Generation Like Blog Post

How is the currency of likes equivalent to an actual currency? How do consumers contribute to this currency?

First of all currency is a system of money used in different countries, therefore there are a lot of currencies around all over the world. I think the most important point that makes likes-currency equivalent to other actual currenties is tangible or actual work. You need to put your effort on work or job in order to gain money, likewise you need to do or start something attractive in order to gain likes for example; creating video, composing music, or just posting your selfie in social media. Sometimes likes can be transferred between people as same as money for example; you trade money in order to buy things. It is the same as you trade likes in order to gain more likes because people or teenagers tend to reply likes when getting liked by other people. Nevertheless likes can be gained by begging other people as well. However, I think that consumers do not mostly contribute with likes-currency in daily life because it cannot be used in buying necessary things in order to live. It is just a tool that consumers use in order to gain happiness or feel successful when reaching certain amount of likes. Meanwhile, consumers might use likes as a tool to be in social or social media because they will be able to talk about the fame of their photograph or video. I think gaining a lot of likes in social media can be seen as a little famous, therefore; gaining likes can be used as a door to gain actual money because company will sponsor you in order to advertise something. However, this method is relatively hard because you have to reach certain amount of likes or fame. Overall, I think consumers mostly contribute with likes in term of gaining happiness, feeling greatful or proud. 

Pop Culture Blog Post

Not Giving In

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9-Lwpgfd1E

“Not Giving In” is a song from Rudimental presented in a way that empower particular social group being in hard time or bad environment which might involve drug, crime or thief.  The song’s lyrics presenting the stress of people after having conflicts are supported by the use music video that portrays two boys which could make choices to be successful in either good or bad way after having family problem. However, the ideology of people living in this particular social group is that they cannot be successful and have to follow the old way which is thief or crime. Hence, the song “Not Giving In” is trying to empower people in a way that they can be successful with the use of effort and talent even though they have fallen or passed through many hard times.

The music video has significantly effect on lyrics because lyrics themselves only have a lot of repetition of the words “Not giving in” rather mention particular problem. The opening scene that the boys’ father uses violence on their mother can be seen as their hard time and heartbroken situation because kids could rarely bear these kinds of feeling. Apparently they start to rob people until one boy finds his interest and chooses his own way which is a good way happening and carrying performance in bad environment. In this case, the use of dancing can be seen as positive alternative to be shown the success in. Watching the music video backward will be able to empower and see that everyone can be successful even though how stress you have and deep you have fallen in. The use of a boy, working and training hard in order to be good at dancing, emphasizes the lyrics of the song, “I’m gonna be stronger I’m not giving in”. The boy fails many times, and gets stronger every times he fails. He finally reaches his goal even though he is in bad environment.

In contrast, another boy chooses bad alternative which leads to end as in people ideology, crime and thief. Watching through the music video shows that working in black market is not a hard job but dangerous only. The end of this boy is apparently bad. The use of showing the progress of two boys empowers people and the fact that you can choose your successful way. The ideology is nothing comparing with your notion and goal.

Looking into the lyrics shows that it does not have anything relate to particular situation, but the music video’. It is just the empowering and strong meaning words that inspire people: “lost my mind and lost my goal” shows that you’re in hard time, “Mm, not giving in” empowers and inspires people not to give up, “this time, I’m gonna be stronger I’m not giving in, emphasizes that you will be stronger every times you fall if you do not give up, and “waste my time which makes things worse” urges people to start doing and working hard. This song and its lyrics is an inspiration to people who are in hard time or in bad environment, as in music video. It shows that every life can choose what they want, and can be successful what they intend as in the end of music video one boy dies and one successes. It is just the way you choose.

Hence, the song “Not Giving In” is a successfully empowerment of people who are in hard time which the music video has significantly effect on feeling and people’s notion.  

Blog Post Advertisements and Culture

According to the advertisement which is about American army, it obviously reveals that soldiers were needed in that particular time period. It shows that there might be war or serious situation in the society that had to get support from civilians. The image of the advertisement also portrays in a way that the actor was taking place somewhere in the desert, mostly in the Middle East. The Americans involve in many wars in the Middle East which corresponds to the message that they’re trying to convey about the soldiers. Meanwhile, the message “The best place to start a business career isn’t always in business” shows that there might be many young graduated facing with scarce employment at that time. The advertisement is trying to persuade people to join army because they claimed that people will get determination, good judgment and self-discipline skills. These claims are interpreted that the people with the skills will have more opportunity than others in finding jobs. The advertisement also shows that the American culture doesn’t want only smart people to work in the company, but also consider their behaviors and other social skills. The message “Army, Be all you can be” is showing that graduating from university doesn’t give all the skills you need for your life. It might be only academic skills, not the mental and behavior one.

The most important characteristic in this advertisement is the way that soldier acts. The image portrays the soldiers jumping over the rocks; it represents the feeling of determination and perhaps judgment skills that needed to be considered before doing anything dangerous or harmfulness. The expression on his face and aspect of the gun gives the feeling of self-discipline skills, since being in the army is a selflessness job that every soldier has to put effort in. The angle of the picture shows that soldier is relatively high of the ground, and almost jumps over the rock. It means that with these skills, you can overcome dangerous or serious life problem. The action of soldiers mostly relate to what they claim people will get.

However, this advertisement is empowering and focusing on masculinity population only since there is nothing relating to female about army. The advertisement itself is showing and representing male soldier because some job is relatively not appropriate for female. Meanwhile, being in the army needs good physical health condition due to the condition of training or serving place might be very tough. Therefore not only female population is being ignored, but also old male population. It is relatively biased to male.

Persuasive Blog

Persuasive Advertisement

This will be the advertisement of instant noodle, Noody

Bored of cooking breakfast?  We know that cooking breakfast is a horrible thing to do every morning. But how are you going to do? You need breakfast. Kids need breakfast. That’s why Noody was born. It is a new generation of food, which is delicious, fast and easy to cook with loads of nutrients and energy from quality ingredients. Noody exists everywhere! Everyone has it! And you will get one soon! All you have to do is just boil the water, pour on the Noody, and add some flavor and a bit of egg. BOOOM! The aromatic smells of Noody you can enjoy within 5 minutes. Oh wait! If you have more time, you can even make a fried noodle form the Noody. The taste of Asian can be yours within short time. You might not wonder how easy and fast Noody is. Our survey found 99% of Mothers use less time cooking breakfast, and they drop their kids on time as well as arriving office in time. How awesome Noody is? Everything is in Noody; convenient, fast, easy and delicious. Get Noody now, and you won’t be disappointed.

Logos: “Our survey found 99% of Mothers use less time cooking breakfast, and they drop their kids on time as well as arriving office in time.” This can be considered as Logos because it uses reasonable proof from the survey showing that getting Noody is actually make their life easier. By telling that they won’t drop their kids and go to work late, it (if we think widely problem occurred in some country) will resolve the problem that they will stuck in the rush hour traffic if spending less time in making breakfast. It’s a way for persuading the audiences to buy product.

Pathos: "We know that cooking breakfast is a horrible thing to do every morning. But how are you going to do?” This can be considered as Pathos because this statement represents sympathetic emotion that the writer can feel. By telling and asking the question to the audiences to think along, it will drag the audiences into their feeling resulting that the audiences might want to find a easier way to cook. And eventually buy Noody.

Ethos: “Noody exists everywhere! Everyone has it! And you will get one soon!” This can be considered as Ethos because this statement represents the connection between Noody and their ethical community. It’s trying to how famous Noody is within community. Therefore, it will drag their attraction to probably buy and get Noody soon.

          “with loads of nutrients and energy from quality ingredients” This can be considered as another Ethos because it shows how good-willed Noody is from putting quality ingredients.

Paper #1 Text #1

 This text is a memoir of Mary Seacole because she reflects on her life events that took place during the 1850s in Jamaica especially death. After seeing many people dying including her love-friend, she realized that death has nothing to be scared and ashamed since everyone could finally bear; eventually she came over the fear of death after those situations had passed. Meanwhile, the story has direct narration from Mary Seacole herself because she was in that particular situation. It shows by the uses of “I” before sharing her story and thought, which means she actually involved in the events.  She also uses many little events occurred during that time to show the affection of yellow fever leading to the suffering because of epidemic. Every event, including the story of her friend, she mentioned relate to the death, which is an anecdote from what she saw and received during that time.  The dialogue for example; “Let me lay my head upon your breast”, is used to pull the audience in the situation, which gives the audiences experience by themselves, and makes the story awakes. Since this is a memoir to review and reflect on her personal experiences, the audiences can be everyone because it is only the life-reflection of one person. Everyone who is interested in what people reflect can read the story. However, it possible that the audiences can be people who follow the life of Mary Seacole, or people who wanted to read the story of the witness, involving in the spreading of yellow fever in Jamaica during 1850s.

The tone of the text is sympathetic because she regretted about the death of her young friend and people who were suffering from the epidemic of yellow fever. The atmosphere is bleak, sad and gloomy because people are not happy. They were struggling to be alive even though the deaths were very close to them.

 Since the text is about the struggles and suffering of Jamaicans community, which she involved in the events, during the 1850s when the country was greatly affected by the yellow fever. It shows the life of Mary Seacole and her experiences with the disease and how she loses her love and others who has close relationship.  However, Mary Seacole doesn’t only want to share her experiences, she is trying to say that there is a loss of every life. Everyone is going to die eventually; therefore, there is no need to be ashamed to fear even though death is always terrible. For example; “if I had never feared death, I had not learnt to meet him with a brave, smiling face, and this he taught”, the sentence implies that she used to fear of death before she met one man who teaches her that death is what not to be scared. She realized that even a man who almost dead still thinks positive with smiling face, so death is what she can bear.

Within the story, Mary Seacole perspective is objective from what she saw and received during Jamaican yellow fever epidemic crisis. She received new ideological about the truth of death of people. She realized that everyone is eventually going to die, therefore; death is nothing to be scared, and is what people can bear at some point. It clearly sees that she actually received new idea from the use of “I” in the text because it shows that she was in that situation. The use of “he” and “my son”, which refers to her friend, shows the close relationship between two characters. This supports the idea that she reflects her experiences from important event in past that she sympathized, which considered as memoir as well. Therefore the text is pulling the audiences in due to the uses of pronouns in particular relation and her perspective that led the audiences think along with her ideological.

The structure the uses is organized within declarative style and informal language. She started with wide and general event that occurred in the area to give audiences the ground information of what she is going to talk about. The detail is narrowing down toward each paragraph to focus on her main point of the story. She develops her idea from giving her thought.  Since she meets the point where she explains everything, she describes her experiences, which provides the audiences’ easier view of what she is talking about, supporting her thought and statement. Her language used is mostly to hook the audiences to her experiences because for example; “I must not tell you his name…”, it attracts the audiences wanting to know who the person is. It makes the audiences curious resulting that she’s trying to pull the audiences in. 

Written Task 1

Rationale:

            This written task specifically relates to the study of language and identity including cultural identity, focusing on the importance and relationship between language and identity including loss of language, identity, and lack of involving in cultural identity as living in the international society.

            After reading the article “Language loss, Identity, and English as an international language”, Adel Dastgoshadeh and Kaveh Jalizadah describe the importance of language linked to identity, and the loss of language which affect the way of perceiving identity and acquiring knowledge of our culture. They also address the issues of using international language, which will decrease the ability of acquiring different identities, cultural knowledge, resulting to the lost of knowledge, human history and information in particular race or ethnicity. Meanwhile, they remark that international language provides opportunity for unlimited information exchange. However, inequality in using language is a way loss of identity occurs. Hence, from the point they made, I believe that the lost of language, which most likely to be mother tongue, can be occurred within international society resulting to the lost of identity and culture knowledge.

Nowadays, Students will have to use English as a general language when studying and living abroad. I realize that first language is very affective in showing our identity and particular culture. However, how important and useful of first language is in an international society? Should we maintain our first language? How do we lose our first language? These are basic questions we hear. Hence, I decided to write a blog about student who studies abroad, experiencing these problems himself, because blog allows narrator to give some opinion about the experiences. Blog is intended to be personal experience blog. Therefore, it shouldn’t be other text type as newspaper, and the intended audiences will be general students and parents who decide to live abroad.

Written Task:

Blog:

Hello everyone, I’m writing from Abu Dhabi, where it’s burning hot today. In today’s blog I’m going to talk about the importance of dialect from what I experienced. In the part of my journey living as an international student, I’ve seen myself and many people living abroad, who are losing their identity when they lose their dialect. I know that being bilingual is beneficial because I can explore the world much better. Since I’ve lived in the Abu Dhabi, English always plays important role for me and everyone. However, is it always good to use English instead of dialect every day? And what is the importance of dialect in the international society? These two questions came into my mind when I experienced the lack of communication by myself.

Yesterday, when I talked to my mom about the celebration day of my country, I couldn’t express what I really wanted to ask because I forgot the specific vocabulary that explains the actual meaning of the event. Furthermore, when my little brother asked me about the symbol of my country king’s throne, I know what it means but I really couldn’t take the word out of my head. The word I said was every vague and meaningless; this is where my realization about using only English instead of dialect came out. Using only English gives me more problem than using both languages. Therefore, I don’t agree with using only English in daily life, but it is still important to comprehend English because it’s how you communicate in this society.

 As I’m living in Abu Dhabi, which is an international society, I realized that the importance of my dialect becomes lesser overtime. I have to use English everywhere and every day to communicate, to study and to live. Hence, I rarely use my dialect resulting that I sometimes forget vocabulary. Meanwhile, my mom also encourages me to use English with my little brother every day so that he can practice using English. This command implies to me that the importance of it almost gone. I have strongly feeling that we need to do something with this because why? It is because dialect identifies my identity and I still need dialect to communicate with people who came from similar culture. There are still national day and many important day celebrations where I spent time doing my cultural activities every year. I need dialect to get involve within these activities. Although English is important, as I’ve lived here for many years I saw many effects occurring because the gradually lost of dialect. The most obvious one is people lost access in their initial culture, and they are losing their true fundamental and identity.

When meeting new people in school, language is the first thing I used to identify people. I know who they are by observing their pronunciation, acting, and speaking style. Once when I was in restroom, I accidently heard other students gossiping their teacher. I was curious enough that I try to identify them by listening to what they said because it implies what gender, age and sometimes nationality from the sound expressed. However, I couldn’t identify efficiently because they are using English. I could have identified them more efficiently if they had used their dialect. Since in each dialect has unique expression in its own, it clicks in my head that dialect plays important role in identifying people’s identity. Furthermore in my English lesson, teacher said that we will lose our human historical and unique knowledge if dialect is disappeared, and this problem mostly happens with young people.

Once I worked on my CAS in primary school, I’ve seen many non-native English speaking kids, who supposed to have their dialect but they were born and raised within international society, using English as primary language. Then, the question came directly into my head. Oh!! What will happen with their dialect and identity?

In my opinion, the kid will not have opportunity to study an actual dialect, which leads to the lost; because of environment around them is international society. It wasn’t surprise that my opinion was true because I’ve seen kids in primary school can only speak one language. Although the kids have dialect, they only speak English with their parents. With losing dialect, kids will not be able to access their fundamental culture. They will not gain various and unique perspective from their home country because of lack of communication, which occur when losing dialect. Furthermore in my English lesson, my teacher said that when losing dialect, the initial identity also lost, and changed to new identity.

It is indeed that their identities deviate from the original. I observed Cambodian kid in Primary school, who supposed to familiar with Asian lifestyle and culture, but the kid is living with European lifestyle. In this case, his cultural identity changed by living and studying in the international society. He bought European food, such as bread and sandwiches, instead of rice or noodle for many days. I know this is a simple observation. However, another observation is that he tended to stay and talk with European students rather than Asians. This shows that losing dialect and having new language are affecting identity. He might be able to get negative responses when trying to access his actual culture because the networking and social relation is cut due to the lost of dialect. With this observation, I can say that the changes in language are also losing in initial identity to another identity.

I think, it’s been a long day now. Being bilingual who live or study abroad is good and beneficial because you can explore the world much better. However, consideration about maintaining our dialect should be kept in our mind because the effect of losing dialect is huge. Identity can be deviated or lost, and access to community and culture can be a lot harder. Therefore, dialect is important.

Language and Technology

Texting by David Crystal and TED talk by John McWhorter

There are many similarities and differences, in theories of how technology impacts language, from John McWhorter and David Crystal.

Firstly, the most important thing is that both authors believe texting or textspeak does not decrease the ability of using ordinary language. They state that textspeak is a way of writing that young people are developing, and needed ordinary structure of language adapted into another form of written language using imagination and creativity. Textspeak is developed by, mostly, phone-using young people who try to suit language within particular situation when texting. In texting, they also state that textspeak has lost its structure by ignoring the importance of punctuation and capital letter, but it has been given new function or use instead to express emotion through texting. Meanwhile, they believe that complex abbreviation is used between close relation recipients in order to convey information when abbreviating efficiently otherwise the meaning of abbreviated word will be changed into, perhaps, negative way. Lastly, both authors believe that the textspeak will exist and evolve along the time.

Within two theories, there are some differences that both authors believe.  David Crystal believes that textspeak has evolved into another kind of language, but John McWhorter believes that textspeak is fingers speech, which speech is one of the existed kinds of language. David Crystal