Tools and Literacy

At the time I went to college, the emergent use of technology, namely computer, has make profound differences in the form, structure and quality of writing and written text. I noticed that with the word processors, people could easily edit their paragraph, either adding new ideas or deleting some extraneous ones. The quality of the article, in some way, may be enhanced due to the convenience of the editing, while the repeated editing may increase the possibility of incongruity, and incoherence of the overall article.

As I read a passage in Bomer’s (2003) article about how kids viewed the pillows not as tools to relax themselves but as toys that they can move and toss them around, I was intrigued that the author held a vision that the muddled incident is a process of learning and can possibly pique students motives of writing and allow them to develop ideas for writing. In my writing class at elementary school, we were usually given a topic and had to write about it with little support (e.g. explanation of the topic, some brainstorming steps, etc.) Both the surface structure – handwriting, punctuation, style, and grammar - and content were highlighted. Based on Bomer (2003), the ideality of the tool that comes out of my writing teacher is very different from the one the in the present article. Her edition of cultural practice was to have students do intentional things – sitting in the classroom, behaving themselves and write as instructed.

Vygotsky’s notion of pivot in connection with play stands out to me. He postulates that children have to detach an object from its meaning in order to play. Through the process of attributing meanings to objects and actions, and meanings that are not presented in objects or actions, children would be able to conceptualize abstract concepts, ideas and formulate new modes of action and thoughts. It reminds me of a scene I saw in the playground the other day. Two little girls were sitting by a table. On the table, a tea pot and tea cups were displayed. Though I did not see any food on the table, the kids seemed to pretend they were having an afternoon tea. Also, both of them kept talking to an “invisible” guest on an empty seat. Though we were not able to see their imaginary guest friend, they were very polite and using all those gestures that people consider the way the guest should be treated. A set of tea cup and an empty chair, in these girls’ minds, symbolized their guest. These two girls attributed meaning that are not intrinsically presented in the situation and brought a surplus of meaning to the context. By taking on a subjective role, a child learns by playing, symbolizing and finally elaborating their ideas through spoken or printed words.

When we were talking about the use of concrete tools such as mechanical pencil for literacy development, I thought about different types of ball pens that can meet various needs of writers. Two years ago when I first came to the U.S., I brought a lot of ball pens with small and sharp tips because my experience of using ball pens made in the U.S. was awful: my handwriting became messy and untidy. However, when I came to the U.S., I suddenly found out those ball pens I brought with me became less useful, meaning that my English handwriting looked better when the words were written by using ball pens with dull tips. I realized that because writing alphabets requires fewer strokes while writing characters takes more strokes. When the tip of a pen is sharp, writing with it can clearly represent the complicated strokes in a character; and when the tip of a pen is dull, writing with it can enlarge, and deepen alphabets. Also, the ways we determine the tidiness or beauty of the handwriting vary from culture to culture. A simple tool like ball pen we are using everyday to facilitate the formulation of the ideas, elaboration of thoughts, and structuring of the texts to share with the audience across time and space can serve different functions and cultural practices. This is something that I would never have thought about if I didn’t read this article.

Reflection on Olson Ch6-12

Olson discussed three aspects of linguistic structures that must be coped with in any interpretation. This reminds me of a joke I read about in a book about linguistics. The sentence clause goes like this: An antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs. To get the joke, one needs to be equipped with basic syntactic ability that enables him to understand that the clause “with thick legs” can be used to modify either the antique desk or the lady. The sentence is ambiguous both structurally and semantically. To putative readers, reading text critically by considering what a text could mean or could have meant seems to be uncommon. As Hass and Flower (1988) noted, many undergraduates expert at paraphrasing and summarizing were limited in their ability to analyze and criticize. I felt that I have the same issue of directing all attention to the literal meaning of the authors. Instead of asking myself questions like “why does the author say this,” “what does the author mean,” “what does the author want the reader to think,” and “what’s my interpretation for the text,” I used to read through the text, take the text as the unshakable truth, and memorize it. Coming from old-fashioned education background, reading only the literal meaning and learn a lesson from it seems to be more than usual to me. The very concept of questioning the text ran counter to my commonsensical assumption as I entered graduate school in the U.S. Since then, I’ve been learning interpret the text by asking not only the literal meaning of the text but by understanding the intention of the author, what s/he wants readers to do and see, and my own interpretation of the text.

When talking about text, author’s intention, and reader’s interpretation, I thought about in ancient China, people did not adopt a punctuation system. Thus, a piece of writing may have several of interpretations because there was no exact segmentation of the paragraph, allowing readers a large space to surmise the authors’ idea and make their own interpretations.

The following is an example of a sentence comprised of the same 10 Chinese characters while they can be interpreted in seven ways based on the position of certain punctuation, and different types of punctuation.

1. 下雨天留客，天留我不留。
Rainy day, staying day, though God/weather wants me to stay, I won’t stay.

2. 下雨天留客，天留我？不留。
Rainy day, staying day, will God/weather makes me stay? No, it does not allow me to stay.

3. 下雨天留客，天留我不？留。
Rainy day, staying day, will the God/weather makes me stay? Yes.

4. 下雨，天留客；天留我不留！
It’s raining, the God/weather would like to keep guests, but I won’t let you stay.

5. 下雨天，留客天，留我？不留。
Rainy day, staying day, will you ask me to stay? No, I will not.

6. 下雨天，留客天；留我不？留。
Rainy day, staying day, will you ask me to stay or not? Yes, I will.

7. 下雨天，留客天，留我不留？
Rainy day, staying day, will you ask me to stay or not to stay?

If you’d like to check more info about this, here’s the link: http://www.gnu.org/software/chinese/otcl/topic-1.en.html

Reflection on "The World on Paper"

The title of the first chapter is eye-catching. Like many readers or scholars, I found several preliminary assumptions about literacy are more than true to me. The importance of the literacy could not have been emphasized enough ever since I was little. Olson argues that the importance of literacy has been over-rated; he offered his own perspective on issues of the relationship between writing and speech, their hierarchy, literacy as the organ of social development, and instrument of cognitive development, etc. I’m with him when he takes on a viewpoint about the role of literacy as a means of enslavement. It reminds me of the fact that in the ancient China, women were not allowed to go to school so men can prohibit the distribution of female individuals into a hierarchy of castes. When Taiwan was colonized by Japan from 1895 to 1945, Taiwanese were not allowed to speak Chinese in school and forced to use Japanese in all occasions. Literacy was used as a means to brainwash and establish social control.

The idea of concepts as “collective representations” in the second chapter is notable. Olson emphasizes the formation of concepts is based upon the social conditions, and the changes of concepts also rest on the social consensus. He brings up the role culture plays in society that some concepts may look awkward in one culture while totally acceptable and appropriate in another due to the social milieu in which they are created. In Taiwan, talking about issues such as divorce and sex in public is politically incorrect while in western culture, they may be common issues to talk about (I don’t know much about the true social norms; this idea comes from the drama/comedy “sex and the city.” I guess most of the elements are exaggerated). The notion that writing is simply a resource enabling individual to participate in social communication strikes me. As a language teacher, I was trained to help students to master a second language, to develop their reading/writing proficiency, while one thing that I often left out was their cognitive operation. If they don’t know what to write about, they may get stuck as they write even though they could recognize ABC’s and know all the words and phrases in the textbook.

One thing that stands out for me in Chapter 3 is Goody’s (1987) argument that “skepticism can arise because writing allows the accumulation of evidence,” and Olson’s critique at the end of that passage. My idea of writing can facilitate formation and accumulation of knowledge came from my writer friends. They told me that one needs to prepare himself/herself to write graphically, convincingly, and impressively by reading a lot of divergent information. I always thought the reading of the information is the accumulation of knowledge and where the originality comes from. Olson’s follow-up proposition leads me to think deeper. Is writing a source of human knowledge or merely an instrument that foster the writer to read and think in a different attitude? I think I know better now. Writing itself does not formulate new concepts, but the inspiration, and epiphany achieved after interpreting the written text bring about innovative ideas.

The locutionary and illocutionarly forces seem to be ubiquitous. I remember watching Will and Grace the other day, and the conversations between Karen and Pamela at a gay/lesbian event at The Human Rights Campaign Gala at Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, was hilarious because of the speech act involved.

[At the Human Rights Campaign Gala, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Karen enters and stops at the top of the stairs to make an announcement.]
Karen: Ladies, gentlemen, and undecided... I'd like you to meet someone. He's been plucked, coiffed, buffed, and fluffed. May I present to you... My cousin Barry!
[Cut to the silent auction room. Pamela is overseeing the silent auction when Karen enters and looks around after making the announcement.]
Karen: [To Pamela] There's some cute guys here, huh? Too bad they're all 'mos. Ha ha ha…
Pamela: It doesn't really matter to me, I'm a lesbian.
Karen: Oh... [Giggles] Honey, we're all lesbians when the right guy isn't around, huh?

“Ladies, gentlemen, and undecided.” This announcement reflects the semantics-pragmatics mapping (Grice, 1975; Person, Kreuz, Zwaan & Graesser, 1995). When making announcement, “Ladies and Gentlemen” is very commonly said by people. However, the “undecided” would not be understood if it is said in a normal situation. In the gay/lesbian event described here, the word “undecided” can be understood by audience as “those who have not decided to be gays or lesbians” or “those who have not decided to play the role as women or men” because of the salient and immediate context the announcement is made. The contextual information provided allows audience to understand what Karen refers to even though people might have never heard about it before. The illocutionary force was obvious here. On the other hand, semantics is complemented with conversational implicatures and the Karen says things that her listeners would be able to understand in the specific context (Grice, 1975). This sample may also be used to support the off-record strategy when the Karen makes an announcement in a vague way, leaving the interpretation to the listeners due to the ethical issue involved. Undoubtably, written text can never record everything in the spoken language. Readers would not be able to understand the transcription of the spoken language unless more contextual information is provided.

Reflection on "Performing English, Performing Bodies"

Louis (2005) posits that “for ESL students, these oppressions may take the form of language-based ‘cops in the head,’ obstacles that affect students’ communication efficacy by interfering with their willingness to use English in selected contexts.” This echoes my experiences as an English learner and an EFL teacher. For a nonnative English speaker, the language itself is an. It is very likely for language learners to mean differently from what they say. To keep a conversation going, language learners need to create a conversational flow by using words or phrases they know or are familiar with or they would have to keep explaining the idea they have in mind without moving on. One of the elements needs to go to make the conversation work. Miscommunication also happens when a nonnative speaker says “yes” to all questions posed to him or her while he or she turns out to understand nothing. It also has something to do with the flow. Nonnative speakers want to overcome the obstacles affect their communication efficacy by showing their understanding about their interlocutors, meanwhile, they are busy searching for information that they know such as context, gestures, or few words, in order to make sense of any given situation.

While language may be a reason for miscommunication, another thing that challenges language learners is the unfamiliarity of the social cultural norms of the target language culture. One of my American friends once asked an international student from Japan about her winter break. She told him that the break was so wonderful that she didn’t want to come back to the U.S. The American friend replied “why don’t you just go back?” The girl suddenly burst into tears. Finally, the American friend realized that the Japanese girl mistakenly thought he was laughing at her not being able to overcome the pressure and difficulties studying in the United States. Nonnative speakers do not have the cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984) that enables them to meet the expectation of the target culture groups and they need to pay more efforts to maintain relationship with people from different cultures.

Interview with the storyteller

I did a little interview with the storyteller and asked the moves she made during the storytelling. The story was told in Chinese while the storyteller code-switch from Chinese to English several times. When she talked about “Highland Mall” and “the mall,” instead of using the word "百貨公司" (Department store), she used English word “mall.” She mentioned that we do not have the corresponding word representing the concept of the “mall” because we only have the concept of department stores. Also, when talking about the retailer’s name, Express, she figured that it was easier for listeners to understand and for her to say it without translating it. She also used “cashier” instead of “售貨小姐”(the person who sells goods) to represent the person who sells stuff in the shop because “cashier” was shorter and easier to pronounce than the corresponding Chinese word. The same rationale was applied to the word “couple” and “confused.” Code-switching heighten our attention of semantic and morphological differences between languages, as well as the cultural diversity behind the story.

In the middle of the storytelling, the storyteller asked the listeners whether they know which shop she was talking about. She shifted the genre of communication which evoked the change of participation structure. The narrative mode has turned out to be a conversational mode with interactions since the storyteller wish to clarify or to negotiate meaning with the listeners. This shows that genre of speech is constantly changing based on the context and the focus of the interaction. As mentioned in the work of Bauman and Briggs (1990), one genre can be embedded within a token of another.

Storytelling--A Robbery Case at Highland Mall

My friend Sharon from Taiwan told me a story about a robbery at Highland Mall in Mandarin Chinese. The summary of the story is as follows:

Sharon and her friend, Amy, went to Highland Mall one Sunday afternoon. They went to Express to get a pair of jeans. While they were shopping around, Amy saw a couple seemed to be stealing things from the store. A guy held a large tote bag and his female accomplice was stationed as a lookout. They slowly approached the display shelves and the guy forcefully put all the clothing in the tote bag. Suddenly, everything on the shelf was gone. As Amy saw this, she ran to the cashier (there’s only one staff in the shop) and told her about the robbery. However, the cashier replied, “really,” with a touch of austerity. Amy desperately wanted to show her where the robbers were and rushed her to catch them soon while the cashier kept doing her own stuff and did not take an immediate action. Not until Amy kept yelling at her did she walk out of the counter toward the couple. The couple ran away immediately and the cashier went back to her counter. Everything went back to normal. It was like nothing happened, except some empty shelves reflecting the light of fluorescent tubes.

In terms of entexualization (Bauman & Briggs, 1990), Sharon got her floor of talking about this because we were talking about wired things happen to us recently. Thus, Sharon got to talk about this story. Now, when I am retelling the story here, I am decontextualize the recontextualize the given information.