Bestiary

I'd have to agree with everyone else and say that so far, this has been one of the most interesting reads. I really enjoyed searching through the bestiary, and was quite surprised at the accuracy of most descriptions. For the most part, I looked at "beasts", and found the characteristics and attributes given to them to be very true to form, even in modern culture. For example: the dog being very close to man, the rooster being able to tell time and crowing in the morning, the camel not needing water for days at a time - all of these descriptions are almost exactly the same as the ones we would give them today. One that I found to be particularly interesting was the Bee - the way it was described was so detailed, I'm not sure how they would have known some of the things they said about it when the Bestiary was written. The "General Attributes" includes things such as "Bees live in community, choose the most noble among them as king...and make honey". For the most part, we believe this to be true - except there is a Queen Bee instead of a King. It also says that "Bees are afraid of smoke and are excited by noise". As far as I know, one way to get rid of a bee hive is to smoke it out, and I know for sure that too much commotion will definitely get a group of bees going (been stung a couple of times! haha) Like I said, I found this to be one of the most interesting articles so far, I hope that the rest of them stay this way! :)

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Bestiary

What I find interesting is the use of the creatures in popular culture still today, many mystic animals such as the Basilisk or pheonix are still in using in video games, tv and other forms of media

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Bestiary

I agree with everyone by saying that these readings are becoming more interesting and "personalized" as Matt put it. I like that the writing assignments are becoming less specific and we are able to have some choice in what we write about --- this definatly makes the assignments easier to get through.
As for our assignment on the bestiary -- I liked this one the most this far. I was pretty surprised at most of the illustrations and descriptions of the animals listed as some were very accurate for never actually seeing some of them before. Even for the animals or insects listed that were not really described as we see them today --they were not completly flawed. For people who never encountered these animals their illustrations and descriptions were quite unexpected.

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Bestiary

I read through several of the descriptions of animals on the bestiary and I noticed that the ones that were actual animals had similar descriptions with the way they are viewed today. some of the character traits of the animals that the bestiary describes are exactly how these animals are viewed today. the fox is described as being a deceitful and crafty animal that never runs in a straight line. when we look at the fox today we see that it is usually portrayed as being cunning and untrustworthy. there were also several other animals that were close to how we think of them now but i felt the fox was the closest to our view today. even the picture looked like a real fox!

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Bestiary Reading

After reading the Bestiary dictionary and the assignment outline for this week I though to myself "This is something really interesting, something that will actually be fun". It's kind of like when we wrote the paper on the slang term, we could pick something that was of interest to us and something we were sure we knew about. I felt this was interesting because of that very same reason, we could pick a animal or whatever that we would enjoy writing about and submit that. I find assigments and such alot easier when they are not strictly based on readings and discussions we are not absolutely sure about their meanings and content. As I said before I find this class is becoming more personalized to each student and allowing us more freedom on what we write about and discuss.

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Bestiary Dictionairy

I found the Bestiary dictionairy to be really interesting. It was interesting to see how a lot of the descriptions were similar to the way that the animals would be described today. it was also interesting to see how they were different. i also think that the way that we view things today has a lot to do with what we get out of the descriptions. for example, in the definition of the dog it sais that the dogs wounds can be cured by the dog licking them. this can be taken literally back when the dictionary was written, and people may have really believed that if a dog licks its wound it will heal. that is not normally the case, by licking the wound it will not be healed. it will only be cleaned. which will, in the end, help the healing process be faster. but it will not literally audomatically heal the wound. i wonder if people actually read this dictionairy back in midieval times and believed that they were facts.

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Jabberwocky

When doing the writting assignment for jabberwocky, I used the web dictionary for some of the words in the poem. I think it's funny how these words were actually listed in that dictionary even though they are made up. It gave a definition but then it would say something like "made up by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There".
Anyway, I just thought that this was kind of neat and somewhat useful I guess.

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Last Lecture

I dont know if it's just me or not but I am finding the classes to be making more sense lately, especially the last lecture on the reading "Jabberwocky". I'm finding that the material discussed is using more applicable examples and "metphors" (if you will) to everyday material we can better understand. Since we have somewhat moved away from topics like rhetoric and Logic things have started to make more sense to me. It is easier to understand examples that we can relate to personally as opposed to things like Saussure, and linguistic structure. I don't know maybe its just me. If any of you guys would respond I would appreciate it to see if it is just me or not. Thanks.

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Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky is a poem that tells a story about a man who is hunting jabberwockys. It is told in a non-sense manner which I found fairly difficult to understand. The poem uses many words that I have not heard of, some of which I'm sure aren't real words. Once I read the translation I was able to better understand what the poem is about. It actually became a rather interesting poem!

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The Task of the Translator

The Task of the Translator is interesting to me because I think that it is a good example of why a universal language would never work. One language can be translated into a different language but the mode of the language will change due to the different cultural backgrounds of different languages. An example of this found in this article is were it says:

"The words brot and pain intend the same object but the modes of this intention are not the same. It is owing to these modes that the word Brot means something different to a German than the word Pain to a Frenchman" (Benjamin, Walter. "The Task of the Translator" in Illuminations, pp 69 - 82)

I think that if there were only one universal language, it would not be possible to find cultural meaning within it.

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week of november 23rd

i just wanted to say that in our tutorial last week, having students edit our work was interesting because it was getting a perspective that was more similar to my own. and going through the essay with another student also helped because if i missed something then the other student noticed it and added in their own perspective or comments. it really helped in editing the essay.

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Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky when first read seems to make sense - it follows a poetic form, has a rhyme scheme, and is separated into stanzas. The nonsense words sound sensical. The first stanza consists of invented creatures that have unheard of names and they are portrayed by nonsensical behavior. (Examples: "brillig", "slithy", "toves", "gimble", "wabe", "mimsy", "borogoves", "raths" and "outgrabe"). In "Jabberwocky" Carol demonstrates that the use and sense of words depends on the context, and that context doesn't guarantee meaning. Readers want to be familiar with these words because they appeal to the sound of these nonsense words. They also sound familiar because they sound like words that would be from our language. Another aspect that throws us off is the fact that we understand the overall story. It is a familiar story- it ends with a courageous and heroic son that killed the bad ugly monster. This also plays with our minds into wanting to define those nonsense words - forcing our minds to try and make sense of it all. However, we fail because there is no truth to nonsense, demonstrating that context does not guarantee meaning.

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Announcement

Dear Colleagues,

This is the address for General Announcements blog for Cultural Studies 100: http://cust100-notes.blogspot.com/. News and assigments that apply to the whole class will be posted here. In addition, I will post my lecture notes, as they are written. No promises on how understandable they'll be, because they are, after all, merely personal reminders. But if anyone does find them helpful, well, there they are!

MWM

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Jabberwocky

I remember reading Jabberwocky as a kid and thinking it made sense. Maybe when your a kid you use your imagination more to fill in the blanks. Maybe when your a child there are so many word you don't know the meaning to, so you make meaning according to what words it's grouped with. As an adult were more apt to dissect a phrase and look at it word for word instead of as a whole.

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My attempt to making sense of "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously".

Colorless is how I see the green greed.
With these ideas, I can not sleep.
I am furiously conscious.

In order to make sense of "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, other words need to be added to the given sentence. I used the words provided in the original sentence to create a short poem/part of a poem in order for those words to make sense. I kept the same arrangement, keeping the words in order so it would nottake away from the original nonsense sentence.
Althought my version is poetic, it still makes sense of the original words.

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This week's assignment

Hi Katy,

for this weeks assignment you can either (A) Discuss from specific examples how meaning is made or (B) From "Jabberwocky" analyze the relationship of sense to nonsense (you can use one passage).

This is what I have written down...hopefully it helps!

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page 53, elements of nonsense

My understanding of what 'elements of nonsense' are sentences that do not make sense logically but make sense in the format of a sentence. These are the elements of nonsense that I found in Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll on page 53.

- 'twas brillig, and the slithy toves'
-'did gyre and gimble in the wabe'
-'all mimsy were the borogoves-
-'and the mome raths outgrabe'
-'and, as in uffish thought he stood'
-'o frabjous day! callooh! callay!'

those are lines that i found that made absoloutly no sense to me. there were other lines that didnt make very much sense because i didnt know the meaning of certain words (i.e. came whiffling through the tulgey wood) but could make sense of them through guessing what the words meant (came running through the woods).

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page 53, elements of nonsense

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A little help please...

Can someone please remind me what the topics for this weeks assignment are??? I didn't write them down when Sarah told us what they were, thinking I would remember...surprise surprise, I don't!

Thanks :)

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Logic and Rheotric

I was just thinking about arguing points, and I thought about it anyone with logical arguement can be preceived as right. Anyone who is a smoth talker or uses rheotric can make someone belive their right. So i figure the person who can combine both logic and rheotric together would have the best arguement of the three

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Logorrhoea

I agree with everyone that the readings this week were much more interesting and easier to understand, I think it has to do with the fact that they are not as long and drawn out so you're able to grasp the concept and idea of the reading without getting bored.
I was interested in the Logorrhoea reading and how logorrhoea is used. Although it can be defined as a langauge disorder -- I think many of us use it quite frequently. When I think about writing certain essays or writing my resume (for example) I can see myself using logorrhoea to attempt to make myself sound more intelligent or trained. For example instead of saying I was a "babysitter" on a resume I might instead say I was a child care technician. This is complete crap, however, this prolixity may fool some.

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Logorrhoea etc...

I liked this weeks readings. They made more sense and were more direct, which I guess is the point of Logorrhoea. After the other readings the Longorroea article is like a breathe of fresh air. Direct, to-the-point and some common sense, which kinda sheds some light on previous articles. How often do you listen to someone using too many big words to say something so simple and think "they think they sound brilliant but really they sound kinda dumb". I especially liked the example of the Sokal Affair. The "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" article was interesting enough. I thought although the sentence doesn't make sense it does sound poetic and maybe that is because it is grammatically correct. Jobberwocky was fun. I read it as a kid and at the time I'm pretty sure I thought it made sense. I guess that's what having an active imagination will do.

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Logorrhoea

In the Logorrhoea article, I found it interesting that in one context, Logorrhoea is a way of speaking in which a person may use very complicated words that don't add any extra meaning to a sentance for the sake of sounding more intelligent. Then it goes to say that "Logorrhoea is a language disorder present in a variety of psychiatric and neurological disorders" (Wilkipedia article on Logorrhoea). It's just very strange how the same type of speach could be defined as a way of trying to sound more intelligent, but also as laguage disorder present in some types of mental patients who speak that way on an unconscious level.

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Readings 6-10

I also found the readings not as complicating as the ones we have had before. In the Logorrhoea article they mentioned how studies showed that University students that used big words and long sentences in their work proved to be less intelligent authors than the students that did not use big words and long sentences. I liked reading about this because I hate having to write a certain amount to get a certain grade and I think it's cool that in this class Sarah and Michael don't give us writing restrictions. That just reminded me of that.
"Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" reminded me of how how in the lecture last week Michael spoke of this, how you can have a sentence that makes perfect sense but is "bullshit". There are many ways that you can percieve this 'colourless green ideas sleep furiously' sentence even though it is only composed of five simple words. I found the game 'cadavre exquise' very interesting.
I also found the 'etaoin shrdlu' article pretty interesting too. It's cool to learn about how things were 'back in the day' and how keyboards worked.
The little 'jokes' on page 51 by Henny Youngman I also found humerous, it's a relief to have to read a bunch of information on something and then get to read a bunch of jokes.
The Humpty Dumptys explanation was also interesting to read and I actually understood this time how this story related to what we were learning and going over in the course.
That's just my experience with the readings from this week. :)

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This weeks readings

I don't know about you guys but I found this weeks readings alot easier to understand, and I'm not just saying this because Michael said "If you dont understand this stuff by now drop out". lol I found the word usage in these articles was alot more conventional, thus easier for us (or anyone for that matter) to understand. I felt I got alot more out of these articles in terms of course material and only had to read through them once to get the jist of what the author was saying. I especially enjoyed, well...........prefered is more the word, reading "Colorless green ideads sleep furiously" from Wikipedia. I found it interesting to see that in this article it was said that a sentence can be false yet not meaningless at the same time. I can see how they arrived at this conclusion with the sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". Although the sentence is false and makes no sense whatsoever, there is still meaning within it. I think this comes from the idea that although the composition of the words in the sentence are totally bogus, the individual words still make sense in themselves. We all know that green, furiously and sleep are all real words in the english language, yet the way they are put together make no sense at all.

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This weeks readings

I don't know about you guys but I found this weeks readings alot easier to understand, and I'm not just saying this because Michael said "If you dont understand this stuff by now drop out". lol I found the word usage in these articles was alot more conventional, thus easier for us (or anyone for that matter) to understand. I felt I got alot more out of these articles in terms of course material and only had to read through them once to get the jist of what the author was saying. I especially enjoyed, well...........prefered is more the word, reading "Colorless green ideads sleep furiously" from Wikipedia. I found it interesting to see that in this article it was said that a sentence can be false yet not meaningless at the same time. I can see how they arrived at this conclusion with the sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". Although the sentence is false and makes no sense whatsoever, there is still meaning within it. I think this comes from the idea that although the composition of the words in the sentence are totally bogus, the individual words still make sense in themselves. We all know that green, furiously and sleep are all real words in the english language, yet the way they are put together make no sense at all.

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Logorrhoea, Etaoin Shrdlu, and Jabberwocky

Well I'm glad to say that for once I read something from the Cust 100 book and actually didn't have to re-read it to understand it! The logorrhoea article I even found to be interesting because I actually know people who try to talk this way, I'm sure many of you know others who do as well. So what I got from the article is that logorrhoea is a type of speech in which the speaker explains their thoughts by using over complicated words that try to make them seem smarter when really they just sound like they have no idea what their talking about! Like the article said, it's like a verbal diarrhea and is just as unpleasent to hear as it is to understand. Then I read the Etaoin Shrdlu article, which I understood but then couldn't figure out what its meaning is. I mean, I understand how it is connected to non-sense but I don't understand the point in the article. Jabberwocky is exactly what the title says it is. Even with the translation it made little sense but I guess that was the point of it! Anyway I hope I'm alone on this....

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Analytical Language

After reading this article the only thing I really get from it is that he is trying to break language into simple terms and categories. Unfortunatly it also seem a bit more confusing than simple. The article starts with the description of people using different words to describe the same object. ie. moon vs. luna which is a better word? Honestly isn't that the purpose of language that we individualy use our own words to express our feelings and thoughts? I don't know maybe I'm missing the point.

Oh and I was just watching The Colbert Report and he made a reference to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky...it was funny. Anyhow anyone else having difficulty with this article?

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LEAR and NONSENSE (week of Nov 2)

Lear was interested in NONSENSE. He was a writer/artist of the Victorian Period.
Nonsense provided a healthy antidote for Victorian earnestness. Most of his poems and pictures, as seen included in this weeks readings, teasingly plays on words. For example: Fishia Marina, Piggiawiggia are based on nursery humor. One of Lear's most famous poem is The Owl and the Pussy Cat. In that poem is the image of a "Runcible spoon" which is a nonsense word Lear made up. From footnote, “it is a fork with three prongs, two of which are broad, the third curved and sharp-edged”. It comes from runcinate, meaning “an irregular, saw-toothed, with teeth curved toward the base” (OED).

For Lear's work, rational moralizing is replaced with nonsense. As shown in Lear's drawings he takes realistic objects and creates nonsense. The odd thing is, nonsense makes some sense because we understand the familar even though it is placed into a new and unordinary context. Lear's drawings are rather peculiar, however reason is still present as noted in the title of the image.

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LOGIC & RHETORIC

I would agree that logic is natural because logic provides a direction for reasoning. Logic is the way people ought to reason. How people actually reason is not natural, rather it is an application learned. Rhetoric is an application of logic. Rhetoric is the “art or technique of persuasion” (Wikipedia, Rhetoric) used to express and clarify logic. Since rhetoric is concerned with persuasive arguments, in some sense, rhetoric is contrasted with logic. Although logic and rhetoric do go hand in hand since logic is the science of reasoning and rhetoric is the technique of persuasion. Rhetoric can be used to express logical views and persuade others into believing in their truth.

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the analytical language of john wilkins

I'd like to first start off by saying that I completely agree with the rest of you guys that this article was VERY confusing. It starts off out of no where talking about how Wilkins likes all these random things (i.e. music, building beehives) and that threw me off rite away. And then all of a sudden its talking about how the Royal Academy edits dictionairies spanish words? Then there are the pictures of the the plant/animal things. Which I found humerous. "Nonsense Botany 1871", it all sounds like nonsense to me.

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Well as far as this weeks blog goes I did one last week for the readings that were assigned so I guess I don't have to do one again, however I do have a question. Does anyone have a clue as to what those pictures were about? I mean is it just me or is some of this stuff in the readings going right over my head? I wonder if any of you other guys (and girls) are having a similar problem or something close to it anyway. I mean I do the readings (sometimes 2 or 3 times) and there are still aspects of them which I completly have no idea about. I don't know just a thought any response would be great, thanks.

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I wiki

Your totally right john, wikipediia is totally based on others input. So we really can't know for sure if it is accurate. However, Wikipedia is a reputable website, so I'm sure there is a main editor or something of the sort which is responsible for filtering out all of the false information.

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Analytical Language

So, I'm posting this blog after my 2nd read through of the article and I'm still confused! Like a couple of other people in the class, I was doing fine with the 40 categories,the subdiving,the monosyllables, etc. etc. For the first few paragraphs I was actually thinking that it was all a pretty cool concept, to have one universal language...then, somewhere around the end of the 4th paragraph, it just got confusing! What was all that stuff about "beauty belongs to the sixteenth category; it is a living brood fish, an oblong one" ??? I guess the "16th category" is referring to one of the 40 categories he has divided the universe into, but "a living brood fish, an oblong one"...what the heck!? If the main idea of the article is showing how Wilkins came up with a universal language, then I've got it, but if it's anything more than that, I am beyond lost. And can someone PLEASE explain the point of those weirdo recipes!? I felt like I was on some bad drug while I was reading them! Any input would help a lot :)

Thanks!

Katy

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