Slang and Jargon: What are they?

Jargon is used in Medicine.

When we think in a group of words used by a single community of people we tend to think on Slang. However, we have to know how to establish differences between slang and jargon or specialist language. The main difference is their formality and usage. 


Jargon can be easily defined as a group of words from a determined group of people, usually related to their work (Medicine, construction, cooking, etc). This words are formal and have meanings known by all the people of a group, and are needed to develop their work.


In the other hand, Slang is also a group of words from a group of persons, but it's informal and it's more related to social differences (Age, social class, location, etc). Slang may be used by gangs or thieves to hide their communication, or in chats to write words shorter and faster. 


According to Dictionary.com


Jargon: The vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group.
Slang: Very informal usage in vocabulary and idiom that is characteristically more metaphorical, playful, elliptical,vivid, and ephemeral than ordinary language.

Slang may difficult communication. 

Debate: eBooks vs Paper Books

A Paper Book.

In the last years a new way of reading appeared: The eBooks. Some devices as the Kindle or iPad born with the objective to change the way people bought and read books. In our class, we decided to discuss this topic in a debate.


I worked with Mr. Oporto and Mr. Kitzing and we were against eBooks, while the opposite team defended this type of books (Mr. Gré, Mr. Barriga and Mr. Núñez). Our arguments where based on the feelings that a paper book has (Not just letters, but an odor, color, texture, pages, etc), in their biodegradable material and in the vision problems a kindle may bring. While the other team focusses on the supposed cheapness of the Kindle, it's portability and it's easy way to get books.


Also, both teams exposed about prices. It's very difficult to define which is cheaper (paper books or ebooks), because it depends on each book's price. In some cases there are no big differences (for example, Harry Potter books have almost the same price in both versions in Amazon.com), while others may present huge differences in their prices.

Sony's eBook.

In my opinion, eBooks will probably grow in popularity, but paper books will never disappear. Also, the biggest concern about eBooks is their price: The electronic device costs over $100 US and virtual books aren't that cheap compared to paper ones. Also, you need internet connection, which is another problem in the distribution of this products. 


We can make a good comparison between books and music. Nowadays we have iTunes and other plataforms where we can buy and download music easily. However, people keeps buying CD's and Vinyls. This is because, a book or an album are not just music or letters, they are collectable objects!

Thoughts about "The Catcher in the Rye"

The Catcher in the Rye.

The Catcher in the Rye... What a revolutionary book. Well, in this entry I will be sharing some thoughts about an extract from "The Catcher in the Rye". Luckily, I had the chance to read this book last years, so I can easily put this extract in context and compare it with the story of Holden Caulfield.

J.D. Salinger's 

The Catcher in the Rye

(excerpt)

"Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead?"

Once I read this extract, different ideas come to my mind. The first thing that impressed me is the relaxed way of thinking that Caulfield has; He doesn't care about his body once he dies, he just want someone to throw it to a river or anywhere else. He says he doesn't want to end in a cemetery, nor wants flowers in his grave. At first, what Holden says seems to be very logic, I mean, do flowers do you any good when you are dead? No, they don't. But, if I go further, I don't think Holden says this because he is just a logic person, but also because he doesn't share most people values. By this I mean that, for example, he is not catholic, furthermore, he doesn't like them, so he doesn't give the importance to a cemetery that believers do. He is very rational, but he doesn't understand emotions very well. Also, his thought is very selfish, because when your familiars go and put some flowers in your grave, they remember you and pray for you. Another thing that may influence in Caulfield's anti-cemetery idea is the death of his young brother Allie. Caulfield, as a depressive young man, feels that nothing will bring his brother back. He could put tons of flowers in Allie's grave, but he will not return to life. This is something that, in my opinion, really affects the way he sees death.

The importance of this texts is that it shows us a different view about life and death. It expresses the way of thinking of a depressive, lonely and problematic young man that lived the troubles that the Cold War brought to the American society.

Analyzing an Image!

I have shown how to analyze texts, but in this entry I'll talk about Images and Pictures. Can we analyze them? Of course! To do so, we must go deep into the image. We can't just analyze what it shows, but the message that the image has hidden; that's what differentiates a Critical Thinker! To show this, I'll be analyzing the following image.

With a simple view, we see a man without his hands, and a child helping him to fasten his T-shirt. Also, both of them have black skin. But, as critical thinkers, we must go deeper. This image makes me imagine the child saying "We can do it". In my opinion, this image was made to motivate black people to solve their problems by themselves, because they can help each other and they can do things independently, without the help of anyone. Also, it deposits hope in the future generations of africans, because the child is helping the adult, not the other way round.

Video: Critical Thinking

In my last entry, I compared Critical Thinking and Critical Reading. Now, I want to go deeper in what does Critical Thinking means, because I find it a very interesting aspect about human intelligence. While I was researching for information about Critical Thinking, I found a video that I want to share with you all!

Something interesting in this video is that it takes Critical Thinking as a tool to solve unfamiliar problems, instead of considering it a must. In other words, we can live without critical thinking, but it helps a lot if we have it! Therefore, Critical Thinking make us different to the rest of the people, and help us face the world in a different way. Also, as the video shows, most people think in "Black and White", and I agree the idea that there are other colors (ways of thinking) between them.

Critical Thinking vs Critical Reading

Every person in this world thinks, but do all people think critically? Clearly not. In my opinion, thinking critically means that you have an active way to face a text or a discussion, it means that you question what you read or hear, and you don't take things for granted, it means that you seek for true knowledge and you don't conform with the first idea you get. 


Critical thinking is something that we should apply in every day of our lives. Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and
skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or
evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation,
experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief

and action.

In the other hand, we have Critical Reading. But before being a critical reader, we need to be Active Readers!. An active reader is a reader who pays attention to the reading and who draws conclusions, make predictions, imagines himself/herself as the character, and re-reads passages that he/she does not understand. An active reader can be a critical reader by complementing his detailed reading with his own beliefs, ideas and thoughts, and by seeking for true and valid arguments.

A good definition for Critical Reader will be: Critical reading refers to interpreting any written text with both a literal and figurative perspective. If readers are not reading critically, they are simply able to repeat obvious facts that are presented on the surface. Critical reading, however, requires the reader to dig much deeper than surface meaning in order to find key elements of the text. Combined with critical thinking strategies, the reader can use various methods in order to better understand the text.

For any further information, I really recommend to visit http://www.criticalreading.com/

Sources:

Critical Reading Definition: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2058095#ixzz1sRRbFSJd

Active Reader Definition: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_an_active_reader#ixzz1sROwnRLo
Critical Thinking Definition: http://lonestar.texas.net/~mseifert/crit2.html

Critical Reading: The Big Sleep (extract)

In this entry, I will put in practice what I've learnt about Literature analysis. Follow the link below to hear my commentary about an extract from The Big Sleep, found in the page 75 from my Course Companion Book from the IB.

Practical Criticism: "You fit into me"

In this entry I will be analyzing a poem called "You fit into me", by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. For this analysis, I will use a New Criticism point of view, this means, I will focus in the poem, leaving apart its context and writer. To organize the analysis, I will answer different questions about the poem (Taken from Course Companion Book, IB)

A Human Eye.

   
    You fit into me


    You fit into me
    like a hook into an eye
    A fish hook
    An open eye.


1.- What is the relationship between the title and the rest of the poem?
The title tells us about someone or something that fits the persona, while the poem describes how does it fit, and the real meaning of the title. 


2.- What words, if any, need to be defined?
-Hook-and-eye: A clothes fastener consisting of a small blunt metal hunk that is inserted in a corresponding loop or eyelet.

A Hook-and-Eye.

3.- What relations do you see among any words in the poem?
The author relates a hook (or fish hook) with an eye. This two words change their meaning as you read the poem.


4.- What are the various connotative meaning of the words in the poem? Do you see various shades of meaning help establish relationships or patterns in the text?
In this poem, the author plays with the various conceptions of "hook" and "eye". She relates both as the thing used to attach clothes, but then she changes their meaning to a fish hook and a human eye.

A Fish Hook.

 5.- What symbols, images or figures of speech are used? What is the relationship between them?
The poem itself is a big irony. It creates us an image of an eye-and-hook in the first to lines, to make us surprisingly realize that it means the opposite in the verses 3 and 4. 


6.- What elements of rhyme, meter or pattern can you discuss?
There is no rhyme, the amount of syllables in each verse is different and there are no patterns. In other words, this poem has Free Verses.


7.- What is the tone of the poem?
Remorse and fury.


8.- From what point of view is the content of the poem being told?
From a person who had a love relation with someone, but now he/she is alone. Also, we can infer that there was a violent or ugly end in their relation.


9.- What tensions, ambiguities or paradoxes arise within the poem?
There is an ambiguity with the word Hook and eye. First, we imagine two persons caught by love, like a hook and an eye (clothing conception), but then, the real meaning is the pain that a fish hook causes in a human eye (referring to a bad relationship between those two persons)


10.- What do you believe the chief paradox or irony is in the text?
To express the suffering, fury and anger of a person that was in love but now he/she is alone. It also shows the remorse of this person against his/her old date.


11.- How do all of the elements of the poem support and develop the primary paradox or irony?
They all contribute to express the emotions of the persona. The irony is based in the different ideas that the reader has when he reads the poem, specially for the hook-and-eye term.

The real meaning!

Finally, it's important to note how this poem expresses a lot of emotions through an irony. Instead of just telling you what happened, this poem gives us the information in an artistic way.

Literature: How can we study it?

Once we introduced ourselves in Literature, we need to learn the ways we can study and analyze it. However, there are many different theories about Literature and about which point of view should we consider to analyze it. In this entry, I will present some of the theories that we have studied in class.

Greeks: In the early 400s, Greeks thought that Literature was concern with human behavior and its relationship with the physical world, society and ethics.  

Romanticism: It believes that Literature expresses feelings,  everyday life and nature through common language. 

Scientific Determinism: They thought that science had the answer to all types of questions, including the Literature's ones.

New Criticism: It focuses in the text itself, leaving context, author and other information aside. 

Saussure's work.

Reader Response: It believes that reader's own experience plays an important role in the interpretation of the text.

Structuralism: Saussure's work stated that words were signs composed by a signifier (Actual word) and a signified (Mental structure or image).

Post-Structuralism: It establishes that we learn by differences. A is A because it's not B.

Marxism: All texts have subtexts that are related, in some way, with something that happens it the real world. 

Feminism: It uses Literature to describe women's experiences and lives. 

Cultural Poetics: It describes History as the central part of knowledge. It studies every part of society and its history to make relationships with human life meaning. 

Postcolonial Criticism: It's an approach to texts produced in colonized countries, considering nationalism, laws, ethnicity and language.

Dramatic Presentation: The Tower of Babel!

Today, in our Language and Literature Classes we had to make an oral presentation. For this, we had to choose one topic related to language and present it to the class in groups. Some of the options to present were a role play, an oral presentation or a dramatic presentation.

I worked with Mr. Barriga and Mr. Gré, and we decided to do a dramatical presentation about the story of The Tower of Babel. So we divided us into three workers from Mesopotamia, and we also have God (Mr. Barriga did both roles). Our presentation consisted in a kind of introduction, where the three persons discussed about what to build to be famous and known around the world, and they all agreed that the best option was to build a tower to reach heaven. Then, Mr. Gré and me discussed about language while we "built" the tower, and finally God punished us by changing our languages, because we were ambitious and we wanted to reach heaven by an incorrect way. (The correct way to achieve heaven is by being a good person, according to the Bible).


Personally, what I most liked about our dramatic presentation is that we were able to present the story of The Tower of Babel, but we also combined it with a modern discussion about language (Innate Language vs Learn Language), and viewers seemed to like it. Luckily, we had no problems in our presentation and I think it was smooth and well done, so we are happy for that!

What is Literature?

Novels, manuals, magazines, poems, notebooks... They are all written Language, but which ones are Literature? Some persons make a relation between Literature and high culture written language, like poems or novels; others, relate it to all types written pieces. There are a lot of definitions of Literature, and they all vary. I think that the main problem when trying to tell what is Literature is to define what type of writings are Literature and which ones aren't. Also, can we consider oral expressions part of literature? This can be answered with something called Oral Literature, which involves non-written literature, mainly oral traditions and oral stories.


Here I present some definitions for Literature:

1. "Writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristics or essential features, such as poetry, novels, history, biographies and essays." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literature)
2. "Written matter, both fictional and non fictional." 
   (http://thesaurus.com/browse/literature?s=t)

From this entry and on, I will refer to Literature as "A highly developed use of language in that is the stylized manipulation of language for larger effect (purpose) and/or affect (emotional response)" (Taken from Course Companion book, IB).

Debate: Language Theories!

In my old entries I showed some of the theories that try to explain how do humans acquire language. The motion of the debate was "Humans are born with an ability to create language" vs. "Language is a learnt construct like the rules governing a sport". In groups of two or three, we had to defend and argument our points of view in relation with the motion.

In my case, I worked with Mr. Romeu, and we argued that "Humans are born with an ability to create language", against Mr. Eidelstein and Mr. Labra. Good arguments were exposed by both teams, but I think that our best argument was "Humans speak, we all know that. But who created the language that we use? Humans, who else could have created it?" Personally, I think that this argument goes really deep into the language origins, and shows clearly that we, humans, created language.

I really liked the opportunity that we had to debate and I hope we debate again in the future, because it's an awesome way of learning, as both teams make their best to found good arguments.