Ashley B’s blog

A few days ago I was riding in a car with an apartment owner in Lexington and my fiance.  The owner was driving us from one location that he owned to another.  It was a beautiful day but it was getting hot in the car so I asked my fiance if he would roll down the window. He tried and could not get it to roll down.  He asked the owner if he would roll down the window and he said "I'll turn on the air".  Again, it was beautiful and I just wanted some fresh air so I told him that the window would be fine, we just couldn't get it to roll down.  Again he replied with "I'll turn on the air." 

This was an interesting and not very effective reply in my opinion because the manner of his response was flouted.  He did not respond preferably to my request and instead of replying to it , he made his own suggestion.  His window had been rolled down and this was a fairly old car so the implicature was that this particular window was broken.  Instead of just telling us that however, he made his own suggestion and because I did not realize the implicature the first time, it led to me asking again and made the conversation much more confusing!!

This commercial was a great example of implications.  In the beginning of the commercial the first man, let's call him ONE, went to speak with the other about ONE's girlfriend being in TWO's fave five.  He's implying that he thinks that TWO is trying to hit on ONE's girlfriend.  TWO denies that anything is going on and says that ONE is just paranoid and then the phone rings.  There are no words needed at this point because the implicature of the phone ring is that it ONE's girlfriend calling and that ONE's girlfriend and TWO are definitely seeing each other.  I thought this was a funny and interesting view of an instance of implicatures :) Enjoy!

I thought the topics of positive versus negative methods of politeness were very interesting this week!  I had never put much thought into how a request was worded and if conveyed distance or closeness.  Upon consideration I realized that I almost or always use the negative form for a request.  Even with my closest friends I will say "hey is there any way you could come pick me up from class if you're not busy?" or "would you mind loaning me a dollar and I'll pay you back tomorrow?". I would never say "hey give me a dollar" even to my parents or brother, who I am very comfortable wtih or even my best friends.  I do have several friends who are more than comfortable with using the positive forms with me :)  but I just found it interesting that I don't do that with anyone. It seems strange to me considering the fact that I feel like I'm a very informal person in general.

So this week I overheard a disagreement between two of my friends who are dating.  We were in his room and they were going through his desk together and found a picture of him and his ex-girlfriend.  She jokingly told him to throw it away and he said that he didn't want to.  She replied with "Well, if it means something to you, then keep it," with a semi accusatory tone because obviously she wouldn't want it to have much meaning to him.  He then became defensive about her comment and when she realized that she had assumed that it had meaning to him solely because it had his exgirlfriend in it and didn't consider the only people in the picture she apologized.  But instead of exactly apologizing she said "I shouldn't have worded it that way."  This is flouting the maxim of manner because she was sort of saying I'm sorry in a roundabout way but not directly.  But the most interesting thing was that after she said this he replied with "No, it's not that you should've worded it differently, it's that you should've said it more nicely."   ......This got me thinking.  It seems to me that they were both saying the same thing.  She was saying that she should have worded it differently so that it wouldn't sound so harsh or rude and he was saying she should've said it more nicely...so that it wouldn't sound so harsh or rude.  Maybe I'm missing something, and maybe this is a guy/girl difference, but I just found it interesting!!!

Spoonerisms are one linguistic phenomena that I am well aware of.  Last year I lived in a house with 9 girls.  Two of my roommates have very strong, dramatic (in the sense of acting and performing) personalities.  One of their favorite things to do is play with language.  They would walk through the house speaking in accents one day. The next day they might sing almost everything they want to say.  But lots of times they would use spoonerisms in everyday conversation or speak use words that are not real, but derived from the actual word in a form somewhat like pig latin. 

This year my fiance has begun using spoonerisms in everyday conversation.  For instance he will say I was just seeing Billy.  Sometimes he uses them with Spanish phrases, such as To Yambien.  I think this all started with accidentally with a linguistical slip-up, but I now have constant reminders of this linguistic theme.

This week in 212 we studied Sociolinguistics.  One of the topics we covered was that of language communities.  Language communities are groups of people who share social conventions about language groups, or "sociolinguistic norms".  While in Ecuador we heard a great account of being in different language communities.  In the US when we meet people we ask their names, where they're from, what they do, etc.  If they are younger we might ask their age, or to avoid this potentially bad question we might ask if they're in school or what year in school they are or something of that sort. 

Of course when traveling to other countries there are going to be different social norms, and this includes linguistic differences.  One of the questions that is commonly asked upon meeting (at least in the village we stayed in) is "how much do you weigh?"  This certainly strikes us as very odd considering it is a taboo topic and would certainly not be something that you would ask upon meeting someone. 

One of the Ecuadorians, during his first few weeks of working at the camp and learning English, committed a social faux pa according to American standards when he asked some of the American girls who were down visiting the camp how much they weighed.  The situation only worsened when, after they hesitantly and unwillingly gave an answer and he replied with "wow that's peculiar, you're younger than me and you weigh more than i do." 

This of course, would be a normal and perfectly acceptable conversation in their culture, but in our speech community it is a definite no-no!!

This is phrase that can get you in trouble, as my fiance found out the hard, and VERY funny way!  He has taken a couple of Spanish classes and is great about trying to use all that he knows when given the opportunity.  I think this will be great for him and he will probably progress much more quickly than I did since he is less timid and shy.  This extroverted learning style does however sometimes get you in trouble. 

One night we were sitting at the camp in Ecuador with some of the nurses and translators that work with the missionaries who live down there.  Justin was teaching them how to make balloon animals and the room was not very well ventilated.  Those of you who speak Spanish can probably see where this is going as it is a classic Spanish mistake.  He decides that to try to use some of his Spanish he will make a general comment like "Gosh I'm gosh" and says "Ah estoy caliente".  At hearing this one of the male translators our age starts cracking up and has to walk out of the room because he's laughing so hard and the other workers also begin laughing.  I turn slightly red and shake my head at him, informing him that he has just announced to everyone that he is horny. 

This is just one example of miscommunication based on direct translations but it made for a great story and funny linguistic connection.

Anyone who has been on an airplane has certainly heard the flight attendants yell this statement repeatedly!  After spending the past week in Ecuador I was especially in tune with how some phrases would seem strange to non-English speakers.  While flying back on one of the many plane rides, I heard a flight attendant utter these same words and it caught my attention.  To a non-English speaker I could see how it would seem that she was literally saying "look at your elbows (as if they were doing something worthy of noticing)". 

Of course there are many of these little phrases that we use but it seemed to tie in well to one of the communicative components that I have been studying in 212.  The illocutionary component for language competence would demonstrate a pragmatic understanding of the speaker's intent and context.  For example if someone asked "do you know what time it is?", the appropriate answer would not be yes.  In this same way we understand that the flight attendant saying watch your elbows is actually saying that we should take care because they are in the way and are likely to get hit! 

This is a wonderful and hilarious, in my opinion, example of a zeugma and I wish I'd been able to think of it about 12 hours ago :)  It is a great example of a zeugma because it has two propositional implications.  The first is that this is a piñata so obviously you hit a piñata to break it and get the candy.  Additionally "I'd hit that" means that you would sleep with him or her.

Idhitthat

Yes poor little Y, he doesn't feel fully accepted anywhere.  He's not a full vowel, nor is he a full consonant.  He just

doesn't know where he belongs.  Everyone knows he's an outcast, even the makers of Snorg Tees.  While looking at 

2pic

the snorg tees website I came across this shirt and I think it is probably

something that only a linguistics enthusiast would wear.  It does bring up a

good point though, because there is a fuzzy boundary concerning the

categorization of the letter "Y".  We all know which letters are vowels, and

which are consonants and they are very clearly defined, but then there is

this one little exception.  So maybe the superordinate of Y is a lexical gap

because it should belong to its own category.