So long farewell, auf weidersehen, good-bye

I am writing this post to close this blog created for ILS 200. This will be my last post.

What I hope readers have gained from reading this blog is that this blog was made for a writing course, but it's a blog about people. Given the open-ended nature of each writing prompt, all of us bloggers were able to craft our posts around our beliefs, and our own personality traits and beliefs were displayed as a result.

That's what made this course so enjoyable. It's well organized and scheduled, but we were able to write about whatever we wanted if we were able to craft it around the writing prompt. Never before was I able to write an entire essay on my favorite show, Lost. At the same time, it wasn't a stupid essay, it was very much related to pathos and emotion.



What I'll take out of this course most was the rhetorical triangle. I think it's one of the most relevant and realistic things we've learned all semesters. I can definitely apply it to real situations and events, and I think it's a thing worth studying additionally in the future.

And with that.....

There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple too.
And up in the nursery an ubsurd little bird
Is popping out to say cook-coo cook-coo, cook-coo
Regretfully they tell us cook-coo
But firmly they compell us cook-coo
To say goodbye cook-coo...
To you...

PS: My favorite von Trapp singer is Liesel

Can language capture the enormity of experience?

It's a complicated question, but the answer is simply "yes". My first instinct and I think the first instinct of many would be "no", because it seems impossible to use words to recreate an experience. In fact, I think in our own lives we've failed probably 90% of the time in doing so. (Think about all those times you've had to say "guess you had to be there....")

But there are circumstances where language can effectively recreate an experience, or at least an aspect of experience. Without specifics, spoken language is the easiest way to do so. I think we all remember a time when somebody told a story that was so gripping and so intense that we actually felt like we were there. The images of the story flow through our brains like it's something we actually saw. That's a case of language recreating experience and capturing the enormity of the situation.

Every time I think of language successfully capturing true experience, I think of Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Most probably don't remember the scene, but there's a very emotional part where he talks to his friend when he gets back from the island. He's describing being there, alone, on that deserted rock constantly thinking about Helen Hunt. He said the thought of her "kept me alive".



Maybe it's the clever camera work, the emotionally filled language, or the dramatic presence of Tom Hanks....but whatever it is, that scene made me feel like it was me on that island, that it was me missing my girl, and that it was me alone, depressed, with very little hope to get back to the real world. In this regard, the language the writers of the film use causes the viewer to run through the events in their head, thinking as Tom Hanks would think, and this too is capturing experience in language.

So in short, yes....language can capture the enormity of experience. It's a delicate, difficult process that requires special circumstances or masters of language to pull off.

The next chapter...

As I write this last post for the semester, I am sitting on the dock behind my house. I take deep breaths of the fresh air as it blows over the lake that stretches out in front of me. The waves crash rhythmically against the side of the dock and it seems as if all other noises have ceased. This peacefulness temporarily calms my finals week anxieties and as much as I want it to be a week from now, when I will be at home again, in this moment, I wish time would stay still.

So much has changed in this past year. A part of me wishes things were like they used to be…when times were simpler and everything was comfortable…but the other part of me knows that I don’t want to go back. I have to move on from this point. I have to move forward.

I stare off into the distance and the sun begins to set. It’s almost cliché. This year’s chapter has ended and summer break is about to begin. I look forward to all of the exciting changes that await me.

Farewell…

Can language capture the enormity of experience?

Personally, I don’t believe that language is able to do this. The enormity of experience is beyond words and can often be indescribable. The closest that language can get to allowing someone to understand another person’s experience is when they have experienced a similar situation or emotion and can draw from their own lives in an effort to understand what is going on in the other person’s life. This, however, will never be precise.

Each person’s experiences are as unique as snowflakes. Even two people who go through the same encounter will take different things away from it, will feel different emotions about it (even if they are only slightly different), and will recall different things about it in memory. Each person brings his or her own previous experiences, knowledge, biases, and emotions to a situation and therefore goes through the experience uniquely. It is because of this, that no two people can ENTIRELY understand the experience of another person (although they may think that they do.)

Even words themselves are not precise and often have several meanings or connotations, and can be interpreted differently by different people. This variation can distort the true meaning of the experience to an even greater extent.

An example of the variation that language can have, though it may seem to be on a fairly superficial level, is in the French saying, “Je t’aime.” This phrase equates to both, “I love you” and “I like you,” in English. Picture a scale from 1-100, where “I love you” in on the extreme 100 end and “I like you” is on the extreme 1 end. There are MANY different levels of affection between these two statements—infinitely many one might say. How can all of these different levels be simply wrapped into just two (as we’ve done in English) or into one (as in French)?

Along those same lines, how can the emotion of love be wrapped up into one word? This silly four-letter word cannot possibly capture the enormity of the emotion and experience of what love really is. Those who are truly in love often describe the saying “I love you” as being extremely inadequate in describing the extent of their feelings.

Just look at how many great writers have tried to capture the experience of love, through language. It is like the holy grail of writing achievements. Many authors have gotten close, but they were held back from the start because of the limitations of language itself.

Please don't mistake me, however, in thinking that no one should try to capture experience through language, for it is this quest, in fact, that makes writing such an art.

Final thoughts

It is a really different experience as a class.

I have never regarded myself as a writer or anyone with great creativity. But in this class, I really appreciate that all of our assignments and homework are flexible and open that I feel that I have something to say at each time. There is never an assignment that I think is too far away from my experience and I think this is applicable to everyone. The things we talk about in the lectures and discussions are easy to connect to. They are also applicable to my other classes. But they also fall into a good framework.

I hope that this class could be a little more structuralized. The good thing about this class is that it is not a class that have been taught in the same way over and over again. It is really innovative and flexible and adaptable. But if we can be a little more informed of the class, that would be better.

Language and expereinces

Blog post topic: Can language capture the enormity of experience?

Language can bring us different experiences for sure. Through out this semester, we have experienced many fun things that language can bring us. However, to what extent can language capture the enormity of experience is debatable. I think this topic should be analyzed from two different angels: language it self and the audience's experience.

From the stand point of the language itself, I believe that literature can normally capture an author's experience if he or she is a good author. There are for sure books that can make us cry and laugh, change our emotions. However, think about the movies that are adopted from books, like Harry Potter. Movies are much closer to an experience in traditional terms and when we watch such movies, we are probably brought through a more realistic and clear experience. Another things about books is that, readers may get very different experiences from reading the same book. Therefore, the enormity of experience that language can capture may or may not be the one that the author wanted to deliver.

From the audiences' stand point, whether he or she can experiences closely what the author is telling also depends on his or her own life experience. For example, when we are younger, it would be difficult for us to be moved by books that are deeper with experiences that doesn't relate with what we have seen so far in our lives. Whether a reader can get the same feeling or can resonate with what the author is saying depends a lot on whether the reader itself have experienced similar things. Every book or advertisement have a targeted audience, whose experiences made them most easily to connect with them.

Language has its power and its magical sometimes because of the unexpected result that may come out of a reading experience because of different readers.

Social Media= Pathetic?

How did today’s social media become so pathetic?

This question is somewhat similar to the “chicken or the egg” question. Did today’s social media become pathetic, and THEN viewers began to respond to this type of appeal? Or did today’s social media become pathetic BECAUSE viewers only respond to this type of appeal? I think that our society has become almost numb to appeals that AREN’T pathetic and this is why media has been forced to use pathetic appeals.

If a non-profit organization, trying to raise money to help starving children in Africa, spread its message by simply stating statistics and only using a logical approach, not many people would donate their money to their cause. Because of selective exposure, we only notice information that is interesting to us. Our society has become so fast-paced that this type of approach would probably not even catch their audience’s attention. If that same non-profit wants to get donations, they need to catch viewers’ attentions…which is exactly what they do with their sob-story commercials with video footage of the starving children in Africa. So, don’t blame the media for becoming too “pathetic;” they were forced to become this way in order to keep up with what our society has become. Sometimes you have to pull on people’s heartstrings if you want to get things done.