Sass for Graduation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY2xQdssuZY&feature=youtu.be

Thank you, Mr. Tangen

A Commencement of Sorts

http://youtu.be/vQGeDn9-4Pw

A Reflection of a Response

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5cG9TuFbmo&feature=youtu.be

More Attention Please

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an advocate for the advancement of Latin American countries and the image that they have in the eyes of the modern world. That being said, the perfect opportunity for him to display these thoughts was in the acceptance speech to winning the Nobel Prize. Through the use of pathos, carefully selected diction and examples that resonate in the minds of his audience, Garcia Marquez delivered a speech prompting social thought alongside literary exploration.

Garcia Marquez knew exactly who was going to be listening to or reading his speech, and that the opportunity to speak his mind about certain controversial social issues had arrived. He took issue with several topics, mainly slurs that discriminate against the Latin American culture, and expressed that literature can funnel the thoughts that will provide change to South American culture. He appeals to the audience’s pathos throughout the speech, noticeably opting to use a tone that seamlessly changes from critical to didactic. The people that he says “tried to change th[e] state of things,” died violent deaths. Moreover, these deaths didn’t receive the amount of international attention and scrutiny that they deserved. The appeal to pathos comes from his sense of national pride. When he expresses the “outsized reality,” he is appealing to the audience’s pathos. Any Latin American person with an educated background was surely nodding along in agreement as the Colombian scholar noted several examples of the harsh conditions of life in his continent.

The diction used to portray the examples of hardship in Latin America is very precise. He personifies the entire population of the continent as “pawns.” More specifically, “a pawn without a will of its own.” In the eyes of the audience, this must be troubling. If an entire continent is rendered to the level of a pawn, what must a Nobel laureate do to exacerbate the level of misfortune that has been laid upon his people?  From the Argentine children born in prison, to the first Latin American ethnocide, all the examples that he includes draw one inevitable conclusion: Latin America deserves more attention. Furthermore, the attention that Garcia Marquez is drawing for is one that punishes and highlights the cruel events that occur (and that he describes in his book One Hundred Years of Solitude) while also recognizing the intellectual richness that can be found in the region.

Overall, Garcia Marquez uses the speech as a means of propaganda for South America. His earnest plea for life— citing William Faulkner— is a respite from a long passage dedicated to showing his people’s misfortunes. Using pathos as his means to endear the audience and carefully selected diction to come off as didactic rather than complaining, the Colombian author not only accepts the Nobel Prize, but prompts the audience to action.

Playing Devil's Advocate to Cristina…Sorry Cristina

After having read about how ellipses are being overemployed and misused across writing, I turned to my peers.  In her most recent blog, Cristina Angel mentions the problems that this epidemic is causing.  According to her, ellipses should be used only in the academic way, in formal writing. Whatever happened to letting language evolve?

I’ve been critiqued by my peer, Cristina Serrano, for not acknowledging the opposition in my recent blog about the value of descriptivists and their one-to-five scale. That being said, this blog post will be all about playing devil’s advocate.  Although I agree with most of what Ms. Angel says, I’ll acquiesce to Ms. Serrano’s request.

Ms. Angel, in your bashing of the modern adaptation of the ellipses, you claim that “we are not even completing sentences.” So? In the evolving world of texts, there is no need for complete sentences, or even complete thoughts.  As the author pointed out when he sent a text to his mom that simply read “All Star Game…..” there is an inherent understanding between texters that enables them to interpret even the vaguest of messages.  This “relaxed way,” of writing, as you call it, allows people to be free.  It gives them the liberty to take the conversation anywhere…

Example:

Person 1: “All Star Game……”

Person 2: “Yeah…I hope the East can finish strong…”

Person 3: “…Soccer is much more interesting…”

Person 4: “I’m tired……”

While this may not seem coherent to a stranger, or a linguist trying to figure out why the English language was saved in the year 2014, it is logical to me, and that’s all that matters.  The privacy of the texter’s world makes it so that as long as the people directly involved understand, the “horrible… consequences” that you speak of are rendered obsolete….and that’s that….

Invading the Crimea of Language

Rules, as I have always been taught, are not made to be broken.  From the clichéd I before e except after c to the basic principle that every sentence needs a subject and a verb, English is no exception to the notion that there are rules aplenty. 

So, as I read Greene and Garner discuss the proper usage and importance of rules in the English language, I was at awe.  I had never realized that there was a place for the oh-so-miraculous descriptivist. A descriptivist, as I have garnered my own definition, is someone that describes language in terms of how it is being used.  OMG thats awesome! I just used an abbreviation for oh my god, and did not use an apostrophe after the second t in thats (although I feel that I might crack at any moment and be obliged to use proper punctuation.) Yes, that is awesome, but a prescriptivist— that is, someone who emphasizes the way language should be used— would say that it’s inappropriate.

Who is right?  As Greene says, there is nothing better than “reasonable moderates.” However, he then proceeds to assign a scale to determine a score from descriptivist to prescriptivist.  You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Mr. Greene. The very inclination of their having to be a scale provides proof that Greene, a self-proclaimed descriptivist, might in fact by fooling himself.  One cannot be a 3 out of 5 in terms of being bothered by improper language usage.  I’ll let this mistake go, but if he doesn’t capitalize God the next time, I’ll completely discredit him as an author… Is this the way the “3/5” benchmark would work? Or better yet, would they allow God to not be capitalized but require that English be capitalized? The way I see it, one is either a prescriptivist or a descriptivist, there’s no gray area when it comes to following the rules of language.

As for myself, I’m all for adapting and evolving to the language being used today.  While I would feel some odd nostalgia if the English that I consider to be proper becomes archaic, I don’t know (or idk?) if that’s enough to get me to commit to all the rules of language every time I express myself.

Juxtaposing Terror

Juxtaposition.  As a part of the analysis of the magnitude of the 9/11 attacks, the author (and many others before him) compares this attack to other acts of cruelty and violence in US history.  As Pearl Harbor is the only other attack on continental United States since the War of 1812, the differences between these two attacks are juxtaposed using text, images, and positioning in the space of the comic.

First, it is important to note that while Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were both organized efforts to destroy and kill, the people behind the attacks had very different levels of education, resources and access to aid.  Furthermore, while the US military in 1941 was equipped with some means of protection from aerial attacks, Pearl Harbor was very hard to stop once the attack had began.  On the other hand, as The 9/11 Report exposes the systematical errors that plagued the governmental response on September 11^th. It seems that 9/11 and Pearl Harbor can only be juxtaposed from a graphical point of view, not a historical one. Having said this, the author is very clear in his interpretation of the comparison of both events. He writes “imagination” over what he describes as the Pearl Harbor Attacks, but he doesn’t fret over the vivid interpretation of a Russian tank burning at the bottom of the page. Because he allows 9/11 to be revealed through the eyes of an investigative committee, he can focus on the illustrations and let the facts speak for themselves.  On the other hand, we don’t know where he got the information about Pearl Harbor; maybe it was purely “imaginative.”

The Retrosi Rant

Samantha Retrosi says that the Olympic games are a lot like the Hunger Games.  Needless to say, I had never before considered the similarities that exist between the blockbuster book and the world phenomenon that— in a very different way— captivate the minds of all viewers.  

Retrosi is right when she says that she was “groomed” toward “Olympic glory,” and that this undoubtedly proves that hard work pays off when it comes to athletics.  However, there is a huge difference between the drive of the Hunger Games and the drive of the Olympic games.  While the former randomly chooses victims that are used for the benefit of what could be translated into the real world’s companies and corporations, the latter takes volunteers. Retrosi makes it seem that she was being held captive to the Luge Corporation and to Verizon’s fake PR stunts; they were only the means to an end for her.  Jennifer Lawrence and Samantha Retrosi both struggle and succeed only to provide monetary benefaction to someone else, for the most part.  Is there really a way to keep this from happening? No. If at her “tender age of 11” Retrosi had decided to go into banking, teaching, or window cleaning, she wouldn’t have had to depend on the cruelty of any Fortune 500 company and she’d be free of a grueling messed up system— and someone with another last name and a surprisingly similar background would be under contract with Luge and Verizon participating in the Torino events. 

All I’m trying to say is that although it is unfortunate that athletes have to depend on the limited generosity of the corporate world, there is no way to change this. What Retrosi proposes, “an internationalized resistance” led by the athletes, is so outlandish that it falls into ridicule.  The athletes have no say, because they are only the catalysts to a very well set up social experiment.  If some put up a resistance, others will gladly take their place. I watch. They ski. Verizon gets paid, period.  I don’t see a way out.