White tiger assignment page 30 -130

What can you learn about Balram's life as a driver? 


You can learn that a driver is a deprived person. And that only because of the job! Many people see drives as servants/slaves. People who aren't smart enough to get higher in the social hierarchy. Drivers are woken up in the middle in the night when their 'mister' wants to go somewhere. It also depends on the kind of master you, as a driver, have. Mr. Ashok is pretty cool to Balram, not everyone driver can say so. It's also hard to become a driver, it costs a lot of money and the poorer people don't have that. 

What have we learned about the Indian Culture from the novel "The White Tiger"?

In the White Tiger, a guy named Balram is writing a letter to the Chinese premier Jiabao. Balram tells the Chinese premier about his life in India. As far as we have read (the first thirty pages), we didn't learn very much about the Indian Culture. It’s not very clear yet what is really a characteristic and what is not. Balram tells a story to Jiabao with two different points of views. The view of the media and foreigners, and his own point of view. For example, Indian people like to jump in the (holy) river Ganges, which is -according to Balram- a very dirty river. And many people in India are under-educated people, they're 'half-baked'. You can also make up of the first 30 pages that some kids go to school without having a name. This, however, is not immediately a characteristic of the Indian culture. When we're reading through the novel, we'll find more characteristics of the Indian culture I think.

TED Mark Pagel - How language transformed our humanity

I'm going to answer the question "What do you think about the fact that there's a dilemma in our modern globalized world. Whether to keep our 7,000 or 8,000 different languages or make the world as one world with one language.'

Well, I think that has some negative and positive sides. When everyone is going to change their language in the same one, teachers which teach people foreign language, will lose their job. Everybody is going to be the 'same' , there is no challenge anymore to learn how to speak another language with which you can communicate to foreign people. On the other hand, it'll make it easier to trade with eachother. When people speak the same language, there will be less of a barrier to understand eachother. Plus the fact that, like Mark Pagel said during his speech, the European Union will have to spend less/no money on translating all the reports into 23 different languages. This will save them billions of dollars! The money used for the translations could be used for Greece right now (for example).  I'm not supporter of the idea to make one world with only one language. It's hard to let all people adapt the new language. Besides, I think different languages are pretty much interesting!

There will be people who think: "YEAH! This is an amazing idea!". How will you change the language of people who live in the bush bush? Mark Pagel's speech was quite interesting, I'm wondering how different people think about this dilemma.

From metaphors we live by

Lakoff and Johnson have written a book about metaphors. Below you will read a short summary about the first seven chapters.

Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Since metaphorical expressions in our language are tied to metaphorical concepts in a systematic way, we can use metaphorical linguistic expressions to study the nature of metaphorical concepts and to gain an understanding of the metaphorical nature of our activities.

A case of how a metaphorical concept can hide an aspect of our experience  can be seen in what Michael Reddy has called “conduit metaphor”.  The speaker puts ideas (objects) into words (containers) and sends them (along a conduit) to a hearer who takes the idea/objects out of the word/containers.

The linguistic expressions are containers for meanings aspect of the conduit metaphor entails that words and sentences have meanings in themselves, independent of any context or speaker. The meanings are objects part of the metaphor, entails that meanings have an existence independent of people and contexts. The part of the metaphor that says linguistic expressions are containers for meaning entails that words (and sentences) have meanings, again independent of context and speakers.
There are sentences that have no meaning without context, but there are cases where a single sentence will mean different things to different people.  The conduit metaphor does not fit cases where context is required to determine whether the sentence has many meanings at all and what meaning it has. 

Once we can identify our experiences as entities or substances, we can refer to them, categorize them , group them, and quantify them = REASON ABOUT THEM.
Ontological Metaphors are so natural, we don't notice them being a metaphor.



Different types of metaphors:
Structural Metaphors: one concept is metaphorically structured in terms of another concept
Oriental Metaphors: have to do with spatial orientation (happy is up, sad is down)
Ontological Metaphors: entity and substance metaphor (Inflation: view it as an entitiy, refer to it, quantify and identify it)
Container Metaphors:
Land Areas: moving out, into another - we set boundaries for physical things, we define where the forest stops, we define when we're in or out a room.
Visual Field: we describe what we can or can not see.
Events, Actions, Activities, and States: Events are often viewed as a container object, Activities as substances. Activities are viewed as containers for the actions and other activities that make them up.
Personification: on-human objects or concepts are given human traits or described as if they were human.
Good things are UP, bad things are DOWN, fundamental concepts contain more or one spatialization metaphors. It is hard to distinguish the physical from the cultural basis of a metaphor, since the choice of one physical basis from among many possible ones has to do with cultural coherence.
Many of our values cohere with the metaphorical structure. Which values get priority depends on culture, subculture and your personal values.

School should start selling chips

We all love chips, especially when we have a period in school when we don't have class. This is why school should start selling chips. It's healthier than a sandwich because they fry it in natural fats. School will earn lots of money but, for us, a portion of chips will only cost €1! Besides the ridiculous cheap price, it is a perfect lunch for like once a week! Mayonnaise, JoppieSaus or the Macdonalds sauce will be included in the €1. Enough variation for everyone and it can make your day! Who does not want this?

American Civil Liberties Union advert

ACLU wants to stop discrimination by creating this ad.
I did not know that the right person was Charles Manson, a man with a criminal mind. The fact that Martin Luther King is 75 times more likely to be stopped by the police is shocking. I thought we'd passed that time period already. This is clearly not the case. It makes me pretty much angry how this can happen. A bad guy won't easily get stopped by the police while he has done so many bad things. I get the idea that they would even arrest a black person for murder when all the evidence available shows that there was a white guy who had murdered! This ad might be exaggerated and dramatized but there is truth in it. They want you to feel angry and shocked for the fact how this ever could happen. By using percentages it even looks worse. 80% is a lot! They really want to activate you to support their organization and I think they bring their story in the right way. The pictures will attract and interest the readers, then they get the desire to get to know more and finally,  exactly what ACLU wants, they can activate the readers to change this situation. Although, I don't think you, as a normal citizen, can change much about this. You will not be able to influence the police. The police (and the government itself) will have to change their way of acting. This should not longer happen.

Displace that place

This place, that place (Kiran Chandra) can be written with different words and letters and still sound the same. We had to analyse the following picture:

Analysis
My first impression was that it looked cool, interesting, challenging, strange but appealing. A lot of first impressions, haha. I think it is appealing because I find it interesting to look at such a pictures with text which creates different meanings while the sound stays the same. It is challenging to find out what they really mean by this.
Because of the white background, the black letters stand out. The basic colors make it very clear what is written in the picture. It's funny how different words can sound the same and how you can play with letters. I keep the meaning 'this place that place' in mind and for me while Kiran has used different words, I don't see another meaning. The same for when I keep the meaning 'displace that place' in mind.
I still can't figure out whether she's meant to say 'displace that place' or 'this place, that place', and to be honest, I don't even care about that. It's just cool for me how she shows that you can create different 3 sentences, which sound the same with different meanings.
After knowing the fact that Kiran was born in India, I think the right part of the upper picture must be a big city in India. Everything is a bit dirty and poor-ish.

Analysis 40-line fragment Romeo and Juliet

Act 2 scene 3 ll. 1 – 44

After the balcony scene, Romeo comes to Friar Lawrence’s cell and finds him between the beautiful flowers. The first 30 lines is an introduction of the friar, it tells about his flowers and how he uses them. This is important for the audience, otherwise they won’t know what he really is. Friar thinks he has not been sleeping last night because of Rosaline, his previous lover. This is false, Romeo came to visit the friar for serious help. He wanted to marry Juliet in secret. Friar does not want to help at first, later he does.

Romeo always comes to the friar for some wise advice, just like Juliet. Friar Lawrence marries the two lovers and later on, they come back for advice and help. The friar plays an important role in Romeo’s and Juliet’s life; he marries them, he helps Juliet to not marry Paris, he informs Romeo about his banishment and if they need any help, he’s there.

The tone in the fragment is pretty neutral and anxious. Romeo is up early and the friar thinks it’s no good. The tone of the friar himself is changing a lot. He starts off having a good day, the sun is shining and it’s all good. When he sees Romeo, he’s getting anxious because he’s up so early. The friar is nearly getting scared when he thinks Romeo has been with Rosaline (quote: “God pardon sin! Wast thou with Rosaline?”). Romeo his tone is neutral, he’s not happy, but just as nice as always. This will change later in the scene.

By using a lot of details, Shakespeare creates a situation wherein people may feel like they’re really there, when Friar Lawrence is talking. He also uses rhyme. (quote: “The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb; What is her burying grave, that is her womb”) Shakespeare also used alliteration, I’m not sure whether he did this on purpose. (quote: “So soon” “therefore thy”) What is also very remarkable is that nearly all nouns have an adjective (quote: “frowning night”, “burning eye”). 

Commenting on translation and what was my part in the translation?

Laura and me both translated Act 1 scene 1.  We wanted to have a more like a ‘gangster’ version of Romeo and Juliet. We have used NoFearShakespear for translations, just to have a look at the modern version. We did not copy it directly.
I have to admit that Laura has done more than I did. This was simply because she worked on it during cancelled periods and I did not have a laptop with me.

We kept the ‘naked weapon’ joke because it was a pervy joke and an important quote. Boys are often more sexually in making remarks, and Sampson made this remark. The “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” we changed into “Do you give us the finger?”. Many people do not know about biting the thumb as an insult to another person, this is why we changed it to giving the finger.

To use ‘modern’ insulting words, the play became more from nowadays.
The fragment of Romeo and Benvolio is a pretty important one, Romeo tells about his love for Rosaline. This is one of the most important events in the beginning, it comes back later during the play. To keep this part clear, we did not use too much ‘gangster’ words. The point Romeo tries to make is very clear.

Because of the fact that our play did not have many different events, it is not really interesting to get into every detail. I think our translation was pretty good and clear. It is a very important scene because this is where it all starts. 

Evaluation Romeo and Juliet

On the 8th of June, the time was there. We all had to perform Romeo and Juliet and I actually really liked it! I did not know all of my lines but I just sneaked to Sanne, behind the curtains, to read through my lines.  I expected it to be a huge fail, no one really knew his or her lines. The rehearsals we did in class were not really good in my opinion. It was chaotic. After only one rehearsal with all of us together, which already took us like 3 hours, I thought we wouldn’t fail as badly as I expected before. During the performance, it was pretty much fun. Romy fell on the ground while the curtains were still closed, she screamed “AU” and we all laughed. I think most of the audience did not know what had happened. People forgot their lines and just improvised some lines. Curtains got closed while the scene had not finished yet. I don’t really care though, I’ve had a fun and awesome evening with everyone together! Even in such a short time, I think we did a pretty great job!