Cartoon

TOK - Language Cont'd

My regular blog is down. So here we are... slumming it on one of my old blogs. :)

1) Language is sorta everything. 

When we talk about what makes humans "better" than animals we always slide into describing our various and complicated ability to communicate. Why?

How interested are you in languages? Are you as interested as this guy? For those of you who are multi-lingual, how do different languages change your knowing?

2) Language and genetics - a theory. We come loaded with a set language system that varies due to genetics.

Meet Noam Chomsky, Linguist and Philosopher (and political activist):

QUESTION: Language, then, is a key to human nature?

CHOMSKY: In Western scientific thought of the last several centuries there has been a tendency to assume that human nature is limited to the immediately observable physical structure of the organism. And that for other aspects of human nature, specifically for behavior, there are no genetically determined structures of comparable complexity to the directly observable physical organization of the body. So human physical structures and intellectual structures are generally studied in different ways. The assumption is that physical structures are genetically inherited and intellectual structures are learned.

I think that this assumption is wrong. None of these structures is learned. They all grow; they grow in comparable ways; their ultimate forms are heavily dependent on genetic predispositions. If we understood, as we do not, the physical bases for these structures, I have little doubt that we would find structures in the brain for social interactions, or language, or analysis of personality -- a whole variety of systems developed on the basis of a specific biological endowment.

QUESTION: Do you mean that all our behavior is innate, genetically determined?

CHOMSKY: No, but the basic structures for our behavior are innate. The specific details of how they grow would depend on interaction with the environment.

3) Language evolves (devolves?). 

How do these changes shift our knowing?
How do these language shifts change our culture?

Read: Top Words of 2013

Scan: Are Emojis Dumbing Us Down?

Read: Latest OED additions

Check out the real OED.

Homework - study rest of language package. Quiz on Friday.

Have a great summer!

Hi Everyone (in all my classes), 

It's been way too long since I saw all of you, so I just wanted to take a minute to wish everyone a successful end of year, and a happy and safe summer.

Here is the thing - life spins on a dime. 

One minute you are safe and happy, the next minute you are terrified, and in shock, and pleading with the universe to let the love of your life survive, pleading for him to have more time.
So, if you are willing to hear me, and can learn anything from me, learn this:

Life is now. 

Look around you, look at the people, look at the light, look at the dark, see it all and savour it, eat it up, this is what you get, right now, and it is beautiful.
Even when it hurts, even when you think you are going to throw up you are so unhappy,
life is now, and life is beautiful. 

Life is now, and life is beautiful. 

(And, for those of you who have been wondering, we're doing okay. We live one minute at a time, but we really hope that one year from now my husband will be all better.)

Best.
Tara Colborne

Sample Thesis for Compare and Contrast

Rough Draft Due - WEDNESDAY
Final Draft Due - FRIDAY

Both the song, "Body in Box," by Dallas Green, and the poem, "Do Not Go Gently," by Dylan Thomas, explore the great sadness of the end of a person's life; where Green's lyrics plead with listeners to focus on living a good life, and pay no mind to his death whatsoever, Thomas' lyrical poem pleads with his father to put all his attention to fighting death.

The Romantics and the importance of place...

1) Poetry Response #2 due.

2) Comma/Semi-colon Worksheet - also due. Mark your own...

3) A Meditation on a Place

4) The Romantics

Most importantly, Romanticism saw a shift from faith in reason to faith in the senses, feelings, and imagination

• a shift from interest in urban society to an interest in the rural and natural; 

• a shift from public, impersonal poetry to subjective poetry; and from concern with the scientific and mundane to interest in the mysterious and infinite. 

• mainly they cared about the individual, intuition, and imagination.

1. Imagination and emotion are more important than reason and formal rules;
imagination is a gateway to transcendent experience and truth.
2. Along the same lines, intuition and a reliance on “natural” feelings as a guide to 
conduct are valued over controlled, rationality.
3. Romantic literature tends to emphasize a love of nature, and a valuing of the common, "natural" man; Romantics idealize country life and believe that many of the ills of society are a result of urbanization.
       

4. Romantics were attracted to rebellion and revolution, especially concerned with 
human rights, individualism, freedom from oppression;
5. There was emphasis on introspection, psychology, melancholy, and sadness. Their
art often dealt with death, transience and mankind’s feelings about these things. 
The artist was an extremely individualistic creator whose creative spirit was 
more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures.

5) Tintern Abbey (Iron Maiden even filmed a video there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSZbbTjM0Es)

- Or, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798...
- slides
- Questions

Tomorrow: Poem Types, and a sample test...

Sonnet Challenge!

(Did your group submit some evidence of your rebellion poem work yesterday?)

1) Introduction to the two most popular sonnet forms

	Italian/Petrarchan	English/Shakespearean
Syllables per line	10	10
Rhyme Scheme	abbaabba  cdecde (or c d d c d d, c d d e c e, or c d d c c d or...)	Abab cdcd efef gg
General Shape	First 8 lines present a problem. (Main Idea) Last six lines solve it. Often ironic. (Conclusion)	First three sets consider a topic with a similar image. (Main idea) The final couplet holds a paradox. (Conclusion)

2) Examples - and some work...Handout.
Anthem for Doomed Youth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlDoon91vZk
How Do I Love Thee? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vog4hMSprls

If you want to read more sonnets, some of the most famous traditional ones are here:
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson830/sonnet-links.html

3) Now, WE are going to write a sonnet together!

Topic: Love
What type? Vote?

Rule #1: The sonnet must be completed in one class period.

Rule #2: Everyone must try to make a contribution to the sonnet we will write.

Rule #3: The sonnet must be 14 lines long.

Rule #4: The sonnet must have no more and no less than 10 syllables per line.

Rule #5: The sonnet must be of either the English or Italian forms.

Rule #6: The sonnet must deal with the subject of love.

Rule #7: If the sonnet is going to be in the English form, the logical progression of thought should be as follows: the first 12 lines develop the main idea, and the last 2 lines (a rhymed couplet) give the conclusion.

If we select the Italian form, the pattern should be thus: The first 8 lines develop the main idea, and the last 6 lines give the conclusion.

Rule #8: Once something has been written on the sonnet, it cannot be changed (except for spelling).

4) Homework: Reading your novel... and the comma and semi-colon review sheet.

Ready to Rebel?

1) Silent Reading

• Next week you should be about 60-70% of the way through...

2) Poetry Unit Updates

• What a Young Man/Woman Wants Poem is overdue.
• Response to Sad Daughter/Waiting Room is due Friday. See example below.
• I will give you Kite Runner test back tomorrow...

3) Are you a rebel? A badass? Poets are... (remember our positive rebel")

• What are the traits of rebels?
• Or, finish this sentence.You know you are a rebel if you...

4) Group Study - 5 rebellion poems