Sounding off

Thanks Cathy - a good summation. As we move from our consideration of the grooming and stroking behaviors that may have encouraged the development of language, our consideration of phonetics keeps us rooted in language as a visceral sound experience. When we speak directly to a present listener, while we may be communicating many ideas, we are also creating sensation that can be felt as well as understood. As we go forward, we will move from the experience of language to the language of experience.

Hey, hey, hey! It's the IPA

Notes 1-27-10

This week, we began our discussion of the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet not Indian Pale Ale) with a few exercises and an explanation of some phonetic terms. You can refer to chapter two of our linguistic textbooks if any of my explanations aren’t clear.

Exercise 1

We split into four groups and recorded a designated teller while he/she told a bedtime story. Afterward, the listeners moved to different tellers. This time, the tellers repeated the same story, but with the intention of making it sound like an inspirational tale. This process was repeated in two more contexts – teaching a lesson and giving a eulogy.

What was the objective? To see how tellers change the sound and content of their tales to fit a story type.
We determined that the bedtime stories were marked by:
- repetitive rhythm (as opposed to the ascending voice of the pep talks)
- explanations of characters and events (Do you know what a jellyfish is?)
- soft, quiet volume
- “cute” language (itty bitty, teeny tiny, teensy weensy)

Discussion
How much can we say without actually saying words? We shared exclamations that indicated everything from disgust to admiration. Variance in tone and facial expression helped deliver meaning.

New Concepts :

Voiced sound: sounds produced, in part by the vibrations of the vocal folds. These include [b] as in bat, [d] as in dime, [g] as in goat, [z] as in zoo.

Voiceless sounds: unlike voiced sounds, these are produced when our vocal folds are apart. This means that the air flowing through the larynx will produce minimal vibrations. These include [p] as in pet, [t] as in toad, [k] as in cup, and [s] as in sew.

Nasal sounds: produced in the nasal and the oral cavity. These sounds are the [m] in mad, [n] in nose, and final sound in sing (sorry everyone, haven’t found that phonetic symbol yet).

Stops (aka plosives): sounds created by momentarily cutting off the airstream. The built-up pressure is then release in a burst (think explosion, hence plosive) of sound. Theses stops come in pairs – [p] and [b], [t] and [d], and [k] and [g]. The first of each pair is voiced and the second is voiceless.

Exercise:
We practiced our phonetic recognition with a few rounds of vocal hot potato. This revealed our tendency to confuse visual sameness of words with a phonetic likeness. For example. When trying to match initial consonant sounds we sometimes made the mistake of matching words like kite and knife. Although the spelling of both words begins with a “k”, in phonetic terms one begins with [k] and the other with [n].

What is a stroke?

So far, it would seem that we are taking stroking as a common commodity, not only in general developmental terms but also in terms potentially useful to the art of storytelling. One teller may try to stroke the audience for some good reason; another one may try to get the audience to do the stroking. A third may understand that stroking is more or less continuously reciprocal—always going back and forth. But what is it? Is stroking any stimulus that gets response? Is it any condition that receives attention? Is it more or less a rational response as one might expect from giving to feel good personally. Or is it also relational response as one might think from giving to sustain a good group feeling? [See Kat’s comments and questions on the Haiti piece.]

David writes that “a stroke may be used as the fundamental unit of social action. An exchange of strokes constitutes a transaction, which is the unit of social intercourse.” This makes perfect sense to me at the same time it opens the door to a bit of a puzzle. What exactly is a “stroke”? What is the range of action and reaction that defines stroking behavior? Let us say a child knows only guilt, shame and violent rejection from the mother or some of the others. In turn, he turns out to enraged and rejecting toward women and others. He begins to operate from the old “I’m not OK: you’re not OK” kind of social intercourse typical of the criminal attitude and the socially misfit. As “the good guys” who understand that “everybody is OK,” we may feel tempted to define a stroke as “whatever makes us feels good, “what makes others feel good” or even “what makes us all feel good.” But is it ever really valid to assume stroking a common commodity? Is it ever really the same for everybody?

Is stroking wanted and needed by the marginalized or criminalized companion likely to be the same as for the more normal and moral majority? Apparently, rape, killing and violence are also part of social intercourse even if, as good guys, we choose to call it clearly pathological. Football players often say they “love the contact.” Urban police say they “need the action.” Soldiers sometimes accept needs to both “bring the pain” and “feel the pain.” Is this not part of the social intercourse even if it resembles “hitting,” “hurting” and “striking” to the rest of us? I once heard a big time football coach say that what people really desire in the world of sports entertainment is brutality. Of course, all the evidence he really needs to confirm this statement is a stadium filled with screaming fans.

In the more sedate world of storytelling, some tellers seem to stroke their audiences a little too softly or sweetly and so leave them hungering for recognition of a more urgent kind. Accordingly, they may decide themselves better off watching violence on television, porn on the internet or drugs and thugs out in the street. Other storytellers appear to stroke their audiences in a way that seems rough or vulgar and so turn them away toward another more satisfactory venue. Some storytellers apparently think that continuous laughter on their part tends to stroke the audience and so turn every tale into a big joke. Other storytellers appear to think that sadness and anger is the better part of social intercourse and higher consciousness. They then think that driving points home and pounding on the facts makes a better story. One common stroke is to make it all end with a big bang—to nail it for all time.

If one defines a stroke as any form of social contact that functions to relieve hunger for attention, recognition and acceptance, then we may as well open the range to include pathological behavior and gratuitous violence. Some people would rather be attacked than ignored. Others would rather be ignored than attacked. In the eighties, Annie Lennox explained “Sweet dreams are made of this/ who am I to disagree?” Can what appears to one as stroking and grooming appear to others as stalking and assault? “Avatar” is clearly a smack in the face of those of us who enjoy safe passage (via military presence) and who defend creature comfort (via limited liability). As storytellers, can we approve of the racial conflicts and social struggles in “Avatar” without accepting a need to smack some of the audience in the face?

Telling Phrases - Kansas going bye-bye

Telling Language
1. “buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye” Cypher, The Matrix
It's an old film, and I'd seen it only once before. This time, this line jumped out at me. It's delivered by the hard drinking crew member who will turn out to be a traitor desperate to return to a safe life, to Neo, the hero, and innocent, about to be initiate and it seems it jumped out at a lot of people too, as its all over the internet.
Unpacking some of the telling elements – because its in a film, it relays us information about the characters . status, attitude and relationships, but also meta-narrative information about the film.
The Matrix is a futuristic sci fi movie – a character referencing a 20th century film classic (The Wizard of Oz) grounds the film narrative in our future (or, it being sci-fi, at least one of our possible futures).
Cypher's delivery is not compassionate, but flippant and knowing. The phrase establishes a dominance relationship between Cypher and Neo, Cypher making it clear that a) he knows what is going to happen and b) he considers Neo an innocent, and weak though the comparison with the darling Dorothy.
It seems to me that the connotation that Dorothy is Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz is so strong, we almost experience it as a denotation. A secondary connotation follows of homosexuality, by way of Judy Garland, and her fan base, and it fits with Cypher's macho bravado for this to be an intentional negative implication.
The choice of comparison with Dorothy and Kansas is interesting: ostensibly the pattern is actually reversed in that Neo is about to leave behind the dreamworld of the Matrix, see it for what it is, and enter the real world with the potential to reach the human home world of Zion. But equally, he is leaving everything that is safe and awakening to a terrifying state – the journey away from the safety of Kansas. It is particularly telling in retrospect, as Cypher is revealed to be trying to return to the safety of the Matrix.
This state, where phrases become telling in relation to information only revealed later fascinates me. Is it a common element to most narrative, or a rare device?

Etymology - Undergird

2.Undergird

I had to include this, because though I only came across the word for the first time in my Interdisciplinary research methods class, and whilst I extrapolated the correct figurative meaning for it from a combination of context and the similarity to underpin, the actual basis for the metaphorical transition is slightly different, and somewhat less comical than mine.

The word didn't acquire its current spelling until the mid 19th century, previously having a variety of different spellings, linked to the Flemish ondergerden which translates as securing or fastening a ship, with chains. Public awareness of its usage was so heavily centred on the book of Acts, that a 19th century writer referred to undergirding St Paul fashion.

A strong metaphor then which sits alongside words such as underpinning, shoring up, even strengthening, which base themselves of the metaphorical construct of an argument or theory as a building. Not quite as strong a metaphor as the one I had in my head.

I thought of girders. Which do, of course, come from a similar term gird, which also has biblical roots and wraps round things. But girders to me are steel, and Irn Bru (a nasty soda) is “made in Scotland, from Girders”. So these interdisciplinary writers, were for me, busily propping up (there's another one) their arguments with large steel beams, whilst drinking soda in a manly way.

Etymology - Rage

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That our rage to tell and retell must be balanced by – even overreached by – our responsibility to listen, study and learn. Barre Toelken

A word worth exploring, since I read the sentence, wondered if it was a typo for race then reread and realised that it wasn't, and was intended specifically.

Entered English from Middle French, it's most common usage in English, even from the early 14^th century onwards is the one we know today, of a “violent anger, often expressed in look or action”. Instances of its use are recorded first for people, and natures' forces such as wind and sea, and then towards the end of the same century for animals. It reminds me of that other French to English crossover word terrible because it can describe states that are different, even opposing. Although now archaic, any Shakespeare educated English speaker would understand rage to sometimes mean madness and might even have an awareness that it sometime(s) referred to foolishness or melancholy.

It is interesting that the use of it relating to rabid dogs is recorded in the Middle French, otherwise I might have thought that a later addition. The online etymology site notes that in Welsh and Breton the word is a compound built on the word for dog.

The usage of the above sentence – as a violent passion - exists in English from the end of the 14^th Century, and is not listed as archaic, though I think perhaps it is becoming so which makes it stand out all the more.

A telling choice of words from Tolkeon, because it carries with it some of the other meanings as threats and portents – not least that of folly.

Class notes 1/21/2010

Hi,
These are phrases and thoughts froom class. Comments and clarifications are welcome.
Karen
Emergence of language:
the larger the group, the more sophisticated the system needed to manage it.
the maintainance of social relationships

Linguistic difference between communication and language

Distinguishing characteristics of language rather than communication:
productivity: ability to reshuffle and reform the bits
openness: introduce new words & their meanings
displacement: speaking of something in a different time and place
privarication: discuss & communicae things we don't know exist
[create entities that do exist...stories, myths]
[sometimes entities can be changed]

Telling of stories aids in group cohesion and rank & grooming, and maintaining status

Elements of language and stories are denotative (actual meaning) and conotative (ambiguous,
metaphor)

Question for us from this course...
When we tell a story, we must look for the "telling remark"
Why do we tell it this way?
What does it tell about the culture?
maintaining a cultural script?
perpetuating messages?

Is the audience grooming the storyteller or is the teller grooming the audience?

Synchronic behavior: grooup actions performed together such as clapping.

Creating Community in Haiti

Vis-a-vis yesterday's discussions, listen to this story from NPR in re: community organizing amidst the disaster in Haiti. Consider how folk activities like playing dominoes or singing sacred songs functions to maintain social ties. In a sense, sacred songs have a narrative role as well: helping to make sense of trouble and endure hardship. Note also, that the story repeatedly compares this phenomenon with New Orleans after Katrina.



In a related story, consider how the "international community" participates in helping Haiti. Is this a kind of grooming behavior? We talked about the high ranking member of a community maintaining the well-being of lower status members. "Still, even the impoverished West African nation of Liberia is sending help..."

TA & "Strokes"

Thanks, Guy, for your post. A fair overview of the TA concept of ego-states is given by Theramin Trees on youtube. Good stuff to contemplate and useful in analysis of conversational "scripts." However, my reference to Eric Berne's work with Transactional Analysis was primarily concerned with his concept of "recognition-hunger" and "stroking." This relates directly to the concepts outlined by John L. Locke in our reading for this week.

For clarification, here is a selection from Games People Play by Eric Berne:

Introduction
1 SOCIAL INTERCOURSE
THE theory of social intercourse, which has been outlined at some length in Transnational Analysis may be summarized as follows. Spitz has found that infants deprived of handling over a long period will tend at length to sink into an irreversible decline and are prone to succumb eventually to intercurrent disease. In effect, this means that what he calls emotional deprivation can have a fatal outcome. These observations give rise to the idea of stimulus-hunger, and indicate that the most favored forms of stimuli are those provided by physical intimacy, a conclusion not hard to accept on the basis of everyday experience.
...
The social psychiatrist's concern in the matter is with what happens after the infant is separated from his mother in the normal course of growth. What has been said so far may be summarized by the "colloquialism": "If you are not stroked, your spinal cord will shrivel up." Hence, after the period of close intimacy with the mother is over, the individual for the rest of his life is confronted with a dilemma upon whose horns his destiny and survival are continually being tossed. One horn is the social, psychological and biological forces which stand in the way of continued physical intimacy in the infant style; the other is his perpetual striving for its attainment. Under most conditions he will compromise. He learns to do with more subtle, even symbolic, forms of handling, until the merest nod of recognition may serve the purpose to some extent, although his original craving for physical contact may remain unabated.
This process of compromise may be called by various terms, such as sublimation; but whatever it is called, the result is a partial transformation of the infantile stimulus-hunger into something which may be termed recognition-hunger. As the complexities of compromise increase, each person becomes more and more individual in his quest for recognition, and it is these differentia which lend variety to social intercourse and which determine the individual's destiny. A movie actor may require hundreds of strokes each week from anonymous and undifferentiated admirers to keep his spinal cord from shriveling, while a scientist may keep physically and mentally healthy on one stroke a year from a respected master.
"Stroking" may be used as a general term for intimate physical contact; in practice it may take various forms. Some people literally stroke an infant; others hug or pat it, while some people pinch it playfully or flip it with a fingertip. These all have their analogues in conversation, so that it seems one might predict how an individual would handle a baby by listening to him talk. By an extension of meaning, "stroking" may be employed colloquially to denote any act implying recognition of another's presence. Hence a stroke may be used as the fundamental unit of social action. An exchange of strokes constitutes a transaction, which is the unit of social intercourse.

TA

Hey all, Professor Novak mentioned some things about Transactional Analysis yesterday in class. I just wanted to mention to you that there are a few pretty good YouTube videos about TA available. I watched them once a couple of years ago. I think that this link will take you to one, or you can simply go to YouTube and search "Transactional Analysis."
Ihope that you each have a great weekend.
~Guy

SPEAKING model

The following comes out of Interactional Sociolinguistics and is well-suited to our storytelling analysis:


Dell Hymes's SPEAKING Model
Background

Sociolinguist Dell Hymes developed the following model to promote the analysis of discourse as a series of speech events and speech acts within a cultural context. It uses the first letters of terms for speech components; the categories are so productive and powerful in analysis that you can use this model to analyze many different kinds of discourse.

The SPEAKING Model

Setting and Scene
"Setting refers to the time and place of a speech act and, in general, to the physical circumstances" (Hymes 55).The living room in the grandparents' home might be a setting for a family story.
Scene is the "psychological setting" or "cultural definition" of a scene, including characteristics such as range of formality and sense of play or seriousness (Hymes 55-56). The family story may be told at a reunion celebrating the grandparents' anniversary. At times, the family would be festive and playful; at other times, serious and commemorative.

Participants
Speaker and audience. Linguists will make distinctions within these categories; for example, the audience can be distinguished as addressees and other hearers (Hymes 54 & 56). At the family reunion, an aunt might tell a story to the young female relatives, but males, although not addressed, might also hear the narrative.

Ends
Purposes, goals, and outcomes (Hymes 56-57). The aunt may tell a story about the grandmother to entertain the audience, teach the young women, and honor the grandmother.

Act Sequence
Form and order of the event. The aunt's story might begin as a response to a toast to the grandmother. The story's plot and development would have a sequence structured by the aunt. Possibly there would be a collaborative interruption during the telling. Finally, the group might applaud the tale and move onto another subject or activity.

Key
Cues that establish the "tone, manner, or spirit" of the speech act (Hymes 57). The aunt might imitate the grandmother's voice and gestures in a playful way, or she might address the group in a serious voice emphasing the sincerity and respect of the praise the story expresses.

Instrumentalities
Forms and styles of speech (Hymes 58-60). The aunt might speak in a casual register with many dialect features or might use a more formal register and careful grammatical "standard" forms.

Norms
Social rules governing the event and the participants' actions and reaction. In a playful story by the aunt, the norms might allow many audience interruptions and collaboration, or possibly those interruptions might be limited to participation by older females. A serious, formal story by the aunt might call for attention to her and no interruptions as norms.

Genre
The kind of speech act or event; for our course, the kind of story. The aunt might tell a character anecdote about the grandmother for entertainment, but an exemplum as moral instruction. Different disciplines develop terms for kinds of speech acts, and speech communities sometimes have their own terms for types.

These terms can be applied to many kinds of discourse. Sometimes in a written discussion you might emphasize only two or three of the letters of the mnemonic. It provides a structure for you to perceive components.

Work Cited

Hymes, Dell. Foundations of Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1974.

Today's class

Hi Kat,
Enjoyed your film conversation; sounded just like you were there.
Re: Locke reading. I can focus with solitude, but I agree, I need conversation or noise when I am not studying. My cd's get a workout and I am singing in the shower, in the car, etc. Not talking to myself yet.

Hello from the other side of the pond

Hi all,

Sorry I'll miss today's discussions, attempting to be there in spirit, by mulling over the possible evolution of speech, and emailing in a film conversation.

Shall be back in Johnson City on Sunday night, hopefully with news about a project on Tarn Hows in the Lake District in June. (the reason I'm not back yet is that I have a meeting to get this sorted out today!)

Hope you've all enjoyed a snowy holiday and not found it too difficult to get around!

First read and assign

Please download and read the chapter "Social Work" from "Why We Don't Talk To Each Other Anymore" by John L. Locke. You can download the reading in 2 parts from my website at: http://www.novateller.com/ETSU.html

Also, while we await the arrival of the textbooks, I would like you to do a simple writing assignment for this week:
Please write a 2 page conversation among 3 friends discussing a recent movie. Simple as that. Write the scene as you might imagine it. Include yourself as one of the characters if you like. Use people you know as well - or be wholly fictional. Entirely up to you. This is an exercise so don't stress about the form and composition, or even neatness of the writing. I just want you to write a conversation AS YOU IMAGINE IT MIGHT OCCUR.

Syllabus

Instructor: David Novak

Phone: 828-280-2718

Email: novateller@aol.com

Office hours: as needed

Course Schedule: Th, 12:15 pm - 3:00 pm; Jan 14 - Apr 30, 2010

Room: Warf-Pickel Hall 403

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Rowe, Bruce M. and Levine, Diane P. “A Concise Introduction to Linguistics.” Pearson, 2006.

Tannen, Deborah. Talking Voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

ADDITIONAL READINGS (much of the following will be included in a Course reading pack, to be available at the start of class):

1. Boyd, Brian. “The Art of Literature and the Science of Literature: The Delight We Get from

Detecting Patterns in Books, and in Life, Can Be Measured and Understood.”

2. Bryson, Bill. “Becoming Americans” from Made In America, pp. 13-29.Perennial, 1995.

3. Chafe, Wallace.. “Integration and Involvement in Speaking, Writing, and Oral Literature,” Spoken and Written Language, Deborah Tannen, ed. NJ: Ablex, 1982, 35-53.

4. Dissanayake, Ellen. “Making Special”: An Undescribed Human universal and the Core of a Behavior of Art.

5. Fine, Elizabeth. “An Illustration of a Performance-Centered Text.” From The Folklore Text. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994.

6. Hymes, Dell. “The Lost Boy.” From “In Vain I Tried to Tell You”: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics, pp. 143-183. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981

7. Leguin, Ursula. “She Unnames Them.”

8. Locke, John L. “Social Work” from Why we Don't Talk To Each Other Anymore, pp. 67-102. Simon & Schuster, 1998.

9. Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale.

10. Sobol, Joseph D. “Innervison and Innertext: Oral Traditional and Oral Interpretive Modes of Storytelling Performance,” in Carol Birch and Melissa Heckler, Who Says: Essays on Contemporary Storytelling.

11. Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Folkstories of Children, pp. 1-43. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.

12. Tannen, Deborah. “The Oral/Literate Continuum in Discourse.” Spoken and Written Language. NJ: Ablex, 1982, 1-16.

13. Tannen, Deborah. “Involvement in Discourse,” pp. 9-35. Talking Voices. Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge University Press. 1989

* other readings TBD.

CATALOG DESCRIPTION: Relationships of local dialects to reading; alphabets; phonology; morphology; syntax, and semantics as related to reading; aspects of psycholinguistics which are primarily linguistic.

ADDITIONAL COURSE INFORMATION:

This section of Linguistics of Reading/Storytelling will be especially geared to the needs and interests of storytellers, focusing on discourse analysis.

Relationship of Course to College Philosophy and Goals:

COE Conceptual Framework Standards:

This course gives students an opportunity to assimilate five dimensions of leadership: concern for diversity, reflective practice, lifelong learning, caring, and critical thinking. General knowledge, content knowledge, and professional knowledge requirements are also met.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

1. To explore the linguistics of storytelling, in its conversational, performance, and literary contexts.

2. To understand the linguistic and rhetorical strategies which signal the emergence of narrative from the matrix of everyday conversational and informational speech and writing.

3. To inventory the specific linguistic techniques that foster teller-listener involvement in storytelling performance.

4. To help storytelling majors to understand how to better use these techniques to raise the level of their own performance, teaching, and communication.

COURSE TOPICS:

1. Basic tools of linguistic analysis: linguistic levels; analysis at the levels of morphology, phonetics, phonology, grammar/syntax, semantics, stylistics, and higher levels of structure, especially including narrative.

2. Discourse analysis: the methods which sociolinguists, anthropologists, and folklorists have devised to represent spoken language and oral narrative in print, and how these methods reflect on and refract the oral language process.

3. Dialect, and its roles in storytelling and literature.

4. Linguistic and paralinguistic involvement strategies.

5. Defining and exploring the grammar of storytelling: the transactional dynamics of conversational performance; the construction of meaning in spoken discourse; linguistic behaviors that establish and maintain social structure; qualities of style and “voice” in storytelling performance.

GRADED ASSIGNMENTS:

Writing assignments:

1. Record and transcribe a story told in a conversational setting. Notate all conversational turns, interactive responses, and as many of the paralinguistic elements such as pauses, expression, inflection, dynamics, laughter, etc. as can be reconstructed. Write an analysis of the event, considering the setting, participants, context, stylistics, and interactional dynamics as revealed in the language of the performance. 10-20 pp. double-spaced total.

2 Record and transcribe a storytelling performance in a more formal solo performance setting. This can be from one of the class members, a member of another storytelling class on campus, one of the storytelling professors, or any other professional or avocational storytelling performer on campus or elsewhere (it is fine to record the performance in the student’s home region before the beginning of the course). It is acceptable to use a recording of one of your own performances, but it will need to be in a live setting, and will also need to be recorded within one month of the beginning of class. Write a sociolinguistic analysis of this performance. Compare and contrast the linguistic strategies, paralinguistic aspects, and interactional elements of this performance with the conversational performance analyzed earlier. Analyze the narrative structure according to the models covered in readings and in class. 10-20 pp. double-spaced total.

3. Language Journal (100 pts.): Journal entries are to be posted to the blog in an ongoing basis for the benefit of the entire class and are to be completed by April 30. Students will keep a language journal during the course, consisting of word etymologies, neologisms, and “telling” uses of language collected in the field.

A) Word etymologies should be selected for their relevance to the art of storytelling. Collect at least twenty five word etymologies.

B) Neologisms are to be of newly coined words currently in use. Collect twenty five neologisms

C) “Telling” Uses of Language. Find and analyze language samples that reveal the base assumptions, world view, or beliefs of the speaker. The language samples can come from encounters with spoken, written, or electronically transmitted language—from conversation, overheard or reported speech, published or unpublished writing, or from language on radio, television, film, or the internet. Each sample should be at least the length of a complete utterance (depending on the context an utterance may or may not conform to the grammatical confinements of a complete sentence—i.e., a proverb (“Waste not, want not”), and exclamation (“Phat!”), or an advertising slogan), but no longer than a paragraph or a conversational turn or two. You will document the context in which you encountered the sample, the date, time, place, speakers, and media involved. You will then write a paragraph analyzing and commenting on precisely what is revealing and distinctive about it. Examples recorded without commentary or analysis will not be credited. Nor will more than three examples from any single source, unless you apply for and receive a special exemption. The purpose of this exercise is to hone your sensitivity to the subtleties and creative uses of language in many different forms and contexts. Collect twenty five entries of examples of language collected in the field.

Other assignments and quizzes TBD

GRADING

Paper #1 300 pts.

Paper #2 300 pts.

Language Journal 100 pts.

Quiz: 100 pts.

Attendance and Participation: 200 pts.

Total Points: 1000

ATTENDANCE

Students are required to be in class on time for each meeting. Three late arrivals or early departures will be counted equivalent to one absence on your record. A second absence will result in a drop of 50 points. Each subsequent absence will result in a drop of 100 points. Arriving more than 30 minutes late or leaving more than 30 minutes early will count as an absence

FINAL GRADING

A: 926-1000

A-: 900-925

B+: 875-899

B: 825-874

B-: 800-824

C+: 775-799

C: 700-774

Grades lower than a C in a graduate class are considered failing.

NOTE:

For more information on courses and the masters program, go to www.etsu.edu/stories/.