So the chapter we read from Argument Culture about men versus women when it comes to this "argument culture" was actually the most interesting chapter in the book we've read so far. It was nice to finally have something different.
Mostly, I enjoyed reading about how little kids play -- and having been in a high school class about Early Childhood Education that also delved into the ways children develop and play at young ages certainly helped to encourage my interest -- and how girls and boys differ when it comes to fighting. However, I want to be clear that the comments Tannen made in this chapter are not completely applicable to either sex, for personalities always come into play, as well as the ways the children are raised.
Specifically, I enjoyed reading the last part of the chapter about the differing cultural acceptance of aggressive behavior. I remember being told so many times when I was little (by my step-dad) that if someone was going to pick a fight with me, I should fight back -- and I should win. If someone should try to hit me, I should try to hit them back -- and hit them so hard on the nose that they won't bother me anymore or be aware, even, of what "hit" them. Of course, I know my dad's background as really aggressive, and I know he got into fist-fights again and again as a kid, so his telling me to fight back doesn't surprise me at all. I never had to use his tactics, though, because I always fought like a girl.
Melanie
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I agree that this chapter was more readable. Going off what Melanie said, I also have experience with different people telling me what to do in a fight. I went to a Catholic school for 12 years, and the nuns always told us to turn the other cheeck, like Jesus. My uncles, however, would have agreed with Melanie's stepdad. I was the youngest of 27 first cousins (yes first cousins, only on my mom's side), so i took a fair share of beetings as a kid. I have scars to prove it. :) When it came to my cousins, I very quicky learned how to fight back against my older cousins.
ReplyDeleteAs for the other readings, I'm really enjoying Brave New World, probably because it actually has a story line and itsn't so repative. The Medium is the Massage is weird. Enjoyable, but weird. I'm glad we talk about it as a class. It helps me to understand it a lot more, and I like hearing what other people took the meaning to be.
Elizabeth
I think "Brave New World" is definitely a nice alternative to the other books we've been reading. I like fiction, not people telling me what I should think as if they are they absolute experts. I keep getting that impression from the other books we've been reading, and I found myself enjoying running my eyes over the pages of "Brave New World" instead of wanting to tear my hair out from being sick of opinion.
ReplyDeleteMelanie
Whoa! There is a lot of information that Tannen completely disregards.Like Melanie said, there will always be personality differences and there will always always be different up-bringings. Not only that but she doesn't seem to make the connection that fighting isn't always necessary and that many kids do not want to fight and therefore will move on-leave the situation-tell a teacher, anything but get charged with asult and face suspension. Our world is filled with suing and law problems that many people who (like the majority of the population) is facing financial problems will opt to run rather than fight. It is the natural fight or flight response and today, the world in general is picking flight. I think she is a educated woman, but is letting to many things of logic and the middle/low class mentality slip her mind.
ReplyDeleteIn other news, Brave New World is my new favorite book. I love the story, I love the message, I love the type of writing, it is just great. The other books I don't really enjoy, but I know there is a purpose somewhere there..
Well, it seems as if disregarding Deborah Tannen a University Professor and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University is the thing to do in class. It’s unfortunate; I think that Tannen has a lot of good things to say if you keep her within in the context of her writing. Remember that this isn’t a book just specifically about Gender model and role’s so a full coverage of these types of issues is a bit redundant. Tannen starts the chapter Boys Will Be Boys: Gender and Opposition chapter with the question “what is the connection between gender and agonism? (Agonism -one involved in a struggle or competition)” Tannen goes on to explore the idea and give many examples on the connection to the idea. I also think that Tannen does a good job to protect her idea against the many of pseudo critics out there, such as myself by suggesting the exceptions and “Many variations exist, shaped by culture Geography, class, sexual orientation an Individual personality.”
ReplyDeleteI agree with parts of all of your very interesting linked comments! I think Paddlehead points us correctly to the disclaimers at the beginning of the chapter. She's quite at pains to limit her assertions and to say that what's in the chapter is not true of all and is not definitive on the subject.
ReplyDeleteHowever, her chapter is remarkably concrete and, furthermore, most of it is illustrating her larger point (connection of gender to agonism) through the work of others. The studies she cites are external. And, of course, whereas all studies have their own limitations, these at least seem consistent within themselves and make small generalizations.
I'm glad those of you who commented on it are enjoying Brave New World. As you get into Postman (another opinionated writer) note how Huxley poses Orwell's 1984 against Huxley's Brave New World.
On the whole, I think Postman is right that our society is less in danger of being oppressed and suppressed by authority and tyranny than of being so dedicated to personal fulfillment that other kinds of fulfillment get ignored. As Postman sums up . . . Orwell was afraid that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley was afraid that what we love will ruin us.
So keep Huxley in mind as you read Postman. And, as you read Postman, keep McLuhan in mind. Postman quotes McLuhan often, and usually with approbation, but ultimately I think they end up in very different places.
Just a word about our "opinionated" authors. There's a difference in genre, of course. Huxley is no less opinionated; he's just dramatizing his opinions. That's illustrated in the Postman-Huxley juxtaposition. They agree. They see the same dangers in society. Both are worried about the erosion of "public discourse," though Postman names it such and Huxley just shows it isn't there.
Well, I wrote a huge comment and then when I went to post it the ungrateful website said it was too long. So this is a continuation of that original comment.
ReplyDeleteKaley said, "The other books I don't really enjoy, but I know there is a purpose somewhere there.." I guess right now I'll try to hazard an idea about that purpose.
As the Communications faculty conceived Media Literacy (our course), it has three components: media literacy skills, create media, consume media. You guys are creating media with these blogs, creating in one of the fastest-growing and growing-in-influence media forms. I hope the content manifests incremental change in how you consume and how you think about media. To that end, the purpose of reading these authors is to encounter perspectives that may be other than your own. The hope is that those perspectives challenge you. And by challenge, I mean prompt you to test those perspectives against the media you consume and the society you consume it in.
So my hope is that people will read these different perspectives for their possibility to widen their own perspectives, to open up other ways of looking at the media and the society around us.
I find it interesting that we have Tannen's ideas about an agonistic culture that is perpetrated by media, by law, by gender and so on and then that is the response her book generates.
Or McLuhan who one day when he was reading Shakespeare and smoking his pipe, he suddenly starts up in his chair and says, "By gum, this world has changed. It's electric now, not print. What in the heck does that mean?" And then he begins to try to work out what's different between the world he studied and the world he worked in as a Shakespeare scholar and this new world he's living in.
Same with us. We're in the midst of the most dramatic revolution in media since Gutenberg invented movable type and Europe was primed to do something with it that was different from what China had done with the printing press and paper. Europe went berserk. And we have two of the most profound revolutions in western history--the Renaissance and the Reformation. If you add in the scientific revolution which the printing press was also instrumental in, we're still living in its immediate consequences.
I think it's a fair question to ask: what's changing now? Where are we going? What are we in danger of losing? What are we in hope of gaining? What is the nature of the media and the society from 1452 to about 1995? And what has the last 15 years brought? What will the next 15 bring?
Well that's the purpose of all these books and authors. Just to stimulate you to ask questions and to get interested in exploring some of the incredible revolution we're in the midst of.
Gordon C