LS2LNM

[allthingslinguistic]

I did a talk at the Dictionary.com office when I was in the Bay Area last week, in conversation with Jane Solomon, and we made a recording so we could share it with you. 

One interesting topic we talked about was about the four major stages of English development (Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English). Considering that we’ve been speaking Modern English since around 1700, Jane asked me if we’re due for a new classification of English.

Here’s my response. It’s fairly short, so if anyone wants to transcribe it, that would be fantastic!

[visual-poetry]

»swofehuper« by richard tipping (+)

[via]

[myterus-is-uterus-deactivated20]

men fabricated the idea that they are the default sex to compensate for their biological inferiority and general superfluousness

this is not just the “natural order” this is the language of a patriarchal culture

[rhysiare]

Omg no, you are wrong on so many levels and as a linguist this makes me ache something terrible. In my linguistics class in undergrad, we actually made fun of people who think like you along these lines and for good reason, because you are wholly ignorant and are choosing to spin narratives about things and fields which you know completely nothing about yet pretend you do.

She: This word evolved naturally from Old English from seo/heo which were just words to refer to feminine-female people evolving from Proto-Germanic words meaning ‘that/there’. He as a word evolved from the same ideas but Proto-Germanic words for ‘this/here’. Your idea of “patriarchal language” further falls apart when you compare this part of English to other Germanic languages, of which English is related, the words in German for he and she are “er” and “sie”, completely unrelated. So it is by clear happenstance, not some patriarchal conspiracy that the words “he” and “she” in English have similar form. 

Woman: Oh god this one always gets my goat when people go for this one. Man did not used to mean “male”, man used to mean “humanity/human being”, the old words in Old English for male adult person and female adult person were “werman” and “wifman” respectively, we can see this relation in words like werewolf and wife as being the remnants of the base “wer-” and the base “wif-”. Woman evolved phonologically from the word “wifman” by natural processes where the ‘f’ sound dropped and the ‘i’ became lax. Man dropped its “wer” stem for reasons mostly unknown but I can guarantee have nothing to do with “patriarchy” because phonological change has no basis in that.

Female: Male and Female actually come etymologically from two completely different words. Male comes from Old French “masle” which meant masculine, while Female came from Old French as well “femella” which meant young woman. This is another case, just like he and she, where the words coincidentally ended up looking similar without having any direct correlation in historical linguistic processes to make them as such.

Human: This word etymologically derives from Proto-Indo-European “ghomon” which means earthly being as opposed to heavenly being which would refer to gods. You have some small glimmer of hope here in that the word does eventually branch off into the word for “man” in some languages but this is still too small of a precedent to base any conspiratorial thinking like you are doing off of.

Person: This one offends me the most, simply because I love the fuck out of Etruscan language and your continued ignorance just irks me at this point. Person derives from “persona” from Latin which meant the same meaning, which ultimately derived from “phersu” Etruscan for ‘mask’ as Etruscans would often have theatre performers use masks to give identity to the performers. So never once did “person” have any meaning to do with “son”. So yes, this IS the “natural order” or language.

Please never proselytise your faulty ideology and misandrist thinking within speaking about word origins and morphology again, as unless you actually do fact checking, I will school the everloving hell out of you, stay in your lane.

[obsessedwithlanguages]

thank god for the explanation above

[exce-lsior]

@langsandlit ho come un deja vù. Ma uno di quelli grossi.

[langsandlit]

@myworldoflanguages …. ti prego no… non di nuovo. amen al tipo che ha illuminato le masse tumbleriane 

[madmaudlingoes]

::cracks knuckles::

Okay, rhysiare, you wanna have a battle of linguistics? I’m ready. You mention having an undergraduate linguistics class under your belt and your blog identifies you as a grad student but you don’t say what in. I am also a grad student, with a BS and MA in linguistics and working towards a PhD in it. So now that our credentials are on the table…

1. While you’re right about almost all these word origins, the Proto-Indo-European roots of a word have little or nothing to do with the way a word is analyzed and interpreted synchronically (in the present day) by speakers. When I teach Ling 100 to undergrads, I see plenty of students who are native speakers spontaneously segment “per+son,” “wo+man,” “hu+man,” and “fe+male” exactly as the original image does. If you’re not familiar with the idea of morphological reanalysis, of course, I’m happy to explain it in more depth. If you are, then you should realize that appealing to the history of a word in a discussion about its present usage is fallacious at best, derailing at worst.

2a. But since we are talking about language history–where are you getting the form wermann from? It doesn’t occur in Bosworth-Toller, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, or the University of Toronto’s online corpus. Wer meaning specifically “man” is well-attested in OE, it’s cognate to the Latin root vir (as in “virile”) but all the way back to Old English, mann is attested as having the double meaning of “human being” and “male” human being. Words for “woman” on the other hand, include fǽmne (clearly a Latin loanword, always used with the sense of “damsel, unmarried woman”) and wif (-mann), which, as with modern German Frau, meant both “wife” and “woman”. You’ve also, incidentally, got the OE roots of “he” and “she” wrong–they both descend from the Proto-Germanic demonstrative *hiz/hijo/hit, whereas seo in OED was a definite article.

2b. And even if I were to credit that, somehow, wermann was a valid form–language isn’t a closed system evolving with no relation to the society that uses it. Sociolinguistics 101: language both reflects and constructs the social systems of those who use it. So ask yourself: why is it that mann came to mean both “humans in general” and “male human specifically” while wifmann remained a specifically marked “female human”? Why did the word wif come to mean strictly wife but (wer)mann didn’t comes to mean specifically husband? (Wer could be used as “man/husband” but was last attested in 1300s, according to the OED. “Husband” comes from hus-bonda, “the master of the house,” which has an attested feminine form hus-bonde “the mistress of the house”–where did that word go, and why?) Why are the default words for woman, like wif and fǽmne, defined in terms of a woman’s relationship or lack thereof to a man, but words for men and boys don’t require us to indicate their marital status?

3. Now, back to the synchronic point the art piece was trying to make, and which has been made by our fellow linguists since at least 1973, when Robin Tolmach Lakoff published Language and a Woman’s Place: when the words we actually use in our daily life present a gendered form as the default, it naturally colors our thinking about gender. The words in the graphic may not be the best examples, granted, but they serve a thematic point, which is that our culture too often treats “male” as as a default setting for humans and any other gender as an exception.

4. As for the comment added by @mitosisyourtosis, men have been saying the same or worse about women for a long-ass time. I don’t necessarily agree with the point but I’m gonna defend the fuck out of her right to say it.

I don’t know where you took your undergrad ling class or from whom, but in my classroom we don’t make fun of people for being non-experts in the field. We make fun of prescriptivists who gatekeep language within narrow, arbitrarily defined borders, because those borders almost always exist to reinforce the power of people who already have too much of it.

[dedalvs]

To the extent that we can know anything concrete about the pre-history and medieval history of language, both @rhysiare and @madmaudlingoes have got some things wrong here. Some notes:

What’s-his-face is right about “she” evolving from *seo, and maudlin is right that it meant “the” (at least at that stage it did; before it was a demonstrative. They were all demonstratives before. This is no secret, as pretty much all third person pronouns in all languages derive ultimately from demonstratives). That’s actually what happened: “she” derived from a word for “the” rather than the actual old third person singular feminine pronoun. The reason? The old separate third person masculine and feminine pronouns (*he and *heo/hio in the nominative) were evolving to sound the same, so people couldn’t tell the difference between the two. If you’re thinking to yourself “That’s great! Third person singular gender-neutral pronoun!”, I am too! And then what happened? Evidently it was too ambiguous for people, so they went and made a new feminine pronoun out of the old feminine “the”, *seo. Lame. Probably men feeling too insecure about themselves; wanted to be sure they could distinguish themselves. We could’ve avoided the necessity of using “they” in the singular if we’d just evolved one single third person singular animate pronoun, but nbd. “They” works fine. So, to recap: maud is slightly mixed up about the evolution of “he” and “she”, but rhy’s conclusion is either total speculation, or just plain wrong (or right for the wrong reason, but we’ll get to that in point 3 below).

Let’s just sidestep the whole “Did it mean human in general or masculine man in antiquity” argument and ask a different question: What if women were the linguistic default? It’s not “supposed” to happen if you follow Linguistic Universals, but the great thing about Linguistic Universals is they’re mostly bs. It’s mostly just linguists saying “Well, I haven’t seen x in a language, so I bet a language can NEVER have x!” Whatev. Even though it’s quite common for masculine to be the default, I know of one language where that isn’t the case: Moro. In Moro, you have words like (using IPA) [udʒi] “boy” and [ŋeɾa] “girl” with plurals [lǝdʒi] “boys” and [ɲeɾa] “girls”. As far as we saw, there isn’t a word that means “child” (gender-neutral), so what word is used for a mixed group of boys and girls? That’s right: [ɲeɾa]. Means “girls” or “children”. Same with the words for “man” and woman” vs. “people”. It’s basically the complete opposite of languages like Spanish and French. So! What’s the cultural result of it? Turns out the culture is still patriarchal. Conclusion: There’s a lot of misogyny in the history of humanity. Language didn’t cause it, and language can’t change it. Random stuff like this just happens, and people will fasten onto it because humans love coincidences and puns.

Most importantly, why did anyone bring up either diachrony or synchronic language use? This graphic has nothing to do with that and everything to do with orthography. You know what would totally undo this graphic? If we spelled the feminine words above as follows: shi, womon, femell, humon, persin. Seriously, of those, the ONLY one where the two word pieces are pronounced the same is “female~male”. The rest: [ʃiː] vs. [hiː]; [ˈwʊ.mǝn] vs. [ˈmæːn]; [ˈçu.mǝn] vs. [ˈmæːn]; [ˈpʰɚ.sɨn] vs. [ˈsʌːn]. If we’re talking about modern language use in the way academic linguistics talk about it, we’re talking about speech only, since most ignore the fuck out of orthography. I don’t even know why it came up, since the original graphic is basically the equivalent of “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’” or “When you assume you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’” or Bart on The Simpsons pointing out that “adultery” has the word “adult” in it. It’s a clever visual or audio pun. It doesn’t need to make historical sense to make its point. At the same time, something like this doesn’t say anything important about language qua language: more about orthography and humans finding patterns in things. (Like why has no one talked about the animal in “carpet”—the little pet that apparently lives exclusively in your car?)

Also, when it comes to cultural misogyny as reified in language, these are not the examples to bring up! Please bring up examples from feminine pejoration, which is absolutely a real thing that happens in just about every language on the planet (I’m tempted to say every language, but will hedge for safety). This is the process whereby two words, one masculine and one feminine that are otherwise identical, end up taking on two different meanings. A very simple example will help to illustrate: master vs. mistress. Clearly related (the latter is the feminine version of the former); clearly can be male and female versions of the same thing, and yet in English “mistress” most commonly refers to a woman a man cheats on his spouse with. Can you use “master” to refer to a man a woman cheats on her spouse with? Nope. How about “wench” originally just meaning “girl” and coming to be an insult used exclusively with women? Or the animal terms hound/dog vs. bitch and what’s happened to them? And consider even milder things like prima donna. Why isn’t there an equivalent word deriving from male tenors? These things don’t happen by accident. This is the regular and crosslinguistic result of cultural misogyny. It’s real, it happens everywhere, and it can be undone. But don’t think that changing the language will change the culture. It doesn’t work that way. The language changes because the culture has changed. Language is a reflection of us. If we decide that we as a society want to be different, we will be, and our language will change with us.

Important takeaways here are:

Orthography ≠ language.

Cultural misogyny is widespread and real.

Language reflects culture, it doesn’t shape it.

Oh, and whenever I see this “misandry” noise crop up, let me just say…

[smallwanderer218]

[tumblinguistics]

I love linguistics so much. :)

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

Down with prescriptivism!

[connectchloe-blog]

Why did Myspace fail and is Facebook next?

Myspace was overtaken by Facebook: FBOOK introduced using users real names rather than strange handles such as “chattygurlxo2” etc, this added legitimacy and authentication something which Myspace didn’t have.

Myspace was slow to become mobile friendly - cross platforming is key for user retention.

Myspace wasn’t very visually pleasing because it tried to give too much creatively to it’s users in terms of audio: members could chose a song to automatically start playing when others visited their page and graphics: banners, backgrounds and text. Facebook entered the market with a more simplistic look making it more user friendly therefore easier to navigate around. Interestingly, twitter and Instagram now seem to be more simplistic than Facebook…

Advertising got out of control and also inappropriate for the average users age range. Facebook has a LOT of paid adverts appearing now…

I wonder if Facebook will see a demise similar to the one myspace encountered, with social media advancing is it inevitable that our needs and tastes will change again?

[lisanewmedia]

I think this is a really good point, especially for our generation we’re constantly looking for new things to purchase or new things on the app store. So it questions whether if a new app came out in the same sort of league to Facebook, would we all just suddenly de-activate our accounts? Realistically, I don’t think we will end up changing to another app because I think everyone is so heavily reliant with Facebook now and everything’s already accessible on there. Whereas to create a new account on a new potential app would require us to fill in all our information, upload a load of photos and videos and get adding everyone we know to try compete with Facebooks level.

But I completely agree that myspace wasn’t very visually pleasing because it relied so heavily on the users controlling their own appearance. I suppose that’s an aspect of Facebook that everyone’s profiles are the same, just the content posted is different. That’s an aspect of Facebook I’d never really considered before..

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

This is interesting - I think I was about 16 when my friends and I started to make the switch to Facebook, a lot of my friends started using it mostly because of the games but I remember thinking it looked really dull in comparison.

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

I just wanted to say...

Everyone’s documentaries were so good! Really enjoyed watching them on Thursday! 

[hollymedia2-blog]

Love how we portray a different lifestyle over social media in order to seem more interesting or gain more likes, since why would anyone want to see you doing boring everyday tasks?

[lisanewmedia]

This is such a good point! We only see the side of people’s lives that people want us to see, and I think it’s very easy to forget that we don’t see the other half of their life.

[connectchloe-blog]

Yeah I find it interesting how people use the tools that say Facebook gives us to create their ‘internet life’. Disclosing only the ‘labels’ in their life like job title and hometown. It’s this kind of data thats easy to manipulate as well. 

[jonkalpakiotis-blog]

I really like this post Chloe. We will only ever see the good never the bad, people rarely post boring pics of themselves watching tv, it’s usually something that they feel they want others to see, a special moment in their lives or a fun event.

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

This is one of the reasons why I love the #cripplepunk community. For me, being disabled often feels like the “self” that I portray offline is much more fake than the “self” I portray online within particular communities. The #cripplepunk movement enables me to present myself as I actually feel - I can be as sick and and as undone as I want because, unlike real life, other people in the community aren’t going to judge me for being truthful. As a self proclaimed cripple, society puts me in one of two categories: either I’m inspiration porn or I’m a drain on the country’s resources. I feel like this is kind of relevant because the common perception is that social media is less “real” than “real life”, but sometimes it’s actually the opposite!

[aatayblr-blog]

Do you agree with this?

We’re always being told that our generation are on our phones too much and we can’t function without them. But could it be considered that we’re just making use of the technology that older generations have provided us with?

[jess-a-barnes]

I kind of agree with this yeah, because I do think that people find themselves looking at their phones when they have nothing to do.  But they are also used as a barrier to sort of maintain someone’s positive face, I guess.  By looking at your phone when someone sits next to you on the train is just a way of letting them know that they don’t have to talk to you.  They might not have had any intention of looking at it then.  It’s just sort of the modern day book or newspaper which is easier to carry around.  And because the world is always moving and new things are always happening, people’s phones are where they get a lot of their info in order to keep up with everything.  It’s increasing communication- making it asynchronous, as well as also being a way of avoiding people. 

[connectchloe-blog]

The intertextuality of this photo is great, a photo of a post-it note! Growing up my parents didn’t use mobile phones it was only me and my brothers who did.. so they had no understanding of what it was like to own one and therefore didn’t like us using them much around the house. However, since they both got mobiles its been a different story! It’s now us ‘children’ who can’t seem to hold their attention for long before their phones steal their eyes, dinging away with emails and texts. I think this is very reflective of how older generations will often criticise what they don’t understand, and also how technologically capable the younger generations are! 

[jonkalpakiotis-blog]

Nowadays everything is on our phones, can we be blamed for using something so often that it makes our lives easier. With everything on a single device we are so connected to everything it makes sense to check our phones often. I get told off by my tutor for not checking my emails as often as I should, these are on my phone so surely I should be checking them very often. However photos of dogs doing funny things appeal to me far more aha

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

I agree with Jon - I use my phone for so many practical things and it makes my life so much easier. For example, before our last lecture on Thursday, I had an appointment at a clinic I’d never been to before and I’d lost the letter with the time and the name of my consultant. I needed to find out where the clinic was, the easiest way to get there on public transport without having to walk more than 500m and the phone number of the department so I could ring and find ut what time I needed to be there AND figure out if it was possible to get back to uni in time for my lecture. Apart from the phonecall, all of this took me less than five minutes. I use the technology every single day but I can’t begin to imagine how much more complicated my life would be without it!

[jess-a-barnes]

Crying with laughter: how we learned how to speak emoji

The ‘face with tears of joy’ symbol has been named the word of the year. How did a Japanese teen gimmick end up changing the way we communicate? Plus, a crash course in how to use the aubergine, side eye and sinkhole

I find this interesting that because emojis are such a huge part of online communication, we have to actually learn to speak them.  There are things online that tell you what each emoji stands for- so clearly someone knows.  But as it has been said before, they are very context bound.  But what I found most interesting about this is that the “crying laughing” face was actually named the word of the year last year!!  We’ve used emojis so much and they are being used in certain scenarios more than others which symbolise a word making it word of the year.  If the fact that we haven’t even got a word as word of the year doesn’t say something about how much we interact on social media, I don’t know what does.  And like it says, emojis aren’t used just by “youth culture” anymore; which is probably what boosted it up to the word of the year position.   And it just shows the increase of online interaction on different social media sites!

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

My parents use the most random emojis, it's hilarious. For some reason my dad uses these two together all the time: 🐕👅 ! And I have no idea what it means!

[lauren-gordon-blog]

I was listening to the radio the other day and the topic was video game rage. There were girlfriends calling in telling stories of how their boyfriends had smashed holes in the tables, walls etc because of their anger towards a certain game (note: normally FIFA). Is this “normal” behaviour? Surely playing a virtual world that engulfs your life so much that you smash up your goods is not healthy!?

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

The above is a video that went viral - I think it was originally uploaded in 2007/8 - of a kid playing StepMania. StepMania is of the rythm game genre, commonly known for its addictive nature. My own experience of the genre began last year with the freeware rhythm game Osu! and I can testify that it really is one of the most addictive games ever.

I think one of the features that really sucks the players in is that despite the lack of narrative (which is what I usually consider the feature that makes most games immersive) is the strive for a “perfect” score. The more you play, the better you get, and the game generates a score that places you on an international leaderboard so the competitive element is incredibly prevalent as players strive to increase their rank.

I have a pretty addictive personality when it comes to a lot of things so I’m a bit hyperaware when a current obsession starts to take over my life but these kinds of games can easily suck hours out of your life without you even noticing.

I know I’m repeating myself now, but I reckon it all comes down to validation. These behaviours assign a numerical value - be it rank, score, followers, likes - which we use to quantify our self worth. It’s the numerical value which makes it so addictive and that’s what makes certain people so emotional when it comes to games, I think. If someone has a predisposition for this kind of behaviour, it’s easy for them to feel invalidated when our self worth is threatened, so they lash out. 

Any other gamers relate to this?

[eemmac]

This article argues that emojis could represent individual words. So I thought I’d put you guys to the test, this is my representation of a sentence using emojis, can anyone guess what I’m trying to say?

🙋❌⏰🎊🙋🚗➡️📖📚🔜😩

So do emojis really represent individual words, or are emojis contextually constrained, and dependent on the individuals perception?

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

I love this article! It’s the one I referenced in my second vlog and I think Prof. Evans makes some really innovative points. Emojis are a a language with grammatical organisation and serious expressive power and have inherent communicative value that’s almost like a graphic marker of intonation. 

Check out this video too!

With regards to your three questions however - if we replace “emoji” with “word” and “word” with “concept”…

So do words really represent individual concepts, or are words contextually constrained, and dependent on the individuals perception?

… it’s easier to see how these questions don’t have enduring answers. We can speculate about the nature of language and its ability to transcend solid conceptual references. 

What I think you’re talking about here is the fundamental property of a word that also translates to emojis > polysemy, ‘the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase’. This could possibly be considered a universal property of a word AND an emoji!

It all gets a bit speculative and philosophical. My brain hurts.

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

OOH ALSO

The Semiotic Triangle (Ogden and Richards, 1923) is pretty relevant here! This is the original version published in The Meaning of Meaning:

And this is another version that I think is easier to understand:

Can you see how emojis fit in here?

Semiotics is an absolutely fascinating topic - I think I know what I’m going to write my essay about now!

[eemmac]

This article argues that emojis could represent individual words. So I thought I’d put you guys to the test, this is my representation of a sentence using emojis, can anyone guess what I’m trying to say?

🙋❌⏰🎊🙋🚗➡️📖📚🔜😩

So do emojis really represent individual words, or are emojis contextually constrained, and dependent on the individuals perception?

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

I love this article! It’s the one I referenced in my second vlog and I think Prof. Evans makes some really innovative points. Emojis are a a language with grammatical organisation and serious expressive power and have inherent communicative value that’s almost like a graphic marker of intonation. 

Check out this video too!

With regards to your three questions however - if we replace “emoji” with “word” and “word” with “concept”...

So do words really represent individual concepts, or are words contextually constrained, and dependent on the individuals perception?

... it’s easier to see how these questions don’t have enduring answers. We can speculate about the nature of language and its ability to transcend solid conceptual references. 

What I think you're talking about here is the fundamental property of a word that also translates to emojis > polysemy, ‘the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase’. This could possibly be considered a universal property of a word AND an emoji!

It all gets a bit speculative and philosophical. My brain hurts.

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

This is Kano.

Kano is a computer that young children from the age of 6 are able to build, code and modify themselves. By teaching kids these skills, they are able to hack games like Minecraft and code their own mods.

To me, the most important part of Kano is the way it encourages kids to be active - rather than passive - in the development of technology that has the ability to shape their entire lives. It encourages them to explore limitless possibilies and enchance their problem solving skills creatively. Although they may be most excited about modding their favourite games, these kids are the future of new technology. This is the kind of thing I would have loved as a kid. As a teenager, I would spend hours trawling through Codecademy, but the Kano is a fun and simple way to get kids motivated and excited about learning.

 "Kids these days want to create, not just consume, the world around them”. 

(Shout out to my partner’s incredibly talented nephew at 1:08)

[jonkalpakiotis-blog]

Question of the day 😂

[lauren-gordon-blog]

I think this is why our module is so fascinating! It points out that by definition new media will inevitably become old media. Everything is so fast evolving.

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

This is actually kind of terrifying! If technology continues to advance at an exponential rate, there will probably come a point in our lifetime where we are unable to keep up with it. When I started school at 4 years old, we didn't have computers at school so most of my early exposure to computers took place at home. I remember when my dad bought his first PC and he didn't have a proper desk to put it so it was on the floor in the spare room and I was only allowed to touch it when he was there - I'd get excited when he came from work and had time to spend a few minutes showing me how to use MS paint on Windows 95!

My dad worked all over the world as an electronic engineer and spent most of his time in Tokyo so in the 90s, he witnessed first hand the rapid evolution and availability of technology. When I was 10 years old, Adobe Creative Suite was initially released; he was working in marketing by this point and I remember him sitting down in front of the computer and telling me how important it was that I learnt to use Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator as it would be important to be proficient in industry standard software when I was older. And he was right. Although Adobe CS had come a long way in the 13 years since its initial release, having a funamental understanding of the software has been incredibly helpful to me.

My dad is now in his 50s and although he is doing a good job of keeping up with new technology due to the nature of his job, I can only imagine it will become increasingly difficult as he gets older. As it is with any other skill, the older we get the harder it is to learn new things. 

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

Thought I’d publish the bloopers and outtakes from our documentary so you can have a giggle at our expense. This assignment was difficult and talking in front of a camera on your own is hard enough, let alone with someone else!

There are a lot of expletives so I apologise in advance if it offends you - I swear like a sailor.

[hollymedia2-blog]

I’m not going to lie, I’m a huge fan of the Kardashians and do watch every one of their television series. Even though Kim Kardashian isn’t my favourite out of the famous family, I really respected her response to all the criticism she received for a naked photo she posted on Instagram. At the end of the day, what we post on the Internet and for others to see is our own choice and only we make that choice. Having others criticise it is all well and good, since social networking sites are open to the public, however why should we shame someone for something like this? She’s not hurting anyone posting a photo of herself naked, she’s not implying that people need to look like her, she’s simply posting a photo. I agree she probably posted this for media attention and to gain publicity, and received plenty of that, but it’s hardly offence or discriminating against anyone, so why are people making such a big fuss out of it and shaming her?

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

I completely agree with you. I think the backlash she has received is quite telling of our society - she’s a woman who feels comfortable in her own skin and is happy to share it with others. Why should she feel ashamed and why are people so quick to shame her? I can’t say I’m a huge Kim K fan, especially after a particularly controversial photoshoot with Jean-Paul Goude, but just let her do her thing.

I saw Sharon Osbourne’s response earlier today and I think it’s amazing. I think that too many of us, as women, are exposed to all kind of forms of body shaming and I think if a woman wants to take back some of that pride, she should be allowed to in any way she wants! 

This is the photo Sharon posted on Twitter with the caption:

 @kimkardashian you inspired me! #liberated #thetalk

(I guess this could be considered NSFW so I’ll post under the cut)

Keep reading

[connectchloe-blog]

I agree with you both however, I’m sure Kim has lots of younger followers and it’s not really setting the best example of how to use Instagram for that demographic. Why does a woman need to post a photo like this? She should feel like she has more to offer than her body. Celebs get a lot of criticism about stuff they post online and its important for them to be responsible when they use media. Also, just another viewpoint, I bet feminists are like “why does she have to cover her breasts?” because men can post topless photos but its different if a woman does it because our bodies have been sexualised by the media. 

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

You’re absolutely right, she doesn't “need” to post these kinds of photos, but why should that invalidate her desire to? As a feminist, I'm going to have to disagree with the idea that a woman should require “more to offer than her body” because I think that’s a harmful narrative. It just doesn't sit right with me. If you saying she should “offer more” then it’s implying that her body “offers less”. She is making an important political statement about female physicality and the male gaze: she could have written an overly verbose academic journal full of jargon and references to dead philosophers, just to prove how much she has “to offer”, but she shouldn't have to and she clearly doesn’t need to. 

(Also it’s censored because otherwise Twitter would delete it, but that’s a different story)

[kkrobs-blog]

I just watched this really interesting video on Youtube showing ways to reduce paper in your life - as discussed in our lecture. It is handy to have everything on our devices in one place, I agree, but I can’t resist a lovely notebook and I love the feel of a book in my hands. Is it a good idea to rely so solely on technology? My fear is that we are putting too much trust in something that has the ability to break so easily… 

[samgenoveseblog]

And this is where the cloud comes in! If your device breaks you can get all your documents down from the cloud on another device in seconds. It’s not like people only have one device these days

[jess-a-barnes]

This is very true!  The cloud and google docs have definitely saved me on a number of occasions when my devices broke.  But my issue is that I am really forgetful and I always forget my passwords to things- because I have so many!  So I have to write them all down- I once wrote them all down on my device that broke which of course was no help.  So now I have them written sneakily in many places, one of those is a notepad because I can trust that not to crash

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

This is definitely a concept that Google have made the most of - having one Google account, I can access my calendar and save maps and routes so I not only know where I need to be and when but also how to get there via public transport, all of my documents (Google Docs and Drive), important information like passwords (Google Keep) and keep track of my finances; and to top it off, all of this information is organised 10x more efficiently than if I were to organise it manually! Also, all I need to access all of this is a browser and an internet connection. As someone with multiple medical appointments and engagements every week, this technology is invaluable. I even use it to make sure I take my medications at the right times every day!

HOWEVER.

Have any of you ever heard of the Bullet Journal system? It’s an ‘analogue system for a digital age’ and, for a lot of people, might seem like a step back with regards to organisation technology, but I have tried it (I’m a bit addicted to researching productivity methods) and something about it really worked for me.

The system is based on the idea that actually writing down (with a pen and paper - remember those?) tasks and goals can boost productivity with something they call ‘rapid logging’. I started using the system at the beginning of last year and it’s honestly really good somehow and it’s even proven more popular than some of the leading productivity and task managing apps - but why do you think that could be?

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

As we talked about memes in the lecture today, I thought I’d share some screenshots from my Telegram chat with my dad. He really loves anarchist cat memes.

[hollymedia2-blog]

I’m not going to lie, I’m a huge fan of the Kardashians and do watch every one of their television series. Even though Kim Kardashian isn’t my favourite out of the famous family, I really respected her response to all the criticism she received for a naked photo she posted on Instagram. At the end of the day, what we post on the Internet and for others to see is our own choice and only we make that choice. Having others criticise it is all well and good, since social networking sites are open to the public, however why should we shame someone for something like this? She’s not hurting anyone posting a photo of herself naked, she’s not implying that people need to look like her, she’s simply posting a photo. I agree she probably posted this for media attention and to gain publicity, and received plenty of that, but it’s hardly offence or discriminating against anyone, so why are people making such a big fuss out of it and shaming her?

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

I completely agree with you. I think the backlash she has received is quite telling of our society - she’s a woman who feels comfortable in her own skin and is happy to share it with others. Why should she feel ashamed and why are people so quick to shame her? I can’t say I’m a huge Kim K fan, especially after a particularly controversial photoshoot with Jean-Paul Goude, but just let her do her thing.

I saw Sharon Osbourne’s response earlier today and I think it’s amazing. I think that too many of us, as women, are exposed to all kind of forms of body shaming and I think if a woman wants to take back some of that pride, she should be allowed to in any way she wants! 

This is the photo Sharon posted on Twitter with the caption:

 @kimkardashian you inspired me! #liberated #thetalk

(I guess this could be considered NSFW so I’ll post under the cut)

You go for it, Shazza!