Week III Blog

1/20/10- Personalities and how they are preserved in different media and through different lenses. As people we have our distinct personalities and the way in which we present ourselves to people face to face. It is this type of person interaction that our today’s society is beginning to lose due to our new technological generation. This then has created many different personalities within our own selves. On the internet a person can choose to be anyone they want to be. They can be more popular by having lots of friends on Facebook, or be pretties by only posting the best pictures, or they can also change the way in which a person is seen through the lenses of the internet. And how do we know as the person on the other side of the lens know for sure that this is the real you. All we can see is what comes out the other end. It’s almost strange to think of things being like this. That how do we know, unless actually knowing the person, who you have met online is actually what you are reading about them. They can make up their own personalities OR not making up a different personality but altering their own to a new maybe alter ego type projection of themselves through different names and personal profiles.

1/22/10- Words and how they are used in different contexts- Words are a part of language, both in speaking and writing to communicate to another. But through today’s media the way of using words has changed. It was interesting and unusual to sit in class today and Tony began class but was not speaking. He used his words and means of communication through Plurk. He was still able to keep class interesting and kept ideas and thoughts running even while using this type of unusual structure for a classroom. We are so used to coming into a classroom, sitting down and either listening to a teacher lecture for some time or take notes on the subject of the class. With this type of student interaction, it brings a different kind of learning into the classroom. But enough about classroom learning, and back to words. The use of words is so important and the way in which they are used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Nrp7cj_tM

It is also interesting to think of the words we never use in everyday language and also how many words there actually are in the English language for instance.There are so many words that we don’t even use in our everyday communicating. Then there are those words that are over used, such as “like” and in my case “really” that don’t need to be used as much as they are.

From http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutenglish/numberwords

I found this map... though it is from Wikipedia, it still amazes me that there are so many counties in this world that don't speak English as their primary language, but yet the English language is the most spoken language around our world.

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

Week II Blog

1/11/10- Interruptions: This is what makes up our daily lives, well to a certain extent. Interruptions, in a better sense, make our lives more interesting. If you really think about it, every event that happens is an interruption to our daily life routines. Whether it is getting up in the morning and your roommate is in the bathroom, you can’t fin d your pants, you have no more socks; those are kind of annoying interruptions, but then there are those like a friend calls who you haven’t talk to in a bit, your significant other sends a text wishing you a great afternoon class or anything else that could make your day just a little better. But then it makes one wonder what is a daily routine, and is that not some sort of interruption to the true routines of daily life. If interruptions are the little bit of good or bad things that can happen in your day, what would a day be like with no interruptions? Would if feel normal? Cause I would venture to say that it would not.

It’s also something to think that over time interruptions to life have changed, but there are those that have stayed the same; such as when running into a friend at the market/ grocery store/ side of the street. These types of interruptions have happened throughout time.

Then there is the interruption of relationships. Spending most of your life as a single individual, but then once really thought about, there is no true single individual. Well there might be, but he or she would be the one living in the middle of nature where none of their interruptions affect anyone else but the nature that surrounds them. But in today’s most common living society there is no single individual and their interruptions don’t just affect them. Close family and friends might be effect by ones interrupted. There could also be other that would be affected by ones interruptions.

Then adding another into your daily routine and then making their interruptions just as much a part of your life as it is theirs. You go through new life routines with different and new interruptions.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend after class and he had a very different opinion on interruptions and the meaning of interruptions in our lives. Evan- “Interruptions is everything that happens in between our main goal as humans and that is to turn 80 and die.” We had a good laugh with this one.

1/15/10- Group discussion: As sitting in class today and going around in a circle, I began to realize that I wasn’t thinking of this class as an English class, but rather looking at it as a philosophy class; which I have taken just recently, which is why I am leaning in the more philosophical direction. The reading of Austin was a hard read and was difficult to understand the purpose and meaning of what he was trying to say. An interesting subject that I pulled out of the Austin lecture was the “nonsense” that we use; that we should “set some limits to the amount of nonsense that we are prepared to admit we talk (pg 2).” Then Austin continues with the follow-up question of “whether many apparent pseudo-statements really set out to be ‘statements’ at all.” This reminded me of a clip of Judge Judy, that two people are supposed to be giving their statements, but rather it comes out as “nonsense.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stHF-8GPz0c

Is it because of the technological age that we are in that is making our means of communication verbally turning more into an art form? It is true that in this day and age technology has become our parasite and we have made it such a part of our lives that without it, the world would end! Imagine if we still talked like those of old English, how long our messages would be. I keep going back to the fact that it’s such as art form to be able to speak and write in that way. The first movie that comes to my mind with the artist feel that i am looking for is within the new 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie. The clip below shows the length that the old English language tends to extend conversations to which today we would send in text form with just a few words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jTITjkN664

I know this way of speaking has changed and hasn’t been used for years, but it is interesting to think that at some point this was the way people spoke and wrote. It really makes our way of speaking today seem like “nonsense,” with our extensive use of “like” and “umm.” These are just two examples of absolutely useless words that we use everyday almost all day.