It was after one too many Hallmark movies in which the bright idea had come to her. She’d gone out, bought a sled that would be big enough for two adults, and brought it back, all under the guise of asking him over to hang out.
After a couple of minutes of convincing, Laura had managed to get him to agree to make the trek to the hill she drove past rather often on her way home, and go down it on a sled. It had seemed like a good idea, and yet as she lay at the bottom of the hill with Matt beside her, and her hair tousled about in the snow beneath her. They’d fallen off after Matt had thought it would be fun to tickle her; resulting in the both of them falling from the toboggan.
“I can’t believe you tickled me, you know how I move when I get tickled, what did you think was going to happen?!” She asked, her tone slightly exasperated as she began to laugh, looking over to see Matt grinning mischievously at her. Shaking her head, Laura picked up a handful of snow in her hand and threw it at him, letting out a loud cry of glee as he began to make his way over to her.
Objective: To connect correctly theory with a real life case. Pennycook vs Chimimanda Adichie.
After watching Chimimanda Adichie's TED talk and trying to connect it with the sixth chapter of Pennycook's (2001) book is remarkably curious how a single perception can define a whole self or an identity.
How identities are constructed has been an interesting topic of social studies as well as in the linguistic field. Cultural Determinism explores the idea of how a certain group shares the same characteristics, this to generalize the condition of these collective in order to facilitate its study. It works in the same a stereotype does.
Adichie perceived a racial group to be the only recognizable in literature when she was young serves as an example of how the greatest economical and political powers of the world can mold realities. As she grew older, she noticed how her case transcended through several cases and people. For example, how she was expected to have an "authentic African" life, meaning to live under war, civil struggles and poverty which wasn't her case, at all. This radical stance is not well accepted since its been said that identities are created and mediated through a dialogue between social conditions, language, among others.
Linguafolio entry # 6
So, this week we studied academic words. Academic words are the ones that are not that frequent on speech nor texts. These words can help a text to be stronger and sound more formal and on a high register. I found 10 words on the second chapter of Pennycook work about CALx that can be considered academic terms, at least for a speaker of english as a foreign language.
To facilitate my understanding of these words, I looked up some songs from familair artists with the words in them so I can remember them easily. :)
The first term is "Deviant" (Adjective used to describe someone/ something that deviates from what is socially acceptable) and the song I found was "Deviant Ingredient" by B52's
The second word is "Dupe" (used to describe someone that is easily tricked or deceived) And the song I found was "Sugar won't work" by Elvis Costello and The Roots << http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpRkr-pqx4Yv >>
"And fly the coop...Far from this tin-pan alley oop, Did you think I was your dupe? I hear such lies and howlers. Words to pull out your molars..."
The third term is "Abstruse" (Difficult to understand or comprehend) and the song I found was "End to the lies" by Jane's addiction. << http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTawffTXUEA >>
"I had never thought that you'd wake, I'm selling my abstruse missing parts"
The fourth word is Bombastic (Pompous and inflated language used in speech) and the song I found was "Bombastic love" by Britney Spears << http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-cOotdqL3k >>
"Know we're gonna get, gonna get get... Bombastic Love, so Fantastic"
The fifth term is "Wield" (To use, control or mange skillfully) and the song I found was "The Grand Conjuration" by Opeth << http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCfNTaS9Uf8>>
"Wield your power. Martyr's price. Stare me down to the ground"
Nicole gave us this task, we had to take a look to this TED Talk by Chimamanda Adichie a Nigerian Novelist. So, at first this wasn’t meant to be a Linguafolio entry, but the subject and how Chimamanda discusses it so passionately made me realize that it needs to be in my blog, it needs to be heard and digested by everyone.
Chimamanda starts her talk by explaining to the audience how her childhood was. How she was able to read and write at a young age. The books she was able to read or that were more easily found in Nigeria were traditional American and British children books. This flashback is introduced by her to establish a direct connection with the way she started to write her stories. She was writing her books according to what the western literature she was reading. Characters with very different racial features from where she was, topics that were not discussed by people in her country, landscapes she wasn’t familiar with, and even products that she didn’t knew.
Later, she was able to find African literature. This produced a shocking change in her as she discovered that people like her could also fit in novels, people like her were able to identify, and people like her could also confirm their existence in books. It was then when Chimamanda realized that there were other stories aside of what she read on her children books.
With this sudden realization came a story with the service boy that was brought to her house. Fide was his name, and he worked in Chimamanda’s house. She questioned why her mom gave away their old clothes and their leftovers to him and his family. The answer was “Fide and his family are very poor”. Then, they went to meet Fide’s house and family. What Chimamanda saw was nothing of what she had pictured in her head after what her mom told her. The socioeconomic condition of Fide and his family was the only side of the story she had, so she had constrained her image to it.
When Chimamanda left her country and went to USA to study, she found herself on the other part of the single story. Her roommate had this image of what being an African was. A girl from a tribe that came from a country of war, of chaos, but what she found was a girl more similar to her that she’d have never imagined. She was not an “Authentic african” to her roomate.
After talking about her life experiences with “the single story” , she introduces the Igbo word “nkali”. It means: “To be greater than another”. With this, Chimamanda says how the “single story” problem is the manifestation of power structures. These structures show how the western world has the power to mold the image, the contemplations, and the stories of the rest of us. How this power turns everyone into a walking stereotype, and not into people with particular, special and different stories.
She ends up saying that it is true that “A single story” is able to turn people into a stereotype, or into break down an identity, but she also says that it has the enough power to repair what the power structures have done to these texts. The message is that every story counts and that if we are able to tell ours and contemplate the others will be able to understand the wholeness of the history.
