Excuses, excuses: why I dread writing

It is telling that I am writing this blog at 2:30am... happy exam week, everyone (sarcastic inflection). We have talked a lot about blogs and the ways we present ourselves to other people, and I thought I would quickly give a personal angle on the subject.

Writing for me is a very labored, anxiety-producing process. Even in a blog post, I cannot type a sentence without backspacing, pausing, choosing a different word/phrase, and then repeating the process three words later. I have been known to take 3+ hours to write a simple email to a professor. Writing papers is a similarly lengthy process.

Even before I took this class, I was overly concerned with how I present myself in words. I could probably date this back to childhood or various educational experiences, but I am more concerned with where it puts me now, based on what I have learned in this class.

I think that my writing anxiety has a lot to do with managing identities and a desire to meet others' expectations. In today's world of constant motion, we are constantly trying to "make a good impression" on relatively new acquaintances, and, often, we have few friends with whom we can be secure in ourselves. So for me, writing is maintaining this terribly burdensome front that constantly threatens to disintegrate into stream-of-consciousness note-writing, chock-full of idiosyncratic abbreviations.

I find the relationship between thought and language very interesting. We spoke in class about whether we ever speak completely extemporaneously. To what extent do we arrange words in our minds before we utter them? Writing obviously takes more preparation, especially written work we will submit for grading. However, I notice that when I am in a AIM/Gmail Chat "conversation," the words spill out as in conversation. Why do my fingers stall so much as I type this blog post? Why do my thoughts scatter so? Certainly, one part of the problem is that right now I am consciously trying to follow grammatical rules that I might flout in conversation. I am concerned lest my words fail to be comprehensible to a wide audience, but in AIM conversations I know my friends will always understand my meaning or ask for clarification.

I always wonder whether good writers can think writing. Can anybody write grammatically correct prose at the same pace at which they speak? Or is writing pretty much a tough job for anybody? Winston Churchill said that writing a book was, for him, something rather like a long bout of illness. Yet you hear about literary figures who were able to dictate works from their deathbed. I mean, think of Mozart, who could think up sonatas during a coach ride and then transcribe them. If these geniuses could order their thoughts so precisely, why can't the rest of us? Or, if we can't all be geniuses, why is it unacceptable to write stream-of-consciousness? Why is there pressure to write a certain way?

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Speaking of different ways of writing (can this count as a second blog post? the first took me only about 50 minutes after all), I was thinking about the different requirements for anthropological writing as opposed to journalism as opposed to philosophical writing, mathematical writing, etc. It seems that in each case, the writing style stems from the values that are important to the discipline. For instance, first person writing became acceptable in anthropology when a wave of theoretical papers brought subjectivity and positionality to the forefront of the discipline. Philosophy and mathematics place great value on rigor and logic. They have developed precise vocabularies, and many writings in these disciplines follow convention structures (i.e., proof of a theorem: states the problem, defines the variables and concepts needed, applies concepts step by step, occasionally stopping to prove lemmas, sometimes has to prove the theorem for different cases, e.g. n<0, n>0 or real/imaginary).

As undergraduate students, we do not take classes that describe the nuances of writing an anthropological paper or a humanities thesis or any other specialized writing style. Our writing styles develop according to often contradictory remarks from professors of various disciplines who expect us to adjust our writing for every class we take.

I think it is a shame that we students receive so little formal writing guidance. In the American system, we churn out papers at a hectic pace, and there is rarely any chance to revise them. There is also an illusion of anonymity when the class size is above 20. Until my abroad year, then, I never really identified myself with my essays. In the British system, they seem to have no coursework that focuses specifically on writing, but since all the classes they take at the university level are in their major discipline (no philosophy, social science or fine arts requirement), they are always practicing the same writing styles. While advocates of the American system would claim that our breadth of education makes us more well-rounded scholars, I would argue that taking a whole slew of subjects in which the main goal is to pass an examination rather than expand one's knowledge, and for which the scholar receives very little personal feedback, is counterproductive. The American system (and this ritual period of torture known as Finals Week) is not conducive to my higher learning. I have become a nervous wreck, and I don't even have time to focus my energies on things I would like to learn.

To return from my rant, all disciplines' writing styles serve a purpose. As a student of a particular discipline, it is important that one learn to write according to the accepted conventions to ensure that one's work is intelligible and meets quality standards. While the American system of undergraduate education does NOT promote the development of specific writing skills, it is something that one can learn with repeated exposure to others' writing. I would be curious to find out whether writings in other languages follow the same disciplinary lines as in English. I know, for example, that German books on music are more more dense and theory-heavy than English books. To what extent is this driven by differences in the structure and vocabulary of the language, and to what extent does it reflect cultural preferences and culture-specific ideas in the discipline?

Drumroll please...

Now introducing... my survey (for my project).

https://spreadsheets.google.com/embeddedform?key=pj30UEf_kaGLhOlwFHoSvFA

I would love it if y'all participated and/or passed on the link. I especially need more guys because apparently my number of girl friends to guy friends is about a 3:1 ratio. I have 12 responses so far, which is OK for the first hr and 15 minutes since I posted it. My goal is 150 by Tuesday (I know you guys with like 1000 friends laugh at that measly number. You say, "I could raise an army of 300 to storm NDH screaming 'I am Sparta!' tomorrow at Brunch!" Well, then, prove it. I challenge you to get 100 of your peeps to fill out my survey, if you would deign to brandish your social power for such a trivial request).

Found It!

After our discussion of blogs in class, I went looking for this article I remembered reading several months ago. It's a narrative of how one woman's blogging affected her relationships and identity (and it got a lot of flak from Times magazine readers). When I reread it now, it doesn't seem as applicable as I remembered. It kinda intersects with the topics we've been reading about, but then again it kinda doesn't... mostly doesn't, I guess.

What I found interesting was how her relationships in "real" life were affected by her blog over-sharing, and how comments on her blog triggered really extreme emotional responses. Should there be restriction on what people share in blogs?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25internet-t.html?scp=3&sq=&st=nyt

Tardy with my posting as always

My response to Baron’s final chapter:

I’m skeptical.

All these authors we’ve read point to increased “loneliness” and social isolation in the wake of our new technology, but I don’t quite buy it. It seems to me that throughout history, most generations view technological change/innovation as cause of society’s deterioration. There always seems to be a tendency to see the past as simpler and purer than the present. Television, the telephone, the telegraph, the printing press—these (and probably lots of other technologies that we’ve forgotten by now) were viewed at the time as “threats” to the established way of life and was met with resistance…. and some of that resistance seems to be related to control of communication and relationships.

I can’t help but think of the Tower of Babel “incident” in Genesis, which seems thematically appropriate. Imagine all of mankind congregated in a grand metropolis, where everybody speaks one language and communicates without barrier. They have grand aspirations: to build a tower to connect themselves to Heaven (opening new lines of communication and transport, if you will). Their plan backfires, and God makes them all speak different languages so that they are socially isolated and unable to communicate or conduct business with each other. A moral in the Bible story seems to be that too much communication and connectedness leads to disaster. Don’t try to play God; humans need to know their limits.

But the Tower of Babel tells me that our worries are not new: we crave connectedness and fear social isolation, and too much connectedness can cause isolation (um, with God’s intervention?… haha, never mind).

I think that our worries about social ramifications of cell phone and Internet usage are rather silly. Humans have been using language for thousands of years, and our use of language has constantly been evolving. A goal of language has always been to connect with people, and I don’t think that’s changed. The concerns of today are the same as they have been. So I don’t think that the nature of human communication or the nature of human relationships is “shifting.” If anything, I think the changes we see part of an “ebb and flow” that will adjust itself with the next wave of technology.

But, all right, I don’t think it’s completely pointless to study the social consequences of blogging and cell phone use. I think it’s incredibly interesting, both because it gives me a different perspective on today’s society, and because it is so much “bigger”—has much broader global reach—than previous new technologies. Never in human history have people on opposite sides of the globe had synchronous contact with each other, and now I can have video, audio, or merely text-based contact with friends in Singapore, England, Peru, etc. But, I argue that though the means of communication, the speed, and the geographic distance involved has changed, there is not much difference between human communication/social interaction in the 1500s and now. Back then they used sailing ships and rode horses, yeah? And back then most people only had close relationships with people they saw face-to-face on a regular basis. But the content of their messages were the same, and they definitely used abbreviations and sloppy spelling. Baron talks about how Shakespeare spelled his own name five ways. And remember how many words he just made up? I’m sure his detractors bewailed his mistreatment of the English language, even though we find in him a pillar of English literature and language.

Baron talks about how we are constantly “able to pull the strings on the ways we interact with other people” (220). Haven’t humans always used strategies to control interactions? What is the purpose of etiquette?

I am trying to say that the more things change the more they stay the same. I do see the points that Baron makes, and she makes them very well. But I think that “loneliness” and “isolation” are very subjective, very relative concepts. Didn’t people complain of loneliness often in the 19th-century European metropolises (think Germany, Paris, St. Petersburg… a lot of the literature has to do with people feeling an “outsider” in industrialized cities, it’s a trope of Romantic literature)?

Language and Politics in Italy

This weekend, I read a paper entitled Language and Politics in Italy: from Moro to Berlusconi by Osvaldo Croci. I was originally looking for articles about media ownership and how that affects bias, and then I thought of Berlusconi, Italy's billionaire Prime Minister whose share of media outlets accounts for a large chunk of the Italian market (nearly half, per Wikipedia). He is constantly criticized for using his media influence for political aims, and I wanted to study bias between reports in outlets he owns and those he doesn't. I did find an intriguing article about Italian newspaper readership and media ownership, but it was in German, so after the first 2 pages I gave up and searched for something else.

And I found this really interesting article, as I mentioned, and it talked about the change in the way Italian politicians are using language. It posits a connection between Italy's political climate (well, “electoral volatility”) and politicians' use of language over the past 50 years or so.

It begins with Moro and the birth of politichese, or morotese, the Italian political language characterized by contradiction and syntactic complexity, which obscure the speaker's meaning. The speaker blunts every affirmative statement by repeatedly qualifying it. Politichese also emphasizes abstruse vocabulary. Croci talks about the relationships created in a politichese speech. Politicians in the 1950s and 1960s worked in broad coalitions, parties brought together by political exigency but with very different aims. [Specifically, the Socialist party PSI entered into a coalition with the Republican and Social Democratic parties in what was termed aperture a sinistra – opening to the Left.]

The language Moro used reflected his precarious situation and was, the author argues, “necessary for the functioning of the Italian political regime of which it was an integral part.” “Morotese allowed him to reconcile the diffent factions within the party, by paying homage to their different views in one subordinate clause or another.” (352)

The style of language also reflected a distance between the electorate and the regime. The government aimed for “limited and controlled mass political participation.” (353) Politichese made the government seem inaccessible to the everyman, a difficult game to play. Croci says that “for this reason, politichese, much like Latin in church services, could be regarded as a sort of esoteric tool capable of performing miracles, since it cold transform what was presented as dangerous political foes one day into trustworthy parliamentary allies another day.” (353)

So this tool helped the Italian government remain stable for a number of years, but in the late 1970s, economic crisis brought dissatisfaction within the government and in the electorate, and the tricky cohesion that had existed quickly disintegrated.

So then this other style of political language arose in the new political environment, one characterized by “clarity, simplicity, and spontaneity.” It originated in the 1980s with the Lega (Lega Nord?) (354), and in the Berlusconi age, it has saturated Italian politics.

Berlusconi’s politics is a lot more like advertising—and a lot closer to the U.S. political style. I found it funny that the author (an Italian who teaches at a Canadian university) said that “if the transition to a genuine two-party system does take place and electoral volatility remains relatively high, then gentese will take root and the language of Italian politics might come to resemble more and more that of American politics, a language that most Italians regard as too simplistic to take very seriously.” (365)

Croci characterizes gentese as “a loss of ideological identity.” While Berlusconi denounces his opponents as illiberale, he rarely identifies what liberale would be. Similarly vague are the cose buone he promises to his followers. He analogizes politics to religion (he took the “chalice” when he joined politics, his promises use religion language “io vi dico”), sports (“taking the field”), famously advertised products (article mentions “Del Monte”, use of superlatives), and medicine (himself as a “cure”). His vague and abstract language energizes the public and encourages electorate participation, but it either fails to specify policies or it characterizes them euphemistically/inaccurately.

When will I learn that less is more?

Information about the founding of Reuters, the principles they stand for, the role of the trustees, etc.
http://www.thomsonreuters.com/content/PDF/corporate/01692_A5_Founders_Share_Sin1.pdf

Also the original Wall Street Times interview with Zardari:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122307507392703831.html

More on Zardari/Kashmir from an Indian Perspective

Here's the Times of India... an editorial on the same theme I mentioned in the previous post (the really long post hehe)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Editorial/Change_the_Game/articleshow/3567520.cms

The first paragraph establishes what relations between Pakistan and India have been -- strained at best, and the blame falls on Pakistan (it's not a real democracy, the military's too powerful, it views India as an existential threat). The underlying message is that India has been the principled one of the two. And the second paragraph starts "But," a very important signal word. The author applauds Zardari's statement against the Kashmir terrorists and hopes that this will "change the game."

"It’s high time, therefore, to put the past behind us and India-Pakistan relations on a new footing." He says Zardari has strong national support and his position is best for economic growth. Eh, I don't have time to go through a whole analysis.

Notes on Fairclough

I'm so lost with the Fairclough bit that I'm typing up my notes on it:

-Theme: power of mass media
framework for analysing media language, important element in social/cultural change
"public affairs media" news, documentary, politics, social affairs, science, etc.

Example 1.
Authoritativeness: categorical statements, reporter projected as figure of authority, who knows and has right to tell (image)
Media artist entertaining consumer, rhetorical attention-grabbing features
Representation: include/exclude, foreground/background
What are they getting at? sensationalistic, sense of alarm

1. How is the world represented?
2. What identities are set up? (reporter, audience, third parties)
3. What relationships are set up?

Example 2. (6-7)
words and filmed reconstruction, borderline info/entertainment, fact/fiction
images primacy over words (see before hear description)
apparent inconsistencies, responsibility mitigated in text (event clauses separated by background explanatory clauses)

Example 3. (8-9) complex images, music, sound, superimosed; unusual, more entertaining than not; no specialist vocab
tension between public and private (science technology part of public life, broadcasts consumed in home)

Example 4 (9-10) conversationalization, presenter an "ordinary bloke", colloquial vocab

Tensions: information/entertainment
public/private
tendencies: conversationalization increase (relationship to ordinary life)
marketization increase --- pressure to entertain to survive commercially (relationship to business/commerce)

Media ideology (p12 and following). "Ideologies are propositions that generally figure as implicit assumptions in texts, which contribute to producing or reproducing unequal relations of power" (14) -- text a good thing to analyze, "tensions and contradicitons manifest in the heterogeneity of teual meanings and forms" (15)

do conversationalized discourse practices manifest shift in power relationships in favor of ordinary ppl? (no) strategy recruit as audience and manipulate
*but no can't be dismissed as ideological (science, democratizing technology)

Language analysis "can help anchor social and cultural research and analysis in a detailed understanding of the nature of media output" 16
analyze as discourse
-discourse practices: "the ways in which texts are produced by media workers in media institutions, and the ways in which tests are received by audiences, as well as how media tests are socially distributed" 16 [situational, institutional, societal levels]
-sociocultural practices
discourse anallysis can be understood as "an attempt to show systematic links between texts, discourse practices, and sociocultural practices" 17
text "both spoken and written language"
-multifunctional/systemic view: ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions (halliday)
ideational "generating representations of world"
interpersonal "relations and identities"

Representations: bias, manipulation, and ideology, but identities and relations receive less attn
Texts as options, forms, choices of meaning, how to relate, what identities, etc.
discourse=both social interaction (interpersonal) and "social construction of reality" (ideational)

Ch 6 media texts "constitute versions of reality in ways which depend on the social positions and interests and objectives of those who produce them" -- through choices!!!
1. how events and relationships and situations are represented -- clauses/propositions
2. combination and sequencing of propositions
-local coherence relations
-coherence relations among complexes of clauses
-forms of argumentation
-global text structure (genre)

Presupposition -- "scale of presence" Absent_Presupposed___Backgrounded___Foregrounded
Assume there exist common ground texts, in which what is presupposed is explicitly present
Positioning the audience
"us"
particular importance in ideological analysis, ideologies typically embedded in implicit meaning of text (what we said about reading stuff from other political parties)
Clauses: wording, choice of conjunctions, connotations; emphasis on what's at the end of a sentence
In any Event, Patients (acted on)/Actors (do the acting)
"Nominalizations" processes that have been turned into noun-like terms which can themselves funtion as participants in other processes p112
Van Leeuwen 8 primary elements of a social practice: participants, activities, circumstances, tools/dress, eligibility criteria, performance indicators, and reactions of participants to one another p115

participant element, defining collectively/individually, by function, status or location, temporally, etc.

sequencing: main clauses foreground info, subordinate backgound it; ways of linking; create form and closure (120)

conjunctions: addition, contrastive, variations...
Halliday and Hasan 4 types of cohesion: conjunction, lexical cohesion, reference, and ellipsis

What is included and what is excluded -- BBC on Zardari and Kashmir

News outlets have to be selective. They can only devote their energy to presenting a certain amount of information, if they choose to hold it to a certain quality standard and want to respond quickly to new developments. But who chooses the stories, and on what basis? Alex spoke in class about an equation... using an incident's proximity and magnitude to gauge the amount of airtime/word count it deserves. These criteria provide a rough indication of the audience's supposed interest in the report. Naturally, you care more about something happening in your neighborhood-- which might impact YOUR daily life or the lives of people you know personally -- than about international conflicts, which are far removed from your experience. So, news outlets set priorities based on appeal to their audience.

To what extent SHOULD news outlets base their reports on their audience? Don't journalists have a responsibility to report news as objectively as possible?

There's been a lot of chatter in the international media about unrest in Kashmir of late, but very little of it has been picked up in our U.S. news outlets (I searched "Kashmir" on Google news and all of the most recent results were from other countries -- India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UK, Australia -- but then yesterday Bloomberg, AP, and Reuters put up some blurbs).

I decided to do my Fairclough analysis on a BBC World report about reactions to Pakistani President Zardari's recent statements on Kashmir.

International news outlets refer to "protesters," "terrorists," or "victims of state terror" in the Kashmir region, depending on whose position the news outlet favors (Pakistani government, Pakistani public, Indian government, U.S. government, etc.). You may remember that Zardari was one of the leaders with whom Governor Palin met in New York a week or so ago. Our government has kinda been frustrated with Pakistan for not letting us cross the border to hunt down terrorists (it came up in the Prez debate). Recently Zardari's govt has begun cracking down more on Islamic militants because of increased U.S. pressure. He issued a statement that his government is "committed to eliminating terrorism" (Daily News, Pakistan, 10/7/08) and called the separatists in Kashmir "terrorists."

See the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7654480.stm

(BTW, I am not at all as well-versed as I should be on developing world situations. There is just too much going on, and I don’t really understand it all. So, I’m sorry if I simplify things too much and don’t give the proper context for statements.)

News generally has some entertainment content to it, and this article is no exception. Even the title “Fury over Zardari Kashmir comment” has a gossipy flavour. The title posits an action and a reaction. Obviously there was a comment, and the comment was inflammatory enough to provoke a “furious” response. The reader thinks “ooooh, what did he say?” and “why were people furious?”

The subtitle further intrigues the reader: protesters “defied a curfew” to “denounce” President Zardari and “burn his effigy.” The positioning makes it seem that all the commotion is over one little comment, although we have not been told what the comment is, or why it has provoked a strong reaction.

What struck me about this article was that the subject matter is words and how they are used and media and the reactions they cause, which fits in exactly with the theme of our discussion.

How is the world represented in the article?

-Separatists against Indian rule in Pakistan are discussed in very positive language throughout. There is very much the impression that Zardari calling them “terrorists” is wrong, and even silly and outrageous.

-Article does not even affirm that Zardari said they were “terrorists,” only that he was reported to have said it in the Wall Street Journal. (calling credibility into question, not-so-subtle critique on U.S. media)

-Geelani "Zardari has made these remarks to please the Americans"

-Report “It is the first time that a Pakistani leader's effigy has been burnt in Indian-administered Kashmir where anti-India protests have often been marked by pro-Pakistan slogans.” (so Zardari must have done something reeeeally stupid to suddently lose the support of a region that had been pro-Pakistan)

-Rehman “[Zardari] has never called the legitimate aspirations of Kashmiris an expression of terrorism, nor has he undermined the sufferings of the Kashmiri people."

What identities are created?

-Individuals: Zardari, Geelani (prominent separatist “fighting for an end to Indian rule in Kashmir”), Rehman (spokesperson for Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP))

-Collective identities: “Muslim protesters” (we assume these include regular people as well as would-be terrorists? It’s left very very vague WHO is protesting Zardari – the people he calls terrorists, or the people who live and get along with the “terrorists”

“Islamic militants” are they or aren’t they terrorists? Freedom fighters?

-“India” and “Pakistan” identities as nations

-Kashmir, identity disputed region

-Wall Street Journal – represents whole of U.S. media/government

-nominalizations

“Comment” is the number one nominalization!!! The article is all about what the comment has done. Others include “reaction”, “our democratic government”, “the country”, “suspicion”, and “relations.”

What relationships are posited?

-India and Pakistan in conflict with each other. “Pakistan has supported anti-Indian militants and fought two wars with India over Kashmir,” are at a “faltering peace” right now; India as a “threat to Pakistan’s existence”

-Muslim protesters against Zardari

-Zardari in league with American government/media

-American government and media are equivalent

What is excluded?

-Why was the curfew in place? (I think it was there because there was supposed to be a giant protest Monday and the government was trying to keep things under control)

-Why did Zardari refer to Islamic militants for independence as “terrorists”?

-What was the context of Zardari’s comment to the Wall Street Journal?

-What have the actions of the militants been? Have they engaged in acts we would call terrorism? (all we get is alleged “human rights abuses” – very vague)

Presuppositions

-That “terrorist” is really bad and should only be applied to certain types of groups. Protester, separatist, and militant are much more innocuous.

-People of the region would rather Zardari didn’t agree with America (don’t like America, don’t like America butting into their business)

-that Kashmiri wants Pakistan to support the freedom fighters

The VP Debate

So, I watched the debate. I don't really have time to discuss it right now... hopefully I'll come back to this on Sunday.

What I wanted to share was a NYTimes OpEd by Steven Pinker... I recognized the name as I scanned Google news. He is a Harvard professor in psychology who studies language and cognition. I knew of Pinker because he once made a remark that music is "evolutionary cheesecake," and that comment has been picked up by mainstream media and other academics...

Anyway, he wrote an editorial on the debate, and he talks about Sarah Palin's use of language and her accent much more eloquently than I ever could, and I thought y'all might be interested.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04pinker.html

Politics and the English Language

I first read the George Orwell article in high school English class. I enjoyed it then, and I enjoy it still more now, having read many academic articles in music and other disciplines that abuse the English language in the ways Orwell describes. In re-reading last week's election polemic, I did not come across as many examples of imprecise language use as I expected. It seems that, in crafted speeches at least, candidates take pains to make their statements clear. In Friday's debate, even as they evaded questions, Obama and McCain stuck to simple sentences with which Orwell would be hard-pressed to find fault. (Orwell could attack my prose, I'm sure... I find it hard to write clearly about anything).

Here are excerpts of candidate answers that I deem imprecise not because they violate an Orwellian rule, but because they complete evade the question (whole transcript here http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/26/debate.mississippi.transcript/):

Lehrer: Gentlemen, at this very moment tonight, where do you stand on the financial recovery plan?

Obama: ...You know, we are at a defining moment in our history. Our nation is involved in two wars, and we are going through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
And although we've heard a lot about Wall Street, those of you on Main Street I think have been struggling for a while, and you recognize that this could have an impact on all sectors of the economy. And you're wondering, how's it going to affect me? How's it going to affect my job? How's it going to affect my house? How's it going to affect my retirement savings or my ability to send my children to college? ... (he outlines his proposal without saying for or against the $700 billion bailout)

McCain: ... And, Jim, I -- I've been not feeling too great about a lot of things lately. So have a lot of Americans who are facing challenges. But I'm feeling a little better tonight, and I'll tell you why. Because as we're here tonight in this debate, we are seeing, for the first time in a long time, Republicans and Democrats together, sitting down, trying to work out a solution to this fiscal crisis that we're in. And have no doubt about the magnitude of this crisis. And we're not talking about failure of institutions on Wall Street. We're talking about failures on Main Street, and people who will lose their jobs, and their credits, and their homes, if we don't fix the greatest fiscal crisis, probably in -- certainly in our time, and I've been around a little while... (keeps going, optimistic about solution, needs to have transparency, does not come out and say he's "for" it, just that he's hopeful)

Both candidates use the terms Main Street/Wall Street. "Main Street" is becoming the kind of stock metaphor which Orwell might not like. Other than that, I think the language use abides by all Orwell's rules:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

In interviews, however, you can certainly catch a candidate in bad language use. I thought it would be too mean of me to use a Sarah Palin interview, but I managed to find a John McCain interview from last Thursday with some good "fudging" vagueness.

Gibson: Was the agreement on principles announced by Senator Dodd and Congressman Frank and others this morning -- was that enough for you to sign on, or do you want other changes in this bill?

McCain: Well, the principles frankly are those that I articulated. And as always the devil is in the details many times and I wanted to see of course whether homeowners are adequately addressed at keeping people in their homes and other aspects of it. But basically I set forth a set of principles that are very similar to these as well as the original plan of Secretary Paulson's, but there have been significant changes as we went through.

This answer has a few nice things.
(#1) Figure of speech: "The devil is in the details" is a colloquial phrase. According to Bartleby.com's The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition., it means that "even the grandest project depends on the success of the smallest components." McCain uses the phrase correctly here, but one would expect that his following remarks would elucidate those details just a little. Instead, the details remain veiled. Everything about the answer, and indeed this whole interview (just after the White House meeting when the bailout fell apart), is characterized by vagueness. McCain will not commit to rigid principles, preferring to speak about "optimism," in a way typical of most politicians.

(#4) Passive: "whether the homeowners are adequately addressed"... it's not so bad, right? But it could be "whether the plan will adequately address homeowners," and so it violates Orwell's rule #4. "There have been significant changes" should become "blank changed blank," using an active construction.

(#3) Wordy: What does the whole answer even say? I will attempt a paraphrase "I articulated the principles in response to your earlier questions, Charlie. Provisions in the bill must benefit the homeowners and aid their ability to keep their homes. My stated principles align with those already mentioned and with Secretary Paulson's original plan, but many changes have since altered the bill (or my principles? to what do the "changes" apply?)." As seen,
"there have been significant changes as we went through" is too vague -- it could refer to McCain's principles or to Paulson's plan or to the state of the economy. It provides no new information.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=5886415&page=3

Aaack! I have to be at the GRE place in 5 hours, but at least I got that done.

Before Switching to the Political Stuff...

Hello everybody, I realize you haven't heard from me for a while, and I feel very bad about that. I am taking the GRE tomorrow morning, and because of my hectic schedule (I'm feeling all of you out there who are feeling imprisoned by your over-scheduled lives. It's draining and terrifying, and it makes me incredibly moody), I haven't had the chance to prepare at all until today. So I am certainly doing things with words right now-- I am LEARNING them. I should be done by 1pm, but in case I'm late to class tomorrow, the GRE is why. I have to miss my morning class, and I can't be bothered to do the homework for it tonight because I still have so much other reading to do...

I just wanted to go back and give my recapitulating thoughts on the verbal art and wordplay section.

First off, Cockney rhyming slang. When I was making up my half-dozen play languages, I kind of "cheated." I got on Wikipedia and read about dozens of other play languages. I had never heard of rhyming slang, and I find it hysterical and amusing. It seems so much more versatile than a play language that works off syllable insertion or vowel change (although i did want to mention one of my syllable insertion languages that i thought was quite fun... adding "ge"-- pronounced "guh" after every syllable... "regemegembeger toge doge thege digesheges!!!!" Say it, I promise it's fun). Rhyming slang actually requires some sort of logical connection, replaying a word with a descriptor of a common rhyming word.

For instance, a friend, or "mate," becomes "china"... "china plate!" "Jam" is a "car," because of "jam jar." And replace "Yank" with "septic," as in "septic tank." I made up my own... "sleep" becomes "rubbish," as in "rubbish heap." A "house" becomes "Mickey," "Mickey Mouse." Can you think of a good one for "Notre Dame?" Baggage (claim)? Candle (flame)? Picture (frame)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang

Second, I listen to a lot of Spanish-language music on the radio or Pandora, and I notice a lot of "code-switching" within songs, where the artist(s) insert an English phrase or sentence-- sometimes sung but often spoken-- into an otherwise Spanish song. This is especially noticeable in Spanish-language singers who live in the United States, like Aventura out of NYC. In their song "Mi Corazoncito," there's spoken lines like "Give us our crown," "Henry? Tell them it's my heart, mio, ok?" And, I mean, that's the first one that comes to my mind, but there are a ton of instances like that... RBD's "Tu Amor" is probably the most cheesy bilingual song I have ever heard in my life. Then of course there's Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca." And I always get a kick out of hearing the same song in multiple languages--- Enrique Iglesias, anyone? The music video for "Dimelo" (English version: Do You Know?/The Ping-Pong Song) is interesting in that it sets up a "frame" for the performance of the song, which is interrupted multiple times in performance. The music video calls into question when the song begins and ends, and it comments on its meaning. I find the differences in the Spanish/English lyrics to be very interesting; the sounds/rhythms of the words become more important than the literal translation. I have pasted the choruses below:

Spanish:
¿Dímelo por que estás fuera de mi?
Y al mismo tiempo estás muy dentro
Dímelo sin hablar y hazme sentir
Todo lo que yo ya siento

English:
Do you know what it feels like loving someone
That's in a rush to throw you away?
Do you know what it feels like to be the last one
to know the lock on the door has changed?

Tu Amor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6WjGKmomXE
Dimelo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSp6H4SdH7Y

And I'm not always sure why Spanish artists add English lyrics. For artists who live in the U.S., it is understandable because they are probably bilingual, and there might be words and ideas they would choose to communicate in English. For huge cross-over artists like Enrique Iglesias, it makes a lot of commercial sense. RBD is a Mexican pop group composed of cast members from the telenovela Rebelde, which had a cult-ish, teen following from what I gather. I find RBD's English songs and inserts (like the persistent "baby" in "Ser o Parecer"... sooo Britney Spears) laughable, but it plays to the group's audience and is a tactic for enlarging the audience. English-language comments were a characteristic of the original tv show, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBD

I meant to talk about that book I mentioned, Doing Our Own Thing by John McWhorter, because it collects a lot of different examples of different ways people use language. Maybe I'll go into all this tomorrow after the GRE.

Speaking of which, I just found out my ride can't take me home after I'm done with the test. So it looks like I'll be walking 4 miles back to class if I don't get this figured out by 8am. Sorry if I'm at all late or irritable tomorow.

Aack! The reading!!! Sorry for the ramble.

Making Politics Ridiculous

I am an avid follower of media coverage... I check Google News compulsively about 5 times a day, I read the NYTimes online as well as a couple dozen AP and Reuters reports (infused with Brit tabloid junk like Independent.co.uk and dailymail.co.uk -- which do have a chunk of serious articles mixed in the bizarre!). I have a penchant for the ridiculous, but I also like to know what's going on in the world around me.

And after my daily news blitz, I like to check out the Daily Show and the Colbert Report to get their take on the news of the day. The focus of both shows is primarily political-- and there is plenty of fodder in that realm to provide both shows a wealth of material to play with. Both shows appear to be a combination of careful strategic planning and spontaneity. The audiences expects wordplay and punchlines and witty comments, but there is a sense that the host is occasionally flying by the seat of his pants. Some jokes fall flat; others result from a host's mistake. Jon Stewart, especially, often is so amused by his own jokes and those of his fellow cast members that he bursts out laughing.

One tactic employed by both shows is the juxtaposition of words and images. Since they are not considered a legit newscast, they have leeway to take footage out of context and reinterpret it for their purpose. Similarly, they will place footage of speeches and interviews side-by-side to point out where the person has contradicted him/herself or where there is a logical fallacy.

I'll focus on the Daily Show and its most recent episode (Friday, recap of the Republican National Convention). Starting with a spoof video promoting John McCain, Stewart introduces the show and launches into a short monologue on Minnesota. From the very opening, the show presupposes specialized knowledge of the U.S. political system... the various personalities of McCain and Bush and Washington and the Republican Party-- and what in the world a "Convention" is, anyway. Stewart notably interacts with his audience. When the studio audience cheers, "'Woo' to you, I say," is his rejoinder, as if engaged in a polite discussion, or wishing to return a compliment. When speaking of Minnesota, he beckons the camera closer and whispers, "I don't understand these people." Stewart's inability to keep a straight face is part of his charm. Although most comedians and comic actors pride the ability of "keeping in character," Stewart has managed to be successful without donning too much of a persona. He finds obvious amusement in the absurdities of American politics and shares his enjoyment with evident glee.

Stewart (and Colbert) delight in one-liners that thwart the audience's expectation... usually by throwing in something that seems completely bizarre but, after reflection, strangely fits the situation. Or sometimes it's just completely incongruous...

After doing that videoclip thing with McCain and Bush to highlight their policy similarity, Stewart rolls a spoof McCain bio film... a voiceover narrative accompanying clips of his past and present campaigning. There is a clear pattern here-- he uses the same techniques over and over!

The Colbert Report is slightly more sophisticated in some ways. First, Steven Colbert uses a persona as a mock conversative news host. He invents words to capture concepts he is ridiculing (most famously "truthiness")... He has a segment called "the Word" where he speaks on a topic while comic bullet points appear to the viewer on the right side of the screen. Relationships and discrepancies between what he says and what the bullets say provide great comic effect.

A couple more things to mention about the Colbert Report that have to do with words are the "green screen" challenge (viewers compete to put the most hilarious background behind John McCain as he gives a speech --- it is the incongruity between the images and the words that makes the challenge humorous) and the interviewing "fill-in-the-blank" tactic. The latter is when Colbert prompts his guest to make a scandalous statement. "I do drugs because..." Colbert starts in one YouTubed clip. "Because it's a fun thing to do," says the guest after much prodding. What was most amusing about the incident is that the quote quickly spread through the mainstream media-- "OMG look what he admitted to on the Colbert Report!!!!"

I am enjoying the Sherzer reading. Besides learning lots of punny new jokes, I enjoy reading about wordplay in other languages. I never realized play languages were so universal! I remember my friend Laura and her sibling having a play language in which they changed every vowel sound to "oo." How they understood each other, I'll never know. My play languages were all text-based letter manipulations... so now I'm really good at Jumbles and Cryptograms (better at the latter than the former though).

While reading both the Sherzer and Bauman articles, I was constantly reminded of Tom Stoppard's excellent play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Does anyone else know this play? Wordplay runs rampant throughout Tom Stoppard's works. It's super funny, sometimes in a rather arcane way. (I lost a book of his plays on a bus in Barcelona so if anyone finds one and it has "New College Library" stamped on it, let me know...)

Speech Act

I apologize for having been rather tardy in the completion of today's assignment. Pursuant to today's class discussion, I have chosen a speech act to describe...

Two girls find out that an unspecified guy has a crush on one of their friends, and a little pact of secrecy develops around it. They discuss the circumstance with endless delight, feeling the power of possessing a secret. When they next see the friend, they make oblique references to the crush. They want to let the girl know that they have a secret involving her, but they won't let her in on it. They refer to the guy as "Mmmm." So the entire conversation progresses so:

A- "I wonder if Katie would like Mmmm back if she knew."
Katie-"What are you talking about? Who's Mmmm?"
B- "Yeah, I know, they would make such a cute couple."
A-"But at the same time there would be such a height discrepancy."
B-"Did you see Mmmm at lunch today? He was really trying to get your attention, Katie."
Katie- "Is Mmmm Joe? Stop it, guys! This is so mean!"

There's a lot going on in this conversation...
I would say the primary goal is phatic... the two girls A and B are using their secret to create a closer relationship, but they are doing it at the expense of Katie, who is frustrated and feeling left out. They are trying to provoke a response in Katie... is this sufficient to make the speech act conative? They are not directing Katie to do something, as they would if they said "Go talk to him, Katie." But at the same time, the taunt would not be near so much fun-- it would cease to have a point-- if Katie were to say, "Jig's up. Steven told me he liked me 2 weeks ago, and I totally am not interested."

If we analyze it in Hymes' terms (and as one big speech act), then senders are A and B and receiver is both the other, non-talking A or B (because they are in on the inside joke together) and Katie... the object of the taunt. The main factor in keeping Katie excluded is the "code," by which the guy is referred to as Mmmm. Channel is informal conversation; setting is American high school, the class after lunch; topic is gossip about boys. Message form is just... well, in this case not that important, since it's not poetic.

Those are factors -- the primary function, as mentioned above, is phatic/contact and possibly conative. There is little poetic or expressive. The referential function is present, but it is subordinate to the primary functions. A does not want to give B information so much as it wants to conceal information from Katie. Do the statements about lunch and attention-seeking behavior perform contextual and referential functions? I'd say they might provide a little bit of contextual information... Katie will start to pin down who this guy is-- he goes to their school, she saw him at lunch, he was doing something to attract her attention. The contextual element is more implied as opposed to explicit. And then, of course, I made Katie's responses metalingual... she's trying to crack the code. "What does 'Mmmm' signify? Is it X?"

(Completely unrelated to previous example)
I am reading a lot of Heine right now (in translation-- though I'm trying hard to get my German up to par-- for reading, that is, don't ask me to speak), and that gives me a few things to say about functions of communication in his writings. First off, expressive function: yes, Heine expresses a lot of feelings and thoughts, but they're not necessarily true... even in personal letters he often takes on a persona who is designed to make the reader think (about their prejudices, about society, about what Heine is getting at). So he is consciously, purposely insincere every moment. And poetic function is important for Heine whether the piece of writing is poetry or prose. The referential content is often thickly veiled-- you can't take any sentence at face value without considering why he chose each individual word. Taken together, the cadences and choices of words make for incredibly fun reading, but you really have to slow down and take in the details to "understand" him. Conative seems to be always the most important function -- Heine is always wanting the reader to do something (read critically for one! also exhorting them to behave rationally, think his way about things, emancipate ppl, etc.).

I understand why Jakobson would be pretty influential in his view of poetics "as an integral part of linguistics (350)." As complicated as extemporaneous utterances can be to analyze, "noncasual" prose and poetry-- assiduously planned and loaded with layers of meaning--are absolute nightmares (yet attractive and totally fascinating). I like that Jakobson starts from the vantage point of literature as communication, which offers a different starting point than a more formal, grammatical approach. At the same time, I feel like the questions we are asking about speech acts are often the same questions we started off with for a work of literature in my high school English classes. So, I have tools both to analyze literature as communication and to analyze verbal communication as a work of literature (verbal art!).

Actually, I have no clue what I'm doing, but it sure is fun. To me, it's like a Rubik's cube or a really hard knot... except that it seems ultimately impossible to come to a completely clear, consistent understanding of meaning in poetry or in a speech act. But hey! That's why criticism/analysis never dies!

Tutorial Reports

This is slightly off-topic, but I'd say it relates in a sort of tangential way. You remember that example from the Grice reading about the person applying for a philosophy job (p.52)? Well, it really cracked me up, thinking back to my year at Oxford last year. (From that paragraph alone, I guessed that Grice was an Oxonian, and sure enough, Wikipedia agrees).

At Oxford, the degree and scoring systems work differently than they do in the States. For instance, "cumulative GPA" and "semester grades" are totally bewildering concepts to Oxford students, who think along lines of tutorials and papers (not papers like essays, papers as in final-final exam papers at the end of your 3 years). My grades from Oxford are conversions of my term tutorial reports. To the best of my knowledge, tutors' tutorial reports are generally brief, brutally honest synopses of a student's work during that term. But when I read my first set, it was slightly startling to see all my work evaluated in three sentences like: "Caitlin completed all her written work to a good standard. She showed up at all the scheduled tutorials prepared and spoke well on the assigned material. She needs to do more critical listening," or something like that (I wish I had the exact text because it was even less positive and more ambivalent than that). A whole semester ND grade had to be determined based on that! (no wonder my GPA dropped...) But in the Oxford system, tutorial reports don't usually count for anything. They are just used internally to gauge students' progress. When I asked my tutors how I was doing and what in my work could be improved, they just said that I was doing well enough and seemed confused that I thought the content of my tutorial report implied that I was doing poorly. They told me that if my work were lacking, they would say that explicitly in my tutorial report.

By the end of the year, I was getting more positive adjectives in my tutorial reports--I wonder whether my work really got better or they realized that Americans expect more laudatory language and were adjusting my reports for the different purpose they served in my case. In any case, this is an example of a time when differences in convention led me to imply something different than what my tutor intended. [Throughout the year, I was rather uncertain of the expectations for me-- and my tutors were uncertain of what I wanted and needed to learn-- and my ND department had trouble figuring out how to credit the work I did towards my degree... yeah, it was a fun year]

Now I'm asking one of my tutors for a letter of recommendation, and I hope he has more good things to say about me than Grice's philosophy tutor...


And I'll do another post later on the reading for Mon.

Performativity2

Connecting the readings to the world, hmm? I thought I'd better add on to my previous post with more of an observed world connection. When I attended Mass last night, all I could think about were the ways in which words were used to enact the rituals associated with Communion and other Mass parts. "The Lord be with you," and the response "and also with you," is a perfect example of the type of performance utterance we are studying. It is a blessing and a prayer and a hope expressing good intentions for the community and for the special presence of God in others' lives. We read about how utterances react to facts in the world but also influence the world. The Creed, then, expresses truths we hold (sincerely or not?) in our hearts, and it also becomes true by our affirmation.

In my Sacramental Theology a few semesters back, we read Aquinas and other theologians about the circumstances which make the sacrament efficacious, and a lot of what we read had to do with words. For Communion, there has to be a priest, he has to say the formula in a certain setting, in a certain order and all that jazz. I don't remember the specifics (I'm actually not Catholic, I go to Mass and don't take Communion), but it definitely should give our class some food for discussion.

Performativity

The readings for tomorrow's class focus on "performativity," or use of language to perform actions. In the characteristic manner of philosophy writings, the essays by Searle and Austin quickly become complicated and dense. The cumulative impact of these readings on me was a newfound awareness and appreciation for the complexities of interpersonal communication. Each time an individual utters a sentence, this action is prone to analysis on several different levels. We can talk about the intention of the speaker, the propositional content, the function indicated by the sentence structure, whether the circumstances surrounding the utterance are "felicitous," and how/whether the statement projects the speaker's identity.

I don't think I'm very good at intensively analyzing philosophical essays. Austin succeeded in convincing me of the existence of performative utterances, and I followed him and agreed with him throughout his discussion. I was surprised at the end when he brought statements under the category of performative utterances.

I don't know what to think about the role of intention in speech acts. It seems to me that much communication is unintentional or misinterpreted or insincere. If you talk to yourself or to a friend and are overheard, you have communicated something to an unintended audience. If your cell phone breaks up and your friend hears "buy the tickets now," instead of "DON'T buy the tickets now," this would seem to affect matters. Austin talked about "infelicities," and I suppose these instances would fall under the "infelicitous" category. Is there more we can say about intercepted or interrupted communication? I hardly know, but I will give the matter some more thought.

The most interesting part of the Searle excerpt was the discussion of the intentional and conventional aspects of the illocutionary act. This was in the section on "meaning" (44-46). What sets apart a speech act from a series of sounds or shapes is that one "means something" by those sounds or scribbles. We say that those words or letters "have meaning." What is boggling is that verbal communication is wrapped up in the participants as much as in the word-symbols. The speaker wants the listener to recognize that it is his intention to communicate a certain meaning. The words and inflection and timing etc. that the speaker chooses are determined by convention, which includes the rules of grammar and etiquette. At least, I think that's what Searle says.

In the Hall article, what stood out to me was the mention of Michelle Rosaldo, whose work we are reading next week. I am curious to see what she has to say after the preview given in the Hall article. According to Hall, Rosaldo argues that Austin and Searle's emphasis on intention and sincerity is ethnocentric. Across cultures, the speaker's psychology does not necessarily affect the success of their illocutionary acts. After reading this, I wonder what other characteristics of verbal speech vary significantly among language groups and cultures. I wonder how the characteristics of the English language and the conventions of American academic society influence our study of speech acts.

And then of course, mobile communication opens up another can of worms. How do we assess the felicity of a text message sent via mobile phone. Are people more or less inclined to be sincere when the communication is not face-to-face? Are people held more accountable when you have their promise storied in SMS or voicemail?

Just my initial thoughts, as they come.

Day 1

Prof B said our assignment was to start a blog, and here it is! First day of class, not too much to say, and at the same time, there's so much I could say about the clips we viewed and heard and how they demonstrate some of the basic characteristics and functions of language. I'll save up my steam for the assignments down the road, but I just wanted to mention how struck I am by the nature of language, at once precisely structured and infinitely fluid. Though I do not consider myself a budding linguist, I am excited for this class and eager to discuss the course content.