Phone Break

Have you ever wondered why nowadays the videogames that dominate the market focus more on a fun multiplayer rather than long and interesting story? Why does the game based on Aliens, a movie that favors tension over action, try to mimic the formula of every generic shooter that has come out in the last decade? What ever happened to the RPGs of the era of the Playstation One and Two? What is the reason behind the huge popularity of phone games such as Angry Birds and Cut The Rope? This change is attributed to a change in mentality in the new generation of people. People nowadays don't have time to play a game that is several hours long, and, if they have time, they lose interest before reaching the end and switch to another game. The multiplayer games are better suited for this new mentality. An average match of FIFA lasts about ten minutes, and Call of Duty matches last no more than five. And if you were to play another game, it is much easier to come back and play a quick match than to try to catch back up in a story. However, despite the shallowness, there are still games sold at full retail price. It is the cheap app games that fully exploit this change in mentality. If you want some quick entertainment, you can just pay a couple of dollars and get still get your money's worth. It is like buying a bag of chips rather than a full meal when you are just a little hungry. Short boosts of entertainment is what is considered as ideal in the current market.

However, this mentality isn't limited to videogames only. In Reality Hunger's thirteenth chapter, "m in praise of brevity," Shields includes various phrases regarding this phenomenon. Brevity is now favored in literature as well. However, Shields includes an interesting reason behind this preference with phrase 383 that states "It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book -- what everyone else does not say in a book." What this is trying to say is that, if the text is too long, the message or purpose can be lost in all the words. It is better to be concise and clear than to be wordy and ambiguous. In Kate Salter's article "Brief Lives" regarding the writer, Michael Kimball, who writes short life stories in the back of postcards, a new perspective is shown regarding short texts. The writer writes that "the postcard doesn't sum up my life, but what got me to where I am now. It's a snapshot of a moment. There's a strong sense of hope and joy in it that, while I don't identify with it every day, makes me feel happy when I read it." There is just something very compelling about simplicity when everything around us is so complicated. Whether it is a phone game or a short text, brevity the relaxant that people need nowadays.

Persona: Shadow of the True Self

In school, one is taught that plagiarizing is bad and that one should never do it. It's basically stealing isn't it? That's why there are laws such as those of copyright and things such as patents. If you patent something, you put it in a safe where, if it is stolen, it can be traced back to the thief in order to put him behind bars. In my school there was a whole campaign regarding academic dishonesty. They used pamphlets and everything. According to my school's NHS, after graduation, these behaviors could lead to economic ruin.

Well, in Reality Hunger, David Shields decides to throw all this out the window. 0% of this manifesto is written by Shields himself. In Layman's terms, this text is a bunch of ctrl c and ctrl v. That isn't really in Layman's terms you say? Well, let me put it simply. Remember that poem you wrote in first grade where you misspelled flower? That required more writing that Shields' Reality Hunger. Don't get me wrong, I am not taking anything away from Shields. His manifesto is probably better than your childhood poem. In fact, this manifesto is regarded as brilliant by many. He might not have written anything, but he still had to think of where to put each statement and what would be accomplished by doing that. In the end, aren't we all writing with words that are not our own? We didn't invent them. They were fed to us by our parents during our first years and by teachers after that. What's the difference between a word and a phrase? This post right now is being written with a great amount of stolen property. Shields was just thinking bigger by using fragments instead of simple words.

Moving on, in his fourth chapter, "d trials by google," Shields mentions many writers with controversial stories. Among these are James Frey, JT LeRoy, and Misha Defonseca. The one that really caught my attention was JT LeRoy since statement 96 said that "'JT LeRoy' was nothing more or less than a highly developed pen name." This led me to conduct a research on who exactly is JT LeRoy. It turns out that she is a woman. It's like playing Metroid for the NES for the first time. The whole time you think that you're playing as the tough bounty hunter, Samus, but then at the end you find out: Samus is a girl?! A moment that changed gaming. Well, not really since the people that played it got over it soon enough. Nowadays, gamers are like, "Ok, Nintendo. Samus is a woman. We know!" Going back to JT LeRoy if that's even her real name (it isn't. It's Laura Albert), the reason this caused great controversy wasn't because sexist men couldn't stand having a female writer (she revealed herself in 2005, a time where I hope this is no longer an issue). The real reason behind the hate was that this JT LeRoy persona that she created was thought to be real by the readers. They believed that there was actually a JT LeRoy who had lived through all the events that he wrote about. Turns out that this person that you admired or were intrigued by is just an invented character. Some people are ought to be angry. It's like that whole fake Paul McCartney story where apparently Paul died in a car crash, and the MI6 replaced him with a Canadian cop in order to prevent various fan girl suicides. It's relatively similar if you take away the death, MI6, and the Canadian cop. Alright, it isn't similar at all. But the essence is still the same.

Soup or Salad?

As I progress through Reality Hunger, I start to ponder about what truly is reality more and more. However, I am yet to experience any hunger while reading it. I guess I'll have to get further in the book in order to allow it to live up to the second part of its title, but who cares about my bodily functions anyways. You are here for the main dish: reality, a meal that in this post will be divided into three courses. Are you getting hungry already? Well, hungry for knowledge that it. If you are feeling the other type of hunger, go make yourself a sandwich and come back. I'm not going anywhere. That is unless your computer gets stolen.

Anyways, let's start this meal with a fragment 197 where it is stated that "Humans are hardwired to deceive... Deception is more the state of nature than not deceiving." An interesting point taking into consideration the fact that deception is one of the basic animal instincts. Whether it is the chameleon changing colors in order to blend into its surroundings or the venus flytraps sending of odors in order to attract their prey, deception is something found repeatedly in the animal kingdom. This is because it is an essential part of survival. In defense or attack, you need every advantage you can get even if it involves getting your hands, paws, whatever bugs have, or flippers dirty. Dodos couldn't fool anyone. Dodos are now extinct. Do you want to share their fate? No? Then go out there and lie to everyone. I'm glad to see that this message is starting to reach the masses via media. We must all learn from Gossip Girl or The Lying Game if I am to judge them by their title.

Moving on to the second dish, we have fragment 243 which states that "We're overwhelmed right now by calamitous information. The real overwhelms the fictional, is incomparably more compelling than an invented drama,"a statement that I agree with. I mean, I might tell you the story of Luke from Star Wars and you'll be like, "Yeah, he's Darth Vader's son (spoiler), whatever, " but if I tell you that a freaking meteorite fell in Russia, you'll be like, "Yeah! I know! It's so cool, right? Have you seen the videos?!" Ironically, there's just something mystical about the non-mystical. This is the reason behind the immediate change of tone we experience in our heads during a film when the words "based on true events" pop up. Then, we start questioning this claim, but that is a course from another meal.

For dessert, we have fragment 256: "Facts have gravitas." Now, this is a fine dessert. This means that it might be small, but it is quite dense. First of all, you might not know what the word "gravitas" means. Me neither, until I looked it up and found that it means dignity, seriousness, and gravity. We live in a world where we can't really take things seriously unless there are facts that prove its reality. This change is most evident in videos since anyone can record something for an audience which cannot settle for ambiguity and has to know whether a video is fake or real. It's like in that video where an eagle picks up a baby and people harassed the maker until he declared that the video was in fact fake. But it's not like the viewers had no reason to want to know the state of the video. Before the declaration the video was in a thin line between a funny video where an eagle is edited in in order to appear to pick up a fake baby and a horrifying video where an endangered species nearly hurt an innocent, defenseless baby. We have to know which one it is. Why? Well, we don't have anything better to do before the next hilarious cat video comes out.

Language II: The Adventure of English

If there is one thing that can be declared about the English language, it's that it always varies. In the same way that language can be spoken differently by different people, it can also be viewed differently by different people. Through the years, there have been many intellectuals and writers who have stated their view of English with each being different from the others. The Adventure of English displays several of these views in its sixth episode, and I, being the language student that I am, will show how these views vary from my own perception of the English language.

As I stated before, change and variance are a large part of the English language. This is something I have accepted and embraced. However, to some people this characteristic is unacceptable. On of these people is John Locke, who thought that it was vital for English to be standardized in order to make it understandable for everyone. Personally, I don't think that Locke should complain so much. At least English doesn't have a word that means straw in one country, cigarette in another, and male genitalia in another. I'm looking at you Spanish. Anyways, I think that this thought is to be expected from a man who studies science, a study where a slight misunderstanding could lead do disaster; however, language goes beyond just science. When it comes to other studies such as philosophy and language itself where topics can be unclear, the language can't be expected to be completely understandable. We can't enjoy a world of multiple representations and clever puns if we cant mess around with the understanding of words. The same goes to Samuel Johnson, writer of A Dictionary of the English Language, who only included his own version of the English language in his dictionary. Language can't really be defined. We often cannot describe our thoughts, and what is language? The communication of said thoughts. Much like the mind, language can't be concrete.

What is concrete is writing. Well, something already written. You can write in any way you want (unless you're in school or taking an exam), but you can't change something that is already written. You can't just change a writer's already existing work. You can alter it in order to make it more understandable, but that text is now shared by you and the original author. However, I would not recommend that. You don't see people approaching Michelangelo's David with a chisel in hand. This leads to my next point. As writing became more prominent, people started regarding written English as the correct English. I respond to that with a simile: text is like a bust. Confused? Think of it this way. A person exists and can be viewed by many people, but these views are only temporal. How can you allow the people of the future to view this person? Well, by making a bust. However, there is a difference between seeing a bust and seeing the actual person. When looking at the person, you can think whatever you want. When looking at a bust, your thoughts are limited by those of the artist implemented on the bust. The same case is seen in language. An idea can be described in many different ways through speech and can be limited through text. Text is important in making language last, but it also greatly limits language. Writer's block is a proof of this. You can have many ideas expressed in language in your head, but you struggle in fitting them into text. Don't get me wrong. Writing is a crucial part of English. I just think that it can't be considered as a norm when it is simply the tip of the iceberg.

Adaptation or Extinction?

Language has always been plagued with discrimination towards a "wrong" form of language. However, these conclusions were hardly ever based on the language itself. Most discriminated forms of language were based on opinions towards the users of that form of language. Just as the Scottish were in England, African Americans were discriminated by many things including their language. However, African Americans' magnitude of discrimination was much greater. Unlike the Scottish, African Americans weren't lucky enough to have their own country where their dialect would be praised and accepted. Thus, the African American dialect was constantly under attack. In the fifth episode of The Story of Language, a woman tells of that discrimination while being interviewed. Their dialect, called Gulla Language, was greatly looked down upon reaching the point where the some African Americans were ashamed of the dialect that connected them to their ancestors. 

As the episode continues, it starts showing younger people who speak less traditional forms of the Gulla dialect. This shows how the repression has led the dialect in an evolution that keeps getting closer to what would be considered as standard English despite varying greatly across the country. Sadly, nowadays, supposedly without such strong discrimination towards race, the extinction of the dialect is still in process. Youtube user jposh707 shows his worries by commenting, "I can see it in my own family. My grandmother, who was born in 1917 in New York, speaks much differently than I do. It's sad in a way because I feel that American English has become a lot more homogenized and institutionalized. The color and character of her vocabulary is something that will be lost when she and her generation are gone." This is an example of the death of tradition, a problem that goes way beyond language all over the world. Going back to my argument from my previous post where I argued against the idea that languages helped add diversity to the world by stating that dialects can serve the same purpose, how can people complain that a global language would kill cultures if it is them who don't let cultures develop their own dialects. Going back to jposh707's comment, I find the use of the word "homogenized" very interesting since, when combining two things into one, characteristics of each one are generally applied. This is shown in how many of the words said to be part of the African American dialect have become "American" slang. Though it might die out, African American dialect leaves its mark with the use of words such as "cool" and "bad." In a way, we are all a little black (apologies for the use of such a crude word).

"Black on White." The Story of English. Writ. Robert McCrum and Robert MacNeil. Dir. Vivian Ducat, Howard Reid. BBC MCML XXXVI. YouTube.

Evolution vs Language

Much loch th' evolution ay a species, th' evolution ay a leid is due tae mony factors. a body ay th' biggest factors in baith situations is isolation. if a crew ay members ay a species is separated frae th' others by, let's say, bein' oan an islain, th' differences atween th' isolated crew an' lae ay th' species will be undeniable. that's wa th' iguanas frae th' galapagos islands ur sae big. its loch if th' other iguanas, due tae nae bein' oan th' islain, didne gie th' memo sayin' 'at bein' big was hip. th' sam happens in leid. irish sassenach, scottish sassenach, an' oxford sassenach waur ance exactly th' sam. they aw took different paths when they foond themselves in different islands ur regions. upon discoverin' each other, they waur obvioosly confused. confusion becam anger, an' that's wa th' uk hates each other. weel, partly. hink ay it thes way. imagine 'at ye ur a stoatin galapos iguana an' suddenly ye fin' thes hin' 'at looks jist loch ye but wee. thes iguana is naethin' but a wrang, inferiur representation ay yerself. 'at is th' way th' sassenach felt towards th' scottish an' th' irish. they felt disgusted by th' bastardization ay their leid an' felt superiur tae them 'en again, th' sassenach feel superiur tae a' fowk. whit aam tryin' tae say is 'at isolation leids tae difference, an' difference leids tae hate. 

movin' oan, as isolation becam harder tae accomplish wi' th' years, changes in leid cam tae be via mixin'. in an attempt tae continue thes relationship atween creature evolution an' leid evolution, Ah will relate th' mixin' ay leid wi' cross-breedin'. weel, eh'd loch tae, but ken naethin' abit cross-breedin' an' dinnae caur tae research. whit Ah can research is th' mixin' ay languages. by watchin' th' foorth episode ay th' story ay sassenach, Ah foond it 'at soothern american accents ur actually evolutions ay th' scottish sassenach. thes was due tae th' arrival ay scottish immigrants fa traveled doon th' moontains. Ah guess 'at scottish sassenach an' american sassenach got alang bonnie weel an' gae birth tae hillbillies. weel, nae hillbillies but whit comes it their gob. 'at still soonds bonnie unsettlin' an' weird. a factur ay evolution 'at Ah woods loch tae see mair ay in leid is natural selection. wa ur ye prood ay yer accent coz nae a body understands it? in nature, ye dornt see white tigers showin' aff tae their orange coonter parts hoo they cannae hunt coz they're aye spottend when they hide.

Much like the evolution of a species, the evolution of a language is due to many factors. One of the biggest factors in both situations is isolation. If a group of members of a species is separated from the others by, let's say, being on an island, the differences between the isolated group and the rest of the species will be undeniable. That's why the iguanas from the Galapagos islands are so big. Its like if the other iguanas, due to not being on the island, didn't get the memo saying that being big was hip. The same happens in language. Irish English, Scottish English, and Oxford English were once exactly the same. They all took different paths when they found themselves in different islands or regions. Upon discovering each other, they were obviously confused. Confusion became anger, and that's why the UK hates each other. Well, partly. Think of it this way. Imagine that you are a great Galapagos iguana and suddenly you find this thing that looks just like you but tiny. This iguana is nothing but a wrong, inferior representation of yourself. That is the way the English felt towards the Scottish and the Irish. They felt disgusted by the bastardization of their language and felt superior to them Then again, the English feel superior to everyone. What I'm trying to say is that isolation leads to difference, and difference leads to hate.

Moving on, as isolation became harder to accomplish with the years, changes in language came to be via mixing. In an attempt to continue this relationship between creature evolution and language evolution, I will relate the mixing of language with cross-breeding. Well, I'd like to, but know nothing about cross-breeding and do not care to research. What I can research is the mixing of languages. By watching the fourth episode of The Story of English, I found out that southern American accents are actually evolutions of the Scottish English. This was due to the arrival of Scottish immigrants who traveled down the mountains. I guess that Scottish English and American English got along pretty well and gave birth to hillbillies. Well, not hillbillies but what comes out their mouth. That still sounds pretty unsettling and weird. A factor of evolution that I would like to see more of in language is natural selection. Why are you proud of your accent because no one understands it? In nature, you don't see white tigers showing off to their orange counter parts how they can't hunt because they're always spotted when they hide.

"The Guid Scots Tongue." The Story of English. Writ. Robert McCrum and Robert MacNeil. Dir. Vivian Ducat, Howard Reid. BBC MCML XXXVI. YouTube.

English Happy Fun Time

It's safe to say that English is a pretty universal language. If you don't know English, how are you reading this? That's pretty impressive. Anyways, the universality of this language provides a convenient way of communication that can be used as a default. This helps in breaking down the language barrier and linking many different cultures. Let me provide an example.

Disclaimer: all characters and locations used in this example are completely fictional and are in no way based on actual people.

Let's say that there is a Mexican called Jorge Bernardo who goes to a school in Colombia. Jorge has no problem communicating in this school since Colombia and Mexico both speak Spanish. However, while in this school, Jorge meets up with two Koreans: Nick and Hae. This sets a problem. In Korea, people don't speak Spanish. They speak Korean. Immediately, Jorge regrets taking choir instead of Korean back in third grade and finds himself in an awkward silence with two Koreans simply staring at him. Here is where English saves the day. Jorge remembers that this school is an American school and these Koreans must know English in order to make it all the way to high school. Jorge mans up and suddenly finds himself having an English conversation with two Koreans about quantum physics and nose bleeds. 

English is the language that can bring the world together. Some people might think that this globalization of a language would take away from the diversity of the world. I think that they are just too lazy to actually learn it. It's not like every country would speak the exact same English. Each culture would have its own accent and slang. An English Speaking World explores this by displaying the use of English in many countries such as the United States, India, and African countries. I believe that all countries should embrace English but shouldn't forget their own culture. People should accept their own mutation of the global language. Though some accents and slang might seem funny or superior, it provides that diversity that you love so goddamn much. What's that? You don't understand the Chilean's accent when they speak English? Well, try understanding them when they are speaking a different language. The first problem doesn't seem so bad now does it? Stop complaining and accept this difference. Don't think that just because you speak English differently you are superior to others. It's still the same language. Learning it is the same in every accent. Speaking with an English accent doesn't make you superior. In fact, if its not your natural accent, it has the complete opposite effect. It just makes you sound silly and makes people around you desire your silence. Instead of practicing that sorry copy of an accent, read a book or a dictionary. If you want to seem more intelligent, try using vocabulary. This method actually works.