Women are evils?

There is a popular formula that widely spreads in the Internet shows that women equal evil. The demonstration is that men think they have to spend a lot of time and money to make women happy, so women equal money plus time. There is another saying that time is money. Therefore, women equal money powered by two. What’s more, money is the root of all evils. That is, women equal evils even powered by two.

Although the formula is a joke made by some guys perhaps, it shows a lot of metaphors that we use in our daily communication. After reading Lakeoff’s “Metaphors we live by”, I found that metaphors are ubiquity. Like the reading mentioned, “a cognitive tool used by humans for thinking and perceiving”, people always use metaphors to show their feelings about what the kind of terms like and sometimes create new metaphors with their experience. I think the term “women are evils” reflects some men’s real thoughts about women.

But sometimes, we can’t use the metaphors in the reverse way. For example, we never say, “Money is time” or “Evils are women”. These two sentences cannot represent any fact or experience basis. Because we all know that if money is time, we can use money as time. Can we? The answer is time is not a good that can be exchanged. The time passed by, no one can catch it. The same as “evils are women”, there is no evil exist in our world. Evils are the term that people create to represent bad things. Thus, there is no gender distinction in evils.

Metaphors are an interesting tool to develop our languages. However, not all the metaphors can be correctly comprehended. In my opinion, metaphors should be used based on the similarity of two terms and on the facts.

The importance of nonverbal communication

Last lecture our professor talked about the nonverbal communication. Obviously, nonverbal communication exists in every person everywhere. It can convey the information that people try to hide it and don’t want others to know about it. Nonverbal communication is some kind based on our emotion and feelings. Instead to speak out, nonverbal communication can better express you when people feel so shy or embarrass.

In the textbook, it mentioned “Nonverbal skills are important that good nonverbal communicators are more persuasive than people who are less skilled and they have a great chance of success in settings ranging from careers to poker to romance.” The most famous example for this argument I think is the “porker face”. When you play the porker, you can try to judge others faces and guess what poker they have. For instance, when you see someone show a little smile on his/her face, you would think that he/she has a possibility that get a hand of good cards. On the other hand, people who sign or are not happy, you can think that their pokers are not good. But a skilled porker player won’t show any expression on his face because they don’t want others to know his porker good or bad through judging the face and can make them misunderstand it as well. Besides let other people feel so persuasive, nonverbal communication can also make them confuse.

I think nonverbal communication is necessary sometimes not only in our daily life but also to the deaf-and-dumb people. The only way for them to express their feelings is sign language. I admire the person who invented the language so much that it uses manual movements to convey grammatical structure and meaning. In addition to using in deaf-and-dumb people, sign language can also use between different language people.

As a result, no doubt that nonverbal communication is so important and skill in our daily life and it is a universal way of communication as well.

A reflection on Pinker's reading

When I finished reading Pinker’s readings about language and the brain, I felt I totally agreed what Pinker said in his hypothesis. From what my learning in psychology class, there is a specific area in our brain that controls our ability of speaking and language. So language is a functional skill involved in brain that it is endogenously generated.

But after the debate in our tutorial class, I changed some of my mind that language is not absolutely innate and can be influenced by other factors. One is the environment, like the opposition group mentioned Genie in our textbook, she was locked in an empty, darkness room without any human contact. What I think is that even this girl has the instinct of language, the environment around her don’t let her talk. It is possible that her ability of speaking will regressive until she can’t speak any more. The same as the “wild boy”, who lives in the wild and recognizes his parents are animals. With no human contact environment, our language may disappear. The other one is about culture. Although Pinker said, “ Language is not a culture invention.” we can’t ignore what culture affects on us. Why were Canadian born to speak English while Chinese born to speak Chinese? Because of the different cultures in two countries. That’s why we have thousands kinds of languages in our world. On the other hand, language is sort of the culture builder. Culture is learned and shared patterns of behaviors and beliefs. If people don’t have the same language, how can they communicate and share their thoughts and beliefs? So, I think language and culture are supplements to each other.

In my opinion, the instinct indicates that we have the ability to speak but the other factors that affect can develop our language.

The departed

starring as Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson. What a cool movie. Feel so shock when I saw the ending. I can't believe Leonardo's role died...but anyway, that's the best ending for it.
"Cops or Criminals. When ur facing a loaded gun, what's the difference."
Official website: http://thedeparted.warnerbros.com/

Culture affects Communication

In my opinion, language is the first problem for those students whose first language is not English here. When I first came to Canada, I felt a big culture shock. The environment around me suddenly changed and everyone who walked in the street was so strange to me. Even if I learned English as my second language in my high school in china, I still couldn’t express my ideas and thoughts so well that sometimes made others feel so confused.

Like the textbook mentioned “anyone who has tried to translate ideas from one language to another knows that communication across cultures can be a challenge”, if I want to say something to my friend, I will first think what I should say in Chinese and then translate it to English because these two languages have different grammar structures. What’s more, I feel so strongly that English is more like a direct language than Chinese or any other Asian language. For example, Chinese will use more euphemistical words when they want to negate someone’s idea like “I think it a good thought, but how about doing something like…” while Americans will say “I don’t think it a great idea.” to you. From the Chinese view, what Americans say don’t show any respect to others. On the other hand, Americans may think that Chinese are not of great resolution. The distinction between them is based on two extreme cultures and languages. So there is no right or wrong what Americans and Chinese express. In my point, culture affects a language. Since language is the main part of communication, culture has an effect on communication as well.

Mid-Autumn day~~

Tomorrow is our mid-autumn day in china. Perhaps not everyone knows about our traditional festival. Let me tell u something about the special day.

The day is on the 15th of the 8th month according to the lunar calendar in China, which is in the middle of Autumn season. It is also called Moon Festival, and it certainly has quite a lot to do with moon. It was a day when emperor worshipped the moon and prayed for the prosperous year. Also, families gather together and enjoy the delicious mooncake in this festival. It is a day when moon is full and round, which evoke people’s miss of hometown and family when they cannot be home. This is because the character“yuan”, which means round, has another meaning—family reunion.

The main food will eat in mid-autumn day is called Moon Cake. Like what is called, the cake is so round that like a moon and is made with sweet fillings of nuts, mashed red beans, lotus-seed paste or Chinese dates, wrapped in a pastry. Sometimes a cooked egg yolk can be found in the middle of the rich tasting dessert.

The symbol in the middle of google logo is what the moon cake looks like and you can find more information in the link if you are interested. http://www.chinavoc.com/festivals/Midautumn.htm

Happy mid-autumn day to everyone!

Money or Career ?

An interesting blog talked about a funny conversation that someone asked the author what his ambition was. He answered money and was thought to be superficial. Others asked the same question again and he responded career. Now he was regarded as an aspiring people.

Communication is the charm of the language. Every word that used in communication can reflect the interlocutor’s personality, goals and wants. Why does the two similar answers make people have different thoughts? The reason is the words the author used. Although money and career seem to mean the same thing, they represent different sense of worth. Going after the money implies chasing material possessions while going after career means pursuing spiritual life. The distinction between them indicates two types of life. No wonder that the author was thought to be two kinds of people.

We can make a conclusion from the example that the understanding and appropriate using of words are technical and important in communication. An unsuitable word may let others misunderstand what you said but a proper word can obtain the praises. In my opinion, we have to use the words that can correctly express our ideas and thoughts to others since one can judge a communicator’s social needs even the sense of worth from just a word. So the communication is critical that it is a way to express yourself and let others understand you. Also, it is a way that let you to know other peoples.