June@Austin

Reflection on the last class

2007-05-01T22:20:00.000-05:00

The emerging use of technology breaks the barriers of societies and different communities as well as gender, age, and social status of individuals. Literacy, therefore in modern contexts, are affiliated with a mindset that is very different from that of the old world. The inter-networked technologies enable the information to spread out through various medium, allowing every individual who has access to the Internet to become expert in the areas chosen. Expertise and authority are no longer limited to certain group of people, but are “dispersed and collective” (Lankshear, 2006). Before the frequent use of the Internet, one has to ask everybody around, look into the encyclopedia, or physically go somewhere in order to get certain kind of information. Take my grandma for example. When she doesn’t feel well, she usually asked people around to find out what type of disease she has. Then she needs to find out the type and sources of her illness in order to make reservation with the right doctor, the doctor specifically associated with her illness. Next, she has to call all her friends to ask who is the most prestige doctor in that field. Finally, she has to call the hospital to make reservation. Since she has hearing problems, she usually asks her kids or other relatives to do so for her. Nowadays she usually types in the symptoms online to search for articles related to her illness. As she determines which type of doctors she should see, she goes to the forum and discusses with other people about which doctor is the best in that field. When she sets her mind in a certain doctor, she goes on to make a reservation through the Internet. Every piece of information she needs is a click away. She is really happy about the invention of the technology. The Internet access enables her to understand her disease by reading information online and chatting with people. She feels a lot less isolated and helpless.

I like the idea that brought up by the article “Smart Mobs: The power of the mobile many.” The author mentions that though computer and the Internet were designed by people, the way people use them are not predetermined. This reminds me of a video clip that I saw on the Youtube.

In the clip, individual members belonging to diverse sociocultural groups, holding different thinkings, converge on a specific location from all direction simultaneously to either have fun or to express their dissatisfaction of the “rip-off” business of AF who advertises their products through the teenage subcultures: loud disco music, spaces with dim lights, vintage styles, etc.

Multiliteracies in practice

2007-04-23T14:41:00.000-05:00

One thing brought up in the handout by Dr. Bomer is very interesting. He mentions that everyone has a “limited supply of attention” and each individual has to plan where and how to use it. Because of the easy access to information, one is likely to be overwhelmed by all types of information available and be distracted from what he/she really wants to focus on in the first place. Spending too much time on reading unrelated information while searching for the necessary information may be my personal itch. Time fleets away like a flash, and nothing big has accomplished.
My attention span has become so short that I couldn’t focus on one single text at a time. The way the information spread out through the Internet has changed the reading habits of people. In the old times, people do not need to pay effort to focus on one single piece of information since they tend to get access to one thing at a time. When too much information is available, one will need to manage his/her time and attention to screen superfluous information and spot pivotal elements.

In the article “A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures,” the New London Group addresses that the trend of civic pluralism fosters the change of the content of public rights and pedagogical orientation of literacy. Cultural and linguistic diversity was no longer viewed as “abnormal” or “non-standard,” but was valued as powerful social resources for students who may equip themselves for multicultural niche markets in the future. This reminds me of the issue of accent that has been brought up constantly in recent years. When learning a foreign language, most people tend to believe that only when individuals who can speak a language without an accent are good learners or speakers of that language. “Without an accent” here I refer to an accent of a target language influenced by a speaker’s native language. Take English as an international language for example. There are an immense number of people speaking this language and, for those who learn English as a second or foreign language; their native tone would more or less affect their accent. The nonnative accent used to be viewed as a stigma, while in the New World, some people, especially humanity researchers and ethnographers, start to advocate the concept of accent as a representation of personal or ethical identity and idiosyncrasy. However, we need to be cautious that the new concept may fall into the category of tokenistic pluralism and people having nonnative accents still have difficulty in being recognized.

Reflection on "Rereading the signs"

2007-04-18T00:44:00.000-05:00

Siegel (2006)’s article points out the important role technology plays in combining threads of literacy practices and development. New context and purpose have been created through the use of technology, and in turn, new notion of authorship and publishing are blooming. Multimodal transformations of literacy has made linear representation of texts become more interactive and reader-friendly. An emergent path of literacy value the symbol systems, emphasizing the importance of sign-making and sign-reading in a variety of modes. This reminds me of my writing class in elementary school. Each student got a writing notebook with a blank column on the top of the page and lines at the bottom of the pages. The teacher always encouraged us to draw something first on the blank part of the notebook, and based on the drawings, we could tell our own stories in written language. The drawing images, compared to texts, are more concrete, which enable little kids to develop their ideas with little constraints of their literacy proficiency. In middle schools and high schools, the multimodal literate behaviors were no longer valued by school teachers. Most of the time, students were asked to write on a topic given by teacher without any visual or audio support. First of all, it may be difficult for students to interpret the topic itself. In the same vein, students were only allowed to express themselves through conventional text system and be evaluated in the same mode, which privileges written language above all other symbol systems and indirectly limit students’ development to only adult-defined literacy.

Literacy in multimodal environments

2007-04-02T21:24:00.000-05:00

When the notions of habits of mind and the ubiquitous use of PowerPoint are brought up together, I immediately thought of a friend who likes to use PowerPoint to take notes, structure his ideas, ask questions, and answer his own questions. It doesn’t make sense to me in the first place. However, after reading Adams (2006)’ article, I suddenly figure out that PowerPoint is not simply a software people could use for presentation purposes, but can be used for concept construction and note-taking. According to Adams, the blank default slides invite authors to think of a title, and add information in a bulleted format. The process of creating the slides simulates a series of steps involved to plot the mental image and develop cognitive knowledge. Furthermore, the software allows people to brainstorm in a default framework, providing a sense of security for people who have little ideas about how to get started. The invention of PowerPoint also reminds me of the writing technology exhibition in Harry Ransom center earlier. Several brainstorming sentences were written on the radii of a circle-shape paper. In the same vein, the circle shaped paper creates a structure and format for authors who could fill in the space provided.

I was also intrigued by the idea of significant insignificance. Adams (2006) points out that the use of bullet tool makes the representation of all information signified, and in turn, makes relative significance indistinctive. Knowledge presented in bulleted format is inclined to be embedded several layers deep and homogenized. Also, in order to incorporate the content into the pre-set PowerPoint framework, certain unimportant information inevitably need to be stressed to complete the overall picture. My experience of making slides echoes this point. I need to think about giving a title of every text, and add extraneous information to fill in the blank space of slides even though there is only one point worth mentioning. Another pitfall of slides is that information needs to be displayed on a single projected 4:3 rectangle. It is unlikely to employ complex table or graph for they requires more space. Authors would inexorably suffer information loss or information split.

When reading about the IM article, Lewis (2005) mentioned about people would have to “sound” right in writing. Because they couldn’t see each other, they would adopt some emoticons during the conversation or some expressions such as “lol” or capitalize every words for the purpose of emphasizing. People sometimes would use “iirc (if I recall it correctly)” or “btw (by the way) to save some typing labor. Posing occurs a lot given a social sphere excludes the body. My friend Jasmine logged on her boy friend’s account and send instant messages to every girl on his body list in order to find out whether her boy friend was cheating on her. In terms of language learning, the enactment of multiple identities through the use of online chatting allows students learning a foreign language to interact with native speakers of target language with fewer barriers. First of all, they could practice the language without take the pressure of face-to-face communication. Similarly, the chances of being discriminated become fewer. Second, the instant message provides students more reaction time than real-life communication. They can sound “smart and sophisticated” even though they are not fluent speakers since they can get access to information they need online before they actually type the sentences. IM demands people who can draw on the intertextual chains that exist through the textual history of each interaction in a larger textual network (New London Group, 1996, 2000). When one is not able to shift his or her performance instantaneously from one audience to another, he or she would have problem carrying conversations with people.

The Sleeper Curve in TV shows

2007-03-26T13:39:00.000-05:00

Based on Johnson’s article “the sleeper curve,” a new trend appears in the mass media has turned the earthbound entertainment into a visual stimulus enhancing cognitive complexity through intellectual labor involved while the audience enjoys and makes sense of the show. One thing brought up was the texture and substance of realism in the making of new media. Johnson argues that the emerging public opinion about the “negative” influence of media pertaining to ethical ambiguity should be taken in a new perspective—the representation of how the world is exercised and how putative audience can interpret the phenomenon.
Johnson’s statement touches the issue of media rating. Though the media reflecting the ethnical ambiguity in today’s world may help audience make sense of their cultural experiences as a member of social mechanism, it is difficult to monitor who the audiences are and how they interpret the scenes they see. When these two factors are not determined, it is difficult to say whether TV shows or video games have positive or negative impact on people of different ages and, in turn, mental ages. People may see a violent scene, think about the issues of social disorder, and take it as a moral lesson. However, there are still people who believe that it is cool to be violent just like what the “heroes” do in the show. This echoes another issue of how the director approaches the realism in a TV show or film. Take a crime scene for example. The director can portray a bloody fight among characters and manipulate the dark side of human beings in a noble way; the director can also engage audience in a mental labor and complex social networks by focusing on characters who manage to use limited resources to solve problems.

The dialogue on the show “Desperate Housewives” involves several textual and substance cues that enable audience to get the joke by making senses of bits and bites of info embedded in the scene.

[Mike walks back down the driveway towards the car.]
Edie: Hi Mike. Susan.
Susan: Edie. [Sighs as she walks down to join Mike.]
Mike: Hey, I’m sorry about your house. How you holding up?
Edie: Alright, I guess. [Opens the car door and steps out.] Oh, is somebody having a party?
Mike: No, Susan’s just throwing me one of her traditional welcome-to-the-neighborhood dinners. Only I’m cooking. And having it at my house.
Edie: [Laughs] Traditional. Hm. I didn’t get one.
Susan: Oh, it’s sort of a new tradition.
Mike: Well it won’t be anything fancy, just a little home cooking.
Edie: Mmm, that sounds so good.
Narrator: Susan suddenly had an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Edie: I’ve been having nothing but fast food lately. [Rummages through Mike’s grocery bags, taking out a grape and eating it seductively, staring at Mike.]
Narrator: As if she was watching an accident in slow motion. She knew it would happen, but was powerless to stop it.
[Mike turns around to look at Susan, cocking his head as if to ask if it’s okay.]
Susan: Edie, would you like to join us for dinner?
Edie: Oh that’s so sweet. No, I don’t wanna intrude. Three’s a crowd.
Mike: No, it’s not like that. I mean, Susan’s bringing Julie.
Susan: It’s not like that. The more the merrier.
Edie: Well, this’ll be fun.
Mike: Alright. Tomorrow night. We’ll eat at six.
Edie: Great. Oh, and Susan.
Susan: Yeah.
Edie: This’ll make up for the dinner that you never threw me.
Susan: Right. [Laughs feebly]
Mike: I haven’t, ah, told her we were having steak. She’s not like a vegetarian, is she?
Susan: Oh, no, no. No, Edie’s definitely a carnivore.
There are some flashing arrows occur when the narrator describe the feelings of the main character Susan. Also, the context of the conversation allows audience to further interpret the comment “Edie’s definitely a carnivore” in a nonliteral way. In this dialogue, Edie is an uninvited guest to Susan because they compete over Mike. Susan’s emotion is changed from embarrassment to powerlessness as Edie asks about dinner and finally joins her dinner with Mike. When Mike mentions about a traditional welcome-to-the-neighborhood dinner thrown by Susan, Edie knows the dinner is only an excuse for Susan to get closer to Mike. She purposefully points out that she did not get one. Susan justifies herself by saying “it’s sort of a new tradition.” The way she puts it is also contradictory because a “tradition” should be a custom that has existed for a long time while “new tradition” is difficult to define. Near the end of the conversation, Edie shows her interest in joining the dinner by saying “I’ve been having nothing but fast food lately.” Edie goes off-record, making statement nebulously and leaving the interpretation to the listeners. Thus, Susan and Mike could either invite her over or not. When Susan finally invites Edie over, Edie replies “Oh that’s so sweet” with exaggerate interest with Susan’s invitation. At the end of the conversation, when Mike asks Susan whether Edie is a vegetarian, Susan replies “No, Edie’s definitely a carnivore.” Susan does not only mean Edie eats meat but also implies that she is aggressive in competing over Mike, the “meat.” Susan’s comment about Edie’s diet habit would be interpreted different, may be literally, if the same utterance is put in different situations. The meaning of “carnivore” is constructed based on the audience’s previous knowledge, their tacit knowledge as well as their social-cultural recognition of the context.

Marxism, intellectual property, and Education

2007-03-18T21:51:00.000-05:00

It is interesting to examine the present educational system through the lenses of Marxist and Capitalist thoughts. Shannon (2000) reminds us that under the logic of capitalist, everything including curricular designs, learning materials, instructional approaches, and evaluation procedures should be organized in a similar fashion, making education works like enterprise that ensures students, like products, to turn out to have the preconceived and fixed capacities bureaucracy sets in. Scripted program in senior high is very common in Taiwan as well. The force of high-stake exam such as college entrance exam for all senior high school students gives rise to the standardized textbooks, curriculum and class activities. Not only teachers but students are highly influenced by such system. Teachers are forced to negotiate their beliefs for teaching to match the social norms and avoid any dispute such as being blamed that they do not do a good job in teaching based on the scores of students. On the other hand, students would not pay much attention to teachers’ teaching if the content is not related to the high-stake tests. A number of drawbacks have been identified. Students lose their creativity because of the scripted structures of teaching. To be recognized as good students in mainstream society, they are trained to be test-taking machines instead of reflective and critical thinkers.
The notion of intellectual labor brought up by Spigelman (1998) makes me think about the issue of the criterion to measure textual ownership. In an academia where the importance of copyright cannot be overemphasized, each researcher strives to establish his/her ownership for texts. Thus whenever collaboration is involved during the process of composing, it is inevitable for people to argue who is more qualified to be the first author. Theoretically, people who contribute the most would be the first author, while in reality, it is not so easy to determine who accomplish the most because both quantity and quality of the duties need to be considered when making such judgment. The issue goes back to the discussion of the definition of originality. Do people do the most writing is the first author? Or people who come up with the idea? People who do the data analysis and collection? What if these duties were accomplished by different people? A piece of writing cannot be accomplished without any of those. After all, there are no rigorous rules clarifying the levels of importance of these duties. The debate of copyright would continue. In terms of the idea/expression dichotomy of ownership, Edward’s responses about the issue stood out for me. He believed that adopting the expressions used by other native English speakers can convey his ideas more effectively. As a nonnative English speaker, I feel that there’s always a language barrier that I couldn’t overcome when I need to express my opinions toward things. Thus, I would usually try to build a personal corpus of literary work for me to refer to when it comes to writing. The process of learning to express myself may invade the concept of copyright that “unacknowledged appropriate of either ideas or words is deemed unacceptable” while it is an inevitable process of language learning.

Tools and Literacy

2007-02-26T20:47:00.000-06:00

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

2007-02-18T21:12:00.000-06:00

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"

2007-02-11T23:39:00.000-06:00

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"

2007-02-05T15:09:00.000-06:00

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

2007-02-01T17:28:00.000-06:00

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

2007-02-01T15:18:00.000-06:00

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.

Transcription of a 5-minute conversation during the break

2007-01-28T00:30:00.000-06:00

I. Multi-party conversation

The conversation took place during the break of a Statistic class. Jenny, Christy, Betty and Jeb are friends. They took the same class last semester and were familiar with each other. The recording began in the middle of their conversation. When two speakers talk at the same time, the overlap is marked by "//" to show where it occurs.

From the transcription, I found that utterances are different from written text in several ways: First, the vagueness of the utterances is acceptable as long as the hearers are able to identify the speaker’s meaning based on the context; second, with the extra information such as facial expressions and body languages, the conversation would be easier to understand for the listeners while sometimes it is difficult for readers to interpret the meaning when transcription is the only thing they can get access to.

From the recording, I also noticed that each individual may have different degree of participation as the topic changes. Take Betty for example, she talked a lot in the very beginning of the conversation because she was into exercise and fitness, while she didn't participate much in the later part since she is single and doesn't have children. Also, in a conversation with more than two participants, it's unavoidable that some people may be left out or get bored about the topics being discussed. As shown in this conversation, Jenny left without saying anything in the middle part.

II.
A. An Example of Implicature:
Jeb: My little girl was sick yesterday so I couldn’t go.
Jenny: what what what ..
Jeb: Her tooth…

Even though Jenny did not complete her question, Jeb clearly knew the implicit meaning of her question derived from the context. The conversation is context-dependent.

B. An Example of Deixis:
Jenny: What exercise do you do?
Christy: Do you go there too?
Jenny: She does, she does....She was there everyday last semester.
Betty: Yeah, last semester.

The reader would not be able to understand that the pronoun “there” refers to the “gym” since the contextual meaning of the pronouns is not stated clearly in the speech context.

III. Conversation

Jenny: What exercise do you do?

Christy: Do you go there too?

Jenny: She does, she does....She was there everyday last semester.

Betty: Yeah, last semester.

Jenny: You get some gifts, rewards….

Jeb: You probably get some...

Betty: Yeah I got all five gifts.

Jenny: All five gifts?

Christy: Good for you.

Betty: That's the incentive program. Do you know that?

Jeb: What's that?

Betty: It's a...when you join the incentive program..when you join the Texcercise first, and then you could join the Incentive program with additional 5 dollars, and then if you go there, like, forty-five times, you'll get like all the five gifts, 25 times, you'll get the first gift. It's accumulation.

Jenny: Like…that kind of thing

Jeb: Wow…sounds good.

Betty: You’ll get things like T-shirts, water bottle,

Jenny: ________________//Like a water jar…uh…

Jeb: I will be there 90 times.

Betty: [Giggling]

Betty: You’ll get whatever you want. [Giggling]

Jenny: ___________//you’ll get too fit. [Giggling]

Jeb: Yeah I should go.

Betty: So did you go there already?

Jeb: I would go….after…after…have to go to the course design.. cause I missed it yesterday.

Betty: oh you missed it yesterday? And you could switch from here to there?

Jeb: Well, I have to.

Jenny: So there are to…to…to.. Are they both on-line? I mean do they have the same course number?

Jeb: Yeah, just different day.

Jenny: ________//Really? Just different day?

Jeb: My little girl was sick yesterday so I couldn’t go.

Jenny: what what what ..

Jeb: Her tooth…

Jeb: She is retaining liquid

Jenny: Oh ok. Liquid from swimming?

Jeb: No it’s just liquid in your year. But we have a system where to, sort of from the year coming drained and normally drained to you but with her, it would stay there. She was sort of hearing late. When you go like this, put your finger like this, that’s how she sort of hearing

Jenny: How old, how old is she?

Jeb: Five.

Jenny: Five.

Jenny: It’s good that you got to communicate with her and know what’s wrong.

Jeb: Yeah yeah she uh..Yesterday I talked to her and it takes ten fifteen minutes…she wakes up and she’s like [don’t know what he’s talking about]

Betty: cannot hearing anything?

Jenny: [chuckles]

Jeb: She’s like…She’s listening everything…she’s like [shaking
his head and pretending to hear something]

Jenny: [Chuckle] Oh Really? [chuckle]

[Jenny left to talk to other students]

Jeb: She was like..

Betty: Where does the liquid come from?

Jeb: Everybody has..

Betty: some liquid inside.

Jeb: It drains out naturally but for her eardrum was flex out. That’s why she uh, at 5, for speech matters, should be..

Christy: Oh ok so because she could not hear ..very well

Jeb: ________________//very well, certain sounds she couldn’t hear

Christy: is she getting better now, or ?

Jeb: Well, they put certain tube..

Betty: _________//ear tube?

Jeb: Yeah, what they do is to stick it around inside, your eardrum will put this liquid so the liquid drains

Christy: Good good. That’s good.

Christy: I remember you have three daughters.

Jeb: Oh four.

Christy: Then you have to spend a lot of money for their dowry right? You know for a wedding..

Jeb: So my wallet is always empty.

Christy: [giggling] Yeah, that’s kind of strange, western society, I mean, why do you, the girl, the women’s family, have to prepare all for the wedding.

Jeb: I tell my girls you find your own money for the wedding.

Christy: I’m gonna save this for my retirement or something, for my traveling.

Jeb: Actually I do have something from my retirement.
Christy: That’s good for you. I think we’d better go back to the classroom.

Jeb: yeah.