Michael A’s blog

So, as in my previous post I mentioned that I have been thinking about awkward silence during conversations. I was wondering what exactly causes these awkward pauses during our conversations. My theory is that it is one of two things:

1. There is an error in communication of the transition relevance place. This means that there is a misunderstanding of who's turn it is to talk. Perhaps the speaker did not get the point across and the hearer is waiting for more information to be relayed, thus, making the entire conversation irrelevant and uncomfortable.

2. There is a element of inappropiateness within the context of the speaker's utterance. Our converstaions (her in the U.S.) have been shaped by what we call social norms. In other words, society trains us to socially operate within a certian appropriateness and when this boundary is breached, we are unable to normally function while outside the area that contains these social norms.

After reading the article about Japanese conversation, I have noticed the role that silence plays in my conversations. Instead of being comfortable and "cool" with it, I tend to freak out and go directly into awkward mode. I will end up saying things that don't make sense or things that are cmpletely random. Perhaps the most damaging is when I attempt to be funny to fill the awkward silence and fail miserably. This proves to me that if there are any backchannels during these awkward conversations, they are not positive ones. Americans are simply not comfortable with silence in a conversational/social setting.

As a tennis fan, I love trying out and owning the finest tennis equipment. Not only does it play well, but it looks nice too. Whenever you see someone approaching centre court with only the finest gear around, there is a sense of intimidation that comes along with it.

As was walking out onto the court to play, I whipped out my new Slazenger XCEL 100 raquet and asked my aponent, "you like my new raquet?" He abruptley replied, "It's yellow." Now, I know that he literally commented on the color of my raquet, but his response implicated that he thought that it was the most disgustiong raquet he had ever seen.

As we are studying implicatures in linguistics, I couldn't help but notice one of the most common ones in existence. The question "are you gonna eat that?" is my favorite implicature.

We have that one friend who likes to eat off of everyone else's plate. He/she might ask if they can have your food or they might just take it, however, my favorite is when they ask me if I'm going to eat my food. While the semantics of their words inquire as to if I am going to consume some food item, in reality they could care less what I am going to do with it... Their question implicates if they can have it or not.

You wouldn't have been able to tell by looking at me, but I enjoyed yesterday's class on locutionaries, illocutionaries, and perlocutionaries. The one thing that interested me the most was the fact that some verbs (performing verbs) can actually complete actions just by themselves. For example, if one was to utter, "I promise you x," then that utterance has created and completed the act of promising x (whether or not the utterer chose to follow through on the promise).

Contrary to performing verbs, there are also non-performing verbs. These verbs are ones that do not accomplish anything simply by utterance. For example, the verb "to know" is a non-perfoprming verb. If I was to say.. I know everything about Einstein's theory of relativity, the actual utterance does nothing to help me know about Einstein's theory.

For one of my enteries, my mission was to find a verb that can be classified as, both, a performing verb, and an non-performing verb as well (depending on context and circumstance). This verb would be able to accomplish an act by utterance or perhaps be used as any other verb in any other ordinary utterance.

I'm sorry to inform you... but I have failed. I will continue my search for such a verb, but my expectations are not set very high. I will keep you updated.

During our study of deixis and locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts, I have been looking for examples of these in everyday life. The other day, I was somewhat perplexed by one thing that I did see.. perhaps you (the reader) can help me out.

Not three days ago at a red-light on Man o' War Blvd, there was a trucker who got out of his truck, with a crowbar, and began to approach the car behind him. Although I could not hear any words, I wondered what sort of linguistic phenomenon is this? I immediately thought of gestural deixis. The trucker was obviously upset about something and, perhaps, the crowbar was a gesture of just how upset he was.

I am perplexed by what I saw... if anyone has any information of what kind of linguistic communication this is, please let me know.

I have become incresingly interested in the study of grammatical semantics. We all know that grammatical semantics, unlike lexical semantics, deal with appropriateness rather than meaning; however, during yesterday's in-class written analysis, something caught my eye. Although I do not remember which question it was, the verb "to get" was used in three different contexts and had btained three different meanings.

As I was pondering this issue (which might sound weird to you) I was amazed that english speakers could attribute so many different meanings to one word. Off of the top of my head, I can think of about 10 different meanings for this verb-- and I'm sure there's more. Is there a certain name that we can give to a verb like this? Perhaps we should call it a super verb?

During our Linguistics class (which might be the highlight of my semester) we have studied semantics. We have all heard people use words that weren't quite appropriate in certain situations, but due to our knowledge of lexemes and meanings we were able to figure out what they meant. I have a question though... what if the word used to describe a noun or an action isn't a word at all? Let me explain..

Growing up in a southern environment, you don't necessarily get proper education of the utilization of language nor proper pronunciations for that matter. For example, when my mother (whom I love to death!!!) needs to borrow something.. she doesn't ask to borrow it, but she asks to "bory" it. Now, given my extensive education in language arts, I know perfectly well that there is no such word (or that would at least make sense in this context) as "bory," however, given my knowledge of southern pronunciations, I know perfectly well what question she is trying to communicate. My question is... would you consider this a case of semantics, or some other unknown (to me) phenomenon?

On Tuesday February 19th, I left LIN 318 class somewhat confused and curious. So I set out on an adventure to see if I could find the answer to my riddle and break the obsession circling within my mind (totally joking). Why would one consider classifying the expression "The man is a woman" as paradox rather than incongruity? "This doesn't make sense," I uttered to myself. "And how can it be easily changed?", I uttered once more. Then at last!!!! Like a light going off in my brain, the answer was as clear to me as the win column of the Notre Dame football team...

In order to test to see if this expression is indeed a paradox, I would have to be able to easily fix the phrase (make sense out of it) simply by pulling its superordinate term. Now.. what word is logically superordinate to both males and females that would make this expression flawless??? The Answer: Humans. Both males and females (assuming that they are human beings) will fall under this category. If I use this term to replace "woman" then I have a perfect expression... The man is (indeed) a human.

Thank you!

   As part of my major, I often have to write essays in Spanish that meet a certain word requirement... no big deal, right? WRONG!!! I tend to believe that I am somewhat a good speaker/writer in Spanish, however, I do not have quite as good a comand of it as I do in English. For instance, I can think of about 27 different ways to someone that I need to go to bed in english, but maybe 2 or 3 in Spanish. This truth tears a whole in my hope of being able to write a quick and well-written essay and only leaves me with slow painful ones... but I have discovered a way to beat the system.

  In spanish, there are indicators and there are verbs. In order for a(n) sentence/uttterance/statement to be correct, the verb must be properly conjugated to match the indicator. For example, the phrase "Yo me acuesto" means "I go to bed (literally; I put myself to bed). In this case, "Yo"is the indicator for "I" and the verb "Acostarse" is conjugated appropriately. As you begin to get more familiar with the language, the indicator is needed less and less as it is included within the verb conjugation, however, by keeping the indicator before all of the verbs that I use, I am easily able to produce more than enough words for the grade. For the native Spanish speaker, this is quite redundant, however, it fits the requirements.

Sorry that this entry stinks... I couldn't think of anything else to write, lol.