Theories in Language and Culture

We use an idiom in our natural conversations. These are words or phrases which should not be taken
literally. Idioms are very cultural as they are formed from experiences. When one is a master of idioms,
we can conclude that he/she is a master of that language.

The Interconnections between Culture and Language

We can view the interrelatedness between culture and language in these three opposing aspects:

1) Language and culture are inseparable since language is closely related to culture.
2) Language and culture are independent because speech is a means of exchanging information
that can be used in aspects not connected to culture.
3) Culture and language are partly interconnected.

Kramsch (1998) asked why there were three ways by which language and culture are related.

 Ways of doing things and perceptions can be manifested through the use and arrangement of
words. Considering this, people in society convey culture.
 People postulate meaning, and their daily activities and experiences through language, and thus,
language personify cultural reality.
 The contexts of communication language are used, and bodies of cultural reality and speakers
distinguish themselves by using their language as their identity.

Therefore, language is a tool for people to express themselves and put significance and the social and
cultural experiences and reality with others.

Culture as Part of Language

"Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and
desire by means of voluntarily produced symbols" (Sapir, 1921).

Risgar (2006) claims that language is a part of the culture and a part of epidermal behavior. It is
predominantly held that the test of language is to put thoughts into words, communicate pieces of
information, and express feelings. Language fulfills many other functions, such as maintaining a friendly
societal relationship between people, such as greeting people, expressing needs, etc. In this area of
study, Kramsch (1962) praises the main functions of language in three aspects:

 Language is the primary vehicle of communication.

 Language reflects the personality of the individual and the culture of history. In turn, it helps in
shaping both personality and culture.
 Language makes possible the growth and transmission of culture, the continuity of societies, and
the effective functioning and control of the social group.

If we endeavor to learn a foreign language, we need to be acquainted with the cultural realities
embedded in this foreign language. There must be a distinct way of requesting or expressing that it
should and other appropriate ways of transacting.

Language, Thought, and Culture

Benjamin Lee Whorf shared his theory on the significance of language in organizing our thoughts. He
espoused that our ways of looking at the world depend on the type of language that we use. His example
is the word "snow". The word may mean differently to an English person and an Eskimo person who may
have 50 ways to describe the snow.
 The same holds true for Sinugbuanong Binisaya or the Cebuano Language, there is more than one
word to mean "eat". There is "painit", "pamahaw", "habhab", sima sima", "timo", etc. Language, therefore,
is very cultural. The Cebuano words for eating basically tell that culturally, Cebuanos have different ways
and practices for eating as represented by the hue of the meaning of these words: (painit, pamahaw, hab
hab, sima sima, timo).

Culture and its Elements

It is undeniable that we learn culture through interaction with people. Culture is not inborn but rather
learned as it is a social product. Words are the best tools of cultural symbols, such as epics, myths, and
stories. This helps connect people. Aside from words or language, rituals, beliefs, and values are
essential in the formation of culture. Generally, the elements of culture include overall patterns of
behavior, literature, and language, arts, prototypes, and other products of human work and thought.

Vygotsky's theory

Lee Vygotsky, a psychologist, believed that social interactions between and among people are a key
element in acquiring knowledge, just like how a child watches and learns from adults. The more
experiences a child has to imitate, the greater his intellectual skills and language development compared
to those with less experience and exposure. Moreover, for Vygotsky, language and culture are intensely
interconnected. He believed that every culture has specific dynamics for social transactions.

Piaget's theory

Jean Piaget contends that when children are born they have an embedded basic structure for
cognition as well as for language. As they mature, their built-in structure also lets them learn more about
complex language and other higher-order concepts. In his theory, PJ stresses that children create
meaning from the verbal and nonverbal cues received from their environment, and these meanings
change as children learn more because of maturity. They did not adhere to Vygotsky’s idea of
emphasizing culture in learning.

Chomsky's theory

Noam Chomsky is known for his language acquisition device (LAD), a built-in box in the brain
responsible for creating and learning the language. For him, practice is not important as children ever
acquire language through it. Furthermore, language structures can change, develop, and evolve given
cultural interactions.

Chapter 5. LANGUAGE AND HISTORY

Objectives:

After undergoing the learning experiences, the students are expected to:
1. identify the noteworthy linguists and their contributions to the language that it is today;
2. trace the development of language in a historical perspective from Anglo-Saxon to global periods;
3. recognize the language family of English and
4. differentiate the three Englishes according to the period from Old, Middles, and Modern through
an in-depth historical analysis case.

The history of language relied so much on the hands of the great linguists from when it started up to
the 20th century. Language literally and constantly evolves with time, and its development follows a
timeline. In each stage, that language passes through our footprints of accomplishments of the great
contribution of ancient philosophers to modern linguists. From the time language was first studied and
structured, the transformation of language artifacts just kept coming. Changes applied to language
miraculously suit the generation of its users. With the numerous language experts the world has, there
are just a few noteworthy linguists whose contributions are white and adopted and scrutinized by modern
linguists.

Lesson 1
Historical Timeline of Noteworthy Linguists

Noteworthy Linguists

Linguistics started to make a mark after Panini composed the Sanskrit grammar in India in 400 B.C.,
followed by the remarkable linguists of Greece from the fifth century onwards, namely: Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle. The lineages of the inquest that history records are all noteworthy. However, in the field of
language and history, the following increased law is well remembered.

1. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

In 384 B.C.E, Aristotle was born in Macedonia, particularly in Stagira. His father served as the
physician of the Macedonian king, Amynta, and stayed there until Plato's death. As the successor of
Plato, he departed Athens and lived in Asia Minor and then resided and lesbos. Later, between 343 B.C. -
342 B.C., Amynta's son, Philip II of Macedonia, taught his 14-year-old son Alexander. In 336 B.C., That's
under died at the age of 32. Uncertain of Macedonian protection, I moved out of assets and lived in the
Chalcis, North of Athens. Later, in 322, Aristotle died of a digestive disease.

Contributions to Linguistics

Aristotle's contribution to the development of language started when he demythologized language. He

viewed it as an object of rational inquiry, a medium of communicating and expressing thoughts about
anything under the sun. Ogden and Richards (1923:11) explained that the "semiotic triangle" refers to (a)
human means of expression of (b) thoughts that are purposefully connected to (c) elements present in
this world. In other words, he was establishing the relation between language expressions, including sand
words, with the mental meaning produced by these words. In other words, he established the relationship
between language expressions, including within words, and the mental meaning produced by these
words. In his theory of truth, he provided the properties of thoughts and sentences as truth and falsity. He
identifies the primary parts of a sentence - the noun and verb- which function as the subject and verb in
the sentence.

2. Robert Lowth (1710-1787)

He was born in Winchester on November 27, 1710, and was educated at Winchester School and the
new college Oxford. In his lifetime, he worked as a professor of poetry at the University of Oxford. Lowth
was a clergyman after he served as archdeacon of Winchester, rector of East Woodhay, prebend of
Durham, Bishop of Saint David's, bishop of London, dean of the Chapel Royal, and privy councilor. His
noble acts ended after he died on November 3, 1787.

Contribution to Linguistics

In 1762, he published his book, "Short Introduction to English Grammar," which became a standard
textbook. The "Short Introduction to English Grammar" instantly gained fame over other grammar books,
and it was reissued approximately 45 times from 1762 to 1800. Lowth then earned repetition as a
prescriptivist, and that period gave rise to prescriptivism. Prescriptivism refers to beliefs and practices
where once language is thought to be superior, incorrect, and should be promoted. The explicit rules are
laid down as the basis of the imposition on the language users. He was one of the few grammarians to
publish writing about what is right and wrong in English grammar, where we used footnotes that contained
essential information that explained why a particular grammatical structure was right or wrong
(encyclopedia.com, 2019).

3. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

In 1857, Ferdinand de Saussure was born in Geneva, Switzerland. He was interested in languages
even at a very early age.

At 15, he learned French, Greek, English, and leptin, and he also wrote essays on languages at that
age. Having been influenced by a family of scientists, I entered the University of Geneva and studied
natural sciences. I stayed at the university, but he had to convince his parents to permit him to study
linguistics in Leipzig in 1876, and luckily received his doctorate.

Contribution to Linguistics

As a linguist, he was among the pillars of linguistics in the 20th century and is known as a co-founder
of semiotics and structuralism. Structuralism theorizes that things cannot be understood without analyzing
the context where they appear. Things might look self-evident at first glance, but structuralism goes
beyond what one sees and insists that context contributes to the meaning-making process.

In summary, structuralism advocated three similar concepts: a) Saussure maintained the difference
between langue (a set of conventions and rules) and parole (language as used in daily life). He claimed
that the sign was a combination of a signified, the mental concept or idea, and a signifier, the physical
existence including sounds and images; b) there was no intrinsic and particular reason why assign was
utilized to express a signifier. There was no resemblance and direct connection between the language
and the thing that it represents, which is why other languages call it using different names; and c) the
meaning of science can be based on their relationships and differences from other signs (Negi, 2020).

Example

Sign Signifier Signified

Passion

Rose The thing that gives meaning, The mental association or concept
including words or images that the sign represents

Activity 1

Draw three objects found around you and illustrate your understanding of sign signifier and signified
following the table example illustrated above.
4. Noam Chomsky

His name, when written in full, is Avram Noam Chomsky. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1928. He
pursued his interest in linguistics under Zellig Harris, the professor who helped him with his doctorate at
the University of Pennsylvania. During his time, he was also regarded as the father of modern linguistics,
a philosopher, a social critic, a cognitive scientist, and a political activist.

At age 13, Chomsky began traveling to New York by himself, where he discovered interesting reading
materials for his extreme reading hobby and befriended some Jewish intellectuals. He works as a
laureate professor at the University of Arizona and as an institute professor emeritus at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and authored some notable works such as the logical
structure of linguistic theory and aspects of the theory of syntax, necessary illusions: thought control in
democratic societies and syntactic structures.

Contribution to Linguistics

As one of the linguistic intellectuals, he introduced the concept of universal grammar and suggested
that humans have the ability to learn grammar because the brain is a language acquisition device (LAD)
that automatically works in language acquisition. Chomsky, who often focused on the language learning
of children, popularized history in the 1980s.

He was not convinced that exposure to language alone could fully develop the child's faculty to acquire
a language. Instead, he believed that basic language structures are already wired into the human brain at
birth. Besides, the human language has universal components no matter what language it is. For
instance, the English language has verbs and nouns, and so do other languages, even if the terms used
vary due to language differences. The word house in English is named “bahay” in the Filipino language.
These terms sound and spell distinctly from each other, yet they belong to one category: they are both
nouns. Therefore, language shares the same universal components of grammar.

Lesson 2
Historical development of the English language
Development of the English Language: The Darwinian Perspective

Human language evolves through a modification process where major languages give birth to new
languages similar to biological species that develop their language (Pagel, 2016).

Darwinian or evolutionary linguistics is a sociobiological method of scrutinizing a language. Proponents

of these look at the linguistic field as a subumbrella of evolutionary biology and psychology. This is further
linked to evolutionary anthropology, violent steaks, and cognitive linguistics. It assumes that language is a
product of nature, and it centers on the biological nature of language. However, this research lacks
empirical data as proof. Researchers have not found any archaeological traces of language that link the
existence of biology and human forms. There is no clear evidence that language started from animals and
developed into a form that humans used even up to the present.

It was in the late eighteen-thirties that Darwin started searching for the beginning of language. His
focus of inquiry lies in the communicative abilities of animals and their capacity to acquire new sounds
and associate them with human words. He observed the proximity and sameness between the sounds of
animals and the different natural occurrences and gestures that humans produced when venting out
strong feelings such as fear, joy, and surprise. He focused on the observable interrelatedness between
words and sounds, shown in the crack, scrape, and roar that appeared to imitate the things signified.

Darwin admitted that language sets man apart from lower animals; however, he emphasized the
resemblance between animal and human speech. Darwin's in-depth beliefs were anchored on his vast
knowledge of anthropology, linguistic pathologies, language learning and acquisition in children, and a
wide range of animal behavior, both domestic and wild. (Darwin Correspondence Project, 2020).

Activity 2

Read the passage above and retell in your own words the flow of the Darwinian mystic evolution using the
graphic organizer.

Lesson 3
The English Language Family Tree

Indo-European family tree

The earliest known Indo-European language is the common ancestor of modern English and Western
languages (Grey, 2019). No written traces of the Indo-European language could be found, for it was not
written down. Based on the many texts that language experts and researchers delved into, they have
deduced that the east of Turkey was once occupied. The group split, with one group voyaging 20 ha and
the other subgroup towards the west of Europe. The two main subgroups scattered into smaller groups
and settled in the different sections of Asia and Europe, where their languages developed separately.

Although Europe and India are geographically distant, these regions use languages that share a
common origin. Researchers revealed that Latin, Sanskrit, Old Irish, Hittite, Old Bulgarian, and Greek all
rows from one common language.

At present, the languages belonging to the Indo-European family are Balto Slavic (e.g. Russian,
Lithuanian, Latvian, and Polish), the Roman languages, the Indo-Iranian languages (e.g., Hindi, Persian,
and Sanskrit), the italic languages (i.e., The roman languages), the Celtic languages (e.g., Gaelic, Welsh,
Breton), and the Hellenic language which the Greek occupied all on its own. About 48% of the population
worldwide spoke the Indo-European languages and its family consists of over 200 languages.

Adapted from Tradoc Rhone Alpes (2020)

 The family tree shows a surprising rise of modern languages from a common ancestor. This does not
guarantee that the speakers of these languages understand one another. However, these languages
have a common word origin, which may not be intelligible to many, but it serves as a link between them.
The illustration does not have modern English. This is because, among the Indo-European languages,
modern English is a combination of Old English and French with the influence of Scandinavian and Latin,
which turns it into both Germanic and italic. This combination gives modern English a lot of vocabulary
(Tradoc Rhone Aples, 2020).

FINAL PROJECT 1

Create a timeline that presents the order of the languages under the Indo-European language family. You
can freely modify the template to accommodate your answer. No need to indicate the dates.

Lesson 4
Old, Middle, and Modern English

The English language has undergone a series of modifications, for it had been in the mouths of a few
generations of speakers. It had changed in that its previous form seemed not recognizable anymore. The
English language has historically transitioned from old to modern English structure and conventions.

Old English

This period started around 450 AD. During this time, the Angles, Saxons, and youth who composed
the West Germanic settlers arrived in southern Britain. They carried some dialects, such as the language
varieties that produced the Dutch, Frisian, and German. This Germanic influence is prevalent in the
vocabulary we use every day, such as come (Cuman in English), old (held in Old English), and heart
(heart in Old English). Irregular verbs are also formed, such as drink-drank-drunk. In the same manner,
several old English pronounced ants are kept in today's spellings, e.g., knight (old English knight, German
Knecht).

Old English, popularly called Anglo-Saxon, was not fully influenced by the language of the Celts, which
was widely spoken by the occupants of the British Isles. Only a few words associated with geography and
wildlife were borrowed. On the other hand, when Latin was brought to Britain by the Romans and
strengthened by the conversion of the angles Saxons to Christianity, it created a remarkable event, for it
served as the basis of the writing system and provided a wide range of new words (e.g. School and
mass).

Old English was mostly written in Latin, complemented by a few Germanic letters to stand for sounds
that cannot be produced in Latin. Besides, the settlements of the Vikings in most parts of the British Isle
gave way to the borrowing of additional vocabulary such as they, get, and sky from the old Norse. The old
English text is prevalent during the start of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf (Lohr, 2019).

Middle English (1100-1500)

During this period, development in terms of pronunciation of unstressed syllables found at the ends of
words caused the merging of most infections. Moreover, the influence of the Norman and French people
went a long way. French prestige dominated the vocabulary in court, church, education, and law. The
words for farmed animals (mutton, beef, pork) translated in modern French into (mouton, beouf, porc)
were from native words like sheep swine, and cow.

The loan or borrowed words referred to the beat of animals consumed by wealthy French speakers,
while the native or old English words referred to living animals. Sermon also changes the way words are
spelled and written using French conventions. As a result, the old English word is turn ice and "cwcn"
became queen. One great example of the Middle English text could be read in Chaucer's canterbury tales
(Lohr, 2019).

Modern English

This period marked the introduction of printing. Caxton's preference for the East Midlands/London's
English variety for the earliest printed books towards the end of the 15th-century influenced the formation
of the standard English language variety with acceptable grammatical forms and vocabulary, fixed
spelling, and punctuation conventions.

The perception of the correctness of the standardized variety was supported by the codification
attempts of Johnson's dictionary and many other prescriptive grammarians during the 18th century. From
that point, English vocabulary was meticulously elaborated as it was widely used for several purposes,
e.g., Translations of written works and other rediscovered writings in the Renaissance, description of
recent scientific works, and the growing of creative literature. In this period, among the borrowed words
from Greek and Latin, we're critic, education, consciousness, and metamorphosis. Modern English was
also characterized by the great vowel shift. People started to produce the long vowels from the
subsequent short vowels.

The modern English text can be read at the onset of Shakespeare's Hamlet. At present, English is
used worldwide as a native tongue, second or foreign time due to imperial and colonial activity,
educational and cultural prestige, the interracial slave trade, and international business for economic
reasons. Modern English is continually changing and upgrading its standard and standard varieties.
However, there is nothing to fear or resist as the language continues to change if it brings unity and
comprehensibility to everyone (Lohr, 2019).

FINAL PROJECT 2

1. Note the significant changes that are present in middle English. You may answer using words,
phrases, or sentences.

Chapter 6: Applied Linguistics

Human speech is a part of the culture. This meant that authorizes can be correctly understood if they
match with a represented culture. Since cultural experiences are shared through language, language then
becomes a representation of one's culture. It is when experiences are told that the listeners get to know
and experience the complexity of other people's practices and beliefs. Moreover, the symbols spoken in
communication somehow represent one's culture since language is sometimes distinct from culture to
culture (Silva-Fuenzaleda, n.d.). However, for some, language is only a means of communication, a
channel through which ideas can be expressed, not knowing that language is more than just that (Silva-
fuenzaleda, n.d.).

The difference in sound and manner of delivery has an important role in communication, and this is an
emerging language concern of ethnolinguistics that could lead to cultural discovery. Ethnolinguistics deals
with the connections between culture and language. It examines how we culturally behave given the type
of language that we use in speaking (Augustyn et al., 2019). Ethnolinguistics further pushes the idea that
languages cannot be tagged " similar" because they represent not only the language symbols but the
social reality and their respective cultures. Where there is even a little difference in how every group
speaks and behaves, there is a significant difference to investigate.

Is the so-called linguistic relativism. It states that the language we know or use daily is more than just a
list of words guided by grammar structures and prescribed rules. It goes beyond the ordinary, for it also
influences or defines cognitive processes and how we see things. Linguistic relativism has two versions--
the strong and the weak. The strong version postulates that language decides and determines our
thoughts and cognition, while the weak version pushes the idea that language only influences thoughts.
At present, linguists are favorable to the weak version, and this fact has influenced many experiments on
linguistics.

Activity 3

1. Based on observation, are there words in your vocabulary that cannot exist in your friends'
language? What words did they use instead?
2. Do you treat someone differently just because you have been told by others about someone
else's negative characteristics based on your judgment from personal experience?

Lesson 2
Code-switching

What is code-switching?

Communities, where bilingualism is practiced, play some techniques in making communication

meaningful, effective, and intelligible. They resort to code-switching, especially if the target language is
the people's foreign or second language. Code-switching is a strategy of using two different languages
inside a sentence or in discourse. This is a real phenomenon among multilingual speakers (Esen, 2019).
It is also the process of distinguishing a speech structure from one language to another. This quick
language shift depends on context and ease. In some cases, some people intentionally switch codes to
get approval and experience belongingness to a large community.

As the code-switching technique spreads, identity researchers, social psychologists, and sociologists
become more interested in its aspects and elements.

Who uses code-switching?

Bilingual and monolingual speakers often use code-switching as a communicative action when
expressing intelligible ideas in target languages becomes a hindrance. This does not apply to others but
also to local dialects. However, some speakers intentionally use code-switching to make the conversation
intelligible to a group that uses the same language. Sometimes, users switch within a single language by
mixing their dialects. Despite the shifting of languages from one to another, the elements of language,
such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and context, are still intact (Esen, 2019).

Examples:

"Kita tayo sa 4th floor of this mall. Maghahanap ako ng toys."

"Naka on yung lights ng motor ko. Please off mo na yan."

Types:

1. Inter-Sentenial. The shifting of languages happens at either end of the sentence. Word or words can
be situated at the beginning or at the end of the sentence.

Examples:

"If he asks you for a date, huwag sumama."

"Ito yon, it is so heavy."
2. Intra-sentential. The languages shift in the middle of a clause (sentence), without obvious hesitations,
causes, and interactions to emphasize the shift. The shift happens without the speaker knowing it.

Examples:

"I was in my office na makita ko siya chaste by the police."

"Get your bag inside the car pati yung payong because it is raining."

3. Tag switching. A word or a tag question of a different language is inserted into an utterance of another
language.

"You are john, tama ba?"

"Ikaw si john, aren't you?"

Activity 4

1. Provide sample sentences for each code-switching type. Next, 3 by stating the unique feature/s
each of them has.

Type of Code-Switching Example Unique feature/s

(2 examples each) (at least a sentence of two)
Inter-sentential
Intra-sentential
Tag switching

2. Differentiate the terms, " code-switching and code-mixing".

Lesson 3
Discourses of language and cultural and social relevance

Socio-Cultural Method of Discourse Analysis

Language discourses are humans' modes of expression. The outputs from the discourse, whether the
spoken or written text forms, can become the basis in determining the person's social and cultural
relevance. How can we say that a discourse bears relevance? What method can be used in evaluating
the relevance of any messages produced by speakers and writers?

There are five categories of discourse analysis: socio-cultural analysis, synthetic analysis, structural
analysis, cognitive analysis, and critical analysis. As a subject of focus, socio-cultural analysis
investigates the purpose of utterances in social settings. It does not only analyze expressions through the
author's words and sentences but also other forms of social-cultural factors linked to discourse. This
means that the purpose of the speaker is to express feelings not only to provide information but also to
get involved in social events in various scenarios and groups. With this method, researchers can see the
personal features of the respondents such as social age, ethnicity, status, classes, and gender. So the
ultimate goal then is to discover how people would socially use their language and how the language
used contributes to the development of a relevant culture. (Wu, 2010).

How to Conduct Discourse Analysis

Luo (2019), revealed an outline of the basic steps of discourse analysis:

Step 1: Formulate relevant research questions and select meaningful discourse analysis content.

Step 2: Collect information and check for existing theories that fit the context.

Step 3: Analyze the subject of inquiry and check for patterns and themes. These are among the context to
analyze: structure, grammar, genre, conversational codes, and nonverbal communication.

Step 4: Evaluate results and make conclusions.

Components of Culturally and Socially Relevant to Schools

According to Cheprasev (2018), for a language to gain social and cultural relevance, it must have the
following set of elements and components.

a. Specific and concrete language

The language that is both concrete and specific can create tangible pictures that the listeners and readers
can easily visualize. On the other hand, abstract language can lead to varied interpretations. So speaking
clearly cannot promote language that represents one's culture.

b. Familiar language

Words only become relevant if they are familiar to others, especially if they use them regularly.
Sometimes, relevance is dependent on the usability and familiarity of the language being used. Whenever
the speaker or the writer uses unfamiliar language, the message might not have an impact on others, or
at least, it might be interpreted differently.

c. Constructive language

Constructive language promotes social and cultural relevance. It can spark expected relationships and
friendships, in particular. If this is not observed, readers and listeners will tend to assume that superiority
and indifference are what the speaker wants to express.

Activity 5

A. Discourse Analysis Guidelines

 Apply the discourse analysis method in analyzing the excerpt from the national speech of
President Rodrigo Duterte.
 Focus on vocabulary and grammar as shown below.
 Follow the simplified format.

a. Rationale - this part explains the reason why the analysis is done. Limit your answer to no fewer
than 100 words.
b. Body - this part contains the analysis of the excerpt. Limit your answer to no fewer than 400
words.

The focus of the Discourse Analysis

Vocabulary Words and phrases can be analyzed for

ideological associations and formality and give a
mistake and metaphorical content.
 Grammar The way that sentences are constructed (e.g.,
Verb tenses, active or passive construction, and
the use of imperatives and questions) can
reveal aspects of the intended meaning.

Excerpt from the third State of the Nation speech of President Rodrigo Duterte.

" You worry about the present; I am concerned [about] both the present and the future.
[applause] I worry about the future because I know what rhymes can do to the youth of this country.
If not stopped, crimes can make human cesspools for succeeding generations. I will not allow it to
happen. Not during my term. [applause]

Time and again, I have stressed that corruption must stop. [applause] Corruption is like a leech
that leads the government to fund programs for its infrastructure and other social development
projects. It saps the morale or the morale of dedicated and honest government workers.

Corruption destroys those who succumb to its temptation, and eventually, it is too innocent who will
suffer and bear its horrible consequences.