries that do not damage or endanger the environment is an urgent concern as industries now face dwindling resources, greater demand and more regulation both locally and internationally (Schnietz Epstein, 2005). Whereas before when interest in environmental concerns were seen more as deterrents to a company’s operations. The increase of judicial decisions levying companies to pay for environmental damages due to their products or manufacturing processes has changed the view to one that treats environment concerns and conserving energy resources as part of ensuring profitability. An assessment done by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) (2002) indicates that the deterioration of the environment has global implications. They point that the depletion of the ozone layer has been linked to stress marine and terrestrial resources though the depletion is mainly concentrated on the poles. Furthermore, scientists estimate that at the current rate of consumption and pollution, the earth’s ecosystems will simply collapse from human demands. De Man (2005) also points out that there are higher social expectations concerning environmental awareness and responsibility among business organizations. National and international efforts have sought to develop universal relevance of the issue not only to promote it as a concern but also to established responsibility for the issue. Robbins (2003) considers these an indication of the urgency and importance of the issue which in turn is to establish it as global critical priority. At the same time, climbing of energy prices due to demand has highlighted the need to raise efficiency and promote conservation. However, there are varying opinions on the approaches to be taken. One of the issues that have been subject to extensive debate is in the development of air pollution control programs. Wigley (2006) points out that because air has no geographic border nor physically contained and all countries have to compete for energy sources such as oil, the issue is an inherent global concern. This global perspective is the basis for the Kyoto Protocol which aims to establish an international monitoring and management system for carbon emissions. The Kyoto Protocol sets a quota for industrial emissions per country where residual allowances can be traded off to other countries and economic sanctions can be applied to violators. Thus, countries are not only politically motivated to control their emissions but also can gain monetary compensation for their efforts. Accession and implementation of the protocol has proven challenging. Opposition to the policies point out that aside from the operational difficulties of the policy and can deter economic growth and development since most industries are energy-intense and impact the environment (Bohan, 2007). Critics of the Kyoto approach to the issue suggest a national interest approach. In contrast to the former, the latter suggests that, â€Å"whats good for the nation as a whole in international affairs†. Using this perspective, instead of developing an international policy, each country must formulate its own towards a common goal (Roskin, 1994, p. 1). As each country is able to achieve individual environmental goals, public interest, which includes the global community, will be met effectively. Thus, what seems to be an inward-looking or even selfish approach to environment and energy issues can be in fact a means to accomplish international goals. Critics of the approach contend in turn that there are no assurances that independent states will develop and implement environmental and energy efficiency protocols. Also, they believe that by leaving consequence at the discretion of national governments, implementation will not be effectively policed. To date, there has still has not been full accession to the Kyoto Protocol: the Untied States and Australia have both rejected it. At the same time, national interest approaches have been significant deterred through the need for compliance to international political, security or economic organizations. According to Setting a Value on the Future, Stephen Gardiner believes that the lack of a consensus on how to deal with the world’s environmental and energy crises is because it is â€Å"politically convenient not to deal with†. Both approaches have proven to be extremely problematic. One difficulty that Thomas Palley of the Economics for Democratic and Open Societies sees in national interest perspectives is a failure to recognize the distinction between corporate and national interests, (as cited in Jacobson, 2006). The suggestion is that confusing corporate interests, which primarily is centered on profit, the national interests that will be defined will be the interest of a few instead of the public’s and that it most likely will neither support environmental or conservation objectives (Wigley, 2006). On the other hand, without industrial development, there will be little headway in the development of efficiency and productivity technologies or the means to put them in practice (Jacobson, 2006). The most critical realization is that the issue is not just a political issue. Just as critical should be the realization that whatever, polices are to be implemented, they should be able to stand the test of time and changes in international relations. This because, achievement of environmental and energy goals will likely take a number of years before they are attained. President George W. Bush has raised a valid point regarding this issue: The fundamental question is whether or not we will be able to grow our economy and be good stewards of the environment at the same time, (as cited in Jacobson, 2006). Neither the Kyoto approach nor the national interest approaches, as they are utilized today, seem to fully address these concerns. However, this should deter the commitment to environmental protection and rehabilitation as well as energy conservation. In conclusion to recognize non-political elements influencing the issue, to institute long-term policies and resources and to develop and implement policies that recognizes both perspectives. Reference http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1537871920071015

Vector And Raster Data In Gis Computer Science Essay

Vector And Raster Data In Gis Computer Science Essay A Geographical Information System (GIS) is a method of spatially storing, analysing, manipulating, managing and displaying geographical data. GIS data represents real objects such as roads, rivers, urban areas, place names, railway, places of interest, town names etc. with digital data determining the mix. A geodatabase is a database that is in some way referenced to locations on earth. Traditionally, there are two broad methods used to store data in a GIS; raster images and vector. Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI) data is supplied in both Vector and Raster format. In both cases the data is geo-referenced. VECTOR AND RASTER DATA Vector data is split into three types; polygon, line (or arc) and point data. Vector is a method for storing spatial data involving assigning coordinates for each entity; an X,Y, Z for a point, a pair of such points for a line and a series of such lines for a polygon. This method is very useful for modeling discrete physical features. Different geographical features are expressed by different types of geometry: Points A point is a zero-dimensional abstraction of an object represented by a single X, Y co-ordinate. It is normally used to represent a geographic feature too small to be displayed as a line or an area (e.g. location of a building on a small scale map or, for example, cities on a map of the world might be represented by points not polygons). No measurements are possible with point features. Figure 1- Vector representation Source: http://www.geom.unimelb.edu.au/gisweb/GISModule/GIST_Vector.html Lines or polylines A set of co-ordinates that represent the shape of geographic features that are too narrow to be displayed as an area, such as, county boundary lines or contours. At small scales geographic features may have no area, e.g. streams or streets and may be represented as linear features rather than as a polygon. Line features can measure distance. Polygons Polygons are used to represent areas. Such as lakes, park boundaries or land uses etc. Polygons convey the most amount of information of the file types and can measure perimeter and area. Rigaux et al. (2002:p.38) states, A point is represented by its pair of coordinates, whereas more complex linear and surfacic objects are represented by structures (lists, sets, arrays) on the point representation. These geometries can be linked to a row in a database that describes their attributes. For example, a database that describes lakes may contain a lakes depth, water quality, pollution level. Different geometries can also be compared and the GIS could be used, for example, to identify all wells (point geometry) that are within one kilometre of a lake (polygon geometry) that has a high level of pollution. Vector data can be displayed at any scale and individual layers (e.g. roads, buildings, etc) can be displayed or omitted (see Appendix A). Raster Ellis states that raster is a method for the storage, processing and display of spatial data. There are three types of raster datasets; thematic data, spectral data and pictures. Raster data consists of rows and columns of cells, with each cell storing a single value. Raster data can be images containing individual dots with colour values, called cells (or pixels), arranged in a rectangular evenly spaced array. Each cell must be rectangular in shape, but not necessarily square (Ellis 2001). Each cell within this matrix contains location co-ordinates as well as an attribute value. The spatial location of each cell is implicitly contained within the ordering of the matrix, unlike a vector structure which stores topology explicitly. Areas containing the same attribute value are recognised as such, however, raster structures cannot identify the boundaries of areas such as polygons. Raster data is an abstraction of the real world where spatial data is expressed as a matrix of cells or pixels with spatial position implicit in the ordering of the pixels. With the raster data model, spatial data is not continuous but divided into discrete units. Ellis states that this makes raster data particularly suitable for certain types of spatial operation, for example overlays or area calculations. Raster structures may lead to increased storage in certain situations, since they store each cell in the matrix regardless of whether it is a feature or simply empty space. Additional values recorded for each cell may be a discrete value, such as land use, a continuous value, such as temperature, or a null value if no data is available. While a raster cell stores a single value, it can be extended by using raster bands to represent RGB (red, green, blue) colours, colour maps (a mapping between a thematic code and RGB value), or an extended attribute table with one row for each unique cell value. The resolution of the raster data set is its cell width in ground units. Anyone who is familiar with digital photography will recognize the Raster graphics pixel as the smallest individual grid unit building block of an image, usually not readily identified as an artifact shape until an image is produced on a very large scale (see Appendix B). A combination of the pixels making up an image colour formation scheme will compose details of an image, as is distinct from the commonly used points, lines, and polygon area location symbols of vector graphics. Aerial photographs and satellite images are examples of raster images used in mapping. Figure 2 Aerial Photo Digitally scanned and ortho-rectified raster colour photography. The ortho-rectification process removes distortions caused by camera tilt and topographical features to produce a scale accurate image. Source: OSI Raster data is stored in various formats; from a standard file-based structure of TIF, JPEG, etc. to binary large object data stored directly in a relational database management system. Raster v Vector There are some important advantages and disadvantages to using a raster or vector data model to represent reality: Vector graphics are usually more aesthetically pleasing. Raster data will appear as an image that may have a blocky appearance for object boundaries (depending on the resolution of the raster file). Vector data is simpler to update and maintain, whereas a raster image will have to be completely reproduced (e.g. a new road is added). Vector data allows much more analysis capability, especially for networks such as roads, rail, telecommunications etc. Distances and areas can be calculated automatically. With raster data it is difficult to adequately represent linear features depending on the cell resolution. Therefore, network linkages are difficult to establish. Vector files require less disk storage space than raster data. Raster data allows easy implementation of overlay operations, which are more difficult with vector data. Raster data structure allows simple spatial analysis procedures An outline of the application of vector and raster data by OSI in Ireland is included in Appendix C. Non-spatial data Relating the spatial component along with the non-spatial attributes of the existing data e.g. census figures (see Appendix D) enhances the users understanding and gives new insights into the patterns and relationships in the data that otherwise would not be found. Non-spatial data can be stored along with the spatial data represented by the coordinates of vector geometry or the position of a raster cell. In vector data, the additional data contains attributes of the feature. In raster data the cell value can store attribute information, but it can also be used as an identifier that can relate to records in another table. Software is currently being developed to support the solutions to spatial problems being integrated with solutions to non-spatial problems. This will result in non experts using GIS to integrate spatial and non spatial criteria to view solutions to complex problems and to assist in decision-making. Data capture The processes of data collection are also variously referred to as data capture, data automation, data conversion, data transfer, data translation, and digitizing. The two main types of data capture are: Primary data sources e.g. those collected in digital format specifically for use in a GIS project. Secondary sources, digital and analog datasets that were collected for a different purpose and need to be converted into a suitable digital format for use in a GIS project. For vector data capture the two main branches are ground surveying and GPS. Survey data can be directly entered into a GIS from digital data collection systems on survey instruments. Positions from a Global Navigation Satellite System like Global Positioning System (GPS), another survey tool, can also be directly entered into a GIS. New technologies allow creating maps as well as analysis directly in the field and as a result projects are more efficient and mapping is more accurate. Remotely sensed data also plays an important role in data collection and consists of sensors (e.g. cameras, digital scanners) attached to a platform which usually consist of aircraft and satellites. The majority of digital data currently comes from photo interpretation of aerial photographs. Workstations are used to digitize features directly from stereo pairs of digital photographs. These systems allow data to be captured in two and three dimensions, with elevations measured directly from a stereo pair using principles of photogrammetry. Photographs are collected by analog or optical cameras before being entered into a soft copy system, but as high quality digital cameras become cheaper this step will be eliminated. Satellite remote sensing provides another important source of spatial data. Remote sensing collects raster data that can be further processed to identify objects and classes of interest, such as forested areas. The disadvantages are that the resolution is often too course or sensors are restricted by cloud cover. Entering data into GIS usually requires editing, to remove errors, or further processing. For vector data it must be made topologically correct before it can be used for some advanced analysis. For example, in a road network, lines must connect with nodes at an intersection. For scanned maps, blemishes on the source map may need to be removed from the resulting raster. To ensure that the data is specific and reliable and that represents as closely as possible the spatial world we live in, it requires a quality insurance process to manage completeness, validity, logical consistency, physical consistency, referential integrity and positional accuracy of data. Raster-to-vector translation Vectorisation is the process of converting raster data into vector data. For example, a GIS may be used to convert a satellite image map to a vector structure by generating lines around all cells with the same classification, while determining the cell spatial relationships. One of the biggest problems with data obtained from external sources is that they can be encoded in many different formats. Many tools have been developed to move data between systems and to reuse data through open application programming interfaces. Therefore, a GIS must be able to convert geographic data from one structure to another. CONCLUSION When data is captured, the user should consider if the data should be captured with either a relative accuracy or absolute accuracy, as this could not only influence how information will be interpreted but also the cost of data capture. Vector data can be manipulated, layers can be turned on and off, data can be edited or deleted and additional data can be added in. Raster data is usually used as a background map. Raster is not as intelligent as Vector, Rigaux et al. (2002: p.39) states the structure is unfortunately not powerful enough to ensure the correctness of the representation. It is more useful as a display map for brochures, internet and power point presentations. Oosterom Van, P.J. (1993:p.vii) states the ever increasing availabilitiy of hardware such as digitizers, scanners workstations, graphic displays, printers and plotters for the input, processing, and output of geographic data only partly explains the growing interest in GISs. GIS allows us to view, understand, question, interpret, and visualise data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts. GIS helps one answer questions and solve problems by looking at data in a way that is quickly understood and easily shared. Figure 3 GIS continues to evolve Source: Cummens 2010 ERSI Many forces are converging transforming how we work and improving efficiency and decision making (see Fig. 3 above). GIS Is becoming Mainstream Technology going beyond focused applications (Cummens 2010). GIS is helping citizens, business and Government by improving planning, management, communications and decision making. REFERENCES Cummens, Patricia (2010) Geographic Information Enabling a Smarter Government and Economy at the SCS Conference 2010. ESRI. Ellis, F. (2001) Introduction to GIS. Melbourne: University of Melbourne. Oosterom Van, P.J. (1993) Reactive Data Structures for Geographic Information Systems. New York: Oxford University Press. Rigaux, P., Scholl, M., Voisard, A (2002) Spatial Databases with Applications to GIS. San Fransisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. http://www.osi.ie/en/academic/third-level-and-academic.aspx?article=4bf958eb-bf0b-4b28-a0d9-24586fadbaab Accessed 27/10/2010

The History Of Poaching Rhinos History Essay

The History Of Poaching Rhinos History Essay As one of the last surviving species of mega fauna, the white rhino is distinctively known by its square shaped lip that enables it to graze. At the end of 2007, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that there were 17 480 of these animals left, causing them to be classified as near threatened. In the past 3 years, South Africa has suffered the tragic loss of 93 white rhinos. (Source A: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Kruger-Park-loses-more-rhinos-20100226 ) These animals are commonly hunted for their horns, despite the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) having declared any trade in rhino parts for commercial reasons illegal. Thus hunters have resorted to poaching both white and black rhinos, often using high-tech weapons and helicopters to achieve their means. (Source E: http://www.traffic.org/home/2009/7/9/poaching-crisis-as-rhino-horn-demand-booms-in-asia.html) In the case of professional poachers, the following takes place. First, the rhinos are shot from the air using a low-noise weapon, for example a crossbow. The poachers then land and remove both horns; sometimes the rhinoceros is still alive but severely wounded when this happens. Before rangers have realised whats happened, the poachers are in the air again. A white rhino killed for its horns in the Kruger National Park. http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/white-rhino-poached-for-horn-picture.jpg Location: The majority of white rhino poaching incidents in South Africa take place in the Kruger National Park (KNP), but it is unknown what the exact statistics are. A map of South Africa indicating the various biomes. The reserve is found roughly within the red lines. http://www.plantzafrica.com/vegetation/savanna.htm The Northern Half of the reserve is home to the savannah biome, characterised by longer grasses and woody plants . This makes KNP the perfect habitat for the white rhino, a grazer. The park is world-renowned and a proud South African tourist attraction, however this not enough to create awareness about the importance of white rhino conservation. A map of the Kruger National Park and its national borders http://www.go2africa.com/south-africa/kruger-national-park/maps/134.jpg This part of the reserve also shares an Eastern Border with Mozambique, home to nearly all of the poachers arrested in 2009. (Source C: http://www.krugerpark.co.za/krugerpark-times-e-3-anti-poaching-yield-results-25073.html) The bigger picture: In 2007 13 Rhinos were poached in South Africa. In 2009 93 Rhinos were poached in South Africa. The problem, as stated by Source B, is that the killing spree is no longer opportunistic poaching by individuals but carried out byhighly sophisticated criminal gangs.(http://www.rhinoconservation.org/2009/10/14/commercial-rhino-poaching-thrives-in-south-africa-thanks-to-asian-demand-for-rhino-horn/) This source goes on to lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Asian countries: commercial rhino poaching has become a well-oiled machine and the new Asian wealth is bankrolling the slaughter. However, this does not investigate the poachers themselves. By July 2009 the South African National Parks (SAN Parks) reported that 32 white rhinos had been poached in the Kruger Park. Of these, 28 had been killed along the Mozambican border. Every single one of the 14 suspects arrested are Mozambican citizens. (Source C: http://www.krugerpark.co.za/krugerpark-times-e-3-anti-poaching-yield-results-25073.html) Source D goes on to say that law enforcement officials in Mozambique are not doing enough to stop the poaching. Not a single poacher arrested in Mozambique for killing a rhino has gone through the full process prescribed by conservation law. The article reports that not a single poacher arrested by Kruger Park officials was jailed for longer than two weeks. In one incident, poachers responsible for trade in R1,5 million were fined a mere R1250 and released. In another case, a poacher with a freedom-fighting history and close ties with politicians and police was released from prison without a fine, one week after being arrested in KNP. (http://hughpaxton.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/more-on-rhino-poaching-the-mozambique-connection/) From 1977 to 1992 Mozambique fell into a civil war that crippled its economy and left its people impoverished. Graph 1: Mozambiques annual GDP in relation to that of Southern Africa, and Africa as a whole. http://www.africaneconomicoutlook.org/uploads/tx_llaeocountries/Mozambique1.jpg With a Gross Domestic Product of just over $1000 Purchasing Power Parity (USD PPP), it comes as no surprise that Mozambicans would resort to poaching, or that the legal system is too weak to prosecute them. However, it is possible that many would prefer the illegal trade in rhino horn to honest work. As part of the anti-poaching initiative in Kenya, this pile of ivory and rhino horn was burnt to create public awareness http://www.safariweb.com/safarimate/trial2/ivory.jpg At November 25, 2009, the black market value of rhino horn was officially greater than that of gold, as stated in Source G (http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1126-hance_rhino_gold.html) . Table 1: Approximate Black Market values of rhino horn and gold per kilogram at November 2009 Commodity Price ($) per kilogram (kg) Gold 60 000 Rhino horn 40 600 However, it is important to note that fault can also be found with South Africans. 2008 Minister of Environmental Affairs, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, announced that individuals with valid hunting permits were abusing their permits to trade illegally in rhino horn. As stated in Source F: During investigations into rhino horn deals, enforcement officials had found that prospective hunters had applied for permits to hunt rhino in various provinces, and these had subsequently been issued. But the hunts had never taken place and the relevant authorities had never been informed. (http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1HYPERLINK http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1click_id=139art_id=vn20080609114119227C941799HYPERLINK http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1click_id=139art_id=vn20080609114119227C941799click_id=139HYPERLINK http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1click_id=139art_id=vn20080609114119227C941799HYPERLINK http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1click_id=139art_id=vn20080609114119227C941799art_id=vn20080609114119227C941799) The article goes on to quote Democratic Alliance (DA) environmental spokesperson Gareth Morgan in saying that the South African Government is still not taking sustainable development seriously. (http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1HYPERLINK http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1click_id=139art_id=vn20080609114119227C941799HYPERLINK http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1click_id=139art_id=vn20080609114119227C941799click_id=139HYPERLINK http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1click_id=139art_id=vn20080609114119227C941799HYPERLINK http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1click_id=139art_id=vn20080609114119227C941799art_id=vn20080609114119227C941799) Furthermore, in conducting this report I have come to realise that most South Africans view poaching as something of the past or something limited to North Africa and Asia. Thus the plight of the white rhino has largely fallen on deaf ears. The ignorance of the people who stand to lose the most has proven a greater threat to white and black rhinos than poachers. Main concerns: Ethical Southern white rhinos are killed with immense cruelty. Before colonisation it was the traditional practice amongst most African tribes to respect wild life, this was emphasised by using every part of an animal that was hunted. Today, the world only takes a stand when cute wild animals or domestic animals are abused. Furthermore, the flippancy with which poachers break the law suggests complete disregard for animal life. As stated by Source D: many suspects are repeat offenders. (http://hughpaxton.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/more-on-rhino-poaching-the-mozambique-connection/) Economic The extreme black market value of rhino horn proves that this is a scarce commodity. However, this only seems to increase demand and frequency of poaching. In addition, SAN Parks pledged R5,2 million to anti-poaching strategies within KNP (Source C: http://www.krugerpark.co.za/krugerpark-times-e-3-anti-poaching-yield-results-25073.html). As the situation escalates, greater donations will be required which could prove to be a set back while the world recovers from the economic recession. Legal The failure of Mozambican authorities to prosecute poachers has instilled doubt in the poverty-stricken country. Relations between South Africa and this neighbour have become clouded with suspicion as KNP game rangers suspect severe corruption within the Mozambican legal system. (Source D: http://hughpaxton.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/more-on-rhino-poaching-the-mozambique-connection/) Environmental A northern species of white rhino is feared extinct. Black rhinos are near extinct. How long before there are no more of these amazing creatures are left in the world? Who plays the largest roles? The rangers of the Kruger National Park, the World Wildlife Foundation International (WWF), the IUCN, TRAFFIC (affiliated wildlife trade monitoring network of the IUCN), CITES, the Saving Rhinos initiative, the Rhino Conservation initiative, and the South African Police Services (SAPS) have thus far played the greatest role in physically protecting the southern white rhino and creating awareness regarding the poaching crisis. (Source E: http://www.traffic.org/home/2009/7/9/poaching-crisis-as-rhino-horn-demand-booms-in-asia.html) However, this will not be enough without the co-operation and support of the South African public. Furthermore, more efforts such as this one by the Saving Rhinos initiative should be made in Asia: An advertisement by the Saving Rhinos initiative aimed at educating the public. http://www.savingrhinos.org/images/Rhino-species-sizes.jpg Co-operation and support is also needed from animal rights organisations such as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and the Governments of Mozambique, Vietnam, The Peoples Republic of China and Thailand in order to destroy the market for rhino horn. Solutions currently in place: According to Source A, current Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica has overseen the implementation of the following sustainable steps to prevent poaching in KNP: The addition of 58 rangers in the park, bringing the total number to 350 19 Motorbikes have been purchased for the rangers for use in patrols The purchase of high-tech night vision equipment for use by SAN Parks Air Service The addition of an ultra-light aircraft for use in patrols The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has taken over from the South African Police Service (SAPS) in patrolling the Mozambique/ KNP border. (http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Kruger-Park-loses-more-rhinos-20100226 ) Solutions that should be in considered: At this stage Mozambican poachers arrested on their national soil are not efficiently prosecuted, thus poachers should be arrested and prosecuted in South Africa as far as possible. Brian Jones of Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre has said from experience that South Africans living around KNP feel very protective over their wildlife. Furthermore, the locals are very passionate about bringing an end to poaching. By employing these locals as rangers and Border Patrol Officials, SAN Parks will not only be reducing unemployment statistics (even if only minimally) but getting the public involved where they often turn a blind eye. Imploring the Governments of Asian countries to educate their people about the effect of rhino poaching and the truth behind the medicinal values of rhino horn. Addendum SOURCE A: Kruger Park loses more rhinos 2010-02-26 22:09 Cape Town Eight more white rhinos have been killed by poachers in the Kruger National Park, despite the deployment of high-tech equipment and extra rangers at so-called hot spots within the flagship reserve. In a written reply to a parliamentary question, Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said eight white rhinos, two impalas and a zebra were poached in January this year, compared to seven white rhinos, two impalas and one kudu during the same month the year before. Her reply contains details of sustainable steps taken to curb poaching in the park that includes: the deployment of 58 new field rangers taking the total number of rangers to 350 to poaching hot spots; the purchase of 19 motorbikes to help with patrols; the acquisition of new night-vision equipment for use by crew of the SANParks Air Service units two helicopters; and the purchase of another ultra-light aircraft, bringing the total to two, for use in anti-poaching operations. The air service unit also has three fixed-wing aircraft. Dramatic rise Sonjica said the SA National Defence Force would take over from the SA Police Service in patrolling the parks international border with Mozambique during the later part of this year. Over the past two years, the number of rhinos poached in the Kruger, and in other reserves around the country, has risen dramatically. On January 22, SANParks chief executive officer David Mabunda said in a statement that at least 14 rhinos had been poached since the start of the year, seven in the Kruger and seven in the North West. This brought the total number of rhinos killed in the past three years to 93. There had been 48 arrests made over this period. Mabunda said at the time that plans to bring the military to patrol the Krugers border with Mozambique were at an advanced stage. SAPA SOURCE B: 14 Oct 09 Commercial Rhino Poaching Thrives in South Africa, Thanks to Asian Demand for Rhino Horn Well-funded poaching syndicates are cashing in on Asias demand for rhino horn and jeopardizing decades of rhino conservation efforts in South Africa. The reason behind the current 15-year high in rhino poaching is no longer a mystery or baffling to experts: It is fueled by the insatiable demands of a newly affluent and increasing population in Asia. Commercial rhino poaching has become a well-oiled machine and the new Asian wealth is bankrolling the slaughter. Todays rhino poachers Heavily funded, politically connected, and well-armed, todays rhino poachers use helicopters to fly into Africas game reserves to kill rhino with the latest high-powered weapons. In a recent Guardian article, chief executive of the Endangered Wildlife Trust, Yolan Friedmann, said the average number of rhino killed has skyrocketed from 10 to 100 yearly. There has been a rampant increase in South Africa. Poaching figures for this year have already surpassed the whole of last year. Its probably the worst its been for 15 years. Theres a lot more money going into poaching and its becoming more hi-tech. Its no longer just a man with a bow and arrow wading through the bush. These guys are using helicopters and AK-47 rifles. Despite the once successful Save the Rhino project, rhinos are under siege. South Africa is facing a crisis. Weve done extremely well in rhino conservation, but something has changed in the past 18 months, theres an insatiable appetite for rhino horn in the far east. Cathy Dean, director of Save the Rhino International, says in the article that the surge in poaching is a threat to years of hard-earned success in rhino conservation. The gains of the last decade are in real jeopardy. The underlying concern is that this upsurge in rhino poaching a major issue in Zimbabwe as well as South Africa is no longer opportunistic poaching by individuals but carried out by à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ highly sophisticated criminal gangs. So far this year, 84 rhino have been killed in South Africa. In 2007, the number was 13. Unfortunately, commercial rhino poaching has become widespread: Zimbabwes rhino population is also suffering at the hands of a politically connected poaching cartel that fulfills orders from Chinese nationals for rhino horn. And illegal killing isnt the only way rhino horn enters Asias flourishing endangered species marketplace. http://www.rhinoconservation.org/2009/10/14/commercial-rhino-poaching-thrives-in-south-africa-thanks-to-asian-demand-for-rhino-horn/ SOURCE C: Escalated anti poaching actions starting to yield results South African National Parks (SANParks) announced earlier this months that more poachers have been apprehended in recent weeks due to the increased efforts to stamp down on poaching of rhino and other high value wildlife in the Kruger National Park. In July 2009 SANParks announced that the organisation had lost 26 white rhino and one black rhino to poaching and an added 10.3kg of rhino horn through a violent robbery in the Addo Elephant National Park. It is with sadness that we announce that since our announcement at the end of July we have lost a seven white rhino to poachers. However, the greatest news to come out of these despicable activities is that SANParks has since apprehended another six suspected rhino poachers and the recovery of five illegal firearms, said Dr David Mabunda, the chief executive of SANParks. The new arrests bring the number of arrested suspects to 14, with 11 recovered illegal firearms. Dr Mabunda said that what is alarming about this information is that of the 33 rhinos (including 1 black rhino) poached this year 28 of them were illegally killed along the eastern boundary with Mozambique and all the 14 suspects arrested thus far were of Mozambican origin. We intend to increase our efforts even more in ensuring that this scourge is routed out. Discussions have been started with Mozambican authorities to solicit their assistance in apprehending suspects and preventing illegal activities from proliferating on their side of the fence, said Dr Mabunda. SANParks has pledged a sum of R5.2 million from its Park Development Fund which is aimed at improving anti-poaching interventions in the KNP. The funds are being used for increasing the number of field rangers by 57 people as well as buying more vehicles and a state of the Crime Information Management System. SOURCE D: Rhino carnage continues YOLANDI GROENEWALD Jan 15 2009 05:00 The illegal slaughter of at least 12 rhinos over the festive season brings the number of the animals poached in South Africa in the past year close to 100. The rising death toll comes amid allegations that Mozambican authorities are not doing enough to crack down on known suspects and, in some cases, might be abetting the poachers. Another two rhino deaths in Mpumalanga have been reported but not confirmed some game reserves are reluctant to comment on such killings. If the figure is correct it would put the unofficial death toll of rhinos poached in South Africa since January last year at 96. The dead animals include critically endangered black rhinos. An Mpumalanga ranger who has tracked poaching across South Africas border into Mozambique said the countrys law enforcement failures were contributing to the problem. Not a single poacher arrested in Mozambique for killing a rhino has gone through the full process prescribed by the conservation law, the investigator said. Unfortunately, the Mozambican legislation cannot deal with modern poaching methods and this is being exploited by the poaching lords. He said many suspects are repeat offenders who simply return to poaching. And even if they point out their handlers the handlers can simply pay a fine if they are ever arrested. No poachers arrested in Mozambique for offences in the Kruger park and Mozambiques Sabie Game Park have been jailed for longer than two weeks. This includes offenders who have been apprehended twice for similar offences, the investigator said. A report he has drawn up reveals that poachers killed at least 43 rhinos between January 2004 and July 2008 in the Kruger park and around its border. Though the Kruger park would not provide official figures, the Mail Guardian understands that more than 40 rhinos were shot there between January and the end of November last year. In many cases Mozambicans, allegedly employed by Vietnamese syndicates operating out of South Africa, are the prime suspects. The syndicates are said to provide their local recruits with high-calibre weapons. Crossbows are also used because they are silent. The investigator said that a community leader from Mozambiques Limpopo National Park had shot rhinos in the Kruger National Park on three different occasions. Kruger law enforcers pursued him into Mozambique, where he was arrested each time, but on all three occasions the cases were either not finalised or no sentence was given. When the poacher tried his luck a fourth time he was apprehended on South African soil. The investigator said that South Africas laws should ensure that he is taken out of the poaching system. In another case in 2007 five rhinos were shot on the border of the Kruger park, in Mozambique. A task team comprising the Mozambican border police and staff from Kruger and Sabie Game Park arrested two suspects along with high-calibre weapons, the tracking equipment and binoculars. The investigator said the suspects and the evidence were handed over to the police commander in Moamba, Mozambique. But the investigator also sent letters about the case to the national government in Maputo because he felt Moamba police had bungled previous cases. In addition, he met with police leaders in Maputo and raised the lack of detective competency in Moamba. Despite his efforts, he said, the two suspects were simply fined R1 250 and released. The fine should have been at least R1,5-million if it was properly investigated and proper channels followed, he said. The horns were worth at least R1,5-million. The investigator said he suspected that some of the police in Moamba were corrupt and actually assisted the poachers. In one case the name of the poachers handler was obtained and the man was arrested. But the suspect has a freedom-fighting history and close ties with politicians and the police, the investigator said. Within one week he was released and South African investigators believe he did not even pay a fine. The Mozambican police had not responded to emailed questions by the time of going to print. Carlos Come, a director in the Mozambican police, merely commented that joint commissions between South Africa and Mozambique had been put in place to help Mozambique with its challenges.

Intriguing Use of Plot in William Faulkners A Rose for Emily Essay

Intriguing Use of Plot in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily The plotline of standard narratives would most aptly be diagramed as a triangle, with the rising action on one side, the falling action on the other side, and the climax marking the angle at the apex. The diagram of the plotline of William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," however, would look like a simple line with a positive slope. The story's chronology is abandoned in favor of a simpler and more effective geometry. Faulkner discards the method of unfolding events in the order of their occurrence. Instead, he raises tension in the reader and creates a climate of curiosity through revealing events in ascending order of intrigue. The beginning of Faulkner's story is the end for Miss Emily. Faulkner presents images of the townspeople dutifully attending the funeral of this fallen fixture. As soon as the reader becomes acclimated to this setting, however, Faulkner subtly takes the reader back in time: "Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Satoris, the mayor, [. . .] remitted her taxes" (Faulkner 75). Faulkner inserts exposition into the middle of what was a section of falling action. Rather than returning the reader to the scene of Miss Emily's funeral, Faulkner trudges forward from 1894, bringing the reader up to date on the issue of Miss Emily's taxes. While explaining the exemption from taxes in Jefferson that Miss Emily enjoyed, Faulkner craftily incorporates the fact that Miss Emily "ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier" (76). Miss Emily is now dead, having refused to pay her taxes and having retired from her china-painting t... ...horrifying truth of Miss Emily's murder of Homer Barron for the final section of the story, and introducing Emily's necrophilia in the story's closing sentence, speaks volumes about Faulkner's abilities in his craft. He has successfully arranged the events of a disturbed woman's life to present them in order of interest and excitement rather than in traditional chronological order. This use of plot enables Faulkner to write a great ghost story, because a ghost story needs to end on this kind of high note. Faulkner creates a plot line that resembles the upper line of a crescendo, a graph of emotional tension that starts at the lowest of points and travels steadily upward to the highest of human horrors. Works Cited Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Comp. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002. 75-81.

Argument and Parody in T.S. Eliots Four Quartets Essay -- T.S. Eliot

The Seduction of Argument and the Danger of Parody in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets Though its more lyrical passages present detailed and evocative imagery, substantial portions of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets afford no such easy approach. Since the initial appearance of "Burnt Norton" it has been a critical commonplace to regard these portions of the text as at once its most conceptually profound and its most formally prosaic. Of course, the Quartets offer enough cues toward this critical attitude that it may fairly be said to reside within the poem at least as much as it is imposed from without. As the text of the poem itself apparently gives license to the view that its "poetry does not matter," the preponderance of critical attention to the Quartets' non-lyrical passages has been devoted to philosophical and theological paraphrase of its argument, to explicating the system of belief or thought behind the words. Meanwhile, relatively little attention has been paid to the working of the poetry itself, to the construction of the presumed meaning, in these "discursive " or "conceptual" passages. Seduced by the desire for a systematic argument, criticism has overestimated these passages' straightforwardness and largely neglected their ambiguity and indeterminacy. The seductive voice of argument – which is already a voice within the poem – invites conceptual scrutiny but repels formal analysis; it displaces the concerns of "poetry" in order to work its poetry undetected. I will be reading critically several critical discussions, but always in the belief that the criticism's concerns are not projected onto the poem from without, but express the critical voices within the poem. The seduction of reading the Four Quartets as a systema... ...loise Knapp. T.S. Eliot's Negative Way. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982. Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T.S. Eliot. London: Methuen & Co., 1965. Orwell, George. "T.S. Eliot." In T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets: A Casebook. Ed. Bernard Bergonzi. London: Macmillan, 1969. Reed, Henry. "Chard Whitlow." In Collected Poems, p. 15. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Shapiro, Karl. "Poetic Bankruptcy." In T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets: A Casebook. Ed. Bernard Bergonzi. London: Macmillan, 1969. Thompson, Eric. T.S. Eliot: The Metaphysical Perspective. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963. Times Literary Supplement. "Mr T.S. Eliot's Confession." In T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets: A Casebook. Ed. Bernard Bergonzi. London: Macmillan, 1969. Traversi, Derek. T.S. Eliot: The Longer Poems. London: The Bodley Head, 1976.

New British Empire

Interview a senior citizen Tonya Williams PSYCH/500 March 25, 2013 Tanya Semcesen A face to face interview was held with Mr. C. Mr. C. is an 82 year old African American male. Physically looking at interviewee he does not look that age at all he looks like he is in his early sixties. Part I: Questions & Answers Q-How old are you? A-I am 82 years old. Q-When will you be 83? A-I will be 83 in mid-July Q-Are you married? A-I am a widow and have been for almost 53 years. Q-Do you have children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren?A-Yes I do. I had three children, eight grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren. Q-Do you live alone? A-No I do not, my youngest son lives with me. Q-Tell me a little about your background? A-I was born in the south and raised in the north by an aunt. Both of my parents died when they were fairly young. My mother at 56 and my father at 42. They were both ill the reason for their passing’s. I graduated high school at age 17. I am a retired restauran t worker for 21 years now. Q-What are no most memorable experiences that you have had?A-The most memorable experiences that I have had are a few good ones. My marriage is one, the birth of my children and grandchildren, and buying my own home. Q-What are the most significant life’s events for you? A-The death of my wife the mother of my three children, the death of my oldest son, my parents, and the death of my domestic partner was another significant stressful event for me. Q-If you had the opportunity to change anything would you and what would that be? A-Of course I would change the passing of my family members besides that it would be the type of job that I choose and when.I would have choose one that gave me better financial security and job happiness. Part II: Senior Citizen Developmental History There is a saying that says â€Å"once a child twice a man†. There a many stages in the development of the human lifespan. In middle and late adulthood people tend to lo ok at things in quite a different prospective as they reflect back on the journey of life. This paper and reflective interview will address the many developmental histories of a senior citizen. Mr. C. is an 82 year old African American who lives along with his adult son.Mr. C. is a widow whom had fathered three children one of which is deceased. Mr. C is the oldest of five children whom are all males. He was born in Virginia and raised in New York since he was age 13 with his aunt. He has been living in New York since then. He was educated in New York’s city public school system where he graduated high school at the age of 17. Married at age 27 and widowed at age 30. Mr. C. ’s father died at age 42 making Mr. C 15 years of age and at the passing of his mother he was 36 years old his mother was 56.Mr. C. never remarried he really never got over the death of his wife and children’s mother. Mr. C. lost his oldest son when the son was 27 years old. Mr. C. was in a d omestic partnership many years after the death of his wife. After multiple years in the domestic partnership yet again he was faced with another death, the death of her. Chronologically Mr. C is 82 and is an imperfect indicator of his functional age. Mr. C looks like he is in his sixties. People age biologically at different rates Mr. C. eems younger than he really is (Sutin, Wethington, et al. , 2010). Mr. C was so gracious to disclose his medical status with me. He is a survivor of prostate cancer, his cancer has been in remission on and off for 12 years. He suffers from congestive heart failure which he developed a few years ago. Not an indication of heart disease at all genetics and environment play a big role in the aging process and disease (Beck, 2010). During the duration of the interview when speaking about the deaths of his family members Mr. C. ecame a little emotional and seem to drift back into time a moment of reminiscence is what I think he was doing, trying to relive those moments in time. I asked him how he felt about their deaths. He responded by saying that he came to terms with it and that he was powerless over what had happened and that everyone has an appointment with God and his faith is what sustains him to carry on every day. According to ((Sutin, Wethington, et al. , 2010) the events that individuals define as stressful and how they cope with these events change across the lifespan (  Aldwin, Sutton, et al. , 1996).Starting in late adolescence, the ability to reconstrue negative experiences as positive develops, but it is not until young adulthood that this experienced wisdom is translated into a touchstone for coping with future situations (  Bluck & Gluck, 2004). The most surprisingly response in the interview process was the interviewee’s ability to remain powerless and come to terms about death. He spoke about what he wanted his son and daughter to do when the time came when he passed on in this life, He accepts death a nd knows that it is inevitable that it cannot be avoided no matter who you are.He keeps his faith in God to help deal with the end of life situations. Religious affiliations and psychological aids are helpful in handling depression and may improve the quality of life of aging individuals (Butler, Fujii, et al. , 2011). The birth of his children and grandchildren played a major part in the interviewee’s life. While interviewing he always said family first. I gathered the impression that he is a very family orientated person. In the bedrooms, living room, and hallway of the interviewee’s apartment is pictures of all family members, recent and the throw backs that is what the younger generation calls old pictures.A different demeanor hovers over the interviewee when he shows me family pictures and speaks about his family. I sense it brings him back to his more youthful days, days where he was the ruler of full independence. I asked Mr. C. did he belong to any senior citiz ens centers and his reply was no and he further elaborated for me. He wanted to be around younger people not people his age that constantly reminded him of what reality was indeed about but to feel vivacious for if only a moment when youth was on his side.He stated that is why he loved for his daughter to bring her youngest grandchild over. He loved the sound of the baby especially when he heard it cry it reminded him of youthfulness and independence. Aging is inevitable; becoming wiser with age is not. Researchers, theorists, and clinicians have noted that older adults approach their lives in one of two ways: Either they draw on their strengths and live life to the fullest, or they magnify their weaknesses and restrict their lives to succumb to life's inevitable end  (Gilbin, 2011). From listening to stories about when Mr. C. as much younger and able to take full control of his independence that making the transition from young adult and middle adult to the latter being late adul thood was the hardest to come to terms with and except fully. Hot cocoa was made for me and coffee was made for him by none other but Mr. C. I offered but that was not an option he insisted upon doing so. He maneuvered around his home with no assistance from anyone and when I attempted to do so he refused. I see that he is like a person with a special need and you opt to do it or help they respond by simply saying they can do it.He spoke about being able to do chores around his home that he no longer could do, his failing eye sight and the need for a therapeutic bed, he has difficulty getting up from lying flat. No longer being able to reach items that are on his top shelf in the kitchen cabinets was a hindrance at one time Mr. C. uses ingenious items to help around his home with activities of daily living. Self-efficacy allows one to develop and carry out a plan of action, allowing for a sense of competency (Butler, Fujii, et al. , 2011).His cognitive skills are on point and sharp and he held on to the conversation that he and I shared foe quite some time for a senior citizen his age. The second premise of successful aging is maximizing high physical and cognitive functioning, with these two factors partnering to optimize overall functioning. Physical function is maintained with moderate exercise and a network of support from family and friends. Cognitive function can be sustained with mental exercises and active engagement through conversation (Butler, Fujii, et al. , 2011).The most valuable information that I received from this interview  is to make sure that I take care of myself health wise, choose a career that I get satisfaction from, and live life like it is golden. Do what I want to do like life is a bucket list. At the end when life is almost near the end you hold no regrets. . References Berk, L. E. (2010). Development through the lifespan (5th ed. ). Boston, MA: Allyn ; Bacon. Butler, J. P. , Fujii, M. , ; Sasaki, H. (2011, January). Balanced agi ng, or successful aging?. Geriatrics ; Gerontology International. pp. 1-2. doi:10. 1111/j. 1447-0594. 010. 00661. x. Giblin, J. C. (2011). Successful aging. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing ; Mental Health Services,  49(3), 23-26. doi: http://dx. doi. org/10. 3928/02793695-20110208-01 Rowe, J. W. , ; Kahn, R. L. (1997). Successful aging. The Gerontologist,  37(4), 433-40. Retrieved from http://search. proquest. com/docview/210948228? accountid=35812 Sutin, A. R. , Costa, P. r. , Wethington, E. , ; Eaton, W. (2010). Turning points and lessons learned: Stressful life events and personality trait development across middle adulthood. Psychology And Aging,  25(3), 524-533. doi:10. 1037/a0018751

Linguistics and Interjections Essay

In Western philosophy and linguistic theory, interjections—that is, words like oof, ouch, and bleah—have traditionally been understood to indicate emotional states. This article offers an account of interjections in Q’eqchi’ Maya that illuminates their social and discursive functions. In particular, it discusses the grammatical form of interjections, both in Q’eqchi’ and across languages, and characterizes the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections in Q’eqchi’ in terms of a semiotic framework that may be generalized for other languages. With these grammatical forms, indexical objects, and pragmatic functions in hand, it details the various social and discursive ends that interjections serve in one Q’eqchi’ community, thereby shedding light on local values, norms, ontological classes, and social relations. In short, this article argues against interpretations of interjections that focus on internal emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. p a u l k o c k e l m a n is McKennan Post-Doctoral Fellow in Linguistic Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College (Hanover, N. H. 03755, U. S. A. [paul. kockelman@dartmouth. edu]). Born in 1970, he was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B. A. , 1992) and the University of Chicago (M. S. , 1994; Ph. D. , 2002). His publications include â€Å"The Collection of Copal among the Q’eqchi’-Maya† (Research in Economic Anthropology 20:163–94), â€Å"Factive and Counterfactive Clitics in Q’eqchi’-Maya: Stance, Status, and Subjectivity,† in Papers from the Thirty-eighth Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (Chicago: Linguistics Society, in press), and â€Å"The Interclausal Relations Hierarchy in Q’eqchi’ Maya† (International Journal of American Linguistics 69:25–48). The present paper was submitted 1 vi 01 and accepted 27 xii 02. 1. A longer version of this article was presented at the workshop â€Å"Semiotics: Culture in Context† at the University of Chicago in January 2001. Chris Ball, Anya Bernstein, John Lucy, and Michael Silverstein all provided very helpful commentary. This article also greatly bene? ted from suggestions made by Benjamin S. Orlove and several anonymous referees. Western philosophy and linguistic theory have traditionally considered interjections at the periphery of language and primordially related to emotion. For example, the Latin grammarian Priscian de? ned interjections as â€Å"a part of speech signifying an emotion by means of an unformed word† (Padley 1976:266). Muller (1862) ? thought that interjections were at the limit of what might be called language. Sapir (1921:6–7) said that they were â€Å"the nearest of all language sounds to instinctive utterance. † Bloom? eld (1984[1933]:177) said that they â€Å"occur under a violent stimulus,† and Jakobson (1960: 354) considered them exemplars of the â€Å"purely emotive stratum of language. † While interjections are no longer considered peripheral to linguistics and are now carefully de? ned with respect to their grammatical form, their meanings remain vague and elusive. In particular, although interjections are no longer characterized purely in terms of emotion, they are still characterized in terms of â€Å"mental states. † For example, Wierzbicka (1992:164) characterizes interjections as â€Å"[referring] to the speaker’s current mental state or mental act. † Ameka (1992a:107) says that â€Å"from a pragmatic point of view, interjections may be de?ned as a subset of items that encode speaker attitudes and communicative intentions and are contextbound,† and Montes (1999:1289) notes that many interjections â€Å"[focus] on the internal reaction of affectedness of the speaker with respect to the referent. † Philosophers have offered similar interpretations. For example, Herder thought that interjections were the human equivalent of animal sounds, being both a â€Å"language of feeling† and a â€Å"law of nature† (1966:88), and Rousseau, pursuing the origins of language, theorized that protolanguage was â€Å"entirely interjectional† (1990:71). Indeed, such philosophers have posited a historical transition from interjections to language in which the latter allows us not only to index pain and express passion but also to denote values and exercise reason (D’Atri 1995). 2 Thus interjections have been understood as a semiotic artifact of our natural origins and the most transparent index of our emotions. Such an understanding of interjections is deeply rooted in Western thought. Aristotle (1984), for example, posited a contrastive relationship between voice, proper only to humans as instantiated in language, and sound, shared by humans and animals as instantiated in cries. This contrastive relation was then compared with other analogous contrastive relations, in particular, value and pleasure/pain, polis and household, and bios (the good life, or political life proper to humans) and zoe (pure life, shared by all living things). Such a contrast is so pervasive that modern philosophers such as Agamben (1995) have devoted much of their scholarly work to the thinking out of this tradition and others built on it such as id versus ego in the Freudian paradigm. In short, the folk distinction made between interjections and language 2. D’Atri (1995:124) argues that, for Rousseau, â€Å"interjections . . . are sounds and not voices: they are passive registerings and as such do not presuppose the intervention of will, which is what characterizes human acts of speech. † 467 468 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 4, August–October 2003 proper maps onto a larger set of distinctions in Western thought: emotion and cognition, animality and humanity, nature and culture, female and male, passion and reason, bare life and the good life, pain and value, private and public, and so on (see, e.g. , Lutz 1988, Strathern 1988). In this article I avoid such abstracting and dichotomizing traps by going straight to the heart of interjections: their everyday usage in actual discourse when seen in the context of local culture and grounded in a semiotic framework. I begin by characterizing the linguistic and ethnographic context in which I carried out my research and go on to relate interjections to other linguistic forms, showing how they are both similar to and distinct from other classes of words in natural languages. Next I provide and exemplify a semiotic framework, generalizable across languages, in terms of which the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections can best be characterized. Then I detail the local usage of the 12 most commonly used interjections in Q’eqchi’ and show the way in which they are tied into all things cultural: values, norms, ontological classes, social relations, and so on. I conclude by discussing the relative frequency with which the various forms and functions of interjections are used. In short, I argue against interpretations of interjections that focus on emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. Linguistic and Ethnographic Context While I am attempting to provide as wide a theoretical account of interjections as I can, thereby providing a metalanguage for speaking about similar sign phenomena in other languages, I am also trying to capture the grammatical niceties of Q’eqchi’ Maya and the discursive and social particularities of one Q’eqchi’-speaking village in particular. Before I begin my analysis, then, I want to sketch the linguistic and ethnographic context in which I worked. Q’eqchi’ is a language in the Kichean branch of the Mayan family, spoken by some 360,000 speakers in Guatemala (in the departments of Alta Verapaz, Izabel, and Peten) and Belize (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980). 3 Lin? guistically, Q’eqchi’ is relatively well described: scholars such as Berinstein (1985), Sedat (1955), Stewart (1980), Stoll (1896), and Chen Cao et al. (1997) have discussed its syntax, morphology, phonology, and lexicon, and I have detailed various morphosyntactic forms (encoding grammatical categories such as mood, status, evidentiality, taxis, and inalienable possession) as they intersect with sociocultural values and contextual features and as they illuminate local modes of personhood (Kockelman 3. Typologically, Q’eqchi’ is a morphologically ergative, head-marking language. In Q’eqchi’, vowel length (signaled by doubling letters) is phonemic; /k/ and /q/ are velar and uvular plosives, respectively, and /x/ and /j/ are palato-alveolar and velar fricatives, respectively. All other phonemes have their standard IPA values. 2002, 2003a, b). This article is therefore part of a larger project in which I examine how intentional and evaluative stances are encoded in natural languages and the relations that such stances bear to local modes of subjectivity. Alta Verapaz, the original center of the Q’eqchi’-speaking people who still make up the majority of its population, has had a unusual history even by Guatemalan standards. In 1537, after the Spanish crown had failed to conquer the indigenous peoples living there, the Dominican Friar Bartolome de Las Casas was permitted to ?pacify the area through religious methods. Having succeeded, he changed the name of the area from Tezulutlan (Land of War) to Verapaz (True Peace), and the Dominicans were granted full control over the area—the state banning secular immigration, removing all military colonies, and nullifying previous land grants. In this way, for almost 300 years the area remained an isolated enclave, relatively protected by the paternalism of the church in comparison with other parts of Guatemala (King 1974, Sapper 1985). This ended abruptly in the late 1800s, however, with the advent of coffee growing, liberal reforms, and the in? ux of Europeans (Cambranes 1985, Wagner 1996). Divested of their land and forced to work on coffee plantations, the Q’eqchi’ began migrating north into the unpopulated lowland forests of the Peten ? and Belize (Adams 1965, Carter 1969, Howard 1975, Kockelman 1999, Pedroni 1991, Saa Vidal 1979, Schwartz 1990, Wilk 1991). In the past 40 years this migration has been fueled by a civil war that has ravaged the Guatemalan countryside, with the Q’eqchi’ ? eeing not just scarce resources and labor quotas but also their own nation’s soldiers—often forcibly conscripted speakers of other Mayan languages (Carmack 1988, IWGIA 1978, Wilson 1995). As a consequence, the past century has seen the Q’eqchi’ population spread from Alta Verapaz to the Peten and ? nally to Belize, Mexico, and even the ? United States. Indeed, although only the fourth largest of some 24 Mayan languages, Q’eqchi’ is thought to have the largest percentage of monolinguals, and the ethnic group is Guatemala’s fastest-growing and most geographically extensive (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980). The two key ethnographies of Q’eqchi’-speakers have been written by Wilk (1991) and Wilson (1995), the former treating household ecology in Belize and the latter upheavals in village life and identity at the height of the civil war in highland Guatemala during the 1980s. In addition to these monographs, there are also a number of dissertations and articles on the history (King 1974, Sapper 1985, Wagner 1996), ecology (Carter 1969, Secaira 1992, Wilson 1972), and migration (Adams 1965, Howard 1975, Pedroni 1991) of Q’eqchi’-speaking  people. The data for this article are based on almost two years of ethnographic and linguistic ? eldwork among speakers of Q’eqchi’, most of it in Ch’inahab, a village of some 80 families (around 650 people) in the municipality of San Juan Chamelco, in the department of Alta Verapaz. At an altitude of approximately 2,400 m, Ch’inahab is one of the highest villages in this area, with an annual precipitation of more than 2,000 mm. It is also one of k o c k e l m a n The Meanings of Interjections in Q’eqchi’ Maya F 469  the most remote, access to the closest road requiring a three-hour hike down a steep and muddy single-track trail. Its relatively high altitude and remote location provide the perfect setting for cloud forest, and such a cloud forest provides the perfect setting for the resplendent quetzal, being home to what is thought to be the highest density of such birds in the world. Because of the existence of the quetzal and the cloud forest in which it makes its home, Ch’inahab has been the site of a successful eco-tourism project the conditions and consequences of which are detailed in my dissertation (Kockelman 2002). While the majority of villagers in Ch’inahab are monolingual speakers of Q’eqchi’, some men who have served time in the army or worked as itinerant traders speak some Spanish. All the villagers are Catholic. Ch’inahab is divided by a mountain peak with dwellings on both of its sides and in the surrounding valleys. It takes about 45 minutes to hike across the village. At one end there is a biological station kept by the eco-tourism project and used sporadically by European ecologists, and at the other there is a Catholic church and a cemetery. In the center there is a small store, a school for primary and secondary grades, and a soccer ? eld. The surrounding landscape is cloud forest giving way to scattered house sites, agricultural parcels, pasture, and ? elds now fallow. All villagers engage in corn-based, or milpa, agriculture, but very few have enough land to ful? ll all of their subsistence needs. 4 For this reason, many women in the village are dedicated to chicken husbandry, most men in the village engage in seasonal labor on plantations (up to ?ve months a year in some cases), and many families engage in itinerant trade (women weaving baskets and textiles for the men to sell) and eco-tourism (the women hosting tourists and the men guiding them). Dwelling sites often contain a scattering of houses in which reside an older couple and their married sons, all of whom share a water source and a pasture. The individual families themselves often have two houses, a relatively traditional thatched-roof house in which the family cooks and sleeps and a relatively new house with a tin roof in which they host festivals and in which older children and ecotourists may sleep. Because of eco-tourism and the in? ux of money and strangers that it brings, there has been an increase in the construction of such tin-roofed houses, and, as will be seen, many of my examples of interjections come from such construction contexts. My data on the use of interjections among villagers in Ch’inahab comes from 14 months of ? eldwork carried out between 1998 and 2001. The data collection con4. Before 1968, what is now Ch’inahab was owned by the owner of a plantation. Q’eqchi’-speakers who lived in the village of Popobaj (located to the south of and lower than Ch’inahab) were permitted to make their milpa in this area in exchange for two weeks of labor per month on the ? nca (Secaira 1992:20). Only in 1968, when a group of villagers got together to form a land acquisition committee, were some 15 caballer? as (678 ha) of land purchased from the owner ? for 4,200 quetzals (US$4,200). This land, while legally owned by the entire community, was divided among the original 33 villagers as a function of their original contributions.  sisted in part of characterizing tokens of usage when I heard them and in part of tracking tokens of usage through recordings of naturally occurring conversations. 5 In particular, given the fact that many interjections occur in relatively nonconversational, task-engaged situations (house building, planting, playing, cooking, etc. ), trying to record them in such contexts was futile. Luckily, as will be seen, they often occur in modes of disruption (when some goal-directed action goes awry), which makes them relatively easy to notice in real-time context and their contextual regularities relatively easy to stipulate. In addition, I tape-recorded naturally occurring conversations in the households of three families once a week over several months, usually at dinnertime. 6 After I describe the forms and meanings of the interjections I will discuss the relative frequency of the various tokens collected and thereby illuminate which forms and meanings are most often used by whom. The Grammatical Form of Interjections There are four criteria by which interjections may be differentiated from other linguistic forms within a particular language and generalized as a form class across languages (Ameka 1992, Bloom?eld 1984[1933], Jespersen 1965, Wilkins 1992). First, all interjections are conventional lexical forms, or words, that can constitute utterances on their own (Wilkins 1992). They are conventional in that their sign carriers have relatively standardized and arbitrary phonological forms, and they can constitute utterances on their own because their only syntagmatic relation with other linguistic forms is parataxis—in which two forms are â€Å"united by the use of only one sentence pitch† (Bloom? eld 1984[1933]:171). They can therefore stand alone as perfectly sensible stretches of talk before and after which there is silence. Second, with few exceptions, no interjection is simultaneously a member of another word class (Ameka 1992a, Wilkins 1992). Almost all of them are what Ameka (1992a:105), following Bloom? eld (1984[1933]), calls primary interjections: â€Å"little words or non-words which . . . can constitute an utterance by themselves and do not normally enter into constructions with other word classes. † In Q’eqchi’, the main exceptions are interjections built, through lexical extension, from the primary interjection ay. In the case of ay dios, the additional 5. I also include several examples of interjection usage that occurred in the context of ethnographic interviews about topics other than interjections, for these often indicated that an ethnographic question was poorly posed or inappropriate in the local context. I also carried out extensive interviews about the meanings of interjections with native speakers (see Kockelman 2002 for an extended discussion of the relationship between form, usage, and speakers’ re? ections). 6.  Indeed, the best two accounts of interjection-like things— â€Å"response cries† in Goffman (1978) and â€Å"emblematic gestures† in Sherzer (1993)—explicitly take into account social interaction and ethnographic description. Good accounts of the discursive use of interjections are offered by De Bruyn (1998), Ehlich (1986), Gardner (1998), and Meng and Schrabback (1999). 470 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 4, August–October 2003 element, dios, is a loan noun from Spanish, meaning â€Å"god. † In the case of ay dios atinyuwa’, besides the Spanish loanword there is a Q’eqchi’ expression, at-in-yuwa’ (you [are] my father). Interjections of this latter kind, which are or involve forms that belong to other word classes, will be called secondary interjections (again following Ameka and Bloom? eld). Similarly, the English secondary interjections damn and heavens may be used as both interjections and verbs or nouns. Third, with few exceptions, an interjection consists of a single morpheme and undergoes neither in? ectional nor derivational processes (Wilkins 1992). Interjections cannot be in? ectionally marked for grammatical categories such as tense or number, and they cannot be further derived into another form class such as noun or verb. Such forms are often classi? ed as a subclass of â€Å"particles† or discourse markers (see Ameka 1992a, Fraser 1999, Jespersen 1965, Schiffrin 1987, Wilkins 1992, and Zwicky 1985). In Q’eqchi’ there are three exceptions to this characterization. First, uyaluy is what I will call a reduplicative interjection, being composed, through syllabic reduplication, from the interjection uy. Second, ay dios and ay dios atinyuwa’ are what I will call extended interjections, being composed, through lexical extension, from the interjection ay. And lastly, the interjection ay may undergo further derivation into a delocutionary verb (becoming ayaynak, â€Å"to cry or yell continually,† often said of dogs howling), which may then undergo normal verbal in? ection for grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, person, and number. Lastly, although it is not a criterial feature, many of these forms are phonologically or morphologically anomalous, having features which mark them as odd or unique relative to the standard lexical forms of a language. For example, unlike most Q’eqchi’ words, in which stress falls on the last syllable (Stewart 1980), the interjection uyaluy has syllable-initial stress. Similarly, while reduplication is a common morphological process in Q’eqchi’ (Stewart 1980), the reduplicative interjection uyaluy is derived through a nonstandard morphological form. While many Q’eqchi’ words involve a glottalized alveolar stop, the interjection t’ is also implosive. 7 Whereas the Spanish loanword dios is usually phonetically assimilated in Q’eqchi’ as tiox when used as a noun, in the interjection ay dios there is no devoicing of the initial consonant of this noun (i.e. , /d/ does not become /t/) or palatization of its ? nal consonant (i. e. , /s/ does not become /x/). And the interjection sht differs from ordinary Q’eqchi’ words in using /sh/, rather than a vowel, as a syllabic (see Bloom? eld 1984[1933]:121). In short, it is clear from the number of quali? cations that interjections, like most linguistic forms, are dif? cult to characterize with necessary and suf? cient conditions (see Taylor 1995, Zwicky 1985). Nevertheless, they may simultaneously be differentiated from other form classes within a particular language and generalized as a form class across languages. 7. Often called a â€Å"dental click† (Wilkins 1992) or a â€Å"suction stop† (Jespersen 1965:90). Readers who speak some Spanish may have noticed that many Q’eqchi’ interjections look similar to Spanish interjections—ay (dios), uy, ah, eh, sht—and even to English interjections (sh[t] and t’). While I have no historical data that would attest to such a claim, given the history of sustained linguistic contact between speakers of Spanish and Q’eqchi’ via the colonial encounter and between speakers of Spanish and English this should come as no surprise. The one good account of interjections in Spanish (Montes 1999) discusses only a small range of the discursive functions of interjections and focuses on the internal state of the speaker. As I will show, however, the meanings of some of these interjections in Q’eqchi’ seem to bear a resemblance to their meanings in Spanish, as far as can be discerned from the comparative data. In this way, these â€Å"loan interjections† show that almost any linguistic form may be borrowed (see Brody 1995) with some maintenance of its meaning. The Meanings of Q’eqchi’ Interjections  Although interjections are relatively easy to characterize from the standpoint of grammatical form, there is no framework in terms of which one may order and compare their meanings—that is, the classes of objects and signs that they index (and thereby stand in a relationship of contiguity with) and the types of pragmatic functions they serve (and thereby may be used as a means to achieve). In what follows, I frame their use in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. I will begin with an extended example through which the framework will become clear. The Q’eqchi’ interjection chix indexes loathsome objects in the situational context. For example, when picking up his bowl of food from the ground, a man notices that he has set it in chicken feces. â€Å"Chix,† he says, scraping the bowl on the dirt to wipe off the feces. His wife, herself responsible for the chicken, then takes his bowl for herself and gives him a new one. Similarly, when opening the door to her house early one morning, a woman notices that the dog has vomited right outside the doorway. â€Å"Chix,† she says, and her ? ve-year-old son comes over to look. She tells him to scrape it away with a machete. Like most interjections that have indexical objects in the situational context, this interjection serves to call another’s attention to the object. 8 Relatedly, and as a function of responsibility assessment (husband 1 wife 1 child), it directs another’s attention to what must be cleaned up, avoided, etc. The interjection chix may also be transposed to index a sign denoting or characterizing a loathsome object (see Buhler 1990). In such cases of sign-based transposition, ? the interjection is in a relationship of contiguity with a 8. Montes (1999:1293) notes that most of the Spanish interjections she examined â€Å"seem to be associated with seeing. We ? nd that a large number of the interjections [ah, oh, uh, ay, oy, uy] used in the conversations examined co-occur with directives to ‘see’ or ‘look at’ or as a response to these directives. † k o c k e l m a n The Meanings of Interjections in Q’eqchi’ Maya F 471 sign that denotes or characterizes the object or event in question (rather than being in contiguity with the actual object or event, as in the usage of chix just discussed). In other words, it is as if the speaker were inhabiting the frame of the narrated event (Buhler 1990). In this way, ? the interjection chix indexes not just loathsomeness but also signs that refer to or predicate qualities of loathsome objects. Insofar as the denotatum of such a sign has the same qualities and values as the object itself, the modality of contiguity (being able to taste, touch, see, or smell the object in question) is suspended while the ontological class of the object (loathsomeness) is maintained. For example, in telling a story to a group of  men about a friend who was bitten by a poisonous spider while working on a plantation in the lowland area of Guatemala, the speaker describes the pus blisters that rose up on his friend’s arm. â€Å"Chix,† says one of the men listening. The other men laugh, and before continuing his story the speaker adds that the pus blisters took two weeks to heal. Like most interjections that undergo signbased transposition, such usage often serves as a backchannel cue, indicating that the speaker is listening but cannot or does not want to contribute to the topic at hand (Brown and Yule 1983:90–94; Duncan 1973; compare the usage of mmm or jeez in English). Lastly, the interjection chix may be transposed to index an addressee’s relation of contiguity with a loathsome object. In such cases of addressee-based transposition, the situational indexical object is transposed to a person other than the speaker. The speaker’s sign is audible (a relation of contiguity) to the addressee, who is in a relationship of contiguity with the object. In other words, it is as if the speaker were inhabiting the ad? dressee’s current corporal?  eld (see Buhler 1990, Hanks 1990), and, again, the modality of contiguity is suspended while the ontological class is maintained. For example, a mother watching her three-year-old son approach a dog that is defecating wormy stool calls out to him â€Å"Chix. † The child stops his advance and watches from a distance. In this most addressee-focused way, the sign is used by a parent to index that a child is within reach (typically tactile) of a disgusting object and serves as an imperative not to touch the object. Interjections are primarily indexical (see Peirce 1955) in that they stand for their objects by a relationship of contiguity rather than by a relationship of convention (as in the case of symbols) or similarity (as in the case of icons). 9 Although the indexical modality of interjections is emphasized in this article, the symbolic modality is always present in at least two interrelated ways. First, and trivially, the interjection itself has a standard9. If interjections were iconic, then they would be expected to resemble their objects. The problem with this, as exempli?  ed by Kryk-Kastovsky’s (1997) argument that interjections are the most iconic of all linguistic elements expressing surprise, is that one needs to know what â€Å"surprise† looks like when usually our only indication of surprise is the interjection or behavior itself. However, interjections as indexical of situational and discursive objects do in certain cases have iconic modalities of meaning (see, e. g. , the discussion of ay, ay dios, and ay dios atinyuwa’ below). ized but relatively arbitrary form that is conventionally used by members of a given linguistic community. Second, interjections conventionally stand in a relation of contiguity with particular classes of objects. These conventional classes of indexical objects are present in two ways. First, across interjections, one may characterize what semiotic class of objects is being indexed. Second, in the case of any particular interjection, one may characterize what ontological class of objects is being indexed. Besides indexing objects or signs in the immediate context, interjections have pragmatic functions: they serve as a means to achieve certain ends. For example, chix variously serves as an attentative (when nontransposed), a back-channel cue (when undergoing sign-based transposition), and an imperative (when undergoing addressee-based transposition). Both the objects indexed and the pragmatic functions served (see Silverstein 1987) are integral aspects of the meanings of interjections. Finally, interjections may index more than one object at once. In particular, they may index objects, signs, internal states, and social relations. In what follows, I will refer to these distinct types of indexical objects as situational, discursive, expressive, and social, respectively. Situational indexical objects are the objects or events in the immediate context of the speech event. Discursive indexical objects are the signs that occur in the speech event. 10 Together, situational and discursive indexical objects are the most stable co-occurrence regularities that interjections possess and therefore the only ones that are easy to tabulate. Expressive indexical objects are the intentional stances of the speaker—the putative mental states, whether construed as â€Å"cognitive† or â€Å"emotive. †11 Lastly, social indexical objects are the various social roles inhabited by the speaker or addressee (gender, ethnicity, age, etc. ) or the social relations that exist between the two (status, deference, politeness, etc. ). For example, chix may index not only a loathsome object in the situational context but a social relation (parentchild, husband-wife, raconteur–appreciative listener) and, in many cases, an internal state (â€Å"disgust†). And the interjection ay not only indexes a painful object in the situational context or an unexpected answer in the dis10. This is not quite the standard distinction between â€Å"text† and â€Å"context† (Montes 1999 and Wilkins 1992). For example, while it is tempting to put sign-based transposition into the discursive context for the purposes of schematizing the data, sign-based transpositions make sense only in terms of the qualities of the objects referred to by the sign indexed by the interjection. In contrast, an unsolicited response such as a dubitive is directed at the truth of another’s assertion rather than at any particular quality of the state of affairs predicated by that assertion. For this reason, dubitives belong to the discursive context and sign-based transpositions to the situational context. 11. Whereas interjections creatively index expressive indexical objects in that the interjection is often the only sign of the internal state in question, they presupposedly index situational and discursive indexical objects in that both interjection and indexical object are simultaneously present in context (see Silverstein 1976 for this distinction). This difference in semiotic status (presupposing/creative) maps onto a putative difference in ontological status (world/mind). 472 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 4, August–October 2003 cursive context but also an internal state (pain) in the expressive context and a role in the social context (in particular, female gender). Many interjections index signs in the discursive context in that they co-occur with (or serve as) a response to an addressee’s previous utterance or a nonresponse. In the case of a response, the use of an interjection occurs after and makes sense only relative to the addressee’s previous utterance. For example, the interjection ih indexes an addressee’s previous statement and serves as a registerative, indicating that the speaker has heard and understood the statement. In the case of a nonresponse, the interjection may either elicit an addressee’s utterance (and thereby occur before it) or occur in the midst of the speaker.