The Ink that Talks

Written essays are nothing more than ink on a piece of paper. However, such simple act brought lives to this world that would otherwise be dull.

Pens are like magical wands that could siphon the threads of thought from a person; like the hand of the mother earth that touches everyone, pouring tons of emotion into the lonely heart.

Hundreds of different language that tells the same story, story that lives for thousand centuries.

Ideas titivated by rhetorical discourse, shines brighter than the webby formulae.

The color of the ink is like the culture of a person, it’s nothing more than what you see. What’s important is the underlying message that is conveyed.

Understanding the written traits of foreign learners is to broaden our minds, to free us from the cultural ring that would otherwise engulfed us.

Poetries are like reflections of essays on a funhouse mirror, where their look changes with others remain.

As an epilogue:
"Whether the ink is white or black, it is a good ink as long as it catches attention".

Evolution of Spoken Discourse

It occurs to me that people tend to convey their message differently when communicating over different mediums. When speaking over the phone, most would say “hello” as their opening statement. When it comes to msn, most would type “hi” or “there?” rather than “hello” when poking for conversation. As for short messages (SMS), they would go straight into the topic without any opening statements.

What’s more is that the tone people used over different communication channels is very different as well. Below cite some of them describing the tone, language and how the conversation is ended among friends over different mediums.

Emails
Tone: Quite Formal
Language: Decent & Structured
Closing Method: Signing off

Facebook
Tone: Causal
Language: Quite Decent & Readable
Closing Method: Change of topic

SMS
Tone: Causal
Language: Quite Decent & Readable
Closing Method: No Reply

MSN
Tone: Extremely Causal
Language: Not so Decent and Readable if I know the terms being used
Closing Method: “Bye” or “Good night” or “Talk to you again”

So with modern technologies, people have different style of opening, addressing issues and closing their conversation.

Speech Event Inference

Speech event is a structured system to study the forms of communication through the study of language (eg. historical tribes or culture). However, in modern time, it may have evolved to the study of others intention or what is going to come next. For instance, when someone starts with “Once upon a time, …”, you better keep yourself free for the next few hours.

Additionally, it may be a form hypnotization where sweet talks are the essential ingredients for persuasion. For the fun of it, let’s analyze it through the 10 components of speech event.

Genre:
Persuasion

Topic:
Work (eg. Preparing the presentation slides)

Purpose:
Delegating work (eg. school presentation)

Setting:
Anytime and anywhere

Key:
Persuasive / Sweet talking

Participants:
Anyone unlucky enough

Message form:
Any form as long as it works

Act Sequence:
Establish rapport
Identify the person strength
Amplify the person strength and potential
Emphasize that he/she is the chosen one through “hypnotization”
Wrap-up the conversation once successful

Rules of Interaction:
Satisfied with the compliments and payback through agreement

Norms of Interpretation:
Nothing comes for free in this world

Well, the above is just a hypothetical illustration.

So, next time when others start saying that you are really good in something and you should put such talent into good use, expect the expected. :)

The Power of Speech

Lectures were great so far as it is still the most relaxing one as compared to the rest of my modules. Let's hope it will stay in this way till the very end.

Just like to mention about the section on compliments. To me, compliment is like an art while responding to it is a challenge. This is because with an inappropriate response, the other party might feel offended.

Below are some of my random thoughts:

Speech is one of the power tools humans used to express themselves. It works well with people standing right in front of you or geographically distant. Its something that people rely on at the onset of their life (eg. infants crying for their milk bottles), at different places (eg. be it Japan, Korea or Singapore) and time (eg. Qing Dynasty or even the Stone Age). However, speech is not proprietary to human only but is used extensively by animal of all types as well (just that we do not understand, how sad...).

What makes thing worst is that humans have a very complicated mindset when it comes to interpretation of a sentence. For instance, to an American, the phase “see you later” would mean “goodbye” to them. But to the Chinese, it might mean that he would be coming back later. Such confusion is ubiquitous yet we have to live with it (how sad * 2). As said by a wise person: “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility”.

In spite of this, standardizing a language for everyone to use might not be a good idea. My personal view of it is due to the lost of its underlying meaning, sentiment and its inner beauty. This is especially so in poetry. For example, the following Chinese phase:

春有百花秋有月 [There are spring flowers autumn months]
夏有凉风冬有雪 [Summer there are cool winter snow]
若无闲事挂心头 [If there are no big deal to hang their hearts]
便是人间好时节 [Earth is a good season]

[Translated by Google]

Hmm... Does not sound that impressive after translation (Sad * 3).
Well, seems quite long already. Better sign off here. Stay tune for more...