(no subject)

[rocknload]

I don't use this journal a whole lot anymore for actual blogging, as you've, uh, probably noticed—I've barely been using LJ since last January honestly. I love my journal too much to every outright abandon it (plus LJ hit me with another automatic payment fee, the sneaky bastard) so I'll still be around. Just, you know, less. Most of my personal journaling is at my Dreamwidth and Tumblr now anyway. I just never feel like divulging personal shit when I'm on LJ. Unless, of course, it is to bitch.

Right now my mission is to fill out my visa application. I actually need to get my ass in gear on the whole "moving to a foreign country in a bit over a month" thing, but, you know how it goes. I have, however, given serious thought to what clothes I will bring! And how many! In case you were worried.

Since I have spet almost the entire summer in intensive psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic courses, I am a fount of information that nobody wants to know. Like, here's a quote that is seriously eating me up:

"Mainstream English, as it is defined here, is an abstraction. It is an attempt to isolate from the full set of all varieties of US English those varieties which are not overtly stigmatized, and which find some degree of acceptance and favor over space and social distinctions. As we will see, these varieties are not coincidentally the language of primarily white, middle- and upper-middle-class, an midwestern American communities."

I know I have been beating the "self-described grammar nazis are fucking classist" drum for a while now, but woah, that's a way harder line than I ever took before. AND IT IS CORRECT, TOO. I want to read this whole book, not just the excerpts we got in class. Edit: This is the book, English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States.

Comments

[unicorn]

This drum makes a lot of sense.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

I HOPE SO I predict I will be shouting it at people for the rest of my life.

Another interesting thing I have learned is that a lot of the supposed benefits of literacy are possibly a myth, and even scientists investigating this have been biased in obvious and not so obvious ways, so it's hard to say for certain.

[unicorn]

I don't really see the logical connection between learning to write helping you with many other things than... writing. HAND-EYE COORDINATION PERHAPS.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

HERE I WILL POST THE QUOTE I PUT ON MY TUMBLR:

“Literacy is claimed to lead to logical, analytic, critical and rational thinking, general and abstract uses of language, a skeptical and questioning attitude, a distinction between myth and history, the recognition of the importance of time and space, complex and modern governments … political democracy and greater social equity, economic development, wealth and productivity, political stability, urbanization and contraception (a lower birth rate). It is also supposed to lead to people who are innovative, achievement oriented, productive, cosmopolitan, media and politically aware … with more liberal and humane social attitudes, less likely to commit a crime, and more likely to take education, and the rights and duties of citizenship, seriously. The common popular and scholarly conception that literacy has such powerful affects as these constitutes what Harvey Graff has called the “literacy myth.”

When basically, there's data that suggests pretty much what you said. It doesn't even help with language, since spoken language and written language are totally different things that use different skills and different parts of the brain and stuff. Scientists have studied this with totally NOT BIASED AT ALL theories like, "Do children with command of greater syntactic complexity"--this totally means writing, we don't really talk in huge complicated sentences, that would be confusing--"have greater aptitude for logical thinking?" THE ANSWER IS NO. And those scientists are also jerks.

[iron.livejournal.com]

That book sounds very interesting, and yeah, it's definitely a true point.

Figuring out what clothes you want/how many is already an accomplishment!

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

IT IS and it sort of staggered me, because it's super obvious and also affects like everything I study. Also my fellow linguists being assholes about this sort of thing always saddens me, even though I should probably like, expect it, linguists being human and all.

I have this dream of only taking one small suitcase, but I don't really believe that's going to happen.

[neuroticisizing.livejournal.com]

GOOD LUCK WITH THE USCIS. even though you will probably get your stuff done quicker because you're getting a student visa.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

IT IS A RESIDENCY VISA ACTUALLY the Republic of China doesn't have special student visas and I'm staying there for like eleven months. After six months I have to apply for a Resident Alien Card? Or something? NOBODY SEEMS TO KNOW FOR SURE. I'm not actually nearly as worried about the visa thing as I probably should be, but then again I'm an American and we're all under the delusion that we're wanted everywhere.

[neuroticisizing.livejournal.com]

Well, it's Taiwan, right? It shouldn't be as bad as mainland China.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

IDK actually Taiwan is really good friends with us and all but I think China plays pretty nice with US nationals visiting and stuff? Taiwan has its own government fuckups and an arguably pretty corrupt government, but nothing on the level as the People's Republic of China.

[nellasaur.livejournal.com]

...Damn. I....had never thought about it that way before. /mind, she is blown

Also GOOD LUCK GETTING READY TO MOVE TO ANOTHER COUNTRY AND STUFF.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

I KNOW RIGHT. She also took a fairly innocuous seeming definition of Standard English that said like, "the language of the educated ... acceptable everywhere ... easily understood ... spoken by people who want to communicate outside their community." and then she reversed the whole thing as was like, so you're saying people who don't speak standard English aren't acceptable everywhere, aren't easily understood, aren't educated, and all that? No.

THANK YOU. WITH ENOUGH LUCK IT WILL GO WITH NO TROUBLE AT ALL.

[nellasaur.livejournal.com]

Wow. Yeah, definitely no. It astonishes me the superiority complex people can develop over speaking English, particularly if they do it 'well'. And stuff.

I SHALL WISH YOU ALL THE LUCK IN THE WORLD, THEN.