Saturday, 23 February 2008
More photos
For those sensible people not on Facebook, I've updated my Flickr site with new(ish) photos. It's a bit messy, since they don't let me have more than three albums without paying, but you'll manage. Some more lizards, some parrots, and a lot of slightly blurry eclipse photos. This was a frustrating evening; the cloud built up at the same rate as the event, scattered at the start, a complete blanket during the total eclipse phase, and then completely clear right at the end. Anyway, some of them are quite good.
Thursday, 21 February 2008
Shaw thing
I've been trying hard, in best scientific style, to not just look for confirming instances of my stereotypes and cliches regarding America. After all, it's an enormous place, and as I'm told with wearying regularity, Miami is very different from the rest. This post, though, amounts to a long endorsement of the George Bernard Shaw commonplace about the US and the UK being two nations divided by a common language.
It's easy to trot off a list of words, mostly nouns, which have different meanings on either side of the Atlantic. I cooked a meal the other day involving aubergine, courgette, and coriander; after a conversation with my housemate about what I was making, I wondered if I could have possibly made anything (palatable) with more ingredients whose name we disagreed about. But the linguistic divisions go deeper than individual words. It's a lot to do with rhetorical forms, inculcated call-and-response routines, and differences in tone.
A few examples to illustrate that obtuse little list. During a class discussion on rhetorical figures of speech recently, litotes was mentioned. The (English) lecturer and I had no difficulty
in dashing off a long list of examples - 'not so bad', 'none too shabby', 'no big deal', and so on and so on. The American students were still struggling slightly with how the trope was supposed to work. The idea of asserting something by uttering its negation just seemed completely alien to them; the rhetorical form isn't part of American speech.
By 'inculcated call-and-response' routines, I mean the kind of everyday conversation-oiling exchanges that you can spell out in advance; greetings are a good example. I've still not got used to being asked 'what's going on?' as a form of 'hello'; my mind starts scrabbling around for a literal answer, whilst an American has some non-literal, non-committal answer instantly ready that gets the conversation going. By contrast, when I, in typical English style, greet someone by saying 'Y'alright?', or similar, they often look slightly surprised... 'yeah, I'm fine, why, do I look ill or something?'.
As for differences in tone, well, I think this might be the origin of the canard about Americans not getting irony. Most do, at least in print. But they often fail to notice every instance of irony in my speech, because (it seems) they don't recognise the contexts, intonations, and sentence-forms that indicate that I'm not being serious. This isn't just to do with me; I've noticed the same thing happen with other English people, in person or on film or TV. It's as if the tone, the tenor, of English-English discourse is more allusive, less direct, more replete with extra unspoken meaning and opportunities for irony.
So what of all this? Two consequences occur to me, one personal, one more general. The personal aspect is that, without (heaven forfend) adopting an American accent or vocabulary, the tone and content of my talk is changing slightly. I've been making a more or less conscious effort to not use much slang or dialect words, since I'm tired of having to explain them; but additionally, without deliberately trying, I seem to be using more direct forms of speech, fewer distinctively English non-literal phrases, less irony and so forth. I'll have to watch that I don't become excessively bland by the time I leave.
The general consequence is rather speculative, but worth thinking about. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis says, roughly, that the thought of a population sharing a language is shaped at least partially by the nature of that language. A lot of people accept the converse, too; i.e., that the thoughts of a population are reflected in their language. So it's interesting to wonder about the American preference for direct speech, its origins (perhaps in 'plain-speaking' pilgrims?), and the way in which it may have shaped the country's self-image and behaviour. I also wonder, listening to the apparently vacuous pronouncements of the presidential candidates, if the things they say are in fact replete with meaning for an American, meaning that's lost on me as an outsider; that is, whether the words and phrases ('dreams', 'hopes', etc) just don't have the same resonance in the English mind.
I don't suppose that's the case all the time, mind. When Miami city commissioner (cf councillor) Marc Sarnoff says of the assault rifles he's trying to crack down on that they're 'designed to kill with lethal force', I'm pretty sure that he's talking thoughtless rubbish, whatever language he thinks he's speaking.
It's easy to trot off a list of words, mostly nouns, which have different meanings on either side of the Atlantic. I cooked a meal the other day involving aubergine, courgette, and coriander; after a conversation with my housemate about what I was making, I wondered if I could have possibly made anything (palatable) with more ingredients whose name we disagreed about. But the linguistic divisions go deeper than individual words. It's a lot to do with rhetorical forms, inculcated call-and-response routines, and differences in tone.
A few examples to illustrate that obtuse little list. During a class discussion on rhetorical figures of speech recently, litotes was mentioned. The (English) lecturer and I had no difficulty
in dashing off a long list of examples - 'not so bad', 'none too shabby', 'no big deal', and so on and so on. The American students were still struggling slightly with how the trope was supposed to work. The idea of asserting something by uttering its negation just seemed completely alien to them; the rhetorical form isn't part of American speech.
By 'inculcated call-and-response' routines, I mean the kind of everyday conversation-oiling exchanges that you can spell out in advance; greetings are a good example. I've still not got used to being asked 'what's going on?' as a form of 'hello'; my mind starts scrabbling around for a literal answer, whilst an American has some non-literal, non-committal answer instantly ready that gets the conversation going. By contrast, when I, in typical English style, greet someone by saying 'Y'alright?', or similar, they often look slightly surprised... 'yeah, I'm fine, why, do I look ill or something?'.
As for differences in tone, well, I think this might be the origin of the canard about Americans not getting irony. Most do, at least in print. But they often fail to notice every instance of irony in my speech, because (it seems) they don't recognise the contexts, intonations, and sentence-forms that indicate that I'm not being serious. This isn't just to do with me; I've noticed the same thing happen with other English people, in person or on film or TV. It's as if the tone, the tenor, of English-English discourse is more allusive, less direct, more replete with extra unspoken meaning and opportunities for irony.
So what of all this? Two consequences occur to me, one personal, one more general. The personal aspect is that, without (heaven forfend) adopting an American accent or vocabulary, the tone and content of my talk is changing slightly. I've been making a more or less conscious effort to not use much slang or dialect words, since I'm tired of having to explain them; but additionally, without deliberately trying, I seem to be using more direct forms of speech, fewer distinctively English non-literal phrases, less irony and so forth. I'll have to watch that I don't become excessively bland by the time I leave.
The general consequence is rather speculative, but worth thinking about. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis says, roughly, that the thought of a population sharing a language is shaped at least partially by the nature of that language. A lot of people accept the converse, too; i.e., that the thoughts of a population are reflected in their language. So it's interesting to wonder about the American preference for direct speech, its origins (perhaps in 'plain-speaking' pilgrims?), and the way in which it may have shaped the country's self-image and behaviour. I also wonder, listening to the apparently vacuous pronouncements of the presidential candidates, if the things they say are in fact replete with meaning for an American, meaning that's lost on me as an outsider; that is, whether the words and phrases ('dreams', 'hopes', etc) just don't have the same resonance in the English mind.
I don't suppose that's the case all the time, mind. When Miami city commissioner (cf councillor) Marc Sarnoff says of the assault rifles he's trying to crack down on that they're 'designed to kill with lethal force', I'm pretty sure that he's talking thoughtless rubbish, whatever language he thinks he's speaking.
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Full Cycle
Decent article from the Miami New Times here about cycling in the city (though the headline's rather lurid, and the webpage is horribly cluttered). If you get through the thing, you'll get a good idea of why Miami should be, but isn't, a great city for cycling.
I was never a cyclist in the UK. I always lived within walking distance of most places I needed to get to, and moreover, I always lived in places with many big steep hills. Miami has no hills, and most of the places I need to get to are further than is feasible on foot. Moreover, the public transport network is, at best, skeletal. So I've taken to two wheels, on a second hand mountain bike that's probably a little too small for me but was only $35. It has numerous gears; I don't even know how many, since I never shift it from the top one. It took me a while to find the top one, in fact. The right hand shift is numbered 1-5, and the left hand one has a series of lines with 'low' at one end and 'high' at the other. It was a couple of weeks before I realised that the lever could be pushed well beyond the point marked 'high', thus engaging a higher gear (set?). I had thought until then that I'd become disastrously unfit, but I was just being dense.
When I got it, I borrowed some Allen keys from the head of department, a keen cyclist, to adjust the handlebar height. He warned me to be careful, because Miami drivers 'don't see cyclists'. I asumed this was just colourful exageration on his part, but after a couple of incidents in which I was nearly mown down by vehicles pulling out of intersections, I realised that he was speaking with proper philosophical precision; they really don't see cyclists, probably because they're not used to looking for them.
Actually, they sometimes do see cyclists, and that's where the real problems can start. As the New Times article suggests, the attitudes of the drivers here towards cyclists range from the inattentive to the downright murderous. Riding on the carriageway (like you're legally meant to) is an invitation for drivers to shout abuse, honk horns, and if they're feeling particularly frisky, see if they can run you off the road by passing far too close and then sometimes even swerving closer as they do so. After a few too many experiences of this nature, I gave in and became something that, in the UK, I hated; a pavement cyclist.
I assure myself that this is less of a sin here, because there's hardly any pedestrians to mow down. I cycled 1o miles earlier today, and saw four, three of whom I passed on a cycle track/footpath. However, cycling on the pavement is frustrating. The surface is often awful, and you have to stop, or at least slow down, at every one of the frequent intersections. Better, though, than risking the road. My ride earlier today was in some ways the most pleasant I've had, because it involved some of Miami's very few dedicated cycle lanes. To be able to go fast and feel safe was a sort of revelation about how efficient cycling can really be given the right conditions.
Really, I should overcome my road phobia. Plenty of my peers cycle in the traffic, and none have yet come to calamity. According to the New Times, there's a small Critical Mass group in Miami. Hooking up with them, perhaps, might be the way to conquer the city from the saddle.
I was never a cyclist in the UK. I always lived within walking distance of most places I needed to get to, and moreover, I always lived in places with many big steep hills. Miami has no hills, and most of the places I need to get to are further than is feasible on foot. Moreover, the public transport network is, at best, skeletal. So I've taken to two wheels, on a second hand mountain bike that's probably a little too small for me but was only $35. It has numerous gears; I don't even know how many, since I never shift it from the top one. It took me a while to find the top one, in fact. The right hand shift is numbered 1-5, and the left hand one has a series of lines with 'low' at one end and 'high' at the other. It was a couple of weeks before I realised that the lever could be pushed well beyond the point marked 'high', thus engaging a higher gear (set?). I had thought until then that I'd become disastrously unfit, but I was just being dense.
When I got it, I borrowed some Allen keys from the head of department, a keen cyclist, to adjust the handlebar height. He warned me to be careful, because Miami drivers 'don't see cyclists'. I asumed this was just colourful exageration on his part, but after a couple of incidents in which I was nearly mown down by vehicles pulling out of intersections, I realised that he was speaking with proper philosophical precision; they really don't see cyclists, probably because they're not used to looking for them.
Actually, they sometimes do see cyclists, and that's where the real problems can start. As the New Times article suggests, the attitudes of the drivers here towards cyclists range from the inattentive to the downright murderous. Riding on the carriageway (like you're legally meant to) is an invitation for drivers to shout abuse, honk horns, and if they're feeling particularly frisky, see if they can run you off the road by passing far too close and then sometimes even swerving closer as they do so. After a few too many experiences of this nature, I gave in and became something that, in the UK, I hated; a pavement cyclist.
I assure myself that this is less of a sin here, because there's hardly any pedestrians to mow down. I cycled 1o miles earlier today, and saw four, three of whom I passed on a cycle track/footpath. However, cycling on the pavement is frustrating. The surface is often awful, and you have to stop, or at least slow down, at every one of the frequent intersections. Better, though, than risking the road. My ride earlier today was in some ways the most pleasant I've had, because it involved some of Miami's very few dedicated cycle lanes. To be able to go fast and feel safe was a sort of revelation about how efficient cycling can really be given the right conditions.
Really, I should overcome my road phobia. Plenty of my peers cycle in the traffic, and none have yet come to calamity. According to the New Times, there's a small Critical Mass group in Miami. Hooking up with them, perhaps, might be the way to conquer the city from the saddle.
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