What? It was a lady who those words?

Having to identify conversations between male-to-male, female-to-female and male-to-female was certainly quite interesting. Doing the acitvity made me think about how males would speak to one another and how females would do so and how people of the opposite gender would converse with each other. Between males, the language use is certainly more coarse and topics are usually quite technical, like for example cars, computers, games, etc. I cant imagine a conversation between males would not include those topics.

Male to male interactions to me would be much more simpler and direct and involve less emotions. The males would talk less about how they feel about our daily lives and about their relationships and similar matters. Whereas for female-to-female interactions, I would imagine the conversation topics would include pop idols, males whom they find cute, gossip about other people they mutually know of, beauty products and many other aesthetics and emotional matters. Matters like the latest fashion or problems they faced or about their individual boyfriends would what I can think of to be present in this conversatoin.

However, male-to-female conversations would certainly turned out to be much more different as compared to these two. It would definitely differ from whom one party is speaking to. For instance, if the male was interested in the female, topics like going out on a date, places they loved going the most or maybe the things they like to do would come up more often. And the male might speak more in this context to find out more about the female and if the female was interested in the male, she might speak more with the male. However, if the female find the male dull and boring, she might not speak to him much and probably talk of only superficial matters like , for example, the weather and school work, or maybe probably just respond to the male's words for the sake of giving a response?

In fact, the behaviour in a conversation between male-to-male, female-to-female and male-to-female would differ alot depending on the parties involved in the speech event. Male-to-male talk could be quite lengthy if they were to talk about women while female-to-female conversations could get quite short if they were to talk of the latest technologies. The same would go for male-to-female conversations as well. They might be very good friends and talk alot more as compared to two parties who are not very familiar with each other and probably are merely acquaintances. The length, the behaviour and the topics being exchanged in a conversation would certainly very much depend on the relationship between both parties of the discourse and it would be very much interesting to see a research on the effect of relationship on a speech event between people of different gender.

Where's the email I sent?

First of all, I would like to take the chance to apologise to Dr Deng for disrupting the class and having to leave early. Nevertheless, I am sad that I had to miss the second class activity that would otherwise help us understand better about the things taught during the last lesson. But as such, I would do my best to write up my weekly reflections with the best of my ability.

Nowadays, the computer is so closely related to our everyday lives that it is almost impossible to live without it. Take the usual lectures for instance, every lecture we have attended has made use of the all-time-popular Microsoft Powerpoint software to create their lectures and uploaded them as notes for students to download. The computer has really evolved so much that even the older generations are encouraged to learn to use the computer. The language used while communicating with other using the internet is still fairly new I would say. It only took less den a decade for the internet to have progressed to this stage and communication via this medium is still very much developing over the years. Over this time, linguists has already completed so much studies over the years.

The use of netlingo has progressed much over the years and almost everyone (especially the younger generation) using the internet would have used some form of netlingo. Some popular examples would include "gtg" - got to go, "brb" - be right back, "cu" - see you and many others! Even I use some of these abbreviations and certainly use emoticons like "=)" or "=(" in my daily online conversations with my friends online. The use of these netlingo is certainly very much part of the younger generation's online communication I would say.

The study on Gender and Identity interests me the most. It is certainly most surprising when we were shown that in the first study, the females actually would use more profanity as compared to the males but the second study showed otherwise. But it would be much more complete if the study were to be done with regards to the environment in which each party was brought up in and the company they had. For example, for myself, I was brought up in a mixed environment where I have both very refined relatives and very, i would say, "unrefined" ones.

Since young, I heard so much coarse language in a few dialects and of course could see the difference between who uses them more, and in this case, the males are definitely using it more. But this is due to the environment in which they were brought up in. The family was poor and had to work since young and probably this was only one of the many reasons in which the language use was much more "wide-spread" as compared to the standard language use. On the other hand, the more refined ones were educated and has more ability to support the education costs and thus, I see the use of more standard language from them. Therefore, I think it would be more helpful if the study would include factors like where the both parties were from, how their environment was like, etc. It would be interesting to see how these factors affect the way a person spoke over the internet.

Was he rude or something?

E-learning week has certainly proven to be very much different from the usual routine we always go through. This week requires so much more self discipline to read through the lectures provided and try to figure out what the lecturer is trying to bring across to us. This has proven hard for me as I am having difficulty just reading through notes without much explanation. Anyway, back to the topic!

Personally I use the Approbation and Modesty Maxim mainly when I speak to most people around me. For example, some friends are upset about certain matters and talk to me about it. I'll be using the Approbation Maxim and say things like "You are just different from the people around you so don't let that affect your feelings" or "You are merely trying something new which is good!", depending on what the situation calls for.

I think these Maxims are certainly very useful in analysing how others are speaking to you and how a conversation is being held. Each week as more and more terms are taught to us, I feel that I start to take note of how people talk to each other more often than I realised and as each conversation is being held, sub-consciously, I start to analyze the turns taken by each party and start to think why and how this conversation is being held.

And then, there's the Negative and Positive Politeness Strategies. I find myself using these two strategies often at times! Like for example, I am asking my usual clinque of friends out for dinner and one of them says that he/she is not free, I'll be using the positive politeness strategy and trying to tell the person who's going, where we are heading to, how long have we not met up and etc to try and persuade the person to come. As for Negative Politeness Strategy, I do use them when I meet up with people who I am still not very close to. Everything being taught is so closely inter-related to each other and only after each lesson every week, do I see that even our normal conversation is so complicated within.

Why did you talk that way?

Indeed there are many ways to bring across a certain point but across various cultures, it would be very hard indeed. Imagine trying to speak to an American with "Singlish" or trying to speak one dialect to a person of another dialect group (i.e. Hokkien Language to a Hakka). During the lecture, the video has a situation where someone was trying to differentiate the meaning of "being pissed" in two very different countries. One meant being drunk while the other meant being angry. I had no idea being pissed meant being drunk either. But this would once again show the diversity of discourse throughout the world and stress upon the fact that everyone would really need to understand each culture's use of language to avoid most misunderstandings.

The activity on the Australian and the Thai reaction towards an elderly neighbour has certainly opened my eyes to how different cultures react differently towards the same situation. The different teachings and many other environmental factors in the country really would depict how one would react to the same situation.

About Power Distance, this is certainly something which I can see very very clearly in my family and certainly in other very traditional family. My father has always the last say and sometimes is quite stubborn to changes but I do luckily have my sister to help out in persuading my father that sometimes what he has in mind is not always the best. When we were all young, we were beat "senseless" if we were to do anything that would let others gossip about my parents not teaching us well or when we do anything wrong. Now, the situation is quite different though. My parents do listen to what we have to say and decide upon the next course of action and I could really see how power distance could change with age too! It would be interesting to compare this on a national level amongst several sensitive powerful figures and their past interviews shown on television.