Blog Ethnograph Assignment

"Clinton opens up in Knoxville" by J.J. Stambaugh probably talks about one of the most important events happening in the United States: fighting for the presidency. Stambaugh's article is about Hilary Clinton's campaign for presidency and her support in Knoxville. She started planning for her primary on Tuesday with about two dozen volunteers from Knoxville, some including UT students. People say that she is parelleling her husbands strategy who won the presidency twice already. It seems as if Clinton is also getting some support from Ut students considering that Stambaugh has some qoutations from some students indicating that Hilary knows what she is doing and deserves to be leader. Then, J.J's article talks about former senator Owen is bakcing up Hilary 100%. The cultural information in this article is her vision for the future of america dealing with Iraq issues and the economy. And first of all, the president has always been a man ever since the beginning of the idea of having a government. So having a lady president will definitely change things up alot. A fieldworker may go ask and find out more information on how Hilary plans to win and what she would do if she were to win. A fieldworker's questions would about be the same I believe, because they are both investigating the truth. The fieldworker would want to know what HIlary wants to do and why she wants to fight for the presidency. One might also want to know what Hilary thinks about being the first lady president and how the public will react to it. The fieldworker might want to find some information on Hilary's opponent and what his strategy is to overcome her. One might also want to look at other newspapers and polls to see how the public is reacting as of now. She could find these sources anywhere; whether it is a library or online. I just believe that having a lady president will be one of the most important eventful moment for a long time and will be talked about in the future history books for awhile to come.

Blog response 1/29/08

Deborah Tannen’s article concerning which gender talks more really intrigued me. It is something that I am sure a lot of people have thought of before, especially me when I am bored. So who does talk more, women or men? I agree with Tannen in the sense that it does depend on the situation in which they are in. Tannen has reported that certain studies show that in certain situations men or women may talk more with one another. Tannen never gave a definite answer or valid opinion about who talks more, but my opinion is that women talk more than men. Women are world wide known expert gossipers. All they do is talk amongst one another discussing what they heard from their other girlfriends. That is basically how girls remain friends and how their friendship starts. They tell each other what they are feeling, what they did that day, what they heard about other people, and so on. When men talk to each other, their conversation never gets that deep or personal. This is displayed in everyday interaction between same sex genders. When two guys pass by each other on the street, all they say is “hey, how are you” and the other just replies,” good and you,” and that’s basically the end of the conversation. However, when girls see each other randomly, they give each other hugs and really actually care how the other girl feels and they talk about what they are doing later and wondering if they should go out. It could just be that women are naturally sweeter and nicer to someone else, even if it is all for show, than men are.
According to me, women speak more to each other in private and at home with their husbands as the men just tend to be quiet at home, however, men do speak more in public than women. However, whatever is spoken in public will soon be repeated in private among the gossipers (women) and elaborate even more. Therefore, that is why I believe women talk more than men.

Language Memoir 1/24/2008

My introduction to the English language started rather peculiarly compared to other normal American students. I was born in New York City in the French Quarters. My entire family spoke French as well as all their friends, who would always come over to visit and such. So I basically grew up learning two languages at once. I learned English when I went to school during the day, and then I would learn French when I was home at night.

 After four or five years in New York, my family moved to Memphis, TN, and then another language was rather forced into my life by my father who was from Syria. He was trilingual, so he would always speak French to my mother in the house anyway. Though my primary languages were French and English, I always picked up a little Arabic when my dad was talking with his friends or family from back home. And sometimes he would take me to the mosque, muslim place of worship. As I got older my dad was relatively forceful about me going to the mosque every Sunday and to Sunday school, where they taught Arabic as a course. I never actually learned Arabic to the point where I was able to speak it fluently. However, there are certain verses that are memorized and repeated during the prayer. And I had to learn those rather quickly. So I was able to speak Arabic though I really did not understand what I was saying. After about three years of strictly learning Arabic couple times a week, I gave it up. I could still speak French rather fluently; however, my abilities did decline because I never spoke it again in the house unless I did not want some friends that were over to be able to understand what I am telling my family. 

The next most difficult challenge about language for me growing up was grammar. The grammar in French and English are therefore, still to this day, I would say things English that makes sense in France but not in America. I had always struggled in English class throughout middle and high school. Direct Objects and Indirect objects just were not the same. They did have the same meaning of course but the placement of the words was different and that usually threw me off. However, it was not only English class that I could not strive at, it was also French class. Though I would still get A’s in high school French throughout the four years, I could never fully grasp the grammar aspect of it. Every year, students had to take the French National Exam to see how they ranked in their state and nationally. I would always do better than people in my class and ranked 2^nd in the nation my freshman year; however, as the years went by my ranking went down further and further. By senior year, I was in the top 8 nationally. In high school, I also picked up Latin for four years and surprisingly my grammar skills in Latin were better than they were in English. In English I was struggling to get a B, while in Latin, if I put enough work into it, I could get an A. And that is how it still is for me right now. I am currently in French class right now having no trouble with vocabulary, yet having difficulty in the grammar view of it.

Now I am not able to go as far as great authors like Douglas because well I have not written a novel, and I have not reached their level of education. But I do have my input on how languages affect young kids in a certain way. I believe that children’s minds are like sponges. They do not know much of anything when they were young except to learn how to speak and eat. And I believe, well in my case at least, that if a child were to be around a foreign language continually throughout his childhood, then he would learn that relatively easy. I believe that is why I have trouble with certain aspects of language, because I was around more than one growing up as a child.

English Blog 1/18/2008

Our previous readings have really made me think hard about languages in more ways than one. One key point that no one really thinks about is what is a "word." There is no easy way to give an accurate definition. Questioning every definition of a word does seem ridiculous and rather silly; however it is true that our definitions are technically not correct in a way. Neil Postman's article "The World Weavers/The World Makers" showed a different way to view words. His most influential idea to me is "abstract." Abstracting is the continuous activity of selecting, omitting, and organizing the details of reality so that we experience the world as patterned and coherent. For example, if you were to ask someone what the definition for a phone is they would probably respond with something along the lines of it being a mechanical device in order to communicate with people. However, it would not be wrong to say that a cup is made of many electrons constantly moving and undergoing change. This idea really surprised me and made me think about how everything else is like that. We really do not see the world the way it really is and that is a little freaky to think about it.
Language is interesting to me because I have a very foreign family. My mother is from France and my father is from Syria therefore i have been exposed to a couple of completely different languages and it is interesting to wonder how like people from different countries communicate with each other by putting together different sounds to form sentences and words. I often wonder how different languages started because it would not be hard to believe that there could be one language in the world. If adam and eve were the first ones to enter this world and they obviously spoke one language and their offspring had to of spoken the same language. However, you could also say that language evolved as time went on and as people lived in different regions. People even talk differently in the states in separate regions like the north and south. Southerners say stuff like yall and git 'r done while northerners speak more formally. There are many interesting things that could be learned about language in its entirety that we still have to discover.