Thoughts for Feb. 5

I'll start off by addressing my thoughts on the storytelling assignment. As I listened to several recordings of people telling stories, I was struck with a few thoughts. First of all, much of the structure that one would expect to find in a story was there: there was a beginning, middle, and end. The first thing that jumped out at me was the use of pauses. Depending on the story, pauses were used in two different ways: to add something to the story, or they were not used at all. For example, one time when I was the storyteller, I rarely used pauses. My excitement over came me and my sentences ran into one another. You couldn't always tell where a thought ended and another thought started. Yet some of the stories were filled with many pauses adding anticipation and suspense. Another thing that stood out to me was the use of nonsense words. When telling a story orally, all the storytellers inserted nonsense words, such as like, so, ok, and um, frequently. Sometimes they appeared more than once in each sentence and sometimes just every few sentences or so. If these stories were being written down, these words would not have been used. The third thing that stood out to me was the use of voices. Each storyteller would alter his/her voice either to imitate someone or emphasis a point. That manipulation occurred more frequently in storytelling than in informal conversation.

Moving on to some readings.......

I found myself struggling through the Bauman and Briggs article. Since this is my first dip into the world of linguistics, I found some of the technical terms tricky. Yet in my struggle I didn't give up and tried to make sense of it the best I could. I found the introduction interesting as aspects of performance were being described and, in a sense, compared to more informal talk.
I felt at a disadvantage not being familiar with many of the authors who were cited throughout the article. My background knowledge, or should I say lack of background knowledge, hindered me from fulling grasping certain concepts.

"Participation structure, particularly the nature of turn-taking and performer-audience interaction, can have profound implications for shaping social relations" (p. 63). This statement caused me to stop and think for a moment. I took this to mean that culture has a profound impact on how the interaction will be interpreted. Since cultural structures can affect how a conversation might go about taking turns, or what is acceptable norms in conversation, these cultural structures will influence how the performance is understood. Performance will look different in different cultures due to different cultural norms.

I still feel as though I need more clarification about entextualization. I can read the simple definition provided on pg 73, but as I continue to read, I'm still not too sure what that looks like. Since I always benefit greatly from oral conversation, I'm hoping I will gain more understanding about this article in class.

I'm also looking forward to our guest speaker on Monday. After reading over the summary of the report, many questions and thoughts pop into my mind. With rapidly changing technology literacies, I find this study to be of great significance. I think we in the United States need to do a bit more thinking on how to truly incorporate these new literacies into our schools. The report made me think more about what I might do as a teacher to make sure my students can survive in a technologically literate world. I enjoyed looking at the concept maps the students drew showing their own understanding. I look forward to hearing more about this study and thinking more about this important area.