Read the text to answer question.

    No one who speaks English has any difficulty understanding the meaning of a sentence like ‘It’s warm in here’. We all recognise that it is a comment on the temperature in some place or other. But why it is being said, and what the speaker wishes to convey by saying it, depends entirely on two things: the context in which it is said and what the speaker wants people to understand (...) The meaning of language depends on where it occurs within a larger stretch of discourse, and thus the relationship that the different language elements have with what comes before and after them. In other words, speakers and writers have to be able to operate with more than just words and grammar; they have to be able to string utterances together.

    Our ability to function properly in conversation or writing depends not only on reacting to the context in which we are using the language, but also on the relationship between words and ideas in longer texts.

    Words can also mean more than one thing, for example, ‘book’ (= something to read, to reserve, a list of bets, etc.), ‘beat’ (= to win, to hit, to mix, e.g. an egg, the ‘pulse’ of music/a heart) and ‘can’ (= ability, permission, probability – and a container made of metal). Notice that, in these examples, not only can the same form have many meanings, but it can also be different parts of speech.

    With so many available meanings for words and grammatical forms, it is the context the word occurs in which determines which of these meanings is being referred to. If we say, ‘I beat him because I ran faster than he did’, ‘beat’ is likely to mean won rather than physically assaulted or mixed (though there is always the possibility of ambiguity, of course).

(Harmer, 1998. Adaptado)

Text 7A3-II 

    400 million people speak English as their first language; another 1.4 billion as a second tongue. Born 1,600 years ago among the Germanic tribes of northern Europe, English became global. A new exhibition at the British Library, named Evolving English, traces for the first time the incredible journey launched by the Frisians, Saxons, Angles and Jutes who sailed to southeast England, and whose descendants created the Vespasian Psalter in the eighth century. From the Vespasian Psalter the journey moves on through England’s early literary heroes, Beowulf, Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight, and on to Jonathan Swift.

    The curators of Evolving English have been clever to focus not just on English at school and English at work, but English at play, from spoonerisms to malapropisms, puns and palindromes and the 1,800 words invented by William Shakespeare — among them “green-eyed”, “go-between”, “well-read” and “zany”. Not only was Shakespeare the greatest English writer, he could have been no other kind.

Internet: (<www.economist.com> (adapted).  

Text 7A3-I  

    As a science fiction writer, Octavia Butler forged a new path and envisioned bold possibilities. The future she wrote about is now our present moment. She wrote 12 novels and won each of science fiction’s highest honors. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. She is also, increasingly, a writer recognized as one of the most important voices and visionaries of the 20^th century, and now the 21^st. As a Black woman and a writer, Butler demolished walls that seemed impermeable, writing on themes that seemed uncategorizable. Her ideas and characters continue to resonate with new readers when so many are looking for, if not hope, then a map for a way forward.

    Her vision about the climate crisis, political and societal upheaval and the brutality and consequences of power hierarchies seems both sobering and prescient. However, as Butler often noted, being right was never the point. She didn’t want to be right — far from it. She wanted to give us time, and tools, to correct the course. 

 Lynell George. The Visions of Octavia Butler. Internet: <www.nytimes.com> (adapted).