I'm thinking about looking at these posts:
Taxes! - adjacent pairs
Movie Reviews - performative verbs
Tautologies galore! - Place name tautologies
Trees - sense relations across languages
]]>Just wondering about when everyone could get together so that we could work on our group project. I suppose it's about time that we get to working on it!
]]>Without question, one of the cutest shows on TV these days. Also a very good example of many of the things we talk about in class:
There is a narrator that often comes in and explains the words of the characters, such as here:
Chuch: what's wrong?
Ned: nothing.
Narrator: He said nothing, meaning I accidentally killed your father and I want to tell you but I can't tell you.
This really sounds like the analyses we've been doing in class.
Also, there is maxim flauting for politeness:
Candy store owner: Do you like excitement?
Ned: I think excitement is better than a lot of things.
He avoids the truth in order to be polite here.
Just thought there were some really good examples here!
]]>I saw a commercial the other day about taxes and it really fit with what we've been talking about with adjacent pairs this week!
A guy walks up to a girl and asks: do you know what time it is?
she replies (yelling): yes, of course I know what time it is!!!!
this is of course not the expected response, but she is upset because she has yet to get her taxes finished. It was pretty funny actually.
]]>While watching a bit of tv, I saw a few previews for some movies. I quickly noticed that these frequently use performative verbs:
Rolling Stones declares this the best movie of the year
'someone else' raves that...
I was just astounded at how they stood out in these previews.
]]>When Dr. Myers was talking about the wedding she attended last week, she mentioned that a lot of people try to change their vows to make them their own and such. This got me thinking about church services and how, with many denominations, the same thing is repeated over and over each week - so much so that it has seemingly lost its meaning. I feel like the rise of alternative church services has followed the same tradition as alternative vows have in order to give back meaning to what is being said.
After so much repetition of language, it seems that more things that are signifigant in our society would have lost meaning just as these have seemingly. Why do you think that these stand out? Also, do any other instances come to mind of long phrases, or even speeches being stated so much that they loose their meaning?
]]>I recently received an email from a current grad student in the program to which I'll be attending in the fall. She congratulated me and such, then ended the email by offering advice or help with anything I needed, as well as to tell me what the professors are really like. This emphasis of really really made me wonder: are you trying to tell me that you didn't give me a good impression of them when I was on the campus looking at the department?
I feel like this is said a lot around university campuses. It seems to me here that the speaker is letting you know in a nice way that they flout the quality and manner maxims for the sake of being polite in order to ease you into the program/new professors.
I find this to generally come as a surprise when someone says it, and wonder why the reality was not stated in the first place.
]]>While planning a trip to Indianapolis to visit a friend next weekend, he sent an email saying that I should arrive late afternoon, about 1:00.
I am rather curious as to when 1:00 became late afternoon? Just as The weekend has taken up Friday for some people, so has late afternoon snatched up early afternoon it appears.
]]>I noticed that the Beetles song I am the Walrus begins with a really good example of personal deixis gone awry!
- I am he is you are he is you are me and we are all together.
If one were to try and follow this train of thought through to an actual conversation, no one would ever be able to tell who was refering to whom. I think that this goes to show us that drugs and pragmatics clearly do not mix.
]]>So, I was watching an episode of Arrested Development today, and this dialogue came up that I couldn't pass by for a blog post.
The situation: the mother is seducing the warden of the prison, and the son with whom she is talking can't accept the fact that she would do such a thing.
Mother- I'm trying to seduce him!
Son - Who's the I in that sentence?
Mother - Me!
I found it rather funny that his own inability to view her as doing that inabled him to understand that the I was the speaker, as it normally is.
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