November 30, 2011
August 24, 2011
August 10, 2011
June 8, 2011
Bakhtin, context and meaning
It’s that time of the year for me again, putting away the past semester’s texts to make way for fall’s texts, that tranquil interlude known as summer. I had a mad frenzy of a revision week for my linguistics module; seeing as the subjects within covered postcolonial writing, English as art, news English, English in new media and global English little wonder my brain was exhausted.
As I picked apart the coloured sticky tags and makeshift bookmarks and dogeared pages I came across this section about ‘how the context and process involved in creating language art, and the contexts in which it is read, listened to, or viewed, affect meaning and interpretation’.
I didn’t pay it much attention during revision and was none the worse for wear after the exam (says a lot about my revision style) but looking at it now I see how important an understanding and acceptance of context and meaning is to my work as a consultant. Implicit assumptions and naturalised ideologies, at which many cultures excel, are part and parcel of the human experience and have been since human life began. There is no shared fragment of human experience that is not tempered by one’s ideology, shaped by personal experiences, the same way ‘there is no such thing … as a text with no ideological basis’.
Startling though is how few choose to embrace and accept the inherent messiness – complexity – in this universe and work with it, like taichi practitioners embrace qi within and without and work with it to their advantage. Bakhtin (1986), literary theorist amongst other things, had the right idea when he asserted that every utterance has some kind of dialogic relationship with other utterances which have preceded it.
With CE’s method of utilising the natural phenomenon of micronarrative sharing and SenseMaker® it is possible to visualise the dialogic relationship between not a few but as many as tens of thousands of ‘utterances’ – or micronarrative fragments in Cognitive Edge parlance – and spot patterns and weak signals.
The possibilities are infinitely exciting, not only to my linguistic/literary self but also to my professional self.
November 26, 2010
I don't know that I really care
Work life has a rhythm similar to the ebb and flow of the seas, and as far as its likeness to a complex system is concerned no one week is the same as the one that went before it.
This week was a very busy one indeed; Dave was in town for KM Asia and the slew of meetings and engagements that follow his presence as a matter of course. What you get when you spend two consecutive days with Dave is discourse simultaneously stimulating and dynamic (or spasmodic, if you happen not to cope well with rapidly shifting thought patterns and changing of topics). German and Italian and English operas, Mozart, Beethoven, Baroque, Handel, humanities, Shakespeare, politics, current affairs and of course the weather, no conversation is complete without talk of the weather.
One of the things I lamented about and will always lament about until I move away is the lack of proper, and I do mean proper culture here. No Baroque repertoire, no operatic repertoire, no (proper) theatre, no (proper) rugby to name a few. It says a lot about a culture's underlying beliefs that the humanities are not promoted at best and derided at worst. A child who wishes to read Anthropology, Divinity, Theology or Classics has to go overseas to do it. That's the keen irony, alienating and essentially kicking out one's own. I can't see that benefiting any society.
I'm convinced I was born into the right era but at the wrong place, but at least the latter can be easily fixed. I work towards the day when I could, in himself's words, have to be in London and easily look up any number of similarly-interested parties willing to accompany me to the opera that very night.
The day such a paradigm shift happens here is the day I know I'd have died and gone to Heaven. That might just be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I don't know that I really care...
October 7, 2010
Dire Commentary
Where five years ago this article would have made me cry out in rage, now I simply shake my head and wonder what's next where this country's society is concerned.
September 5, 2010
"Absolutely a magic tackle"
My sentiments exactly - and such a tackle deserves a blog post, I think. You could say Nicole Beck is now my favourite Wallaroo.
August 29, 2010
On discernment
My son, let not them depart from thine eyes: keep sound wisdom and discretion: So shall they be life unto thy soul, and grace to thy neck. - Proverbs 3.21-22
A post on my Livejournal friends list set me thinking. The post in question had to do with how best to teach one's offspring the art of discernment, and some of the suggestions given were pretty much what I expected from a Christian-centric community.
August 18, 2010
Messiah and Elijah
For the past few months I have started my mornings with Handel's Messiah. The glorious splendour of its harmonies counter-balanced by the elegant simplicity of its lyrics have never failed to uplift me. It is my favorite amongst oratorios although Mendelssohn's Elijah is a fierce contender. This morning I picked up a brochure advertising a performance of Elijah at the Esplanade. As much as I am tempted I think I shall save my money to hear the LSO and Tenebrae in perfect harmony.
August 6, 2010
It is what it is
In this modern world it is easy for a young person to become cynical and jaded about many things, this concept of 'love' amongst them. Yet every now and then a heartwarming story will appear out of nowhere to strike a blow against that fortress of cynicism and guardedness and nearly, very nearly, has one believing that things can change for the better.
This week brought a double blow to my fortress at least. First Prop 8 in California was ruled unconstitutional by a Judge Vaughn Walker and the second is an article by Lisa Ruth Brunner published in the New York Times' Modern Love column. (My thanks to Dorothy Snarker for highlighting it in her blog.)
Brunner makes no bones about the fact that the object of her desire and ultimately love was also a girl, and how instead of following a boy wherever he went she ended up following a girl instead.
We all have that first love. You know the one. The one who either brings a bittersweet smile to your lips after many years or a sweet smile of reminiscence when you recall that laugh, that voice, that look. The one you will always remember and perhaps, even, write about. The one you will always, in some way, love.
Certain parts of the world have come far. While the plague of female foeticide and infanticide still ravages vast lands, we have the heartening progress, the gradual shift away from hetero-normativity, an increasing tolerance of diversity. For those fortunate enough to be recipients of that progress, revel in it and pray that one day it will be the same in other parts of the world.
Meanwhile, I will go back to re-reading Brunner's article, and after having snooped around Google to find out who the object of her affection was, I expect it will be interesting.
Image from Art & Perception