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A project for ENG560 History of English, this language analysis takes a deep dive into a set of 20 synonyms, all centered around my all-time favorite word, "macabre." I then decided which synonym could most easily replace "macabre" in a given sentence.
I used Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, the Oxford English Dictionary, and Vocabulary.com as references to create a breakdown of each synonym, laying out its history and developing usage through the centuries, and analyzing its denotation and connotation in real-world modern usage.
Shakespeare is a revered master of the English language and often gets credit for the famous insults his characters hurl at one another. For ENG 534, I took a deeper look into the profanity and foul language present in his play 1Henry IV to uncover what these word choices revealed about the characters.
My research took into account what words counted as profanity, digging up academic resources by linguistic experts who know this time period well. I picked out which words were used by which characters, as well as why and to whom they spewed these colorful words.
While the History of English class helped me develop a love of etymology, it also helped me exercise my language and translation skills.
Using only spellings and grammar of Old English words found in the poem, I unraveled the Anglo-Saxon philosophies and ideals threaded throughout the narrative, determined the time and point of view of the piece, and speculated on the dialectical origins of the ancient poem.
My latest language literary analysis was written for ENG560, English Drama. Here, I took a closer look at the names chosen for the characters in two Restoration-era plays, seeking to reveal what these names would reveal about each character to the audience who heard them.
I once again returned to the Oxford English Dictionary, looking at the meaning and usage of those words during this time period. I picked out how the traits hinted at by these names were carried out in the play, and how both names and characters contributed to the author's larger messages about society.
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