we can haz blog?

You Are My Sunshine...

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:33:58 -0500

Pretty sad stuff, huh? A mom with lung cancer who isn't going to be there for her child because she didn't stop smoking, making a home movie in her living room for her baby. It literally almost made me cry. I'm kind of a softy, though.

"Come so far, but got so far to go.."

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:26:24 -0500

For my final exploring the field entry, I want to talk about an article that gives me hope that sarcasm actually will occur in the conversations I will be setting up for my comp next year. At the same time, it also makes me rethink my design and makes me wonder if perhaps I want to use friends AND "strangers", or some different combination of participants, but that is something for me to ponder about over the summer and not something to ramble on about here. The main focus about Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.'s article Irony in Talk Among Friends for me was the overwhelming prevalence of sarcastic exchanges in conversations between college student's and their friends.

Are you man enough?

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:57:45 -0500

The article that I focus on for this Exploring the Field talks about the difference in interruptive behavior and status differences in group conversations. Because men are viewed as being in positions of dominance, Smith-Lovin & Brody hypothesized that men will interrupt most often, regardless of who they are talking to. Researchers found that interruptions were not as common as they had expected. They found that males interrupt females but not other males. Females were found to interrupt equally for both males and females. The results show that men may interrupt more often due to expectation states framework which suggests that males use their status as a status diffentiation and therefore attempt to dominate men. Women, on the other hand, are inferior to men and therefore interrupt equally, knowing that they hold this position. Although this article looks specifically at group conversations, I believe that it will extend to my experiment even between 2-person conversations. I am still in the process of deciding on a clear topic however I am interested in extending a previous comp by looking just at male participants (the previous, just female). After filling out a questionairre related to gender, I will see a range of gender associations within men and will be able to see behaviors across gender. So this article will help me in the process by understanding the role that sex plays in language behavior. I will look at gender specifically to see if the same is true across gender. If this is the case I would find that men who identify as more masculine will interrupt men who identify as more feminine. Another aspect of my project that I need to consider is the situation I am going to present to the participants. As this article has said, interruptions are not as common in conversations as one might think. Because of this I have to set up a situation in which is going to elicit strong opinions so that interruptions can occur. With a good situation or question and a time restraint, the occurance of interruptions is greater.

"I mean, what are you gonna do? Turn off your tv AND your computer?!"

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:36:59 -0500

One thing Prof. Knupsky said to us in our last class really stuck with me. After a certain point, having an excess of statistics loses your reader as well as the meaning/argument. Reading through the first several pages of Chapter 3 once again featured statistic after statistic, and I don't know if it was because of my less than ideal state of sleep deprivation that my attention span and cognitive abilities are limited, but I feel as though I could have skipped the first ten pages without any real trouble, as he doesn't get to his own argument until "That's the claim" on page 84. Did we really need 12 pages of introductions and statistics before he got to what he really wanted to talk about? Anyway, I, like Rachel, found that my reactions to this chapter were somewhat choppy and therefore may require some bullet points.

thee Dumest genaracian

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 23:47:28 -0500

I will start my discussion on Chapter 3 where Rachel has ended it by thinking about the last question that she poses on changing the way we view intelligence. This struck me most on page 94 when Bauerlein says, "they navigate the multimedia like pros...they know remarkably little about the wider world, about civics, history, math, science, and foreign affair...". At this part of the chapter, like Rachel has mentioned, I just wanted to ask, why can't we change what is considered intelligent? Intelligence and the categorizes that fall under it have been constructed from somewhere and if half of the population no longer fits the mold of what was considered intelligent, then why not restructure it? Or, do you think it has already changed except for some people beyond this generation who disagree with these differences? On the topic of libraries and the elimination of books, I have different opinions than stated in this chapter. I do agree that library books seem more deserted than they had been before computers and other technology but this is because most often, on-line articles and sources have the most recent information. Looking at books from ten years ago, especially for a topic in college courses such as Psychology, will leave a student behind and have outdated information. I do understand, especially because I would rather read something on paper, the differences that concrete text and on-line information have but, I also can see advantages of the access and current availability that the internet offers. Also, reading a little further Bauerlein mentions internet terminals in public libraries rising each year. Although the internet may not always be used as an educational tool, I feel as if it is a good thing that so many people are using libraries for something.

Facebook Birthday Pie Chart

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:17:28 -0500

I'm pretty sure this is just some guy messing around and creating a graphic, but it's amusing nonetheless. I had brought it up a few classes ago, so i thought I'd finally post it. http://graphjam.com/2008/10/01/song-chart-memes-facebook-wall-activity/

I never really thought of myself as a revolutionary before..

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:49:32 -0500

The way Bauerlein continues to refer our generations as revolutionaries makes me think that I should start looking behind myself while sitting at a computer and thinking about taking cover. But I guess that would actually be what Bauerlein is suggesting is going to happen to the bibliophiles of the world when us technophiles begin to take over.

A view of an interview

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:28:30 -0500

As I continue this journey into the topic of interruptions for my senior comp, I have found alot of different articles that have allowed me to have a better understanding of power dynamics and the ways in which we communicate with one another. Although I have initially looked at interruptions in general, I have found specific situational context for interruptive behavior that is very interesting and can help set up ideas for my comp. This article by Menz and Al-Roubaie looks at interruptions in doctor-patient interruptions. They are analyzing three specific ideas. One is to see if interruptions correlate with a person's gender. The second is to see the relationship between interruptions and the doctor's level of training (as either intern or senior). The last is if the length of the interview led to more interruptions. Both supportive and non-supportive interruptions were evaluated. Supportive interruptions were coded as signals of interest in what was being said, described as "physicians maintenance and co-construction of patient-initiated topics" (649). Non-supportive interruptions included violating speaker and are described as "overlapping sequences as violation to speaker's rights" (650). Results show that doctors of either status (senior or intern) were involved in more non-supportive interruptive behavior than patients. Patients interrupt interns more than senior status doctors. Overall females in general initiated supporting interruptions more than males. This article is important in understanding status and the role that status plays in interruptive behavior. Also, in terms of gender, this experiment shows different ways in which people interrupt and what type of interruptions occur. I like the ideas that Menz and Al-Roubaie lay out in their study and think that understanding status difference is an important factor to consider when thinking about conversational behavior in two person or group conversations. The only thing to consider is that in these interviews doctors in a hospital setting are typically not going to bring up issues in which cause argument among patients and therefore non-supportive interruptions are not going to be aggressive power displays. As I continue my comp research, I am interested in looking into more situational context in which elicit interruptions or that look at status differences among individuals in conversation. Menz, F. & Al-Roubaie, A. (2008). Interruptions, status, and gender in medical interviews:The harder you brake, the longer it takes. Discourse & Society, 19(5), 645-66.

Don't do drugs... because.. uh.. it's bad..

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 22:41:40 -0500

"marijuana is a gateway drug." Not a very strong or convincing argument against doing drugs, is it? A. Lang & N. Yegiyan didn't think so, either. The 2008 study, "Understanding the Interactive Effects of Emotional Appeal & Clain Strength in Health Messages", looks at how an audience perceives anti-drug PSAs (what are referred to as health messages). This plays right into what I want to do for my comp which will focus on creating effective PSAs. Lang & Yegiyan investigate how PSAs can be effective and what makes them fail or even "boomerang". In this case, when a PSA boomerangs, it means that instead of decreasing or discouraging drug use, it encourages teens to try them. Not exactly worth spending large amounts of money on, which the government has been known to do. (see video)
Stop Government Spending on Anti-marijuana Propaganda

It's a joke, and I've got the winky face to prove it ;)

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:48:09 -0500

The Provine et. al article about :) ;) :( emotional expression was very interesting. :) The study itself was pretty standard, :-/ but they got extremely :-D robust results. (which were semi-expected?) But what I really :-))) enjoyed about it were the parts :-P which didn't really deal with the experiment itself :-O. Alright, looking back at that, I want to kick myself in the face. Ugh... that's so awkward and terrible. I definitely understand the whole punctuation thing...especially because I read this in my head as me speaking it and all the emoticons just keep interrupting the flow of what's happening. I guess I could see an occasional smiley after a phase break at mid-statement such as with a comma, but other than that... Ew... that was rough. The article brought up a lot of different applications and examples which I thought were valuable, such as the use of canned laughter on TV shows to indicate to people when they should be laughing or when something is funny. The idea of higher-order versus lower-level processes was also cool. Even though deaf individuals were not limited in their actual vocal tracts to limit them from laughing, they still placed their emotional content as punctuation, rather than something in the middle of statements.

Uh :) what's so funny

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:47:31 -0500

At the beginning of Provine et al. the punctuation effect is described which is used to help explain laughter in conversations as being "filled with laughter." The difference in speech then as they suggest, is that laughter is not randomly distributed. In this way, when having conversations through CMC, emoticons occur where punctuation would normally occur. This study observed emoticon usage in three different placements including alone, before or after a statement, or during a phrase. After analyzing emoticon usage on certain message boards, the most frequent use of these emotions was at phrase breaks. The question that I was wondering is why are these emoticons used and why is the placement so important? This article addresses these questions in an interesting way by referencing laugh tracks in television shows. Laugh tracks are added in shows most often after sentences or during phrase breaks. This idea is related to the emoticon placement in computer mediated communications. The use of these emoticons is to let the audience or other party know that the comment is supposed to elicit humor or an emotional feeling. However in face to face conversations do we use these somewhat awkward emotional responses as much as it seems we do in CMC? These symbols as Derks et al suggests do not tell us what a person actually emotionally experiences but rather the motive behind the comment that is being made. Why is there such an urge for people to share emotions and since we do not know how the opposite party reacts, are these emotions actually just reassuring the sender of their own emotion? Do you think that people who use emoticons for an emotion such as laughter are actually received as funny people in person as well or are they more often trying to be funny.

So people actually do use emoticons..

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:20:22 -0500

In "Emotional Expression Online, Emoticons Punctuate Website Text Messages", I was not really surprised to find out that emoticons were placed in normal conversation breaks where punctuation, breathing or laughter would normally go. Since it would be a huge interruption to conversation to laugh in the middle of a sentence and emoticons represent an emotion such as laughter, it would be an obvious interruption to the flow of a statement to put an emoticon in the middle of a phrase. Was anyone else thinking the results should have turned out differently?

Common Ground is a very common theme in Sarcasm Research...

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:27:20 -0500

A huge part of sarcasm in research is something called common ground. Common ground is the shared belief, ideals, and past situations shared by two or more persons that create a relationship between the people. This common ground helps irony be correctly interpreted. In the article "Does Irony Go Better with Friends," the researchers are focusing on common ground shared by, you guessed it people who have a "close, familiar, supportive, and liking relationship" or friends (144). In the study, participants were presented with a scenario between two people with either a friendship or a nonfriendship setting that finished off with a statement that was the focal point of the example. The participants were then asked questions such as "Is the speaker being ironic?" and "How certain are you that you correctly interpreted the speaker's intent?" (151). It was found that there was a positive correlation between the use of irony and certainty it would be understood. As the researchers expected, the ironic statements made to someone who was a friend was considered to be funnier and more appropriate than ironic comments made to someone who was not a friend.

WebCT is CMC! (but Sakai is better)

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:43:36 -0500

As I sit here in pajamas and sweatpants with un-brushed hair, hunched over my computer with an energy drink, I am able to appreciate the convenience that CMC and computers in general offer. It has been a commonly used joke that you can surf the net or go shopping in your pajamas, or even underwear, etc, if that is your desire. The ability to use the internet for communication allows us to remain in the privacy of our own living spaces if we so choose, which I think is a valuable tool. Also, I can do it any time, day or night. I don't have to blog at a normal hour of the day; I could do it at 4 am if I wanted to. The study done about computer-mediated communication in students who were enrolled in face-to-face courses was an interesting one. I thought it was a good area to study, because CMC is definitely not something just used for distance learning, though I do see a lot of those "Earn your degree online in just 6 months!!!" ads. This seems like a study that will become outdated quickly, and I wonder if the data collected today, only 3 years later, would be much more swayed towards CMC as it has increased in integration. Before you go to the main part of my blog entry, though, I think you should check out this wonderful illustration I found about CMC. As you can see, CMC involves kindness, wise thoughts, comparisons, investigation, and everyone involved has a smile on their face. What could be better?!

2b oar nt 2b. tht iz the ?

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:03:14 -0500

I was fascinated by the new world that Crystal opened up for me in Chapter 4 of Txting. Who knew that an entire genre existed just for works using SMS? I didn't that's for sure. A lot of the works he discussed in the chapter were from other countries, so I decided to do some yahooing and see what I could discover.