the IT accessory
That's right ladies and gentlemen, this season's IT accessory is... a book! And not those Kate Spade or Charlotte Le-Tan clutch things. I'm talking about the real deal, you know the thing composed of bound pages of paper filled with words. While I'm all about the digital age, there is something gratifying about flipping through the pages of a book.
The book of choosing is Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation. It was an assigned reading for my lower division linguistic anthropology class. The information is a bit obvious, but forms the basis for a good introduction to linguistic anthropology. It reads easily and you don't have to any sort of background in anthropology or linguistics to understand it.
Actually, I happen to like the class a lot more than I had expected to. It's fascinating dissecting the assumptions of gender, race, socioeconomic class, etc. we make from the way people communicate, beyond just their words. Some of our judgments seem like second nature and trivial but significantly impact various realms, such as the American education system. Did you know that from a period spanning from the reconstruction era to the 1970s, sign language was viewed as an inferior method of communication? By 1920, it was forbidden in 80% of schools for the deaf. And all this stemmed from a belligerent form of patriotism which feared and suppressed anything which was seen as a threat to a homogenized, or rather "united," nation. Apparently one language equals one nation.
Okay, now my nerdy rant is over.
Onto something relevant to this outfit, these white jeans and my white denim overalls have been on constant rotation. I guess I've embraced the white denim for warmer weather thing.
The book of choosing is Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation. It was an assigned reading for my lower division linguistic anthropology class. The information is a bit obvious, but forms the basis for a good introduction to linguistic anthropology. It reads easily and you don't have to any sort of background in anthropology or linguistics to understand it.
Actually, I happen to like the class a lot more than I had expected to. It's fascinating dissecting the assumptions of gender, race, socioeconomic class, etc. we make from the way people communicate, beyond just their words. Some of our judgments seem like second nature and trivial but significantly impact various realms, such as the American education system. Did you know that from a period spanning from the reconstruction era to the 1970s, sign language was viewed as an inferior method of communication? By 1920, it was forbidden in 80% of schools for the deaf. And all this stemmed from a belligerent form of patriotism which feared and suppressed anything which was seen as a threat to a homogenized, or rather "united," nation. Apparently one language equals one nation.
Okay, now my nerdy rant is over.
Onto something relevant to this outfit, these white jeans and my white denim overalls have been on constant rotation. I guess I've embraced the white denim for warmer weather thing.