Abraham Lincoln's speech analysis

Abraham Lincoln could made the decisions he did because he thought he owed everything to his home town, as he says in line 2 of the speech: "To this place (...), I owe everything." in this quote we can see the feeling Lincoln felt that he owed everything to his home town and that being a member of the house of representatives and later being the president of the united states could help him achieve that goal, which could have included his opinion against slavery which maybe helped him take decisions as for example the emancipation proclamation.

Paper 2 preparation

The written texts have always a certain meaning, that tells us something that is not necessarily explicit on the text o could help us to understand what the author wanted to say. Meaning is what the source of sender communicates in their message to the receiver, and what the receiver infers from the current context. But the meaning of a text is fixed and do not change over time? I say no because: the message of a text is received different depending on the reader and the time; the words used in a text could mean something different depending of the time, and the reception of certain elements of a text can be different over time.

First, the message of a text is received differently in different times from where it was written and depending on the reader of the text as for example in page 40 of “To Kill a Mockingbird”: ‘He had announced in the schoolyard the day before that Scout Finch’s daddy defended niggers.’ This quote from the book tells us what Scout, the protagonist, referred to as what made her forget she did not have to fight with others. This quote talks about how was society’s reaction when someone defended a “nigger” a term widely used to refer colloquially to African American descendants, mainly in the times where the plot of this book takes place, 1930s decade, when the African American descendants were very discriminated for that, to which a reader from the time the book was written, in 1960, will have a neutral reaction because the fact that in those times the people was used to this and most white people supported it, but if we apply it to a time as the present day, 2014, it could have caused a lot of controversy for the use of the word “nigger” in the context it is used because of the racism implied in it. It also show us how the African American descendants were discriminated as being a reason of mock between the children the fact that Scout’s father was the lawyer defending one, Tom Robinson, which nowadays could be very condemned in the society such expression of racism.

Second, the words used in the text could mean something different depending of the time the story is read as for example in page 41 of “To Kill a Mockingbird”: ‘I’m simply defending a Negro (…)’. In this quote we can see how Atticus Finch, Scout’s father, refers to the fact that he only defends an African American descendant referred by him as a “negro” which, as I said before, was received in the context when the book was written in 1960 because of the great amount of discrimination against African American descendants during this period that was followed with the defence of the rights of the African American descendants with his famous speech “I have a dream” from 1963. Different from that period with the present time is that the word “negro” passed from being a common term for the dark skinned people to be an offensive and racist term for them, coming from white people, so in the present days the use of “negro” could, as I said before, cause a lot of controversy and problems for the author with the society.

Finally the reception of certain elements presented in the text can be changed depending on the time the text is published and also depending on who is the reader as for example in some elements of the book Fatelessness by the Jewish author Imre Kertész, as are the main elements of the holocaust as for example the forced work made by every man and woman from teenager age to old age. This elements can be perceived differently depending on the time that are perceived and in the reader. The element that we can identify in the text of the young György Köves working in very poor conditions moving rocks, loading them into train carts while being abused by the Nazi guards leading to some cases in which he nearly faints. This specific element will be perceived differently depending on the time it is received and who is the reader, as for example, if the reader is a Nazi soldier in mid 1940s he would probably perceive the element in a positive way and probably supported it, but if the reader was an Englishman with an anti-Nazi thinking he could receive the element in a very negative way because of his thinking and the abuse shown inside the text. While if the reader are a German and a British man but in the context of the XXI century they could receive the message in a very different way, being probably the German seeing it as a great fault that should never happened in the history of Deutschland while the British man could only see it as the awful past of the German people.

In conclusion, the meaning of a text is not fixed and changes over time because many parts of a text as are the context and the message can change depending on the time the text is written and/or read because of the changes in how society see some actions and thoughts which make them be more or less condemned, as for example the use of word as “negro”.

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