Rape of Nanjing

The Rape of Nanjing was the largest single city massacre in the world in which 250,000-300,000 citizens were killed and many more were injured and left mangled. This was the Japanese attempt to conquer what was the Chinese capital at the time. Looking at what historians have to say about the rape of Nanjing is that the interpretations of the event differ entirely from nation to nation. China views the rape of Nanjing as a remarkable insult and a great loss of civilians. This is an event from their history that the Chinese look at with great despair. On the other hand, the Japanese do not even accept that the massacre even took place. They deny every piece of evidence altogether, and when argued that it did indeed happen, the Japanese claim that it is a part of their "hazy past" and that it needs to be forgotten. This is a case of great subjectivity. Because the Japanese view this as shameful on their part, they do not feel the need to educate their students about it either and the event does not exist in Japanese textbooks. They do not wish for this massacre to be known by the youth of their nation. However, the Chinese insist that the Japanese must teach about this as it is important for the world to know how horrific the event was. The Chinese also demand an apology which is contrary to the Japanese thinking that this should just be forgotten. These two poles of subjectivity make it difficult to understand what one should believe. Another nation's standpoint can also be subjective without being the main actor in the situation. Because the USA saw how bad Sino-Japanese relations were, and also the increasing arms rivalry between Japan and the US, they had personal reasons to dislike the Japanese as well as condemning their actions towards China. Therefore, they fully support the fact that the rape of Nanjing needs more recognition and that it is a terrible event of the past. 

Inattentional blindness

There was a concept that we read about while we were researching for our Tok presentation called "inattentional blindness." Inattentional blindness is a condition where a person only sees where their attention is paid and disregards all other elements. An example that we saw was the gorilla test in the room where many of the people were focused on counting the number of white shirts in the room and did not see when the gorilla appeared. This is called inattentional blindness. In many situations this occurs such as when athletes are extremely focused to get the ball that they disregard who they may be dodging and could potentially injure. This is a form of a fallacy where if applied to knowledge, people would not be able to acquire the truth because it has been hindered by what they are looking for. For instance when one is searching for knowledge about a specific cause regarding an event: say, militarism regarding World War 1. They would solely look into the aspects regarding militarism and associate that with being the single cause rather than looking at other potential triggers of World War 1 such as alliances, nationalism and imperialism. This blindness occurs in the search for evidence, and also on a regular basis where we disregard other aspects due to our focus on a particular thing. 

Is harming an individual for the sake of benefiting the human population justified?

Mr Michel was telling me about an event that took place the year of his graduation, 1983 where in South Dakota, students of his college were offered compensation for enrolling themselves in human experimentation. They were all given contracts where the ones devising the experiments stated that they were not responsible should anything happen. This was was an experiment held for researchers in the field of medicine. When I heard about the event, I immediately thought how ridiculous it was. People at the time that they are most needy of money and have to get jobs while coping with living alone and paying tuition will definitely feel as if earning easy cash is the simpler way out. However what they do not realise is the extent of drastic consequences they may have to face some of which are not even mentioned and the experimenters do not even take any responsibility. They claim that they are helping the world, perhaps through some tests conducted to learn more about the body or for claimed cancer research. There is no guarantee that any of these will absolutely lead to a fruitful outcome, and I feel that it is a question of ethics to be testing on other humans in order to potentially attempt to helping the entire humankind. It is somewhat of a contradiction to be doing that. Even prior to World War 2, human experimentation was frowned upon and it was one of the vile acts committed solely by Nazi doctors on Jews. Human subject rights also demand that no physical or emotional harm is induced to those that are a part of the experiment however these rights are violated and without risk as those who have been paid cannot legally accuse the ones carrying out the test since they had already stated they would not be responsible. Many would say that it is the individual's responsibility and that no one is forcing them to be a part of human experimentation, however, I feel that people take desperate measures and rely on the chances that things may turn out okay which is why they agree to do this. It isn't as if they are engaging in the experiment for fun, but rather because circumstances have pushed them to and for this reason they do not deserve to be impaired and I find that harming an individual is never justified in cases such as these.

Propaganda influence

In History we have been learning about World War 2 and one of the major components used by leaders to spread awareness of their ideology was through various means of propaganda. One of the reasons why the Nazis were so successful was due to their use of potent publicity which leads us to question to what extent does propaganda influence our beliefs?

Nazi ideology was indeed very twisted but it was one that attracted the attention of so many. There were many techniques involved in order to achieve this. Firstly was the subtle condemnation of the races/kinds of people that the Nazis disliked. There were storybooks published depicting the Jews as criminals and monsters so children would grow up with a falsified perception of them. For adults and children alike, there were museums built to downgrade art made by the Jews and communists and all their pieces were shown to be disgraceful to the name of art. On the other hand, there were museums built to showcase the art made by the Aryan master race and this was considered the epitome of art. Everything that they made was somehow superior and contained in depth meaning as opposed to the pointless babble created by other races and religions. This was a message that since art by the Jews and communists held no meaning and undermines the value of art as a whole, it should be eradicated and the artists should be arrested for creating such work. Later, this symbolised the people in general and that by comparing such work to that of the super race, the people were also being shown as inferior to the Aryans and as they were portrayed as a disgrace to the name of art, they were also given the status that they were not good enough for Germany itself. Hence their eradication meant loss of citizenship and many of them were arrested and sent to camps. This shows that the showcasing of their art and using propaganda led up to what the Nazis had  initially wanted to do. By subtly feeding these ideas into the minds of people and having them believe that the Jews and communists were inherently inferior lead to less tumult when they were eventually marginalised and suffered grave penalties. Propaganda was used widely throughout Germany. All of Hitler's speeches were also given on radio and people were dismissed from work so they would be able to listen. Having been fed these ideas daily influenced them to think that Hitler knew what he was doing. He already had a way with words and public speaking and having that heard by his people incessantly made him and his ideology that much more popular. 

Pointless questions? Or do they aid us?

Often while we are having discussions regarding knowledge issues (and I've noticed this in small groups where people speak more) questions tend to be posed that have seemingly little or no importance that may have some correlation to the topic but entirely they tend to distract the persons focus from what they're trying to answer. Such questions can be mind boggling. For instance, something very vague like do we share the same reality with someone else, is something that can make you really think about it because we never know if we see the same shade of a colour or hear a sound at the same volume and frequency as another. One specific scenario where such a question was roused was when we were discussing whether inanimate objects begin acting on their own accord when not being monitored by humans. This reminded me of a personal experience when as a kid, a little girl in my class insisted that her sleep was interrupted by the commotion caused by her barbies and that they were behaving as we do. She told everyone that very few people get to witness catching barbies in the act as they are very skilful and only come to life when they are certain their 'owners' are asleep. Even then this sounded stupid to me and it made me embarrassed of my own kind when other girls became so fascinated by this and discussed schemes they would implement to spy on the barbies. Now that I come to think of it, although this scenario was a little too absurd, there are various things I am ready to ponder about that are still realistic such as cats seeing the world differently than I do in terms of senses or even whether we see people differently and what one person looks like to another could be different from the way I see them. However, are these questions of any use to us? Using the pragmatic theory, these are situations that do not affect our lives in any way, and trying to figure this out is simply a waste of time and won't help us gain any form of truth as what it isn't useful to us isn't knowledge. 

Change in socio-economic classes

We are discussing Reza Khan's Iran and a lot of that in the beginning revolves around reforms that he made. There was an aspect that came up about the poor supporting his changes because they were desperate whereas the more affluent were not particularly keen on bringing about change because they were content with the way their lives were. So a question was posed about change in socio-economic classes and about how the lower in status that they are, the more they believe that they should work to ameliorate the society. The elites disengage themselves whenever they can because they are ultimately selfish and do not want things to change for themselves as to aid the poor and grant them more privileges. Looking at history, there is a pattern where this continuously happens where the rich do not support change, and the poor are willing to do anything for it. This is because the poor feel they do not have anything to lose and that any hope of change would be better than the lives they're leading. In addition to this point is that whenever things are looking up and more people are employed and there is no hyper inflation, people begin to stop supporting radicalism. Before world war 2, when the Weimar Republic induced a 200% raise in unemployment, everyone looked towards the NSDAP to bring about change, whatever it took. But as Stresemann, the foreign minister at the time introduced the Dawes Plan, reducing overall German reparations, the NSDAP temporarily became unpopular because people were content. This shows us a recurring prototype where people looks towards bringing about change only in times when they are desperate but when their personal situation is not declining, they immediately stop caring about altering circumstances for the rest of society. 

Faulty Causality - Logical Fallacy

We have just begun studying Single State Parties in History class of which our unit circulates around the dreaded yet very exciting figure, Adolf Hitler. We were discussing Hitler's drives and to get to that, we studied his biography as well. One of the things it stated was that Hitler loved to paint and it was a passion of his to go to the Vienna Art Academy which was perhaps one of the best Art schools in Europe at the time. Unfortunately he got rejected because he didn't draw people well. This didn't settle well with him and he was extremely disappointed. Some people say this is a reason he become a psychopathic dictator. It does sound absurd but if it is analysed then it could be a possibility. He was deprived of something he desperately wanted, that too by the administrators who were supposedly Jews leading to his greatly anti Semitic personality. However, it still remains a faulty causality. Not getting accepted to Art School is not the cause of him killing millions and is indeed a logical fallacy because there is not a clear connection between the two propositions. Yes analysis will help a person better understand how they are related, but that does not justify anything. A serial killer who also happened to be a school drop out cannot be deduced as being a serial killer BECAUSE he dropped out of school, or perhaps was unemployed or whatever the case is. Assuming such things or linking them together in a manner of cause and effect just causes misconceptions when there are so many factors and theories involved in why exactly Hitler became inclined to do all of this of which people cannot prove. The rejection from Vienna Art Academy is just another causes of many that have been affiliated with Hitler's dementia because it preceded his rise and is therefore linked with being the cause. 

Are people studying reality a part of it?

My friends and I always learn something or another from Kinga. We feel that she is so interesting and since she is older and hence much more mature, we can take away something from our conversations from her rather than just complaining to each other about something. One day while working on our group four project, Kinga told us how she loves Literature and Art but despises Math and Sciences, a familiar feeling to quite a few of us sitting with her. She then said something that I thought was truly interesting which was that people spend so much time picking reality apart to the extent where they are not even in it anymore. The way she said it was articulated differently but I believe what she meant to say was, was that sometimes people study things that may not be of utmost pragmatism to us, or they scrutinize it to the point where they are not a part of their social realities but in a world where they are blindly looking for answers and not pausing to see what is actually around them. She sarcastically gave an example of a table while knocking on it, "oooh a table, how close are the molecules? is it a solid? why is it huh?" and said that these people tend to be the most awkward because they cannot appreciate the beauty of things around them as they feel the need to examine it. The table example was a scornful and mocking one but I could understand what she was getting at. I remember when we were studying the IQ and EQ in class and discovered that EQ is also very valuable in getting jobs nowadays because sometimes if the IQ is too high, people are not emotionally capable of handling customers and managing their enthusiasm and things similar to that. I think that in a sense relates to what Kinga said, because if the intelligence quotient is too high and the general tendency to be correct and particular is greater, a person loses their touch with emotions which can be related back to seeing reality, experiencing it and appreciating it. Kinga strongly prefers people who have aesthetic tastes such as in writing and art and she finds that math and science people are actually not pleasant to talk to, not as entertaining and imaginative, and overall just too skeptical and precise. I feel that studying reality is necessary and enlightening but could it be that the more you study it, the more you detach yourself from it? If you study something beyond what needs to be done, it may get devalued. People can lose touch with their social realities as a result of trying to figure out what a certain object is or means. From what she said, she had me convinced, and I think that this could be one way to look at it. 

Sentimental Appeal - Logical Fallacy

For this spring break, I really wanted to go to Dubai because a lot of my friends were going there. However, my family wasn't traveling because my dad has some work he needs to take care of. Luckily one friend of mine from school who is going to Dubai with her mother actually asked me to join her on the trip and I was overjoyed, regardless of considering the fact that I would probably never get permission to go to a different country with a friend. Despite that, I excitedly told people that I knew who live there and later explained that my mom is paranoid and wouldn't agree whereas my dad does, to which one of the responses I got said, "do some emotional attyachar. your mom should be cool" I didn't understand what that meant at first because it is not a word I am familiar with and probably comes from Indian vocabulary so I had to ask what they meant and turns out that it means "blackmail" and not "act" as I would have thought otherwise. And then, I thought, might as well try my luck, obviously not exactly in the blackmail sense, but in a way that I thought would appeal to my mom. "Amma, don't you think this trip will make me a lot more independent? Don't you think I'm sensible enough to handle myself the way that you have raised me?" and other dramatic questions of the like. These were all things my mom would be sensitive to seeing as she wants me to be self-relying and responsible and it twists my arguments slightly as it makes it seem I am going to prove myself to her and not just because I want to go for my own enjoyment. This kind of sentimental appeal manipulates the listener because it makes them consider themselves and adds a deeper purpose even to a superficial argumen, hence it is a fallacy. Did mom agree after listening to my emotional "attyachar"? No, she is great at this and does it for my own good. However it is a way to exploit arguments to people and make them seem really meaningful, heart-rending and for the greater good when they actually may not be. 

Ad Hominem - Logical Fallacy

There is a huge phenomenon on Facebook and BBM and other forms of social and mobile networking where people are posting photos of an equal sign to promote rights for the LGBTQ community and particularly for homosexual marriages. However, there are some who put up a not equal sign stating that it is against their culture for this to be legalized the world over and should not be promoted so openly. These people get the most amount of criticism not regarding that if the majority have the freedom to voice FOR the cause, naturally there will be some people who are against it and should be able to post whatever they want as well. In one particular case where a boy put up the picture of the non-equal sign and made an argument that his religion speaks for women for men and men for women, someone countered it by saying that he is not even religious because he has had alcohol, or whatever it was that he supposedly does. That argument was irrelevant because he merely stated one aspect of his religion that he does abide by, and instead of countering that particular argument, he received a personal attack where he apparently isn't religious enough because of other things that he does. Ad Hominem arguments are used to deter the person from the actual argument and attack them in a personal way as to get them to retaliate to that instead. Since they could not argue with the part where the boy's religion is against marriages, they decided to attack him personally inducing a logical fallacy because the intention of the argument is not addressed.

Logical Fallacy - Equivocation

While we were in school one day, we were discussing Bad Luck Brian memes. It is something really popular on Facebook lately and some of them are actually pretty ridiculous. Then Shahmir brought up that one of them said, "Smokes up for the first time in Pakistan. Gets stoned." I am actually not good at understanding jokes so he explained how in this sense, stoned means the literal kind of prosecution but the joke is that it refers to Bad Luck Brian smoking for the first time and instead of getting stoned after consuming the drug, he literally gets stoned. This is because Bad Luck Brian refers to a guy who thinks he has done something, but the absolute worst consequence emerges. An example of this is, "Wins a date with a Kardashian. Rob," meaning that out of all the Kardashian women, he happens to get their brother. Going back to the equivocation, the word stoned has two different meanings. They are used in a way to create a joke, however taking it literally would be a logical fallacy. Both ways would make sense, but what the intention is would not be conveyed. The meme portrays Brian's bad luck by saying that for the first time, Brian had the courage to smoke but it happened to be in Pakistan, and hence he literally got prosecuted for it. Equivocations can sometimes be a little tricky to understand and could hinder our ability to understand what is being said but they are used in jokes often and ultimately make it more humorous once you understand, in this case being Brian's terrible luck. 

Karma Police - Language as a WOK

 There is a song by Radiohead titled Karma Police that conveys the abstract belief of karma. Karma is held as a strong belief by many and the lyrics of this song as well as the visuals clearly portray the concept behind what goes around comes around. The first part of the song is, “Karma police, arrest this man he talks in math, he buzzes like a fridge, he’s like a detuned radio” The language of this line refers to the fact that people take bad actions without a reason, they buzz like a fridge, like a detuned radio where they are annoying and constant and should therefore be "arrested" by the Karma police. Towards the end, the song's line says, "Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough/ I've given all I can, I'm still on the payroll" indicating that they have gone through enough, and are still waiting for justice, or payback going back to the initial meaning of karma being cause and effect. The music video of the song is about a car with a man in the backseat that is chasing another man. The car continue to chase him throughout the song but by the end it approaches the man and reverses leaving a trail of fuel to which the man lights a match and alights it, and the sparked fire chases the car all the way back until the car explodes into flames. The language of the song and the visuals both convey the faith in karma, the belief that anything you do will actually bring the outcome of what will happen. This started off as being a Buddhist and Jain tradition, the cycle of cause and effect, to convince people to do good deed, but upon experiences observed by humans over the years it became a phenomenon with karma being a widely recognized belief and people using it as an excuse as at any point they can. The song demonstrates that people await karma to get back to those who have done them wrong just as in the music video where the car represents the perpetrator and the spark is karma that gets back to it. 

How we know or that we know?

“Is it important how I know or that I know?”

I was watching an episode of Suits, which happens to be my favourite show these days and at one point, Donna, the secretary of a Closer discovers that the associate he has hired did not actually go to Harvard Graduate school and when she says so in casual conversation, he anxiously asks, “How do you know?” to which she responds, “Is it important how I know or that I know?” That got me thinking on a larger scale about whether it actually is important where the knowledge came from or that the person has acquired it. Personally when people state something, I instinctively ask, "how do you know? where did that come from?" It's just something we do. However, I think there are various kinds of knowledge where the source is important and others where it just isn't. In math or natural sciences or anything that requires a definite answer, it is extremely important to question it and find out who said it, whereas in areas of knowledge such as the arts or ethics, there are some things where people do not know how it is known, but rather just accepted anyway. A literary piece about imaginative concepts is not going to be asked how the writer knows what they have written, but a thesis would be. Similarly with ethics no one can answer how they know a certain deed is morally wrong, it just is based on its regard in society and on a conscientious level. It also depends on the pragmatism of the proposition of knowledge, if it is something that does not have a lot of value then it will not be scrutinized much whereas something that holds a lot of importance would constantly be. 

Blasphemy Laws

Blasphemy laws are a very controversial subject, especially residing in a country like Pakistan where it is taken into account greatly. However what does surprise me is that in the same classroom we can have such strongly opposing views regarding it. We were discussing secularism in class, how Mustafa Kemal formed the state of Turkey and how Muhammad Ali Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be designed on the basis of those premises. We were taking notes on all of this when Mr. Walton began telling us a story about a British teacher who named a teddy bear Muhammad on the request of the students in her class. We thought the measures taken against her were great seeing as it was Muslim students or rather kids who had chosen the name and not her, but then Mr. Walton asked a question, something like "Would anyone be offended if I named my dog [the same name as the teacher had named the teddy bear]" I expected someone to say something but no one did and I realized I was the only one who was affected by this, to the extent where I do not like to restate the question although I know that is a bit silly. To be honest, I was not offended that Mr. Walton had asked the question and he even told me he didn't mean to offend me later on, but rather, I was offended that no one else in the class could raise their hand for something that ought to be culturally disrespectful to us. I understand that they are being open minded but not to the extent where we forget about what we should defend and what we shouldn't. Or maybe that was just their honest response that it doesn't offend them at all, for which I don't know what to say because I tend to have very contrasting views to others and just agree to disagree. In fact, the others just horribly criticize and lambaste religious scholars who are against these sorts of things. I am not saying that the scholars are right in the actions that they take, but that doesn't mean we should stop seeing their point of view as well. They learn only from what is being taught to them which is an altered and misinterpreted version of Islam and if they take extreme measures based on the backgrounds that they have and the little schooling they receive doesn't mean we should not understand WHY they think and feel a certain way. I feel that sometimes, our open-mindedness makes us narrow to understanding other points of view. Instead of us all trying to defend our culture and stating that yes, indeed measures to this extent can be debated on and in some cases are too extreme, but in your example, naming your dog that for no reason at all IS offensive to Muslims because why else would anyone do that if there are countless names out there? The question in itself was understandable, however I think the response just was just against what I think is right and I found it interesting that we had such different views coming from kids who are primarily from the same country and have been in the same school. Ultimately, what I think is right is probably not right for them so I am no one to speak for this, but this was something I felt strongly about and I just feel that people should retain their cultural identity and say what they feel, and if they are so detached from their culture, they should at least attempt to understand the minds of those who are affected by this and take action instead of bad-mouthing them and calling them illiterate because they are obviously much less affluent than anyone who attends this school. I think understanding other points of view is one of the keys to gaining knowledge. If we don't try to comprehend who goes through their mindset, how will we know why they do these things, how it can be prevented, and other questions that could be answered through analysing their stance on the subject. 

"Can you believe your eyes in a digital world?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10558258

I read this article for my ITGS course and it got me thinking about its relation with TOK and how sight is or isn't a way of knowing in the digital world nowadays. This article is published in BBC and written by Zoe Kleinman who is a technology reporter. The article states that in present day, any picture can be "digitally altered to tell an entirely different story" (Kleinman1). These include photoshopped images of presidents on beaches to airbrushed models. There have also been cases where experts have been fired for spreading false rumours due to surreal editing leading people to believe a "fake" story is true. Technology is developing by the day and it gets more and more difficult to identify whether a picture has been tampered with or not. Thus professors have to continue evolving methods to recognize if it is. I feel this could be a huge ethical issue now because it is demonstrating an artificial reality to people. Years ago, it was easy to see whether a picture was photoshopped or not due to poor skills but now it is getting increasingly hard with people that are experts at merging photos together and changing backgrounds professionally. So the question that arises in the article is, can we ever really believe our eyes? In technology or the digital world as it is referred to, I don't think we can. Everything is altered in a way to manipulate or deceive us, from advertisements to even news such as a magazine cover of The Economist featuring Obama alone with an oil spill which was actually a picture taken of him on a beach with two other people. It has come to the point where anything we see in print media cannot be believed solely on the basis of looking at it. Knowledge from digital media has now become difficult to attain as a result of this. A situation just took place where fans saw a photo of Justin Bieber smoking and they all started a ridiculous cult to cut for him so that he would stop. It began to trend on twitter as well and more and more people were posting about it, obviously comprising of the obsessed 11 year old girls. This caused quite a scare as things were getting serious over someone editing a photo of Justin Bieber as a joke they probably deemed harmless, but it deeply affected the adolescent girls and they were going overboard with this. To illustrate how these knowledge claims are taken too seriously and have consequences is when Brian Walski got fired from LA Times because he "composited" or combined two pictures together that changed the meaning. Both the pictures featured a soldier who was  leading civilians but one of them had a man carrying a child in the background. Walski had combined them in such a way that it looked as if the soldier was holding out his hand to stop the main with the child. This was something that had not even taken place and by editing the picture as such he was leading people to believe something else amidst the Basra conflict because it was not in the soldier's intentions to stop the man with the child. This caused Walski to get fired from La Times. I feel that this situation demonstrates the severity of the power of editing and that it is consequential enough to get someone fired because they are convincing the whole world of something that is not true. Sight, I would say for the most part, is not a way of knowing in the digital world because it only provides us with a misrepresentation of how things actually are.

Language as a WOK in History

In our history class, we received some documents regarding the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip who worked for a Serb terrorist organization called The Black Hand. What was interesting about these documents was that it was the same event reported but by two different sources. One of them was from an eyewitness from The Black Hand so it was a Serbian source. The other comes from the perspective of Austria-Hungary. Each source has a different way of telling the story. The events are the same, but the language used demonstrates their bias affecting what the reader might gain from reading it.
The first source is what Jevtic, the co-conspirator of the assassination, has to say about this who had worked alongside Princip in this operation. He states that when they found out that archduke Franz Ferdinand would be arriving on the 28th of June, they were furious. It reads, "How dared Franz Ferdinand, not only the representative of the oppressor but in his own person an arrogant tyrant, enter Sarajevo on that day? Such an entry was a studied insult." This demonstrates that this is why Serbians were so aggravated. Not only had Austria Hungary occupied their territory but now they were sending their Archduke on their national day too? Jevtic goes on to say that "Princip is destined to go down in Serbian history as one of her greatest heroes" telling readers that they this was something of utmost pride for the Serbs and that it was a very bold and considerable act. At Princip's first attempt, the Archduke "threw himself back and was uninjured." Later as Ferdinand was turning a corner, Jevtic states, "Here, he [Princip] had taken his stand." Jevtic even included that Princip's last regret was that he had also shot Ferdinand's wife as a mistake while aiming for her husband.
The second source from Austria Hungary has a different approach. Just by looking at the title that states, "Heir to Austria's Throne is Slain with His Wife by a Bosnian Youth." The word "slain" has automatic negative connotations and the picture that comes to mind is a massacre or slaughter, and not simply a gunshot. Next, when it the Autro-Hungarian article talks about the Princip's first attempt at throwing a bomb at Ferdinand's motor car, it says that the Archduke "pushed it off with his arm." This makes it seem as if Ferdinand was on top of things and saved his own life so courageously, whereas from the Serbian perspective it had said that Archduke had thrown himself back, making it appear as if he did that to defend himself, almost caught off guard. This illustrates how language differs according to the source and how that affects our perception of what actually took place. Additionally, where the second successful attempt took place, this article states that "the chauffeur took a wrong turning. Quite by chance, Princip was standing in that very street." This differs from the Serbian article which said "Here, he [Princip] had taken his stand" portraying that it was not a coincidence, he had been there for  reason and does not say anything about the chauffeur taking a wrong turn.
These two sources have a different way of looking at the same events as expressed through the language they have used. Serbia makes Princip come across as a hero and shows hate towards Ferdinand, whereas Austria-Hungary says their duke got slain and that he fought with courage by deflecting the bomb the first time only for misfortune that Princip found them again. If they had been read individually, it would have a great impact on the reader's way of perceiving the events, but because we read both as well as an objective article from London, we were able to tell where they had deployed the language to suit what they wanted to convey.

Language as a WOK

One of the most famous songs of all time is Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. We learned about how the meaning of a text can change through translation of the language. Considered as one of the most eloquent songs, I decided to apply a translation to my own language and see how the meaning differs and provides a misinterpretation to us. Just by looking at the first line which states, "there's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold," as English speakers either natively or having learnt it over the years, we gather that the phrase means that everything that seems valuable is, contrary to the popular saying, "all that glitters is not gold." Led Zeppelin is saying that the woman he is speaking about is certain that whatever she sees as precious is actually as great as she perceives it, demonstrating her naivety. Now if the same line were translated into Urdu, it would have a quite literal and ambiguous meaning which would throw Urdu readers off and not give them the same meaning that Led Zeppelin originally intended. Since this figurative language is not used by Urdu speakers, a literal translation would make the meaning absurd, directly implying that the whatever the woman sees as sparkling is in fact, gold. In addition, the word "gold" translates to an equivocation with two very distinct meanings in urdu. It means to sleep as well as gold. So it could be misinterpreted as whatever the woman sees glittering she sees it as asleep.