Varying Viewpoints of Capital Punishment essays

Varying Viewpoints of Capital Punishment essays Capital punishment is an important issue because it deals with life, the value of life, and personal liberties. The death penalty has been in existence for as long as America has been a country. Execution was quite common in the early colonial days, with punishment of death resulting from such crimes as denying the "true God," lying, and stealing. Interestingly enough, the framers of the Constitution did not consider capital punishment cruel and unusual punishment. (Inciardi 488) The death penalty has always been a sensitive subject, sparking debate from all sides. Those who support capital punishment believe that it is a just and fair punishment for murder. They also believe that capital punishment serves as a deterrent for other would-be murderers. Those who oppose capital punishment believe that murder by the state is no different than murder on the street. They believe that lifetime prison sentences are fair justice. However, abolitionists have always maintained that the death penalty is wrong. In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was "unconstitutional because it was being administered in an arbitrary and capricious manner" (White 131). It is not cruel and unusual punishment because it "achieves to important social purposes, retribution and deterrence" (132). In fact, the majority of Americans considers the death penalty an acceptable means of punishment and 35 states practice it. (Death Liberals favor equality over freedom and oppose any government involvement that restricts individual liberties. They approve of government action that promotes equality among individuals. In regards to capital punishment, liberals feel that executing a murderer is a form of harsh punishment. Liberals favor the death penalty with 37 percent and 60 percent would rather see murderers serve life sentences in prison. (Death ...

Definition and Examples of Ideograms

Definition and Examples of Ideograms An ideogram is a graphic  picture or  symbol (such as or %) that represents a thing or an idea without expressing the sounds that form its name. Also called ideograph. The use of ideograms is called ideography. Some ideograms says Enn Otts, are  comprehensible only by prior knowledge of their convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and therefore may also be described as pictograms, or pictographs (Decoding Theoryspeak,  2011). Ideograms are used in some writing systems, such as Chinese and Japanese.   EtymologyFrom the Greek, idea written Examples and Observations â€Å"[T]he picture [of a finger pointing] is an ideogram; it does not represent a sequence of sounds, but rather a concept that can be expressed in English in various ways: go that way or in this direction or over there or, combined with words or other ideograms, such notions as the stairs are to the right or pick up your luggage at that place. Ideograms are not necessarily pictures of objects; the arithmetic minus sign is an ideogram that depicts not an object but a concept that can be translated as minus or subtract the following from the preceding or negative.(C. M. Millward and Mary Hayes, A Biography of the English Language, 3rd ed. Wadsworth, 2012)The X IdeogramAs a modern ideogram, the diagonal  cross has a wide spectrum of meanings from confrontation, annulment, cancellation, over opposing forces, hindrances, obstruction, to unknown, undecided, unsettled.Here are a number of examples of the specific meanings of X in different systems: a crossbreed between different specie s, varieties or races (in botany and biology), takes (chess), printing error (printing), I/We cannot continue (ground-to-air emergency code), unknown number or multiply  (mathematics), unknown person (Mr. X), and road obstruction (military).The diagonal cross is sometimes used as a symbol for Christ, whose name in Greek begins with the Greek letter X. It also stands for the number 1,000 in ancient Greece, and even represented Chronos, the god of time, the planet Saturn and the god Saturn in Roman mythology.(Carl G. Liungman,  Thought Signs: The Semiotics of Symbols- Western Non-Pictorial Ideograms. IOS Press, 1995) Pictograms and IdeogramsThe difference between pictograms and ideograms is not always clear. Ideograms tend to be less direct representations, and one may have to learn what a particular ideogram means. Pictograms tend to be more literal. For example, the no parking symbol consisting of a black letter P inside a red circle with a slanting red line through it is an ideogram. It represents the idea of no parking abstractly. A no parking symbol showing an automobile being towed away is more literal, more like a pictogram.(Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams, An Introduction to Language, 9th ed. Wadsworth, 2011)The Rebus PrincipleWhen an ideographic system proves too cumbersome and unwieldy, the rebus principle might be employed for greater efficiency. The rebus principle is an important element in the development of many modern-day writing systems because it is the link to representing the spoken language. Unlike pure ideograms, rebus symbols rely on how a language sounds an d are specific to a particular language. For example, if English used the symbol [graphic of an eye] for eye, that would be considered an ideogram. But if English also began to use it to represent the pronoun I or the affirmative aye, that would be an example of the rebus principle in action. In order to understand that [graphic of an eye] could mean the pronoun or the affirmative, one must also know English. You could not use that symbol to conjure up the comparable words in Spanish, for example. So, when you read 2 good 2 B 4 gotten, it is your knowledge of both English and the rebus principle that allows you to assign meaning to it.(Anita K. Barry, Linguistic Perspectives on Language and Education. Greenwood, 2002) Pronunciation: ID-eh-o-gram