Karen F’s blog

After reading the article about silence in Japanese conversation I found myself thinking about it.  When you are face to face empty silence doesn't really exist because you can pick up on non-verbal cues such as smiling, nodding but what about the phone.  My sister called me today to make sure I got "the message" about "the party".  After replying "yes", the awkward silence ensued.  For 3 minutes, yes I counted there were no words spoken, did she fall asleep?  This is what I consider silence in converstion. 

So yesterday I received a voicemail from my sister declaring, "The party is at 2 p.m. at the house".  After listening to this I started thinking about the explicatures of this statement. 

"the party", whose party?  My niece's birthday was last month, is the party for her?

2 p.m., ok nice, today, yesterday, Saturday, with Cingular I have received messages a week after it was left so this needed some clarifying.

"the house", who's house?  My sister's house, my mom's house, my house, yikes!!!

People really need to think about the messages they leave. LOL

A girl I work with is constantly dying her hair and asking "do you like my hair".  Yesterday she attempted to bleach the blue dye out of her hair and now has multi-colored hair, gray in spots, blue and pink in others, and even a few streaks of blonde and green. 

Some of the responses I have heard are,

Wow, it's different. CONSIDERSATION?? Quality, Quantity, Manner

Rainbows cheer me up!  Relevance? manner, quantity

Like, is a strong word.

It looks "nice".  Manner, quality

Someone handed her a card for their hairdresser.

Someone simply said, WELLLLLL manner

My hair turned purple one time. relevance?

Isn't it funny how one question can encourage so many different people to flout so many different maxims.  I wonder if she was seeking agreement. 

So, yesterday I received an email from someone I have been friends with for a long time.  We were very close for years and just recently lost contact with each other.  The email read as follows:

Hey,

Before I bother with a long, drawn out email, a question. Are you still out
there in internet land? If so, are you interested in communicating with me?
How are you?

I truly hope all is well with you. And for what it's worth, I miss you.

I highlighted the part that seems really strange to me considering the closeness of our previous friendship.  I find it unusual that he would select Negative Politeness to reach out when it actually seems to put us at a distance.  My question is this, why negative politeness and what perlocutions could this express?

So, one of the commercials that absolutely crack me up is the car commercial where the people are making requests similar to those you would to get your mp3 car player to play such as "Play artist Seal".  I absolutely love the part where the woman says "open door" and proceeds to walk into it spilling her coffee.  Anyway, a couple days ago I had an armload full of family stuff and trying to use humor to hint to my husband that I needed him to open the door I said "Open Door" about 4 times.  When he still didn't get the hint I looked at my 2-year-old and said, "wouldn't it be nice if Daddy would open the door for Mommy?" Of course I was making a request.  Yesterday, we were walking up to the back door, my daughter had her favorite rabbit in one hand and her backpack in the other.  She looked at her rabbit and said "wouldn't it be nice if mommy would open the door for Emma?"  This is the way my two-year-old's brain works.  Just a few days ago she got really upset with me for not listening and said, "some people never listen" to get my attention.  She has certainly opened my eyes to my passive aggressive requests.

After our class discussion I started thinking about the signs we see everyday and the perlocutions that could accompany them.    For example, Slippery When Wet might yield the reaction of slowing down on a wet road.  It might yieldt the response, "duh".  I found a few interesting ones.  What are the possible perlocutions for these signs.

In class we have been talking about deictics and I just remembered one instance of spatial deictics, specifically gestural from that silly newlywed show on ABC, "Here Come the Newlyweds".  One wife was talking about asking her husband if "these jeans make her look fat", of course the use of the word these is gestural because it requires the hearer to be in the room to see which jeans she is talking about.  Now, I am sure he probably didn't even look up to see which jeans she was talking about before he replied but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because his response was, "No, it's the fat that makes you look fat".  Brutal, huh???  BUT don't we all ask these questions at one point and not really want to know the answer.

We have all heard the phrase, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" but do you think a kleenex by any other name would still be a kleenex.  In chapter 16 we looked at definite references and the use of proper nouns so how does the proper name of a product become an abbreviated description of a product.  Here are some of proper names (that I could think of) that have been extended to include an entire product and therefore its abbreviated description.  Maybe you can think of more.

Kleenex refers to all facial tissues

Xerox often refers to copiers in general

Legos often refer to children's building blocks that lock together

Coke ofter refers to all soft drinks

Speedo is sometimes used to refer a style of swimming garment

I know there are more...how many can you come up with.

Dr. Myers used a phrase in class the other day when she was talking about someone telling her that her question, "what do people mean by going semantics", that I have just recently realized is used frequently, especially Rachel Ray.  She said the simple words, "I know".  Now when Rachel Ray says it, it is usually after a round of applause after some "brilliant" statement.  At least, that is what I believe she means, "I know, I AM brilliant".  Now Dr. Myers didn't use it exactly the same way.  She said it as, "I know it is a good question."  Think about all the ways you use the words I know and how many different meanings it can communicate.

When my mother is lecturing me "I know" means, I get it now back off.

When my daughter is crying uncontrollably because she has been put in time out for the 100th time in a day, "I know" means,  I told you this would happen.

When I am sharing something completely unbelievably stupid that my coworkers did, with my best friend and she says "That's Crazy", my "I know" means I can't believe it either.

I know, I know language is pretty amazing.

Before class, we realized that the in class written analysis is only worth 10% of our final grade.  Boy, wasn't that a relief to hear.  Makes me feel a little silly for staying up until 2 am preparing for it.  It wasn't that bad after all.   So, I am not saying I aced the exam...in fact, after talking to others I think it might just be that we all did well, just in different ways.  BUT to use metaphor, bordering on a cliche, On the road of Semantics and Pragmatics, today wasn't a mountain to climb...just a little bump in the road.