Vocables

We have talked about presenting oneself in different ways depending on which language one is using. Here is an interesting variation:

In my world music class we talked about the use of vocables in some Native American music, which are basically just sounds that don't have meaning like words do. At powwows, many different tribes gather together and sing songs that use vocables instead of words because the different tribes do not share a common language. In this sense, the vocables are used to unite the tribes at one event.

I just thought this was noteworthy because it shows a sort-of-linguistic view of expression and unity (only without actual words...)

Some questions/thoughts

Why does writer's block happen?

What are the various factors that allow us to remember some things much more easily than others? (Ex, why do we tend to use certain words more frequently than other synonyms?)

Do babies understand what their first word means?

How did words without a real definition originate? Ex: the, a, an, there

How come some words for meat are the same as the animal, but others aren't? For example, why is the meat from a chicken called "chicken" and the meat from a fish called "fish," but meat from a cow is "beef" and meat from a pig is "pork?"

Why we have to go and make things so complicated?

A coworker brought in a picture of her young grandchildren surrounded by toys in the living room. As she showed me the photo, she pointed to one of the toys and said "What do you think that is?" I said, "It looks like some kind of Frisbee."

"That's what everyone has been saying," she said.

After I suggested that it was a Frisbee, she told me that when she had asked her granddaughter what it was, she simply said "An orange circle."


This story shows how two people can look at the same thing, but think about it differently based on one's past experiences and acquired vocabularies. I just thought this was interesting because it shows that sometimes larger vocabularies lead us to complicate or overlook a very simple description for a simple item.

Back to technology

Today my friend showed me his new phone. By doing this, he gave me another example of developing communication technologies. We touched upon this certain technology in class but only with the notion that it hasn't really taken off yet. We might be wrong soon...

...because...

...my friend's phone has voice-recognition abilities. He can speak to the phone: "call Stephanie," and it will proceed to call me without my friend ever having to touch a button.

Maybe a lot of phones can do this but I've never seen it before, so I thought this would be an interesting occurrence to point out.

Maybe this is one step closer to Kurzweil's prediction that much of future communication will be human-to-machine (not quite there yet, since telling the phone to call me is just a step before actually talking to me, a non-machine)




* A special thanks to Dan for making this post possible

Songs

I'll admit I had some trouble with the song/emotion assignment. I was thinking of songs that make me feel a certain way, but I wasn't sure how to explain why those songs brought up those emotions. This is because I don't often pay attention to lyrics...a lot of the time it's how the song sounds that elicits emotion for me. Since I knew people in class would be listening to lyrics, my explanations might not have made any sense and it would have been weird.

For example, I heard a song that reminded me of my boyfriend just because of how it sounded (well it makes sense to me). One day in the car I started playing the song and told him that it made me think of him. So we started listening to the song intently, and this was the first time I actually paid attention to the lyrics, which as it turned out included lines such as "I don't really like you" and "On the cold wet dirt I cry." Oops.

Fortunately, he knows that I don't tend to listen to song lyrics and thought this was really funny.

So, I guess the moral of this story is that if you ignore the "language" part of "language and self," you pave the way for some potential misunderstanding. "Language" and "self" truly go together, and genuine self-expression is not complete without a full recognition of both elements.

Citation for my last post...

Wadman, Ruth, Kevin Durkin, and Gina Conti-Ramsden. 2008. Self-esteem, shyness, and sociability in adolescents with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 51: 938-952.

Language and Self-Esteem

For today (Monday), I read an article about how Specific Language Impairment (SLI) can effect individuals' self-esteem. I thought this was an important topic to investigate while we were on the section about Language and Self, because it's a reminder about how the ability to effectively express ourselves impacts how we really perceive ourselves.

The authors used the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale to assess self-esteem ratings of 16-17 year-olds with SLI and compared their results to those of their peers with typical language ability. They found that "the SLI participants had lower self-esteem than peers but these scores were within the expected range (ie, not abnormally low)" (947).

It was important to note that there is no clear arrow of causality in this study. The authors suggest that SLI is a good predictor of shyness, which in turn leads to lower self-esteem. The SLI participants showed high levels of sociability, but tended to exhibit shyness nonetheless. This highlights a notion that Goffman touched upon, that the way others perceive an individual is important in influencing how the individual perceives him or herself.

The authors state that "Having positive regard for the self is favorable for general well-being and may protect adolescents with SLI from long-term negative outcomes, such as mental health problems and loneliness" (949). I thought this was a significant article overall because it emphasizes the importance of langauage in relation to self-image.