Sometimes it's nice to live on campus. And sometimes it's not nice to live on campus. Let me tell you why. On Monday I was sitting in a bus. I was coming home from my classes and I was carrying that big white thing also called a wedding dress. When I arrived to the campus of the Helsinki University of Technology, next to the place where I live, someone suddenly said: "Hey there, can I ask you something?" "Well, of course", I said and he continued: "I was wondering if you wanna be friends with me. I know you Finnish people don't make friends easily (is it really true?) but you're going to know me better." I have to say I was a little bit astounded at that moment. I was also in a hurry since I was still holding my wedding dress and it was about to start raining again... Nevertheless I gave him my phone number, maybe just because I was so confused and I wanted to prove Finns are not always shy and suspicious.
The next day I had already forgotten the episode. I was sitting in a bus again and guess what happened? He, whose name is Ali by the way, came sit next to me, we chat and he told me he comes from Middle India, from a small town next to Bombay. He told me he is studying and working here at the University of Technology and that he has already been living in Helsinki for five years. He told about his trips to Russia and other countries in Europe. In the end of the bus trip he had invited me to his place for dinner. We were told to actively hunt opportunities to communicate in English. Well it seems I don't even have to hunt for those opportunities! Then I have to tell the dark side about living on campus. Sometimes early in the morning (today it was about 5 A.M.) people come back from a party or from a club and I can tell you the noise is horrible. Since we're living in a student apartment, we're living with lots of other students around and it's really easy to hear them sometimes... That's also why I'm writing my blog at 7 A.M.
Another reason why I started writing was that I can't do it in the English class today. I have to work for the whole day until ten o'clock, hopefully only this one time during this autumn. At least we can say I'll be actively improving my English with customers. Instead of going to class today I could write my second essay about an academic article. It's called "Pre-expansion" (2007) and it's written by Emanuel Schegloff, one of the founders of conversation analysis. So here it comes:
In his article "Pre-expansion" (2007) Emanuel Schegloff writes about certain types of utterances or sequences in conversation. These sequences are called pre-expansion or pre-sequences because they are situated before some particular pair type, for example: an invitation, an offer, a request or an announcement. Human psychology is interesting. Did you ever notice that for example asking for a favor from another person isn't easy? It's also hard to say "no" if someone invites you to a party. At least harder than to say "yes". Schegloff and his co-workers found out that this difficulty of sayng "no" or asking for a favor is actually an observable part inside a language. This difficulty gains it's form, for example, in type-specific pre-sequences such as pre-invitations, pre-offers, pre-requests and pre-announcements. These are pre-sequences " and what they commonly project, what they are regularly preliminary to, what they are pre-expansions of, is the specified base sequence." (p.29).
Another important thing to note is that some responses to these pre-sequences lead to the production of a base sequence and some don't. I'll give you some examples of different kinds of pre-sequences. Lets start with the most readily recognizable pre-sequence, the pre-invitation. If someone asks you in the phone: "Are you doing anything?" or "What are you doing?" you normally don't start with the factual description of what you are doing. What you probably produce is an answer like: "Nothing" or even "Why?" Questions like "What are you doing?" are then not understood like questions themselves but as preliminaries to something else like an invitation. If you want to inform your buddy that you are going to say no to the prospective invitation, the invitation can also be discouraged already in the preliminary phase. In that kind of situation the answer to the first question: "What are you doing?" could be for example: "Well, I'm just about to leave.." or "I'm being busy with...". Schegloff says: "If the prospective invitation is to be discouraged, if (for example) it is likely to be declined, then the answer to the preliminary- to the pre-sequence- should be selected accordingly, for example, "yes, I have a term paper to finish."
What we also should remember when we are talking about conversation analysis is the importance of preference. It's preferable to say "yes" to an invitation than to say "no". A "no" always insists some kind of explanation and that kind of sequences are usually longer. Instead of saying "Nothing" you have to give a long explanation to project to the person-who-asked why you are probably saying "no" to his future invitation. Schegloff lists three different response types which serve as a response to the pre-sequence. These are: 1.) "Go ahead"-response, 2.) "Blocking"-response, and 3.) "Hedging"-response. The "Go ahead" response "promotes progress of the sequence by encouraging its recipient to go ahead." This kind of response could be for example the "Nothing" that was mentioned earlier. The encouraged individual who produced the pre-sequence, the first question, could then continue to the base sequence, for example: "Do you want to go shopping?". The second response type is "Blocking". It raises the possibility that the invitation will be declined or rejected and "thereby discourages or blocks the invitation from being tendered at all." Pre-sequences are then designed to avoid rejection or "to help interaction to avoid a sequence with a rejected base." Third response type is "Hedging" "which can make a full response contingent on what the invitation is going to be." For example, if someone asks: "What are you doing?" you could answer: "I'm doing my homework. Why?" meaning that you can still change your mind if the other one has something great to offer.
I thought the article was really interesting. I'm quite excited to open this new box of knowledge this autumn and I'm really happy I chose conversation analysis as the subject of my Master's Thesis. These phenomena I'm reading about were always there, in everyday conversations, but it's only now that I'm starting to pay attention to them. Another funny thing is that I never thought that I could profit from this English class so much! It actually makes me understand the articles better when I have to read them twice. First for my own good and then again to make a reference to this log. I couldn't possibly imagine a better way to learn these things by heart.
torstai 27. syyskuuta 2012
maanantai 24. syyskuuta 2012
Storytelling
I couldn't keep my promise, after all. Yesterday afternoon after reading the article I was just weary. This week is going to be even worst than the last one. I'll have to finish reading four articles, write three essays, and write the first two pages of my Master's. (I still have no idea what I'm going to write about.) On the top of it all, my boss just happened to give me some extra-hours of work on Friday and Saturday... Still, lessons and writing assignments are not the only reason I'm feeling busy right now. Next weekend after work we, my fiancé and I, are going to travel to the countryside to meet the reverend. Today after lessons I had to run to the other side of the town to pick up my wedding dress... Did I mention we're getting married on November? Oh my, there's still so much to do before that!
This week I decided to kill two flies with one swat and write about the article called "Sequential Aspects of Storytelling in Conversation" written by Gail Jefferson in 1978. As the title reveals us, it's an article about conversation analysis based on Harvey Sacks' lectures about story telling and it's structure. In the beginning of the paper Jefferson reminds us about Labov's and Waletsky's theories of spontaneous stories. These two men suspected that spontaneously told stories could also be subjects to formal analysis and found out that this kind of stories had formal properties. What Labov and Waletsky also mentioned was the relevance of social context when spontaneous stories were told. (Labov & Waletsky, 1966, pp. 12-13.)
The third person Jefferson mentions in his article is Harvey Sacks who has focused on the contexted occurrence of stories that are told in conversations. He points out that stories are sequenced objects that articulate with the particular context in which they are told. This means for example that the structure of a story depends on where, when and to whom it is told. Storytelling might or might not involve the following: A preface where a teller projects a forthcoming story, a second turn where a listener aligns himself/herself as a recipient, the next turn where the story is produced, and the next turn in which the recipient gives reference to the story that was just told. (Sacks, 1972b, Lecture 2.) (I guess it's important to mention that conversation analysis is built on turn-by-turn talk and that kind of talk was just represented in the earlier sentence.)
Jefferson says that: "Stories emerge from turn-by-turn talk, that is, are locally occasioned by it, and, upon their completion, stories re-engage turn-by-turn talk, that is, are sequentially implicative for it." (p. 220.) By saying that stories are local occasioned he means two different things. 1.) Something said in a conversation can remind a participant of a story that may (or may not) be topically coherent with the earlier talk. For example, you could be talking to me about the muffin you're eating and that could remind me about the cake I baked yesterday. (Not topically coherent.) 2.) A story can be methodically introduced into turn-by-turn talk.
What kind of techniques are there to inform the recipient that there's a story to be told? One technique is the use of a disjunct marker such as "Oh" or "Incidentally". Disjunct markers are signals that show us that the following talk (the story) is not topically coherent with the prior talk. The other technique is an "embedded repeat" meaning a form like "Speaking about X" or "Saying X". Disjunct markers and repetition can also cooperate together or the repetition of the X-word can appear in the end of the story and tie it with the prior talk. Another way to show the recipient that there's a story to come is the use of a temporal locator ("New Years we..."). These kind of techniques of informing the recipient that a story is about to begin are called "Story prefixed phrases" by Jefferson.
The rest of the article treats different kind of examples of storytelling taken from real conversations that Jefferson has recorded with his cooperators. From my point of view reading this article was very useful. I have to mention that I was excited to read for the first time something that Jefferson himself wrote since he was along with Sacks and Shegloff one of the founders of conversation analysis. He was the one who invented the transcription now used in our area, a real genius indeed. Since this was the first time I read about storytelling from the conversation analysis' point of view, I noticed I had some difficulties with the terminology and I had to read some parts twice. In the end I felt like I got the idea and I'm now understanding the complex world of conversations a little bit better. How do I find this theory about storytelling then? I think Jefferson's ideas (and Sacks' and Schegloff's) are brilliant! Those things he notices in real conversations are actually quite easy to notice in daily conversations. Soon I won't be able not to think about these theories every time I'm talking with someone!
This week I decided to kill two flies with one swat and write about the article called "Sequential Aspects of Storytelling in Conversation" written by Gail Jefferson in 1978. As the title reveals us, it's an article about conversation analysis based on Harvey Sacks' lectures about story telling and it's structure. In the beginning of the paper Jefferson reminds us about Labov's and Waletsky's theories of spontaneous stories. These two men suspected that spontaneously told stories could also be subjects to formal analysis and found out that this kind of stories had formal properties. What Labov and Waletsky also mentioned was the relevance of social context when spontaneous stories were told. (Labov & Waletsky, 1966, pp. 12-13.)
The third person Jefferson mentions in his article is Harvey Sacks who has focused on the contexted occurrence of stories that are told in conversations. He points out that stories are sequenced objects that articulate with the particular context in which they are told. This means for example that the structure of a story depends on where, when and to whom it is told. Storytelling might or might not involve the following: A preface where a teller projects a forthcoming story, a second turn where a listener aligns himself/herself as a recipient, the next turn where the story is produced, and the next turn in which the recipient gives reference to the story that was just told. (Sacks, 1972b, Lecture 2.) (I guess it's important to mention that conversation analysis is built on turn-by-turn talk and that kind of talk was just represented in the earlier sentence.)
Jefferson says that: "Stories emerge from turn-by-turn talk, that is, are locally occasioned by it, and, upon their completion, stories re-engage turn-by-turn talk, that is, are sequentially implicative for it." (p. 220.) By saying that stories are local occasioned he means two different things. 1.) Something said in a conversation can remind a participant of a story that may (or may not) be topically coherent with the earlier talk. For example, you could be talking to me about the muffin you're eating and that could remind me about the cake I baked yesterday. (Not topically coherent.) 2.) A story can be methodically introduced into turn-by-turn talk.
What kind of techniques are there to inform the recipient that there's a story to be told? One technique is the use of a disjunct marker such as "Oh" or "Incidentally". Disjunct markers are signals that show us that the following talk (the story) is not topically coherent with the prior talk. The other technique is an "embedded repeat" meaning a form like "Speaking about X" or "Saying X". Disjunct markers and repetition can also cooperate together or the repetition of the X-word can appear in the end of the story and tie it with the prior talk. Another way to show the recipient that there's a story to come is the use of a temporal locator ("New Years we..."). These kind of techniques of informing the recipient that a story is about to begin are called "Story prefixed phrases" by Jefferson.
The rest of the article treats different kind of examples of storytelling taken from real conversations that Jefferson has recorded with his cooperators. From my point of view reading this article was very useful. I have to mention that I was excited to read for the first time something that Jefferson himself wrote since he was along with Sacks and Shegloff one of the founders of conversation analysis. He was the one who invented the transcription now used in our area, a real genius indeed. Since this was the first time I read about storytelling from the conversation analysis' point of view, I noticed I had some difficulties with the terminology and I had to read some parts twice. In the end I felt like I got the idea and I'm now understanding the complex world of conversations a little bit better. How do I find this theory about storytelling then? I think Jefferson's ideas (and Sacks' and Schegloff's) are brilliant! Those things he notices in real conversations are actually quite easy to notice in daily conversations. Soon I won't be able not to think about these theories every time I'm talking with someone!
perjantai 21. syyskuuta 2012
The summary
Hello there! Here we are again. It's Friday evening and I have exactly thirty minutes left before I'll have to go to work. Luckily I was quick enough to write most of the summary that we were asked to do in the classroom today. To confirm that I'm not going to forget the rest of the text, I'm going to write it down now. During these thirty... I mean 25 minutes I've got left! So here we go:
The summary of the introduction of Guy Deutscher's book: "The Unfolding of Language" (2005).
The author starts his book by saying: "Language is what makes us human." Without language we could never have reached the position in which we are now, above all animals and nature. Language is our greatest invention- even if it was actually not invented. It was probably born by accident. Deutscher tells us the story of the history of language. He also tells us how he first became interested about languages. Language is an instrument we use everyday but we normally don't think about. We only start to think about it through foreign languages. That's what also happened to Deutscher: he became interested about languages in his early Latin lessons. He started to think who invented language in the first place. He was not the only one who had thought about this.
Earlier people used to think that language was created by God. (Remember the story about the Towel of Babel?) In the 19th century the scientific community came to a conclusion that evolution of languages moves from complex systems to simple ones. (Late Latin for example didn't have cases anymore.) Already in the ancient times in Greek and Rome, people were dreaming about the "Golden Age", the period of time when language was perfect. So, they were thinking that language was always becoming worse and worse. It took a long time, until our days almost, before scientists noticed that any kind of language also has creative forces- and that it's constantly changing. If we can be sure about one thing concerning languages it has to be it's perpetual restlessness. The writers of language history also realised that they can start writing and searching for the secrets of a language very close, from the language of our own time! There's always something left of the way our ancestors used to speak some 100 or 10 000 years ago.
Deutscher was also asks in his book how we can know when languages started to develop. The answer is simple: we cannot. It's still interesting to try finding out the answer to the question and in the end of the introduction he lists different things that scientists have tried in order to find out when and where human language was born.
Okay, now I really have to go to work but I have some good news! On Sunday when I'm not working I'm going to read some articles and probably write one or two critical essays about them. See you then!
The summary of the introduction of Guy Deutscher's book: "The Unfolding of Language" (2005).
The author starts his book by saying: "Language is what makes us human." Without language we could never have reached the position in which we are now, above all animals and nature. Language is our greatest invention- even if it was actually not invented. It was probably born by accident. Deutscher tells us the story of the history of language. He also tells us how he first became interested about languages. Language is an instrument we use everyday but we normally don't think about. We only start to think about it through foreign languages. That's what also happened to Deutscher: he became interested about languages in his early Latin lessons. He started to think who invented language in the first place. He was not the only one who had thought about this.
Earlier people used to think that language was created by God. (Remember the story about the Towel of Babel?) In the 19th century the scientific community came to a conclusion that evolution of languages moves from complex systems to simple ones. (Late Latin for example didn't have cases anymore.) Already in the ancient times in Greek and Rome, people were dreaming about the "Golden Age", the period of time when language was perfect. So, they were thinking that language was always becoming worse and worse. It took a long time, until our days almost, before scientists noticed that any kind of language also has creative forces- and that it's constantly changing. If we can be sure about one thing concerning languages it has to be it's perpetual restlessness. The writers of language history also realised that they can start writing and searching for the secrets of a language very close, from the language of our own time! There's always something left of the way our ancestors used to speak some 100 or 10 000 years ago.
Deutscher was also asks in his book how we can know when languages started to develop. The answer is simple: we cannot. It's still interesting to try finding out the answer to the question and in the end of the introduction he lists different things that scientists have tried in order to find out when and where human language was born.
Okay, now I really have to go to work but I have some good news! On Sunday when I'm not working I'm going to read some articles and probably write one or two critical essays about them. See you then!
keskiviikko 19. syyskuuta 2012
A touching lesson
It's reflection time! 50 % of this weeks independent studying comes from the visitation lecture kept by Marjorie Harness Goodwin from the University of Pennsylvania. This lecture was not part of any specific course I'm doing right now but it was interesting since it crosses with conversation analysis. Mrs. Goodwin talked about Haptic Sociality, a field of study where she's actually a trailblazer. Mrs. Goodwin and her group had been recording children's and their parents' acting when it's time to go to bed or when they see each other after a day at work or school.
Her field of study was intercorporeality (this word is so going to be part of my idiosyncratic dictionary!) inside families, in other words she studies physical contact and the meaning of touching in families. (Especially in families with kids.) It was a great honor to follow her lecture since this was the first time her work is presented in Finland. She started the presentation by telling about the meaning of touch as a sense in the animal world and among humans. Touch is something that has been underestimated in science (she calls this occularcentrism so I'll have, again a new word to my dictionary) even though all five senses can be reduced to one: touch. Through touch an individual locates himself in space and is interlocated with things. Despite of the occularcentrism - the importance of visuality in the field of science - psychological research finally paid attention to touch. They admitted that it's through touch that social development begins and the importance of this sense stays during the whole life of an individual.
She talked about experimental studies on monkies: monkie babies without touch (or without any contact with their mommies) became autistic. It was the same effect that created mental problems to Romanian children who were separated from their parents in the 19th century. She told us that all kind of intersubjectivity (contact, care, love, sexuality and empathy) starts with touch and usually conversation as such is not the primary and final aim. Touch can be seen as a ritual. A touch virtually demands response. Touch can be used as a source of control and compliance. She gave us some examples of how touch can be used when parents control their children. These examples were: piggyback ride (a new word again!) when going to bed, high five evaluation, gestures and shepherding. All the examples were in the video tapes she showed us from her project. All put together, she wanted to show us Descartes' error: the abyssal separation between body and mind.
What has this lesson got to do with language? Why am I interested in touching instead of different forms of using spoken language? Well, since I would like to study 'real' language, real talking situations, I have to admit that a big part of communication is actually not verbal. It's also touching, gestures etc. And that's interesting!
Her field of study was intercorporeality (this word is so going to be part of my idiosyncratic dictionary!) inside families, in other words she studies physical contact and the meaning of touching in families. (Especially in families with kids.) It was a great honor to follow her lecture since this was the first time her work is presented in Finland. She started the presentation by telling about the meaning of touch as a sense in the animal world and among humans. Touch is something that has been underestimated in science (she calls this occularcentrism so I'll have, again a new word to my dictionary) even though all five senses can be reduced to one: touch. Through touch an individual locates himself in space and is interlocated with things. Despite of the occularcentrism - the importance of visuality in the field of science - psychological research finally paid attention to touch. They admitted that it's through touch that social development begins and the importance of this sense stays during the whole life of an individual.
She talked about experimental studies on monkies: monkie babies without touch (or without any contact with their mommies) became autistic. It was the same effect that created mental problems to Romanian children who were separated from their parents in the 19th century. She told us that all kind of intersubjectivity (contact, care, love, sexuality and empathy) starts with touch and usually conversation as such is not the primary and final aim. Touch can be seen as a ritual. A touch virtually demands response. Touch can be used as a source of control and compliance. She gave us some examples of how touch can be used when parents control their children. These examples were: piggyback ride (a new word again!) when going to bed, high five evaluation, gestures and shepherding. All the examples were in the video tapes she showed us from her project. All put together, she wanted to show us Descartes' error: the abyssal separation between body and mind.
What has this lesson got to do with language? Why am I interested in touching instead of different forms of using spoken language? Well, since I would like to study 'real' language, real talking situations, I have to admit that a big part of communication is actually not verbal. It's also touching, gestures etc. And that's interesting!
sunnuntai 16. syyskuuta 2012
Independent Work Module
It's again time to think about the independent part of my studying. 2 credits means approximately 3,5-4 hours of independent work or studying each week. So how am I going to get there? Here's the plan:
Reading/Writing:
I hope I'm not crazy but I'm kind of thinking that I would complete all of the tasks asked in this Reading/Writing part. Since I'm studying for my Master's I need to do lots of independent reading at home anyway (and without this English course I couldn't even get any credits from that reading). First, I'm going to read this introductory book by the author Jack Sidnell: "Conversation Analysis, An Introduction". I'm sorry I'll be palling you with these texts from my area. It's just that I've done my 45 credits of world literature already (I just loved it) and now I really need to focus on this big task. So I'll be doing a book review. Hopefully it'll be worth it.
If I have the time I might also write some sort of essay or two about the academic articles I've read. Right now, I have in front of me a collection of articles from Markku Haakana, Minna Laakso and Jan Lindström. It's called "Talk in Interaction, Comparative Dimensions" and I'm hoping I'll be able to finish the whole book. That depends on the time I have for studying. (You see, It's really hard sometimes to get these books from the library and when you finally get them you have to finish them quick before someone else wants to borrow them.) In the end, I'll end up doing either just one of the tasks or both of them and as you know I'll also be writing this language/literary blog where I'll be reflecting my learning.
Listening/Speaking/Writing:
I'll probably be watching lots of "odd films" during this autumn. Some funny TV-series also do. That's just my way of relaxing after long days at work and at the Uni. or after reading articles. The most important thing: if it has nothing to do with conversation analysis, the better. I think it's not such a big thing to write a couple of reviews after watching TV, right? P.S. No worries, I'm not using the subtitles, and if so, they will be in English.;)
About the communicating part I really hope my work counts. I can tell you it's sometimes hard to convince someone to buy a great wine with your mothertongue but it's much harder to do it in English (or even in Swedish for God's sake!) And I did serve many English speaking customers this weekend, just like I told you I would. Saturday might have even been this year's record! I also have many English speaking friends just one Facebook click away. And I do send them 'letters' all the time.
The last assignment was the Idiosyncratic dictionary. Well, I guess I just need to start keeping one. Let's get started with the first word: excruciatingly. I still have no idea where I could possibly use that word. Maybe I'll figure it out during the course.
Now, when the independent work plan is done I can finally get to this week's achievements. I can happily tell you that I've been doing a lot of stuff using the English language and I don't mean only in the classroom or costumer service. I've been reading a book called Sequence Organization by Emanuel Schegloff, 2007. It's funny that all of a sudden I start to read so much in English. (Last year in Lisbon I read books ONLY in Portuguese.) It is slower than reading in Finnish instead. It's also harder since all new key words need to be translated in my head to Finnish, even though I most of the time don't even know what the translation could be. I notice that when I get tired It's really hard for me to concentrate but I think things will be a lot easier when I get used to studying in English. (It took some time to learn to study in Portuguese as well.) The best thing about this week was that we've been watching soooo much "How I met your mother" with my fiancé. I mean a lot! We must be already watching season six or seven. Tomorrow we are going to watch the movie "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
Reading/Writing:
I hope I'm not crazy but I'm kind of thinking that I would complete all of the tasks asked in this Reading/Writing part. Since I'm studying for my Master's I need to do lots of independent reading at home anyway (and without this English course I couldn't even get any credits from that reading). First, I'm going to read this introductory book by the author Jack Sidnell: "Conversation Analysis, An Introduction". I'm sorry I'll be palling you with these texts from my area. It's just that I've done my 45 credits of world literature already (I just loved it) and now I really need to focus on this big task. So I'll be doing a book review. Hopefully it'll be worth it.
If I have the time I might also write some sort of essay or two about the academic articles I've read. Right now, I have in front of me a collection of articles from Markku Haakana, Minna Laakso and Jan Lindström. It's called "Talk in Interaction, Comparative Dimensions" and I'm hoping I'll be able to finish the whole book. That depends on the time I have for studying. (You see, It's really hard sometimes to get these books from the library and when you finally get them you have to finish them quick before someone else wants to borrow them.) In the end, I'll end up doing either just one of the tasks or both of them and as you know I'll also be writing this language/literary blog where I'll be reflecting my learning.
Listening/Speaking/Writing:
I'll probably be watching lots of "odd films" during this autumn. Some funny TV-series also do. That's just my way of relaxing after long days at work and at the Uni. or after reading articles. The most important thing: if it has nothing to do with conversation analysis, the better. I think it's not such a big thing to write a couple of reviews after watching TV, right? P.S. No worries, I'm not using the subtitles, and if so, they will be in English.;)
About the communicating part I really hope my work counts. I can tell you it's sometimes hard to convince someone to buy a great wine with your mothertongue but it's much harder to do it in English (or even in Swedish for God's sake!) And I did serve many English speaking customers this weekend, just like I told you I would. Saturday might have even been this year's record! I also have many English speaking friends just one Facebook click away. And I do send them 'letters' all the time.
The last assignment was the Idiosyncratic dictionary. Well, I guess I just need to start keeping one. Let's get started with the first word: excruciatingly. I still have no idea where I could possibly use that word. Maybe I'll figure it out during the course.
Now, when the independent work plan is done I can finally get to this week's achievements. I can happily tell you that I've been doing a lot of stuff using the English language and I don't mean only in the classroom or costumer service. I've been reading a book called Sequence Organization by Emanuel Schegloff, 2007. It's funny that all of a sudden I start to read so much in English. (Last year in Lisbon I read books ONLY in Portuguese.) It is slower than reading in Finnish instead. It's also harder since all new key words need to be translated in my head to Finnish, even though I most of the time don't even know what the translation could be. I notice that when I get tired It's really hard for me to concentrate but I think things will be a lot easier when I get used to studying in English. (It took some time to learn to study in Portuguese as well.) The best thing about this week was that we've been watching soooo much "How I met your mother" with my fiancé. I mean a lot! We must be already watching season six or seven. Tomorrow we are going to watch the movie "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
perjantai 14. syyskuuta 2012
Humour me
We got an assignment about David Mitchell's Soapbox from our last English lesson and I thought I should do it right away before I'll forget it. I have to admit that I have too many things in my head these days and it sometimes makes me absent-minded. Most of the time I'm just thinking about my thesis... How should I do it? What should I investigate? There are just too many options... On top of my absent-mindedness I'm also too busy. After lessons I'm unfortunately not going home to watch nice comedies. Just like almost any other student I'm going to work. (To be more specific I'm going to sell wine in one of Helsinki's finest shopping malls.) When it comes to language practicing, there is still one bright side in going to work instead of laying on the sofa at home. Since we have such a fine shopping mall we also have lots of fine tourists as our customers. I bet that I'll talk English with more than five customers this evening. And after ten o'clock, when I'm free I might as well watch English comedies at home.
I didn't know anything about David Mitchell's Soapbox before I saw it today in the class. Surprisingly, the Brittish humour in the show reminds me of Finnish humour. What could be better than laughing at yourself and your own bad habbits? What could be more Finnish than ignoring the other people in public transports? (Everyone talking to his own iphone of course.) We cannot say that we're the Great Finland but I think that the Finnish audience gets the sarcastic point of the first joke as well.
In the classroom, we were talking about the relationship between humour and culture. I've many friends from different countries and I've noticed there's a difference between European humour and Asian humour for example. How did I notice it then? Well, sometimes with my two Japanese friends I just thought they had no sense of humour. I mean, they were laughing a lot and I just stood there without any idea about what was so funny. On the other hand, when I was living in Brazil my Dutch friend once told me: "Do you know what I most miss in Europe?" "Sarcasm!", she told. And she was right. Brazilians, as lovely as they are, mostly did not understand sarcastic jokes. They thought we were just being mean or meaning literally what we said. If you travel in different countries you should be quite sensitive when making jokes. And not be too sensitive when they joke about you. It took some time to realize in Brazil that it's very common to call people by different nicknames. With very rude nicknames from the European point of view! If you're chubby in Brazil you can easily called 'gordinho' (which means 'little fat') or if you happen to have a big nose they are going to call you 'narizão' (the big nose'). Maybe it's just us Finns who are too concerned about the way we look like. In Brazil it didn't seem to be a tabu.
I didn't know anything about David Mitchell's Soapbox before I saw it today in the class. Surprisingly, the Brittish humour in the show reminds me of Finnish humour. What could be better than laughing at yourself and your own bad habbits? What could be more Finnish than ignoring the other people in public transports? (Everyone talking to his own iphone of course.) We cannot say that we're the Great Finland but I think that the Finnish audience gets the sarcastic point of the first joke as well.
In the classroom, we were talking about the relationship between humour and culture. I've many friends from different countries and I've noticed there's a difference between European humour and Asian humour for example. How did I notice it then? Well, sometimes with my two Japanese friends I just thought they had no sense of humour. I mean, they were laughing a lot and I just stood there without any idea about what was so funny. On the other hand, when I was living in Brazil my Dutch friend once told me: "Do you know what I most miss in Europe?" "Sarcasm!", she told. And she was right. Brazilians, as lovely as they are, mostly did not understand sarcastic jokes. They thought we were just being mean or meaning literally what we said. If you travel in different countries you should be quite sensitive when making jokes. And not be too sensitive when they joke about you. It took some time to realize in Brazil that it's very common to call people by different nicknames. With very rude nicknames from the European point of view! If you're chubby in Brazil you can easily called 'gordinho' (which means 'little fat') or if you happen to have a big nose they are going to call you 'narizão' (the big nose'). Maybe it's just us Finns who are too concerned about the way we look like. In Brazil it didn't seem to be a tabu.
torstai 13. syyskuuta 2012
About Alice Malkovich
Hello! My name is Alice, I'm 24 years old and I'm studying languages at the University of Helsinki.You fool! Did you believe me? No, my real name is not Alice. Did you really think I would use my real name on the Internet? Someone could actually recognize me here! But I could be Alice as well. Let me explain why.
I was first called Alice when I participated English lessons in the third grade. We were nine years old and our English teacher explained to us: "I'm now going to give you English names so that I'll be able to pronounce your names right here in the classroom". That was the first time I noticed that English pronunciation is different to Finnish. The second time that I was called Alice was last year. I was participating in my universtity's exhange program in Lisbon, meaning that I had to study in Lisbon University, and every single professor called me "Alice" or "Alicia", which is actually a very common name in Portugal. So now I almost told you my real name. Lets just say, the pronunciation is quite close to "Alice".
Well, since you now know the story of my name I may tell you something about this blog. Like I said, early in the beginning, this is a learning blog. In this blog I'm going to reflect my learning process. I'm going to bore you telling what I'm reading at the moment and I might also slip in something about my real life behind this blog. On this first time I may warn you that I'm going to write a lot about conversation analysis. That's the area I'm studying for my Master's Thesis and during this autumn I'm going to read lots of articles and books on spoken human language. Let's hope my knowledge of English won't be a problem for that!
I was first called Alice when I participated English lessons in the third grade. We were nine years old and our English teacher explained to us: "I'm now going to give you English names so that I'll be able to pronounce your names right here in the classroom". That was the first time I noticed that English pronunciation is different to Finnish. The second time that I was called Alice was last year. I was participating in my universtity's exhange program in Lisbon, meaning that I had to study in Lisbon University, and every single professor called me "Alice" or "Alicia", which is actually a very common name in Portugal. So now I almost told you my real name. Lets just say, the pronunciation is quite close to "Alice".
Well, since you now know the story of my name I may tell you something about this blog. Like I said, early in the beginning, this is a learning blog. In this blog I'm going to reflect my learning process. I'm going to bore you telling what I'm reading at the moment and I might also slip in something about my real life behind this blog. On this first time I may warn you that I'm going to write a lot about conversation analysis. That's the area I'm studying for my Master's Thesis and during this autumn I'm going to read lots of articles and books on spoken human language. Let's hope my knowledge of English won't be a problem for that!
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