Blog du Culture and Language
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Eng 126
The personal and social interests and the environment of a group of people living together ( a culture) create a working language. This working language is malleable and quickly reflects new words, pronunciation, accenting and phrases to adequately describe (or not) new experiences, attitudes and experiences as suggested by Kirk Johnson?s short essay ?Today?s Kids Are, Like, Killing the English language,. Yeah, right.?(p 689). Ironically, the language may also keep out-dated words and their connotation, which is brought to light in ?The Quare Gene? by Tony Early (p 684). Language is a direct response to shared beliefs, customs, behavior, attitudes and survival techniques, and as such is a function of the culture. The culture shapes language -- it has to, because culture comes first.
Many academic professionals believe that the relationship between language and culture is the other way around. They feel that the language itself defines the culture. This is demonstrated by the archeological approach. In ?Reconstructing the Lost Tribe? (p 42) WLTC textbook, the author/editors ask us to describe an unknown, historic culture merely from a sampling of some findings about their language and the words themselves. With this approach it is easy to assume that language created the culture but this is not really the case as the culture itself created and used the language to verbally define and express what they knew and cared about.
The process is continual, much to the delight of humans who love to create new words and connotations to describe new information and new histories. For those of us who feel we cannot keep up with the constant changes and updates, there are plenty of books written by great authors like Honore de Balzac and of course William Shakespeare to keep us happy with the old and familiar. . . or is it?

Blog du Voice of the Writer/Reader
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Eng 126

I?m thinking of taking a vacation this coming summer. It?s going to be the best vacation ever. I will fly on a plane. I will ride animals. I will sweat a lot but stay perfectly comfy
in the water. I will get lots of exercise and fall asleep instantly with exhaustion and a happy smile on my face.

You may never know exactly what this perfect 10 vacation is but you, as the reader, may have had many images come to mind as you read the above. Notice the lack of details, but . . . perhaps, your inner voice and imagination created the details. Maybe you lexia-d in your own amazing mind and pulled in images and ideas of where YOUR perfect vacation is and what you would do simultaneously while trying to figure out what mine is. All in a 9 second read.

The distinction between the voice of the writer and reader can be quite immense. The writer supplies the verbs and nouns and the reader supplies the rounding out of the full contents of each noun and verb context. The writer can manipulate this difference and use it as a writing tool. There can be a delicate balance: too little information and the reader is uninterested and stops reading; too much information and the reader is bogged down in minute detail that can stop her own creative reading voice.

In Thomas Lux?s poem ?the Voice You Hear When You Read Silently,? (p. 658) he delightfully expresses this difference by his use of the word barn and says ? . . . the voice in your head, speaking as you read, never says anything neutrally -- some people hated the barn they knew, some people love the barn they know. . .?