Understanding the Utterances of NDA Cadets: Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis

<P align=left><I><FONT face="Times New Roman"><FONT face="Times New Roman">The official language of the Indian Armed Forces is English. Otherwise Hindi connects the officers and personnel from the different parts of India. As the cultural ethos of (wo) men-inuniform is quite different from that of the civilian community, the dialect of their language repertoire also varies. The language of the Armed Forces, which is an abounding site for a sociolinguistic&nbsp;investigation, has received little attention from linguistic studies. In the present paper, I have tried to analyze the ‘utterances’ of the cadets of National Defence Academy [NDA], Khadakwasla, Pune (India). Based on the data collected during April 2004 to Oct 2007, the study explores the nature of cadets’ use of language on the campus. The cadets’ language, popularly known as the &amp;apos;NDA lingo&amp;apos; at the Academy, exhibits a typical linguistic behavior of the Armed Forces. The register of the NDA lingo– marked by the economy of language, deviation from the general conversational practices, code-mixing, word blending and clipping, etc.,– reflects the cadets’ way of life: their regimental lives, the relationship between senior and junior cadets, their socio-psychological make-up, play with language, management of time, etc. Largely derived from English and partly from Hindi, the NDA lingo is slightly unintelligible to outsiders. The First Term cadets take almost four to five months to acquire a pragmatic competence of the lingo.</FONT></FONT></I></P>

04_Alina Buzatu.pdf

<font size="3"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Abstract</span>: The present paper deals with the binomial to read / to imagine and its taxinomic<br>definitions in various aesthetic paradigms. The point of departure is the discrimination between<br>mimetic and non-mimetic texts and the ways they are (semantically) tributary (or not) to the reference<br>world. The focus is on the idea that the conversion of signifiers and the negotiation of meaning are<br>guided by textual procedures. They act as operational instructions for the reader or, as I put it, a<br>User’s Guide to reading. The more elaborated they are, the more intense is the autotelism, the<br>narcissistic nature of a given text. The parameters of fictionalization are discussed contrastively using<br>two aesthetic paradigms (Realism and Surrealism) and their epitomic examples (Flaubert’s Madame<br>Bovary and, respectively, Breton’s Nadja). At the superficial narrative level, these texts actualize the<br>theme of love (licit or illicit, euphoric or deluded, real or specious etc.); in the profound semiotic<br>layers, these two entities are self-referenced. But, if the Realist work dissimulates its specularity, the<br>Surrealist text is ostentatiously self-reflexive; the Realist art creates possible possible worlds, while<br>the Surrealist doctrine is the recipe for the impossible possible worlds.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;">Key words</span>: autopoiesis ; specularity;textual procedures ; User’s guide to reading; Realism;<br>Surrealism</font>