Just Kidding.....Here's the one I missed (Plus, I'll raise you a PDF)

The article I was required to read this week was a quaint little article on language and how it affects the way that we think about and perceive our environments. One of the main things that I found very interesting was coincidentally one of the main focuses of the article. The article dismantled the idea of the Whorfian Hypothesis or the idea that we are unable to comprehend ideas not encompassed by our linguistic understandings. This is just false, but what the article didn’t dismantle that our language affects our sub-conscious perceptions of our ideas. This is especially true for languages that are gender specific. The article brought up one example that was really attention-grabbing. It spoke of how certain languages like English have the ability to hide a persons gender in conversation, while someone speaking a gender specific language like French for example is inclined or obligated to make the gender of that person known by either saying viosin (female) or viosine (male).

The other thing that I found almost unbelievable was the section on cardinal directions. Some languages and cultures don’t think of directionality in terms of their spatial location, but cardinally instead. It takes me a second or so to gather my cardinal directions even when I have access to the sun, and to think that some languages have such a sub-conscious influence from birth that would allow them to maintain their cardinal orientations in a room with no sun after having been disorientated and spun around is almost incomprehensible. I almost wish that I had been born into one of those cultures, think of what good navigators they would make.

Here's a PDF! ;)

During the week I didn’t blog about we watched part of a documentary entitled "Do You Speak American". They only interesting idea I pulled from the narrators dull rhetoric, was the opposition between the prescriptivism and descriptivism. The way in which I understand it is that the prescriptivism believes that we should have a strong language foundation, a base that is universally understood by all Anglo/American speakers. Descriptivism advocates the idea that as the national culture and values change the language should with it.

I take an eclectic stand. As the nation, culture, and the world grow, expand, and evolve we will find it increasingly difficult to accommodate new ideas into preexisting words and phrases, therefore new terms are inevitable. What I don't agree with is the formation of novel terms to represent preexisting ideas and denotations: slang. Different dialects breeds disharmony, superior-ism, and discrimination. Have you ever heard someone make fun of a southern drawl, or a New York accent? I know that I have. I have seen and heard Chinese persons exhibit a disconnected sense of shared culture because one spoke Mandarin, while the other spoke Cantonese. The slang that originates from hip-hop and rap music has come to embody something almost criminal by the preceding generation (the employing generation) while it is a integral part of most of my generations daily lives (the future work force).

The Last One?

This week in class we covered the new and exciting topic of race. The main idea stressed in throughout the material is that race is not a biological phenomenon, it’s a sociological one. The definition of a biological race is that of a subspecies of human being that has certain specific biological characteristics or traits that separate it from others among itself. The sociological definition of race is primarily based on geographically determined traits that are typically recent, superficial variations.

We also did an apparently famous activity known as the IAT test. This test had you classify words into the categories good or bad, and classify faces into the categories black or white. The test eventually had one sort the two subsets together, having you organize both faces and the words simultaneously. Your amount of correct answers and response times were recorded and checked for differences to assess your color preferences (aka how racist you are). When I took this test it informed me that I had little to no skin tone preference. I was kind of surprised, because I know I’m racist and have skin color preferences, so as far as my results go, this test was not very accurate. It probably had to do with the fact that I spend too much of my time on video games, and my thumb to brain to eye sorting abilities are on the list to be made a world wonder, or that I knew what the test was measuring before I even started the assessment. I think it’s accurate for most people, but I definitely did not deserve the “unprejudiced” label.

We also read myths about the ‘differences’ between black and white athletes. I believed and still believe that blacks tend to make better athletes, but not for any biological reason. It’s a known fact that poverty tends to dominate two things: sports and the military. The reason being that blacks resided in greater and more accumulated poverty than whites do, and interestingly enough, someone who has the money to go to college and pursue an MD doesn’t rely as intensely on sports or extracurricular activities to help them get there. Who knew, right? After reading the myths and truths though I generally found my beliefs to be supported, and I was surprised that there was some data, however inconclusive, that showed minor differences between white and black athletes. The part about finding more developed fast twitch muscle fibers in black professional sprinters than in white professional sprinters was pretty incredible.

In my first addition to this blog I labeled myself a sociologist from the cradle to the grave. I have always had somewhat of a “sociological imagination”, known to some as the combination or critical thought and common sense, and have used it to look into a lot of issues, whether sociological or not, and have ultimately formed opinions and ideas that I’ve copied from intelligent people all over the world. Opinions and ideas that set me apart from the rest of my peers, and left me thinking to myself alone instead of establishing social relationships. There are no topics that I specifically enjoyed and none that I would have like to spend less time on. I had a basic understanding of just about everything we did in class this year from previous independent thought that I assumed everyone shared and experienced. The one thing I learned from participating in this class that stood out above all else is that there are still individuals not capable of abstract or critical thought at my age or even older, and through this I learned that I am a condescending asshole.

Stained Class

           
This week in sociology we watched a video that covered a plethora of social class related topics. I’m not going to cover the entire video. Instead I’ll touch on the parts I found to be most interesting, and the general idea.           

            The part of the video that I found to be most enjoyable was the part about WASP lessons. The WASP character that they kept interviewing was the easily one of the most ironic, funny, and dissonant characters that the video featured. The part in which he made the claims about the WASP community was what I can only describe as obnoxiously truthful. I didn’t know if it was meant to be a satire of WASPs or if he believed what was coming out of his mouth. The part that I found funny was that it didn’t matter. After watching the WASPs I genuinely believed that they were a purer, more proper people. Their class is depicted in film and other media as a sort of old fashioned, very prim and proper, anti-typical American way of life. The part that I found very enlightening is the fact that the lifestyle is alive and well in the American community. Old money apparently refused to die.

            The more general idea that ties into this section and all of the other is the idea that a class is more than the money you make, it’s who you are. It is something that you are programmed to accept and do from the day you are born to the day you die. It’s your behavior as well as your financial status. Support for this even lies in the way we classify the rich. There is the working class wealth (doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc.), there are the celebrities, athletes, politicians, wasps (old money), and none of these groups belong to a singular “Wealthy” class.

            The article that we read this week talked about food and the different ways that we eat as Americans. The rich eat well, the middle class eat, and the poor eat junk. It talked about how the ability to eat healthy may actually increases with financial status. It’s kind of an odd statistic considering that most of our stereotypes of obese children look something like a fat, spoiled white child stuffing his face with Swedish chocolates, while the real stereotype is the fat minority kid stuffing his face with cheap candy and Ho-Ho’s. There was even a parallel in the video, when the two black kids said that the uptown stores where cleaner and the fruits and vegetable were fresher. The hailed localism foodie ideal is something that is only achievable for middle to high income families, not the ones on well fair and food stamps.

            The general idea that I agree with presented in the video is the idea that changing your class in America is possible but we underestimate the difficulty that accompanies the process. Most people are not in socially mobile positions like we think they are. It is much less a question of motivation as it is of possibility. Social mobility takes motivation, literacy, and connections. Look at Tammy’s case. Can anyone really look at her and have faith in her dream of becoming a teacher, or her son’s dream of climbing the social ranks? No. The majority of people can only express their feelings for Tammy’s situation in pity and disgust. Whether or not they are willing to admit that they feel that way is a different story. For every American that ascends the social ladder, there are another ten that fall off.

 http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/climbing-social-ladder-starts-childhood/story?id=7768775