Month: September 2018

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Marisa Brincat Post for 9/17

”Models of communication are, then, not merely representations of communication: templates that guide, unavailing or not, concrete processes of human interaction, mass and interpersonal.” (Carey, 25)

I liked this quote because of the message behind it. The meaning that I took away from this quote is that to study communication, you must understand how the models of communication are constructed. When understanding communication, you need to know what goes into the process of creating these models of communication and where the concept originated in. For example, it is possible that the construction of communication came from art, science and  interactions within real life experiences such as the communication between parent to child, advertisers, welfare workers, teachers to their students, etc.  I feel like this quote really helped me understand the model of communication and it allowed me to see how communication can evolve over time.

 

Sources: James Carey, Communication as Culture, second edition, 1991

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Clary Capellan NYPL Oral History 9/16

For the NYPL Oral History assignment I chose Esther Zhang’s interview by Iris Grattan. In this interview Esther, a Chinese graduate at Columbia University, speaks on living in Harlem and how although Columbia is in Harlem, the University and many people choose to disassociate it from Harlem. She also speaks on her observations of the racial issues and oppression that are evident in the community in which she resides.  One of the challenges that i faced while editing this transcript was the fact that the audio would not play as I tried to edit it. Therefore, I had to constantly switch tabs when there would be confusion in what was said, which I later resulted in just opening two separate windows with the audio and the transcript to reduce the hassle. To me the editing process was quite time consuming and involved a lot of paying attention and focus in order to transmit what was being spoken into writing, that was probably the hardest part. The easiest part of this assignment was listening to the story, I actually found it very interesting, as it has never been brought up to my attention. This assignment captures the distinction between storytelling by speaking and writing.

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Week 3 Post 9/16

For this week’s response I chose to reflect on Marie Battiste “Decolonizing The University” which I found to be something that’s not new to me but it was interesting. Battiste writes about the times of early European takeovers had noticed that the Indigenous people were literate. “ When Europeans did encounter undeniable evidence of a literacy equivalent to their own, such as Toltec and Mayan paper books, they did their best to eradicate it as a threat to the teachings of the scriptures they brought with them” (Battiste, 111-112). After reading this it made me question to why the Indigenous language was seen as a threat? Living in a world today where communication comes in all different forms, neither of them are a “threat” to the other.  If anything, having different forms of communication can be beneficial to others because communication is what makes us not afraid of each other. The early Europeans probably had feared the Indigenous because of what they believed them to be, which was being uncivilized.

 

 

Cited Works

  • Marie Battiste. “Print Culture and Decolonizing the University: Indigenizing the Page: Part 1.” The Future of the Page . University of Toronto Press, 2004.
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StClair blog post week 3

The work I choose for this week is Marie Battiste’s Indigenizing the Page. In this article, Battiste talks about how Indigenous people retained their oral culture and Aboriginal forms of literacy during the time of being colonized and assimilation of Eurocentric ideas and imperialism. Battiste brought up this one example of Mi’kmaq, an Indigenous person who was living in eastern Canada and was part of being colonized with other Indigenous people in eastern Canada. Battiste explains how Mi’kmaq kept his culture during this period of colonization. Battiste wrote “Stripped of their wealth and power in eastern Canada, Mi’kmaq maintain their knowledge and heritage through symbolic literacies and language, as they are also becoming increasingly bilingual. They are restoring their knowledge and heritage by taking over the education of the youth, and healing the harmful psychological and economic damage of colonialism.”(Battiste, 2004). Although Mi’kmaq became bilingual and had to assimilate, he still preserved his Indigenous culture and Aboriginal forms of literacy from being completely erased by Eurocentric ideals for future generations that followed. Battiste emphasized how Aboriginal forms of literacy is prominent in Indigenous culture and how important it was for it to “not been replaced or displaced by print culture and new technologies of the page.”(Battiste, 2004) Through this, Indigenous people have retained their culture for many generations.

References: Battiste, Marie. (2004). Print culture and decolonizing the university: Indigenizing the page: Part 1. The Future of the Page. 111-124. 10.3138/9781442657250-007.

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NYPL Oral History

For my NYPL Oral History Project, I chose the interview done by Brian Gerber, interviewing Adrian Spratt.  Adrian Spratt is a British born, now a Brooklyn Heights native, visually impaired, with a speech impediment, NYC attorney.  The reason I chose this interview, to be perfectly honest,  was Adrian’s photo. After I heard the original interview, I knew I was writing a blog on him, but seeing Adrian’s picture, there was something very welcoming about him. I loved hearing Adrian’s story because he has quite the one to tell.  It was slightly difficult to understand at some parts due to Adrian’s British accent mixed in with his speech impediment.  However, hearing his life story was truly inspiring, and I can say almost as if a modern Helen Keller. Adrian had many physical problems and diagnosis’ as a child which affected him as an adult. But despite those problems, which most can say would forcibly sit those who are affected, down, and prevent them from doing wondrous things in their life, Adrian went above and beyond. He finished his elementary, secondary, and primary education, and even went on to attend university, including Harvard! Leading to become the attorney he is today. Adrian’s story really makes me believe that nothing is impossible, and anything is possible, (as they say in Disney, my favorite!) if you just believe, and set your mind to your goals.

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Blog Post #3

For this week’s response I chose to write about Thamus and Theuth. The whole conversation between Socrates (philosopher who dictated the story), and Phaedrus (Socrates’ pupil), is fascinating. However, the following line is what stuck out to me most.  The god Thamus said this to the god Theuth  in response to Theuth’s idea on how letters, and written words will help mankind for the better. “ The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. ” I really liked this line because it speaks volumes of mankind today, even though we are talking centuries later. Yes, written text, and literacy has made mankind leap miles in a positive way, and in so many categories. Culture, religion, societies, etc. However, seeing as we live today, with technology surpassing us in so many ways, it is important to acknowledge what Thamus said. Due to technology being where it is, we have become accustomed to it. Sure, it works in our favor, technology, and it is extremely helpful and convenient, yet we are forgetting who and what we were as a people beforehand. It is important to remember the ways of the past, to continue tradition, and not lose ourselves in the future. I believe that was the message of Thamus, if we let ourselves be fooled and seduced by the phenomenal ways of what letters. literacy, and eventually technology bring us, we might forget who we are and where we come from, and that cannot happen.

Cited:

http://www.john-uebersax.com/plato/myths/phaedrus.htm

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Michael Farias Blog Report 3 for September 20

The writing I chose for this blog report was Marie Battiste’s “Print Culture and Decolonizing the University: Indigenizing the page: Part 1”. What I found interesting about Battiste’s writing was how the Indigenous people of the Americas communicate and how European settlers destroyed that way of communication. The Native Americans used to communicate using things such as symbols that were designed to have different meanings. This system of symbols was based on knowledge that was shared among the people (Battiste, 111). Then European settlers came and destroyed all of these communication methods and implemented their own methods. They also forced the Native Americans to change Religion and change their way of life. Personally, I think that it is disgusting what the European settlers did to the Native Americans and their culture. For me I think it would be an interesting experience to live in the Indigenous peoples society and use their communication methods.

 

Work Cited

 

Battiste, Marie. “Print Culture and Decolonizing the University: Indigenizing the page: Part 1”.

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Milagros’ Weekly Reflection for 9/16

This week I wanted to reflect on the Battiste reading. I thought the whole reading was quite interesting but also at times very upsetting. Batiste writes “early Euro Christian travelers and missionaries destroyed, transformed, or simply ignored most aboriginal literacies of America or created myths to their Eurocentric biases favouring pages writing” (Battiste,111). When I read this, I was upset because the colonizers completely ignored the culture of the indigenous people that were already well established and had their own form of communication. Just because of the fact that their communication was abnormal or different then the colonizers, they had to destroy or ignore it. The reading then goes into the forms of communication they had. I think that the pictographs actually meant more than just writing on paper because every aspect of the pictograph truly has a lot of meaning, whether it was drawn on a birch bark or the way they drew. (Battiste,115). Their way of communication helped them to think cognitively whereas when the colonizers just gave them what they wanted to give and there was no room for anything else. I also think to how in our education system, we are taught at a young age one certain way and taught what we are told, but if a child doesn’t learn or do something a certain way, then they are categorized as “different” or “autistic”. But how about if their way is better or why can’t it just be the way that works for them? This reading really left me with questions and left me with a lot of information I never thought about.

Cited Works

-Marie Battiste. “Print Culture and Decolonizing the University: Indigenizing the Page: Part 1.” The Future of the Page . University of Toronto Press, 2004.

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Carolyn Pena Blog Post Week 3

For this week I am going to write about “Communication as culture” by James Carey because of how many great points were brought up in this reading. On page 25 in “Communication as culture,” James Carey wrote “There is nothing in our genes that tells us how to create and execute those activities we summarize under the term “communication.” If we are to engage in this activity writing an essay, making a film, entertaining an audience, impairing information and advice we must discover models in our culture that tell us how this particular miracle is achieved.” This quote reminded me of our discussion during class on Thursday. There have been so many changes in communication throughout the years and it wasn’t always perceived how we see it now. Culture also plays an important role in shaping communication. One example that I can think of is years ago when the Egyptians used Hieroglyphics to communicate and how they used it for 3,000+ years. Hieroglyphics were used to record important events such as stories, wars and were first used by priests. After years passed by the use of Hieroglyphics were uncommon to rare and now no longer existent as a sense of communication. The reason I mention this sort of communication is that this was taught and learned by so many people for years, only to end up non-existent and no longer practiced. This makes me wonder how our sense of communication is going to change after the years. Most of us learned how to read and write ever since we were able to and I’m sure once you started getting older, you have been curious about where a word came from and why it’s called that word. Also as a child my first language taught to me was Spanish and then I was put into school and had to assimilate into learning English. Why did this happen? Why were schools closing in communication from other cultures? Living in Queens, it is so diverse and for that reason, it would make sense if communication with other cultures was taught to us as children. One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is getting taught how to communicate and what communication exactly is. We were all taught the same language, taught to read from left to write, thinking before you talk and the writing structure of an essay. Who created all of this and why do we keep practicing it?

 

James Carey, Communication as Culture, second edition, 1991

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Michael Farias NYPL Oral History project for September 20

For my oral history project I chose to do an interview with Bruce Moore by Diane Norris. In this interview Bruce was asked to speak about what it was like to grow up in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx during the 1960’s. He talks about how there were no cell phones at the time and how kids used to always be outside playing sports. He also said that it was safe to play in the streets and not have to worry about getting hit by a car.

 

When it came to editing the transcript, it was a lot more complicated than I thought. I thought it was particularly hard when the speakers are always saying “um”. I found this to be very annoying because you always have to put these pauses or “ums” into the transcript. Otherwise it’s wrong because it wouldn’t be identical to the way it was spoken. I don’t think that it is really that hard to edit transcripts, but it just takes concentration and can maybe get a little overwhelming if it something long. This assignment helped me realize that we speak so differently from the way we write. When we speak, we sometimes stutter and say things like “um”. We also show emotions such as laughter. When we write, we just write words but we don’t stutter or say “um”. It really showed the difference between communication through writing and communication through speaking.