Since I've done so much research on bilingualism, I thought I'd share a few things that were on my mind. I know I've already said a lot on code-switching, but I really find it interesting when it happens. I can't say how many times per day I'm exposed to it...my roommate himself is Mexican-American, and he talks to someone in his family almost everyday. He'll begin by greeting his family member in Spanish, but within seconds, he'll switch over to English, especially when it comes to words about school, money, or things going on in the apartment. Prior to studying bilingualism more in-depth, I never really paid attention to how frequently it happened.
(will continue....)
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Thoughts About Language
This semester, we've explored a whole array of things we can do with words--we've looked at how words can have an artistic, aesthetic aspect to them. We've seen this verbal art and verbal play. We've also see, thanks to Orwell, how language has become convoluted and can obfuscate one's meaning...we examined this in Persuasive and Political Speech. Moreover, language has taken a whole new meaning through online and mobile technologies. Instead of having face-to-face interactions, we can now convey our feelings and thoughts through the internet, e-mails, texts, and IMs. We've seen how this is intimately tied to identity and self-presentation, in that we can present ourselves in whatever way we want without anyone ever knowing the truth. This touches upon our last topic, language and self, which I think is the most interesting of them all. We've heard the saying, "Choose your words wisely", so as not to offend others, or so that we can project a certain image around certain people. We all tend to have different registers which completely depends on the situation. When we're with friends, we may speak one way, when we're with family, we may speak another. Words can thus have an effect on status.
This class has definitely given me a greater awareness of words and language in general. Orwell especially has impacted me...I'm always careful to be more selective of my words when I write papers, and even when I speak sometimes. In general though, I think I now tend to analyze what someone says, how they say it, what they "say" versus what they really "mean."
This class has definitely given me a greater awareness of words and language in general. Orwell especially has impacted me...I'm always careful to be more selective of my words when I write papers, and even when I speak sometimes. In general though, I think I now tend to analyze what someone says, how they say it, what they "say" versus what they really "mean."
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Brief revisit to Online and Mobile Technology
In class we talked about how the future of literature will be vastly different from how it is now, and enormously different from how it used to be a hundred years ago. When we read Gergen's "Social Population and the Populated Self", we contemplated WHY people are so interested in celebrity gossip, when such information really has no direct effect on their lives. This is actually kind of interesting, really. Do the every-day scandals of celebrities add a sense of excitement and thrill that we seem to be lacking in our own lives? Possibly. Then again, it's always been a fundamental part of human nature to gossip anyway. People love gossiping, but (as I read in an article about gossiping sometime earlier), gossip isn't always negative. There's positive gossip too, that can really boost a person's reputation or make them be seen in a more positive light.
Anyway, I got sidetracked from my first point about the future of literature. I brought up Gergen because, as we established, people love to read about celebrity gossip. They may not like reading books, almanacs, or encyclopedias, but they still love reading nonetheless. People aren't reading in an educational capacity (as much) anymore, but they are STILL reading...be they celebrity tabloids, or stuff on the internet...people are now generally reading what they WANT to read, and the internet has afforded us an unlimited amount of ways to do just this. You can google any topic you can possibly think of and find sites upon sites about that one topic. And all at the convenient click of a button. You don't even have to get up and drive your car to the library anymore. You can practically sit back, relax, and veg out while scanning articles about how this or that works, about music and movies, and all that stuff. So in a sense, the internet is certainly educating people about things...and people are learning. But maybe not about geography, or politics, or government, or science, or math...all that "academic" stuff. I used to have an English teacher in high school who knew countless kinds of trivia...she said she was a "library of useless information", all because she spent so much time on the internet looking up things people thought were inconsequential.
Anyway, I got sidetracked from my first point about the future of literature. I brought up Gergen because, as we established, people love to read about celebrity gossip. They may not like reading books, almanacs, or encyclopedias, but they still love reading nonetheless. People aren't reading in an educational capacity (as much) anymore, but they are STILL reading...be they celebrity tabloids, or stuff on the internet...people are now generally reading what they WANT to read, and the internet has afforded us an unlimited amount of ways to do just this. You can google any topic you can possibly think of and find sites upon sites about that one topic. And all at the convenient click of a button. You don't even have to get up and drive your car to the library anymore. You can practically sit back, relax, and veg out while scanning articles about how this or that works, about music and movies, and all that stuff. So in a sense, the internet is certainly educating people about things...and people are learning. But maybe not about geography, or politics, or government, or science, or math...all that "academic" stuff. I used to have an English teacher in high school who knew countless kinds of trivia...she said she was a "library of useless information", all because she spent so much time on the internet looking up things people thought were inconsequential.
Catching up....
I was reviewing some of my class notes from about a month ago (yes, that's about how long it's been since I've posted...oops!), and there were some things I thought were worthy of mentioning on here:
Language and Self:
We talked about how psychological anthropology looks at person and self across cultures, and we investigate how the self varies across different cultures. In western society, it does seem that the self is viewed as an autonomous, independent entity--we focus primarily on individualism, with full agency and a full autonomy. In many other cultures, a person's "selfhood" is viewed in relation to other people; there's a sense of a collective identity. Where does the person fit in with the rest of society? Another important question to think about is, particularly for us, where and how do we find a sense of independence? When do we lose that sense of dependency on people like our caregivers, and assert that we are fully independent?
We also talked about whether or not we are "separate" selves, or present different personas at different times in life. I think we are, in a way, multi-faceted individuals. In some ways, I feel like we're like chameleons, who are able to change "personality traits" and blend in with our social environment. But of course, this begs the question, "Who are we really?" Stripped down to our core, without pretenses and different personas, who are we really? What is our true color? I've found that over the years, my groups of friends have changed, especially in terms of what they're like, personality traits, habits, attitudes, and the like. I've thought about my friends back in grade school, and the friends I have now. And personally I wonder, am I like all of them? Have I adopted their behaviors and made them my own? Am I a combination of my grade school friends' personalities and my college friends' personalities? Sometimes it's hard to figure out, and there are many times when I'm with my college friends and find myself acting the way I did with my grade school friends. This distinction is hard to make, I feel.
This little dilemma I found myself in is also touched upon by Goffman. What's essentially universal about "self" is that it's conveyed as a performance. So there's a performance aspect in self-presentation, and this obviously varies depending on who we're with. But this also brings up another very important question, "is that front necessarily false?" This ties in, once again, to "who is the real you?" If, according to Goffman, you perform for everyone, even yourself at times, then how do you fundamentally define yourself?
In Turkle's article, we talked about the evolution of humankind as "logical animals" to "feeling machines." I think it's absolutely true how, in this age of technology, computers have changed the image of self. When we talked about this, I thought immediately of a good friend of mine. Her computer, for example, has become an "extension" of herself practically. It seems like she has dumped her entire life into her laptop--all her music (which she is completely passionate about), her treasured photos (basically ALL her memories), diary entries, papers, all that good stuff. One time last year, her computer almost crashed, and I swear it was as if her entire world was about to come crashing down on her. She ALMOST broke down in tears. That's how much her computer meant to her. Who knew a laptop could have such sentimental value to someone?
I guess for the general population (who use computers), computers give us the best of both worlds--we gain both isolation and intimacy through computer use. It's interesting that, by nature, people are afraid of solitude and intimacy. Computers, I suppose, are that happy medium, the perfect compromise between both extremes.
Language and Self:
We talked about how psychological anthropology looks at person and self across cultures, and we investigate how the self varies across different cultures. In western society, it does seem that the self is viewed as an autonomous, independent entity--we focus primarily on individualism, with full agency and a full autonomy. In many other cultures, a person's "selfhood" is viewed in relation to other people; there's a sense of a collective identity. Where does the person fit in with the rest of society? Another important question to think about is, particularly for us, where and how do we find a sense of independence? When do we lose that sense of dependency on people like our caregivers, and assert that we are fully independent?
We also talked about whether or not we are "separate" selves, or present different personas at different times in life. I think we are, in a way, multi-faceted individuals. In some ways, I feel like we're like chameleons, who are able to change "personality traits" and blend in with our social environment. But of course, this begs the question, "Who are we really?" Stripped down to our core, without pretenses and different personas, who are we really? What is our true color? I've found that over the years, my groups of friends have changed, especially in terms of what they're like, personality traits, habits, attitudes, and the like. I've thought about my friends back in grade school, and the friends I have now. And personally I wonder, am I like all of them? Have I adopted their behaviors and made them my own? Am I a combination of my grade school friends' personalities and my college friends' personalities? Sometimes it's hard to figure out, and there are many times when I'm with my college friends and find myself acting the way I did with my grade school friends. This distinction is hard to make, I feel.
This little dilemma I found myself in is also touched upon by Goffman. What's essentially universal about "self" is that it's conveyed as a performance. So there's a performance aspect in self-presentation, and this obviously varies depending on who we're with. But this also brings up another very important question, "is that front necessarily false?" This ties in, once again, to "who is the real you?" If, according to Goffman, you perform for everyone, even yourself at times, then how do you fundamentally define yourself?
In Turkle's article, we talked about the evolution of humankind as "logical animals" to "feeling machines." I think it's absolutely true how, in this age of technology, computers have changed the image of self. When we talked about this, I thought immediately of a good friend of mine. Her computer, for example, has become an "extension" of herself practically. It seems like she has dumped her entire life into her laptop--all her music (which she is completely passionate about), her treasured photos (basically ALL her memories), diary entries, papers, all that good stuff. One time last year, her computer almost crashed, and I swear it was as if her entire world was about to come crashing down on her. She ALMOST broke down in tears. That's how much her computer meant to her. Who knew a laptop could have such sentimental value to someone?
I guess for the general population (who use computers), computers give us the best of both worlds--we gain both isolation and intimacy through computer use. It's interesting that, by nature, people are afraid of solitude and intimacy. Computers, I suppose, are that happy medium, the perfect compromise between both extremes.
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