And it all comes to an end..

After 8 faithful posts after each class, now comes the very last one to summarise everything.


In general, the module has been an eye-opener to me.


We think that communication comes naturally in our daily life, but we are unaware of the many different underlying aspects of communication.

Only when we understand these basics of communication in different settings, with different people of various background, and through different medium, we can consciously make the effort to present ourselves most appropriately.


In doing the project, I have found out that the planning stage is very important.
A good design is a must to ensure that the project can be carried out smoothly from the research all the way to the written report.

Even though the project is focused on a single topic, there are always possibilities to analyse the data from various points of view to give a more complete perspective on the subject.


All in all, this module is up to my initial expectation: interesting and worth my 800 bidding points for it.


When it all comes to an end: BYE.

It's a men's talk. Well, and women's, too.

Ok, this post is gonna be a mix of some stuff.



In Bahasa Indonesia, now it's dawned on me, there're much more words refering to female, girl, woman, and the likes compared to those to the opposite sex; there are perempuan, wanita, gadis, dara, betina, etc. Male or man is usually translated to jantan, lelaki, or laki-laki.

There are some denigrating adjectives and nouns which most of the time go with those words connected with female. For example: perempuan jalang/binal (lewd woman), setan betina (female evil), janda kembang (literally flower widow, usually used to describe young, attractive widow; there's no duda kembang or flower widower). Even gadis and dara can be used to mean virgin, only applicable to females.

Another thing is, the equivalent of Mrs in Bahasa Indonesia is Nyonya, while Miss is Nona. While it's getting rare to hear people use Nyonya, Nona is almost unheard of. Most of the time, when a lady still looks quite young, usually she's called Mbak (sister), followed by her first name. An older lady's called Ibu (literally mother, but it's a polite way of addressing older women) followed by, again, her first name. Maybe it's because of the Indonesian way of addressing people by their first names rather than family names which are required after Nyonya and Nona.



Move on to French.

When I started learning French, I thought it was one of a sexist language; every noun's either masculine or feminine. Masculine nouns are indicated by the use of le in front, and feminine la. The worst thing's that there's no logic in assigning the gender. Le soutien-gorge is masculine and means bra, la guerre is feminine and means war. According to my teacher, the nouns were given their current genders based on how well they sounded with either le or la.

Speaking of Mrs and Miss, Mrs is Madame and Miss Mademoiselle in French. There are now more and more people (especially women) in France who demand for a new title for women which doesn't reveal their marital status, the equivalent of Ms. It is, according to them, to prevent discrimation against women which might arise from their marital status. By the way, like in English, men only has one title: Monsieur.



Now let's talk about English and Singapore.

In my secondary school, when talking to teachers, we use Sir for male teachers and Madam for female teachers; so there's no "Good morning, Miss Tan", instead it's "Good morning, Madam". Married or unmarried.
But we still refer to them using Mr, Mrs, or Miss/Ms; so it's still "Hey, Jon, have you handed in your homework to Miss Tan?" instead of "Hey, Jon, have you handed in your homework to Madam Tan?"

Some people say the use of Sir and particularly Madam when speaking to teachers is very old-school British. But, it's kind of the school's tradition. I'm not sure if there are many other schools like us.

But this is private, between you and I

The inclusivity or exclusivity of CMC tools is very interesting.

As we know, most of CMC tools are Internet-based and people say that it's very hard to maintain privacy in this age of Internet.


Let's take a look at blogs.

I have a friend who used to badmouth strangers and acquaintances in her blog. Sharp. Straightforward. Painful. That's until she had a lot of comments in her blog. Only then she realised that the address of her blog had spread and some of her victims had been reading her entries. Later, she decided to restrict the access to her blog by securing it with a password.


Now, let's take a look at Facebook and Twitter.

You think you can control who you want to be in your circle and to share your (nonsensical) stuff with. Well, yes, you can. You decide whom you want to add as friends in Facebook and who to subscribe to your Twitter. (Am I right? I'm not into Twitter at all.)

But when (unfortunately) your parents are on Facebook and want to be your friends and follow your Twitter? What would you do?

If they do so because they are tech savvy, well, they are cool.
If they do so beacuse they want to monitor you, well, they are smart.

Imagine uploading your clubbing photos with some flesh-baring foreign ladies onto Facebook or tweeting about "Yayy, skipping lecture to grab THAT cute mini skirt with my sweeties!! =))" when your parents can see everything.



I guess we can possibly try to limit our CMC to stay within our desired boundaries. However, when the Internet is involved, this possibility is magnificently threatened. Talk about hackers, worms, identity thieves, and the likes.
Even when we manage to dodge all those, some people whom we rather exclude from selected details of our everyday life (read: parents) might try to intrude the privacy of our CMC meant for friends.

The bottomline is that we can always do our best to protect and maintain the exclusivity of our CMC, but in today's hi-tech world, we'll never know if Big Brother is still watching.

I Give You Face, Not Love

One of my friends claims that boys always say the same thing when breaking up with their girlfriends - "It's me, not you".

When I thought about it, I realised that's an example of the use of the generosity maxim.


I shall now attempt to see how breaking-up lines might go in terms of different maxims:

The tact maxim - "Have some time off to enjoy yourself while we are cooling down."

The generosity maxim - "I'll give you some space to enjoy yourself while we are cooling down."

The approbation maxin - "Dear, we've been through a lot of things together. Why don't we have some time off to cool down and enjoy more of our own personal space?"

The modesty maxim - "How selfish of me. I should have let us have some time to cool down long ago."

The agreement maxim - "You're such a jerk!" "I'm agree with you, dear. All I need now is some time off to get myself back on track."

The sympathy maxim - "I'm really sorry, dear, for what has happened. I think we need some time off now to reflect on everything."


I feel that, yes, different maxims lend different tones to the messages although basically they mean the same thing.

So, know the situation you are in and choose the appropriate maxim to use wisely!

Miscultured

baiser Noun, masculine (a) kiss; donner un ~ à qn to kiss sb, give sb a kiss; "bons baisers, Claire" "love and kisses, Claire" - http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/dictionary/


Yes, most people have probably heard about it: how French people kiss each other on the cheeks.

I had heard about it before leaving for a one-month summer programme in France last year, but hearing about it was just not enough to prepare me for the real thing.

So, during the one-month period, I stayed with a host family who had five (yes, f-i-v-e) sons. One day, when we were having dinner, the 2nd son's girlfriend came over to join us.

She entered the dining room and gave a peck in each cheek to all members of the family, from the dad in his 50s to the youngest kid who was barely 6 years old.
I turned nervous. I knew I'd have to welcome her as well sooner or later, but I was not sure what to do.

It's like I was a total stranger to her.

So I thought I'd just offer her a handshake.

And, ya, when I was about to extend my right hand, her face was already positioned for le baiser. I had no choice, it's their culture. And I realised at that point of time that when the French people did it, they made some smooching noise as well although there's just cheek-to-cheek contact. Quite amusing.

My next le baiser was when I was leaving the house for Singapore. It's the farewell with my host mum and the youngest boy. The older boys, the dad, and I shook hands.

My French teacher here in NUS has told us before that even though the tradition of le baiser could still be found among French men, it's getting obsolete; blame it on the modernising world where affectionate and/or intimate gestures among men are frowned upon.

Written Discourse, Oh, What Art Thou?

Regarding some points from this week's class, I have a few afterthoughts bugging me now.



Firstly, the Arabic writing and its balance.
I find it amusing as well as wonder if when it comes to writing, Arabic-speaking writers consciously put in the coordinators to balance out their sentences. Are they trained since they were young? Do they follow the flow of sentences and just do it? They must have a good sense of writing.

Then here is the essay by the Arabic-speaking student. I think the essay was originally written in English, not a translation from Arabic. In this case, I find it more amusing that the student was still able to keep his/her style of mother-tounge writing (I'm very sorry for the weird expression, I don't know the right term to use) even though he/she was writing in a foreign language.

As we have seen in our "Speech Acts" class, most of us responded to a similar situation differently when using English and Mandarin, and most probably other mother tounges.
However, this student seems to be able to use English to convey and express his/her Arabic ideas very well without being affected by the English norms of writing.
Yes, this includes having the Arabic balance in English sentences.

Is this a case of poor skills in interlanguage variation?



Secondly, I feel that comparing texts A and B is not fair to see how English and Chinese writings differ.
Text A is more like an intellectual, educational, scientific piece of writing similar to those found in journals and other reports.
Text B is more like a beautiful, artsy poem.
Two different pieces of writing with different purposes. I'm very sure they can't adopt the same style of writing.

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/litovitz/poem3.htm
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/litovitz/poem2.htm

I am no literature person. But those two poems were written in English by one poet.
Do their structures differ? Do they follow any particular genetic language types(e.g. circular Oriental or digressive Russian)?

The Calling

I can't exactly recall how or when I answered my 1st phone call.
However, I still remember some "unusual" phone calls which I've been receiving over the years.


*At that time, I had never received any wrong-number calls.

(Caller rang)
Andy: Hello.
Caller: Hello. Can speak to Mr X?
(Andy hang up the phone as there's no Mr X in the family)
(The same caller rang)
Andy: Hello.
Caller: Hello. Can speak to Mr X, please?
(Andy hang up the phone again)

Only after my mum asked why there'd been so many calls, did i tell her that the guy's calling the wrong number. Then she showed me how to "handle" such cases by answering the guy's next and last call attempt.


**I'd say that some of my dad's friends and relatives are quite different when it comes to making phone calls.

(Uncle A rings)
Andy: Hello.
Uncle A: Hello.
(silence)
Andy: Hello?
(ONLY THEN this uncle starts talking)

(Uncle Y rings)
Andy: Hello.
Uncle Y: Hello. Who's speaking?
Andy: Hello?
Uncle Y: Hello?
Andy: Hello?
(basically Andy just waits for Uncle Y to say that he'd like to talk to Daddy though he perfectly knows it)

So, in my case, sometimes I don't use voice recognition to recognise callers. As my siblings and I have been ridiculing those people for their "unique" calling styles since we're kids, we now recognise them from how the phone conversation starts.