Amanda’s blog

A couple weeks ago a fellow classmate requested we fill out a survey before class on dialects. One of the questions was "What is a hard sweet candy that is on the end of a stick?"  Okay so this is probalbly not the exact wording of the question but you get the drift. I automatically answered the question with sucker of course because I grew up calling it this.  I was later discussing the question with a classmate and she called it a lollipop.  I have heard this before but had never called them lollipops.  It is a perfect example of regional dialect because I am from Western Kentucky and she is from northern Kentucky.

So this is yet another connection to linguistics through my Canadian co-worker. 

In the English language there are many different "nicknames" or endearing words used to address one another and even more for an adult to use for children.  I have caught myself using words like "hun" or sweetie.  I was listening to one of my students when all of a sudden I hear the word muffin come out of my co-worker's mouth.  I was like what.  So after we each handled our situations, I asked her what she called the little girl because I wasn't sure if I had heard her right, and sure enough she had called her little muffin.  I was intrigued by this  dialectical saying she used.  I had never heard anyone else use this. 

Aww... the mysterious of the english language and the multitude of dialectical regions.

In flauting the politenesses maxim can on still be considered polite if the hearer considers true honesty to be polite?

I have a friend as well as a sister who considers not telling the truth (flauting the maxim of quality) to be impolite.  If either one of them ask you a question on say their appearance or a paper or something personal then they expect you to tell you the truth, no matter what it may be.  So to them it would be flauting the politeness maxim not the quality maxim it one would tell anything less the the complete truth.

Any thoughts?

I am in a Latin American Studies class this semester and we are learning about, you guessed it, the history of Central/Latin America.  We are accustomed to having guest speakers.  One of our recent speakers was discussing the history of certain Central American countries and immigrants into the United States and she brought up the issue of how we "call" or classify them.  She posed the question, if you see an individual that appears to be of a different race and could either be from Mexico, Central/Latin America or Spain what do you call them?  She proposed that we Americans either call them Mexican or Hispanic not caring where they are actually from. 

So what does this have to do with linguistics? Well it deals with the subject on the lines of ambiguity and homophones.  Here it is proposed that we Americans use these two words as homophones in a very ambiguous manner.  We are excluding any true context and using our own.

What do you think?  Do we use this linguistic rule to suit our needs for classification?  

Back to Grice's maxims and my co-worker.   The question I have here is do these maxims apply to all dialects and regions?  I hear my fellow co-worker and friend flauting these maxims quite frequently but using phrases that I would feel be irrelevant to the conversation, going back to her uses of I'm sorry, but I do not think she is doing it on purpose.  Any thoughts?

In class the other day we were discussing reasons behind flauting Grice's maxims.  The one reason the stuck out in my mind is as a means of sarcasm.  My question is, is this the only reason?  Can one successfully achieve flauting with out accomplishing the illocutionary act of sarcasm? 

At work to day I found myself listening to my co-worker from Canada.  In particular I was listening to her uses of "I'm sorry."  In class we were discussing the illocutionary acts for this "I'm sorry" locution.  With my co-worker I found her using it for: excuse me (please move),  excuse me (I just sneezed),  the form of sympathy, and i don't understand.  Within one day I heard all of these illocutionary acts.  I find it interesting how across dialects one runs into such diverse illocutionary acts for one phrase. 

"Please send me your slippers"

In class Dr. Myers read us this interesting blur including this statement.  I found it very interesting.  According to the individual, the recipient of this note would not be able to incorporate the perspective change.  But I feel this would be more confusing.  One you have me in the statement.  I would argue that any individual would immediately be about to understand that the sender would be requesting for their own slippers with the element of me.  I would also argue that with using the word your then the individual receiving the not would automatically interpret your as meaning their (the receiver's) slippers.  Thoughts?

In class the other day we were discussing perspective in relation to direction.  We brought up the argument on the statement of "Look to the right."  This made me think of my middle school geography professor.  When giving us directions or instructions she would never say look to the right, she always stated either "Look to YOUR right" or "Look to MY right."  She always took in consideration the issue of perspective.  This leaves me with the question, how important is perspective?

Again, another later post.  Anyway, we have been talking in class about semantics (go figure...lol).  One concept I find quite interesting is that of dialect and more specfically regional dialect.  I am blow away with how this is demonstrated by my coworker.  As a reminder she is form Canada. Yesterday we were talking about the Career fair and I had asked her if she had gotten to go.  Her version of "we were at a lost" was simply "we were lost.   This was in reference to the fact that there was only four boths at the career fair for her major.  Again, regional dialects are interesting.