Blog 13 & 14: Short Analysis Draft

For my short analysis project I have decided to focus on shaggy dog stories. As someone who thoroughly enjoys all that goes into good storytelling, I found these data sets particularly intriguing. Narrowing in on the storytelling aspect of these stories I decided to focus on one particular aspect of how they are told. Basically, I am curious as to what role the fantastic elements of storytelling play in the experience of shaggy dog stories.

CODING

In order to better look at this question I decided to code the data in a particular way. Essentially, I broke my data into 4 categories that follow basic storytelling structure:

Characters

Circumstances

Confrontation/Conflict

Resolution

From there, I saw a few sub-categories and codes that I could use in analyzing this data. My coding looks something like this:

Characters:

Anthropomorphized animal/object

Human being

Stereotype/Stock character

Circumstances:

Outlandish Circumstances

Mundane Circumstances

Confrontation

Resolution

The characters are broken down in three ways. First, I have the anthropomorphized animals and objects that many shaggy dog stories use. This is the most fantastic of the character categories, as it requires a bit more imagination to picture an animal acting as if it were a human. The second category, "human being," is for human characters that aren't particularly stereotypical or stock characters. That brings us to our final category of character: "stereotype/stock characters." This is for characters who are not basic human beings, but embody all of the stereotypical traits that their profession or archetypal personality might dictate. 

The next category is also broken down into two separate groups. For circumstance I have decided to look at both the outlandish circumstances that these stories might utilize in order to get their point across. I also looked at the more mundane, everyday situations that arise for some of these characters. In breaking this category down I hope to contrast the two and see if the more outlandish and fantastic circumstances aid in the reception of the stories.

Next, I have the general category of confrontation. This is for moments of conflict between characters and is a basic element of storytelling.

Finally, I have the resolution. All of the stories have a resolution, and often that resolution is a pun or a play on words. 

CODED DATA

I only used the first 5 stories discussed in class, opting to narrow my data instead of having to code the additional stories we were given. In addition to the basic codes that I have already listed, I have also listed a "victor" at the end of each story. I was intrigued to see who came out victorious from each story, so I took the extra step to list that after the coded resolution. The data is as follows:

Story 1

There was a snake called Nate. His purpose in life was to stay in the desert and guard the lever. Theis lever was no ordinary lever. It was the lever that if moved would destroy the world. Nate took his job very seriously. He let nothing get close to the lever.

One day off in the distance he saw a cloud of dust. He kept his eye on it because he was guarding the lever. The dust cloud continued to move closer to the lever. Nate saw that it was a huge boulder and it was heading straight for the lever!

Nate thought about what he could do to save the world. He decided if he could get in front of the boulder he could deflect it and it would miss the lever. Nate slithered quickly to intersect the boulder. The boulder ran over Nate, but it was, in fact, deflected, leaving history to conclude that is was better Nate than lever

Victor: Technically, the boulder. Though, Nate saved the world.

Story 2

Some friars wanted to do more for their flock but their vow of poverty, simple lifestyle and lack of gainful employment meant that their supply of available funds was, to say the least, meager. Nevertheless, they put their collective heads together and came up with the idea of opening a small florist shop. They reasoned that they could grow most of the flowers on the church grounds, and what they couldn't grow, they could likely pick from the surrounding countryside.

As you can probably guess, everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God and their little business flourished. So much so that the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close their little shop, but their flower business was providing them with much-needed funds for  their good works and they refused. He went back time and again, finally begging the friars to close. By this time, they had tired of the florist's constant whining and they ignored him. The florist even asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of the flower business, but they ignored her, too.

By this time, the florist was nearly backrupt and in desperation hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to "persuade" the good friars to close. Being a man of few morals and even fewer religious convictions, Hugh had no ethical problems with his assigned task and promptly gave the friars a thorough beating and trashed their store. He departed with a stern warning that he’d be back if they didn’t close the shop. Terrified, the friars did so immediately, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

VICTOR: Hugh and the Florist

Story 3

A giant panda escaped from the zoo in New York. Eventually, he found his way downtown and walked into a restaurant, where he found a seat at an empty table. The maitre d', being a native New Yorker figures he's seen stranger things than this so he sends over a waiter to take the panda's order. In due course the panda's meal arrives and he eats.

After he finishes his dinner he stands up, calmly pulls out a gun from God-knows-where he had it hidden, and blows away several customers and a couple of the waiters. Then he turns around and walks toward the door.

Naturally, the maitre d' is horrified. He stops the panda and demands an explanation, at the very least.

The panda says to him, "What do I look like to you"?

The maitre d' answers, "Well, a giant panda, of course."

"That's right," says the panda, "Look it up," and he walks out.

The maitre d' calls the police. When they arrive the maitre d' relates the whole story to them, including the panda's comment about looking it up. So the chief detective sends a rookie out to get an encyclopedia.

He eventually returns with the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Volume P. The detective looks up "panda", and there's the answer: "Giant panda, lives in China, eats shoots and leaves."

Victor: The panda

Story 4

Robinson Crusoe fell desperately ill. Just before dropping into a coma, he called for his man Friday to help him. "Friday, get help! Get help!"

"Yes!" Friday replied, "Get help now!" Not knowing what else to do, he went outside of Crusoe's tent and danced and prayed for the gods to come and help his master.

Shortly afterwards, he went back into Crusoe's tent and found his master awake and staring at a beautiful glowing shape at the foot of his bed.

"Who is that?" Robinson Crusoe asked.

His helper answered, "Thank Friday! It's God!"

Victor: Unknown. Conflict is absent here.

All the top chess players show up at a hotel for an important international tournament. They spend the first hour hanging around the lobby telling each other of their recent victories. Their crows get progressively louder and louder as each one tries to outdo the others.

The hotel manager gets tired of this, so he throws them out of the lobby and tells them to go to their rooms. "If there's one thing I can't stand," he says, "it's chess nuts boasting by an open foyer."

Victor: Manager of hotel. 

ADDITIONAL DATA

Outside of the basic data of the stories themselves, I also decided to look at the results the classes had about how funny the believed the stories to be. While I am not particularly looking for the humor of the stories, this data still aids in knowing how people received the stories. The data, taken from Dr. Chandler's blog, is as follows:

nate       1/1/3/1/-     
             1/4/4/4/1

friars      1/3/1/1/-  
            1/1/6/2/4

panda    2/-/1/2/-
            7/4/-/1/2

Friday   -/-/-/2/4
            5/3/-/2/4

chess    1/-/1/2/2
             -/2/4/5/3/ 

By looking at this data set we can see that the majority of individuals who read the stories found the Panda one the most interesting, with the Friars and Nate stories coming in the middle. The least-enjoyed stories were the Friday and Chess stories. 

RESULTS

Examining the codes gives a clue as to why this is. The panda story, arguably the favorite by far, is the story that uses the most fantastic elements. From an anthropomorphized character getting involved in an outlandish situation and ending up in a conflict with a stock character, this story has it all. 

The friary story actually has very few imaginative or fantastic elements to it. In fact, it is actually quite similar to the chess story. It involves regular people getting into a conflict and having that conflict resolved. The major difference between the two is the length of the conflict. The friar story tells us more, we know more about the friars and the florist and their rivalry. The chess story leaves out almost everything except for the necessities. It can be surmised, from this data, that the length of an "ordinary" story helps us appreciate the resolution/play of words more. 

The Friday story is the least intriguing in many ways. There are no fantastic characters, merely two stock characters that the audience must previously be familiar with in some capacity. The situation is also rather mundane. The entire story, which is not long, lacks conflict and the pay-off is minimal. This helps us to show that the stories can lack fantastic elements, as long as some conflict is apparent, and still amuse readers. 

Overall, it can be assess from this data that fantastic elements of storytelling are useful in an audience's experience of them, but they are not the only important factor. Length and conflict are also incredibly important, and further studies might examine these aspects in order to get a better understanding of what makes shaggy dog stories work. 

Blog 12: Short Analysis Plan

For my short analysis project I am interested in taking a look at Shaggy Dog Stories. Specifically, I want to center around the use of language in the stories. The research question that I settled on after being given time last week to work on it in class was as follows:

"What role does imaginative language play in the telling of Shaggy Dog Stories?"

I feel that this question provides me with a wealth of data for my short analysis project. First, there is no shortage of imagination being used in any of the stories that we read in class/for homework. I plan on examining the more fantastic elements (a panda in a restaurant, a piece of string that can maneuver its way to a bar stool, etc) and see how the language used to present these ideas manipulates our conventional ways of thought.

I believe that the more imaginative the story, the more humorous the payoff. I don't plan on making that my focus, per se, but I do think that the most popular stories in class will have higher levels of imaginative language involved. Off the top of my head I can say that some of the least popular stories did little to engage our imaginations (the story about chess players comes to mind). As a fan of the silly and absurd I think that this kind of research is right up my alley, and I think it could bring many elements of shaggy dog stories to light in the process.

I don't think I will have any trouble mustering up 1000 words for this project. I believe that there will be so much data to work with, and so many conclusions that can be drawn from said data, that I will want to exceed the limit. Of course, for the sake of my own sanity as well as for Dr. Chandler's, I will not go beyond the limit. That, itself, would be ridiculous.

Blog 11: Gee!

Reading the first four chapters of Gee's book has proven to be an interesting endeavor. I find language very interesting, so his approaches to explaining the "use" of language (outside of standard communication practices) is intriguing.

What I enjoyed the most in the opening chapter was his statement under the LANGUAGE AND PRACTICES section. Specifically the line: "One of the best ways to see something that we have come to take too much for granted (like language) is to look at an example of it that makes it strange again." It reminds me of the age old idiom "everything old is new again." By taking something that we don't usually give second thought (in this case, language) and applying it to something new (like his example of the card game/anime/manga Yu-Gi-Oh!) we are able to observe language from a new perspective.

The words on the cards in Gee's example are, as he says, all words that native English speakers are familiarized with. However, by simply reading one of the cards most people (specifically those unfamiliar with the game) would not be able to understand what the card was saying. I enjoy the fact that Gee is focusing on context here. Context is one of my favorite areas of language studies. By taking things out of context we can often get confusing, humorous or incorrect responses. By placing thoughts/words/etc IN the proper context we are more likely to figure out what is trying to be communicated through language.

The vernacular vs. specialized language explanation was also quite interesting. Had I decided to stick with my original research topic of "how social media is affecting the way we write and communicate" I would probably use a lot of this information. "Vernacular speak" is very prominent in social media, and it is causing a lot of confusion (and, often, anger) for people who are more "specialized" writers. That, however, is a conversation for another blog/research paper/lifetime.

I also find interesting, in Chapter 2, when Gee breaks down the 7 "building tasks" of language. #3 stands out the most, which is about identification. "Labeling" as it is generally known in everyday life, is an awkward issue that is doing more harm than good in recent days. Over over-obsession with words and needing names for everything and everyone is causing us to live within the confines of the words that we identify with. This, actually, may be an interesting area to explore for those in the class who are focusing on groups that deal with labeling and false labeling on a daily basis (such as Jaylecia's research project on gay people, Arlene's project on teachers and Christine's research on women).



There is a lot more that I could say about Gee's writing, but it was a lot to digest and I, unfortunately, don't have enough time to dedicate to it. I look forward to our class discussion about the reading, and am curious to see what my classmates found interesting about these chapters.

Blog 10: Research!

I originally had intended to do my research project on how the age of social media is changing the evolution of language.

After meeting with Dr Chandler about this, a whole new world was opened up to me in regards to what I could do.

During our meeting we discussed several possible areas about how language is evolving in the age of the internet, and some books we recommended to me. During some idle conversation, I made mention to the fact that I do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) content writing in order to supplement my income. Soon, we were bouncing ideas around and seeing if this, in fact, was where my research topic proposal lay hidden.

Dr Chandler did a quick look on the web for articles surrounding SEO and content writing in general, and there are very few (if any) out there. The closest are articles written by Tim Wu, whom I have yet to read due to time constraints of my week.

After going over my notes from the meeting, and thinking long and hard about the topic itself, I've settled on a general question:

"Do SEO techniques bring forth questions of ethics in the way it utilizes language as a distraction? Should these processes be regulated?"

I'm still working on the exact phrasing, but it will be something along those lines.

I've already begun brainstorming over how I will go about my research. My goal is to have at least three in-depth interviews with individuals who I feel represent various aspects of the general public (business owners, parents, professors, etc) who use Google (or other search engines) often. Next, I would like to broaden my study's base by having people (students, mostly) fill out a questionnaire on whether or not they find SEO ethical.

I have a million ideas for this bouncing around, and am eager to see where it will take me.

Blog 9: Groupthink

During our last class (10/02), we broke into groups to discuss the comments that appeared in sample 1 and sample 2 on our class blog.

Our group consisted of Tempie, Antoinette, Stephane and myself.  

The first thing we, as a group, decided to do was go over each comment in sample 1. This sample, which was the comments provided by an educator on a draft of a student's process narrative, had fewer comments than sample 2. The reason we began with this sample was due to the limited time provided in class. As we began, Antoinette and I got caught up with the first three comments provided on the sample.

Specifically, the comment titled LT3 sparked a bit of discourse.

This comment utilizes a strategy known as "hedging," in which positive buzzwords are used to encourage a writer. In the context of the sample, it came after 2 other comments (unhedged) that asked the writer to "dig deeper" and explore what he or she was trying to say. This third comment began with "Good observation!," and then continued with some urging to dig deeper. All three of these comments asked the writer to explain more, and gave prompts for the writer to entertain while rewriting.

Antoinette suggested that this hedged comment (LT3) was something that she was very receptive to. She felt that it would make her feel like she was on the right track, as opposed to the first two comments.

Playing "devil's advocate," I asked Antoinette if she would be more likely to rewrite the sections of comments LT1, LT2 or LT3. She paused and smirked, knowing where I was going with my comment. She admitted, after a moment, that she probably would be less likely to rewrite LT3.

Tempie and Stephane, who had been printing copies of the samples during our conversation, joined in at this. I asked them both to read comments LT1, LT2 and LT3 and then posed the same question. We unanimously agreed that LT3 would be the area we focused on least when it came to revising. This began an interesting discussion over the role of hedging.

After a bit of discourse, we began formulating a research question. Our first attempt at forming a research question was along the lines of:

"Can positive encouragement in comments work against the process of a writer?"

Dr Chandler, who had been observing the class during the group discussion, intervened. She told us our question was good, but to phrase it differently. A "yes" or "no" question would not do. Our rephrasing of the question became:

"What features of positive encouragement in comments work against the process of the writer?"

We kept reading through comments, searching for hedging and other "positive" features of comments. This caused us to discuss the nature of our question more, and we began to reshape the way we were asking it. The question that we eventually settled on was:

"How does the way a positive comment is offered work against the process of the writer?"


With this framework, we continued analyzing the rest of the comments. Our general consensus was that positive comments can boost confidence and make a writer feel good about what they have done correctly. Conversely, they also make a student/writer feel comfortable with what they have, and they are less likely to explore revisions or rewrites if the teacher is offering positive feedback before a suggestion.

This could be tested by seeing the revised version of the paper, and analyzing which areas the writer decided to focus on when they were rewriting.

Blog 8: Developing a Research Plan

1.) Familiarize Yourself With Your Topic

My topic is fairly new, but at the same time it isn't SO new that there is absolutely nothing out there. A few of my favorite articles in recent years center around what the internet could potentially be doing to our mind. A very interesting article for The Atlantic titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr addresses a lot of what I hope to delve into. Specifically, he discusses the changes in the way we communicate (with others, as well as the way we communicate with ourselves) and how it could be dangerous. One of my favorite points in this article is that Google, and the way it is structured, is rewiring our brains. Our brains are extremely adaptable, and they are able to adapt and change when they find that something isn't working anymore. For example, if we try to go into a building and find the door is locked, we may try one, possibly two, more times to get the door open before finding a new solution. In this same train of thought, our minds are becoming very used to scanning quick blurbs for important key phrases (as with Google) and it is losing the ability to focus its attention on longer works. Mr. Carr writes that many of his colleagues (writers, professors, etc) had expressed frustration in not being able to sit down with a long book. He surmises that it has a lot to do with how we are training our minds to read on the internet.

While this isn't what I'm researching, per se, the sentiments addressed will come into play. The advent of social media has brought with it a change in the way we communicate with language. Mainly, what I plan on focusing on is the actual use of language and how it is being modified to fit in our current day, but I also find it interesting to see how it is changing our physical, real-world interactions. Many have been the days that I spend with friends, in total silence, as they stare at their Iphones reading god-knows-what. We may be communicating more than ever with language, but it is putting a strain on our social interactions. This is not my area of study for this project, but it will come into play in my discussion of the issues surrounding my topic.

2.) Identify a Research Question

I don't necessarily feel comfortable with this yet. I am still not positive with what question I want my research project to focus on. I know that I want to do interviews (oral history reports) with people of all different ages in order to get a feel for the opinions that surround my topic. I feel that older generations will generally feel that there is a huge shift in the way we live due to the internet and other advancements in technology, but I am not sure what their take on it will be. I know a lot of older individuals (some as young as their mid-thirties) who can't handle technology and choose to avoid it, not because they don't care for it but they don't want to be bothered with it. I also know people of all ages (from teenagers to folks in their early 70s) who absolutely love technology and all that it brings with it. I am curious to interview people and see what they feel language is becoming with all the different ways of utilizing it, and I want to know if they think the changes in language are "good" or "bad." I put these in quotes because I hate breaking things down into convenient black and white categories, but it will help me focus as I explain my goals.

3.) Mapping It Out

I can't find anything, specifically, about my topic. There are a lot of articles (like Carr's that I mentioned above) centering around the rapid advancements in technology and how they may be changing us (for better or worse), but nothing that I have come across focuses on the evolution of language. I have done a considerable amount of reading on the origins of language over the years and I feel I will reference these books and articles throughout my research in order to help formulate my thoughts. I plan on not getting too one-sided with this, I agree with people who see a problem with the way language and communication are changing but I also feel that it may not be as big of a problem as people make it out to be.

In his wonderful and clever essay "The Phenomenology of Error," famed linguist and writer Joseph M Williams makes some points that I want to address. Namely, he discusses how people tend to overreact to errors in grammar when, in fact, they don't notice them all the time. Without rehashing the article, he discusses that certain rules of grammar are useless and only in place because the administration enforces them. He finds it to be silly, writing to only please the academics who perpetuate the rules. I agree with this and, as I've said in previous posts, I believe that if we are communicating things clearly, we should allow that to be enough. I won't be getting into the areas that Williams does (I highly doubt split infinitives are something that most people will want to discuss when questioned about social media) I do plan on using the same mentality.

For now, I am still developing my plan. It is starting to come into the light, but it isn't all the way there yet.

Blog 7: Brainstorm.

Ah, the art of brainstorming. I am an idea man by nature. When I sit down with a will to write I usually flesh out dozens of ideas before settling on just one. That said, I feel that I have a clear idea of where I want to take this research project. My writing in class was scattered and undefined so I will lay out my thoughts as best as I can.

Language fascinates me. I mentioned, albeit briefly, in my first blog post that I would like to write about the evolution of language in the modern era. There are numerous reasons why I am leaning towards this  topic. First and foremost it is due to my own particular stance on language. Being an English Major and a person who loves to communicate, people often assume that I am concerned with things like grammar, spelling, etc. This could not be farther from the truth. While I understand and respect (most of) the rules of language, I do not strictly adhere to them in the same manner that many of my peers do. I will never correct people for accidents in grammar, word choice, etc. I dislike the amount of animosity that comes from people when they see a misused comma or an improper form of a word. To me, it becomes an issue of status and intelligence for those who love to wag fingers and make corrections. I know what I should and shouldn't do when it comes to writing, and I do not feel the need to condescend to others and make them feel bad about themselves for their mistakes.

You may be wondering where this is going, but I assure you there is a point.

My stance on language and structure often puts me at ends with friends and other students who LOVE to correct others. They find it to be their sworn duty, to patrol language and look down on those who do not know how to properly write. I love arguing, so I often play Devil's Advocate against those fighting for linguistic uniformity. All of these arguments have made me take true notice of the age we live in and how we communicate.

We live in a time period where people HAVE to write to survive. As little as ten years ago this was not the case. Writing has been taught in school for as far back as educational institutions have been around, but the vast majority of people who have gone to school in the past didn't have to concern themselves with writing daily. Writing was a luxury for those in the middle class, those who worked in factories or stores or restaurants. The most that people would do, even as recent as the 1990s, would be writing letters. With the age of the internet and communication methods like text messaging, we are seeing a huge rush of people having to write to get their point across. Few are the people who do not have a cell phone, and most of those with cell phones utilize texting over calls. Not only that, but social media makes it so that we are constantly writing about our own lives, commenting on the lives of others, and voicing opinions left and right about everything from politics to potato chips. With all of this writing, especially from the "common man," we are also seeing a lot of typos, grammatical errors and overall poor use of written language.

With all of this it is also interesting to note how our language is changing. Language is both a living and stagnant thing. It is stagnant in symbolism, what words represent, but it is living in its constant evolution. If language never changed it probably never would have come around in the first place (speculation, as the origins of spoken language will most likely never be realized) and we cannot try to stop the growth and change of our language. In this age, we see people writing the way they speak, something that is advised against in institutions of higher learning. My real question, though, is how can we call these changes "bad?" Sure, people are using double negatives, the wrong forms of "your" and "you're" and creating ridiculous ways of abbreviating words that, actually, take longer to use, but if that is how people communicate and other people understand them then language is serving its purpose. Just because people are communicating in a manner that goes against what our schools tell us does not necessarily mean that we are seeing a degradation of our higher faculties.

I could go on and on about this, which is why I definitely plan on using this topic for my research paper. I believe that I will be able to focus and explore one of the many facets of this area of research, and will probably have to scale back more than delve. Start big, then make it smaller; that's how I like to do things.

Obviously I am open to input, and the ambivalence of my opinion can make it difficult to try and "prove" something, but I'm okay with that. I don't usually write to prove a point, rather I enjoy starting a discourse (rhetorical writing, I guess) and opening minds to both sides of an argument. Picking a side may be the popular opinion, but it also closes off the mind to why the other side may be relevant or correct.