manderlyh Posted January 8, 2008 Author Share Posted January 8, 2008 I just got an invitation to take an Honors' English class on British Twentieth Century Literature. I'd LOVE to take it, but it's on MWF from 2:40-3:30. My classes are all on TTH...damnit! I don't need any more upper division English credits...in fact...I have more than I know what to do with...but I'd love to take it. Too bad I can't. It would boil down to taking this class or not doing my student teaching. :'( Course Description: This course is a tour de force of the dynamic literature of the last century in its social and historical contexts. The breath-taking sweep of that century is reflected in the dazzling diversity of its fiction: from the shift from gaslight to electricity to the domination of the cell phone, from the First World War to a Second and a Cold War, from sexual repression to Freud to women’s liberation and Queer theory, from driving a horse and trap to skimming over the Channel on the Concord, from high tea in the parlor to jazz age champagne parties to martinis and speed dating, the twentieth-century is nothing if not novel. “Make it new!” Ezra Pound’s branding of modernism in the first half of the twentieth century captures the passionate experimentation that writers carried on throughout the century into postmodernism. For these writers, literature is an art; it can create beauty and timelessness, make the familiar strange and horrible, interrogate our most cherished or unconscious beliefs, and explore the fundamental experiences of human life—identity and prejudice, being and time, love and death. For these writers, the art of literature is often also a craft, a living, a means to various ends. In the first half of this course, we will study the rise of literary modernism in its social and historical contexts. Our questions will include: How is modernist innovation a reaction to Victorian styles and values? How do modernists debate the role of fiction and its scope? How do these writers respond to the new technologies, new physics, new gender roles, new politics? What is the impact of two devastating World Wars on writers? In the second half of the course, we will study the emergence of postmodernism. How do writers take up art after the atom bomb and holocaust? What is “new” in postmodernism? How do “others”—postcolonial and marginalized writers—begin writing new histories, new narratives, and new identities? Are the genres of self-reflexive fiction and magical realism serious interrogations of art and dominant ideologies or, perhaps, just good fun? Texts will include: Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Lawrence, D. H. The Fox, The Captain’s Doll, The Ladybird. Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse. Waugh, Evelyn. Vile Bodies. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Short stories by Samuel Beckett, B.S. Johnson, David Lodge, and John Fowles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragster Posted January 8, 2008 Share Posted January 8, 2008 Languages and linguistics are not only our means of communicating in the world, but they also reflect the culture of a nation....you'll be surprised how much you will learn about a country from its language......I know, I've been in the lingo biz for over 30 yrs now! Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manderlyh Posted January 15, 2008 Author Share Posted January 15, 2008 Here's a beautiful metaphor I got out of a novel that I'm reading, The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCraken. "She was a dry person, not in an unpleasant way: like a flower that had been pressed in a dictionary for years, lovely and saved but liable to fall to dust." There's more, but I don't feel like typing it all at 1am.. ETA: okay...it's a simile, not a metaphor... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragster Posted January 15, 2008 Share Posted January 15, 2008 Here's a beautiful metaphor I got out of a novel that I'm reading, The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCraken. "She was a dry person, not in an unpleasant way: like a flower that had been pressed in a dictionary for years, lovely and saved but liable to fall to dust." There's more, but I don't feel like typing it all at 1am.. ETA: okay...it's a simile, not a metaphor... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manderlyh Posted January 25, 2008 Author Share Posted January 25, 2008 We were talking about some pretty funny things in my linguistics class tonight. The entire class was roaring with laughter. I really hope that this class stays this fun all semester! It's a 3-hour, once a week class, so we have to be fun or I'll go crazy! My teacher was talking about the use of the word "totally" and how it has "recently" changed meanings. She said her favorite piece of data from a student's study was this: "I totally lost my virginity in Winnemucca." ROFL Not only is this a terrible thing to admit, (Winnemucca is a very small town in Nevada that's 100% dependent on gambling for its economy), the teacher brought up a question: "Can you ever partially lose virginity?" What about the cat that we wouldn't name our cat "'Fin-off?" It sounded like the last part of something not so clean... ROFL... Yanno...like Jack.... There was a study that asked people what some of their least favorite words in the English language were. Surprisingly, women replied in a large number that they didn't like the word "moist," I wonder why? We were also talking about how English has several words that begin with the "gl" sound that have meanings that have something to do with light. Not all words that begin with "gl" have something to do with light, and not all words that have something to do with light start with "gl," but there's a definite pattern: gleam glow glare glimmer glisten Now--if we were to market a cleaning product for mopping the floors, we'd be likely to name is something like "glem" instead of something like "fump," right? What got me there is when she wrote the word "fump" up on the board, and I decided to share with everyone that "fump" sounds more like a blend of two sexual words that mean to have sex than a floor cleaning product. LOL Now for something a bit more wholesome... My teacher was talking about metaphor, metonymy and synedoche. She gave us a bit of a schpiel on what a metaphor was, and I loved the metaphor she put on metaphor.... "Metaphors are everywhere. A metaphor is not one of those little bits of lace on the edge of the fancy carpet of language--a metaphor is all over the carpet." Oh God. I love linguistics. I walk out of there at the end of every class...excited. I really am an English nerd, aren't I? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manderlyh Posted January 30, 2008 Author Share Posted January 30, 2008 OKAY KAT! I'm relying on you to help me out with this little thread here! Here is a little bit of linguistics for us: What is the relationship between arbitrariness vs. iconicity? What makes a word or a morpheme something that is NOT arbitrary? Why is a house called a house? Why is a dog house called a dog house? Just a few things to ponder... Now I must read up on my linguistics homework so I am able to discuss. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 Why is a house called a house? Why is a dog house called a dog house? Rest assured, I do not posit the following arbitrarily. The answer to your questions lies in the answer to the question Why is a dog called a dog? Chew on that bone, cunning linguist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evster2012 Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 Euphamisms by George Carlin I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I'll give you an example of that. There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to it's absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap. In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock! Battle fatigue. Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, were up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car. Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I'll betcha. I'll betcha. But. But, it didn't happen, and one of the reasons. One of the reasons is because we were using that soft language. That language that takes the life out of life. And it is a function of time. It does keep getting worse. I'll give you another example. Sometime during my life. Sometime during my life, toilet paper became bathroom tissue. I wasn't notified of this. No one asked me if I agreed with it. It just happened. Toilet paper became bathroom tissue. Sneakers became running shoes. False teeth became dental appliances. Medicine became medication. Information became directory assistance. The dump became the landfill. Car crashes became automobile accidents. Partly cloudy bacame partly sunny. Motels became motor lodges. House trailers became mobile homes. Used cars became previously owned transportation. Room service became guest-room dining. And constipation became occasional irregularity. When I was a little kid, if I got sick they wanted me to go to the hospital and see a doctor. Now they want me to go to a health maintenance organization...or a wellness center to consult a healthcare delivery professional. Poor people used to live in slums. Now the economically disadvantaged occupy substandard housing in the inner cities. And they're broke! They're broke! They don't have a negative cash-flow position. They're fucking broke! Cause a lot of them were fired. You know, fired. management wanted to curtail redundancies in the human resources area, so many people are no longer viable members of the workforce. Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that. The CIA doesn't kill anybody anymore, they neutralize people...or they depopulate the area. The government doesn't lie, it engages in disinformation. The pentagon actually measures nuclear radiation in something they call sunshine units. Israeli murderers are called commandos. Arab commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called freedom fighters. Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part of it to us, do they? Never mention that part of it. And...and some of this stuff is just silly, we all know that, like on the airlines, they say want to pre- board. Well, what the hell is pre-board, what does that mean? To get on before you get on? They say they're going to pre-board those passengers in need of special assistance. Cripples! Simple honest direct language. There is no shame attached to the word cripple that I can find in any dictionary. No shame attached to it, in fact it's a word used in bible translations. Jesus healed the cripples. Doesn't take seven words to describe that condition. But we don't have any cripples in this country anymore. We have The physically challenged. Is that a grotesque enough evasion for you? How about differently abled. I've heard them called that. Differently abled! You can't even call these people handicapped anymore. They'll say, "Were not handicapped. Were handicapable!" These poor people have been bullshitted by the system into believing that if you change the name of the condition, somehow you'll change the condition. Well, hey cousin, ppsssspptttttt. Doesn't happen. Doesn't happen. We have no more deaf people in this country, hearing impaired. No ones blind anymore, partially sighted or visually impaired. We have no more stupid people. Everyone has a learning disorder...or he's minimally exceptional. How would you like to be told that about your child? "He's minimally exceptional." "Oohh, thank god for that." Psychologists actually have started calling ugly people, those with severe appearance deficits. It's getting so bad, that any day now I expect to hear a rape victim referred to as an unwilling sperm recipient. And we have no more old people in this country. No more old people. We shipped them all away, and we brought in these senior citizens. Isn't that a typically American twentieth century phrase? Bloodless, lifeless, no pulse in one of them. A senior citizen. But I've accepted that one, I've come to terms with it. I know it's to stay. We'll never get rid of it. That's what they're going to be called, so I'll relax on that, but the one I do resist. The one I keep resisting is when they look at an old guy and they'll say, "Look at him Dan! He's ninety years young." Imagine the fear of aging that reveals. To not even be able to use the word "old" to describe somebody. To have to use an antonym. And fear of aging is natural. It's universal. Isn't it? We all have that. No one wants to get old. No one wants to die, but we do! So we bullshit ourselves. I started bullshitting myself when I got to my forties. As soon as I got into my forties I'd look in the mirror and I'd say, "well, I...I guess I'm getting...older." Older sounds a little better than old doesn't it? Sounds like it might even last a little longer. Bullshit, I'm getting old! And it's okay, because thanks to our fear of death in this country, I won't have to die...I'll pass away. Or I'll expire like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital, they'll call it a terminal episode. The insurance company will refer to it as negative patient-care outcome. And if it's the result of malpractice, they'll say it was a therapeutic misadventure. I'm telling you, some of this language makes me want to vomit. Well, maybe not vomit. Makes me want to engage in an involuntary personal protein spill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzyMerkin Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 So true. When did racist mass murder turn into "ethinic cleansing" and dead civlians into "collateral damage"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 So true. When did racist mass murder turn into "ethinic cleansing" and dead civlians into "collateral damage"? along those lines.. ..when did "mercinaries" become "private contractors"? aw well,.. at least a "merkin" is still a "merkin", right Fuzzy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzyMerkin Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 aw well,.. at least a "merkin" is still a "merkin", right Fuzzy? Now if only a Hermit was in fact a hermit... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 Now if only a Hermit was in fact a hermit... yeah,.. if only.. HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable. [source: *The Devil's Dictionary*] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragster Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 After reading some replies here, my question is legit! Any colleagues here?! I'm a Cambridge ESOL teacher and certified examiner AND pro-interpreter translator. Robert. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzyMerkin Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 her·mit (hûrmt) n. ... 2. A spiced cookie made with molasses, raisins, and nuts. Yummy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragster Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language#Properties_of_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Surfacegyri.JPG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 her·mit (hûrmt) n. ... 2. A spiced cookie made with molasses, raisins, and nuts. Yummy! hermit merkin n. 1. a pubic wig made with mollases, raisins, and nuts. 2. snatch snack 3. pre-cunnilingus cookie uhh.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzyMerkin Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 hermit merkin n. 1. a pubic wig made with mollases, raisins, and nuts. 2. snatch snack 3. pre-cunnilingus cookie uhh.. hermit-merkin Hermit n. a person whose vices and follies are not sociable enough to earn him a snatch snack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 hermit-merkin Hermit n. a person whose vices and follies are not sociable enough to earn him a snatch snack erm, I mean.. no fuzzy snatch snack for Hermit, eh? damn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manderlyh Posted January 30, 2008 Author Share Posted January 30, 2008 Hey you guys! This thread had better not get pulled! I'm giving my sternest teacher look right now! I'm also using my sternest teacher voice! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 Teacher wanna see me after school? ..please. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzyMerkin Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 Hey you guys! This thread had better not get pulled! I'm giving my sternest teacher look right now! I'm also using my sternest teacher voice! But, but...Miss....it was all about cunning lingo...honest! *twirls pigtail around finger, looks innocent* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manderlyh Posted January 30, 2008 Author Share Posted January 30, 2008 The last time I participated in discussing "cunning" and "lingo," it got pulled and I ended up feeling like some kind of pervert criminal or something...don't you remember? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 The last time I participated in discussing "cunning" and "lingo," it got pulled and I ended up feeling like some kind of pervert criminal or something...don't you remember? I for one will stand up and vouche for you, Miss Mandy! You are NO criminal, I say! You are a law-abiding citizen and a first rate, highly qualified cunnil.. erm.. cunning linguist! [a pervert?.. well, yeah,.. but certainly not a criminal. ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrownSugar62 Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 I for one will stand up and vouche for you, Miss Mandy! You are NO criminal, I say! You are a law-abiding citizen and a first rate, highly qualified cunnil.. erm.. cunning linguist! [a pervert?.. well, yeah,.. but certainly not a criminal. ] Some of my favorite people are perverts! Hiya, Hermit! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzyMerkin Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 The last time I participated in discussing "cunning" and "lingo," it got pulled ... Your lingo got pulled? Ouch... :'( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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