Thoughts?

Words Don't Mean What They Mean. It is not something I am saying, but rather it is the title of a piece written by Steven Pinker. In the piece, Pinker talks about how what people say directly are not what they mean. He lists different techniques that people use to do so including innuendo, veiled threat, and double entendre. But is that really what happens? Don't you just say what you want to say directly? Maybe? Well what turns out to be is that Pinker is true in saying that in our society, we say things indirectly to convey our thoughts. For example, we sometimes use whimperative to say, “Do you think that you can pass the salt?”, as Pinker suggests in his piece. Or someone saying, “Would be a real shame if something happened to it,” would also be indirect communication; this would be a veiled threat statement according to Pinker’s piece.  That's the reality of us behaving in the society, in which we are often very formal. But when the topic comes to informal talks with o...

Firoozeh Dumas wrote the piece called "The F Word." When I first read that title, I thought the essay was probably talking about curse words. But no. The essay is nowhere near that. Rather, it talks about her name. She describes how her name, "Firoozeh," distinguishes her from the society in America, and makes others think that she is not a good fit in society. She demonstrates this by commemorating her experience for applying for a job. She, when applied with her real name, did not get a single job offer. But when she changed the name on her resume to "Julie," she got so many job offers.  According to her anecdotes, people were discriminating against her based on the ethnicity of her name. And she displays that in many other examples than the one I just mentioned. But I do not think that her experiences could be replicated in America today. She is talking about when she applied for a job in the 20th century, and the times have changed a lot since then. ...

  Link to article: https://www.theonion.com/12-year-old-spends-entire-hiking-trip-fantasizing-about-1851282560 There is an article I saw on The Onion . The article is about a paragraph long, but it is very satirical in showing today’s youth’s addiction and obsession with technology. It is called “12-Year-Old Spends Entire Hiking Trip Fantasizing About Which Video Game He’ll Play When He Gets Home,” and the link to it is attached above. The article uses satire to correct the behavior of many kids being very obsessed with technology. In order to build that satire, many strategies are used in the article. Reviewing the article, it is describing how a 12 year old boy, Austin Tanden, spends his whole hiking trip thinking about video games, and goes through his inner thoughts. As the article does that, it makes use of multiple tones. Firstly, in order to build satire, the article lands on an exaggerated tone. Along with the exaggerating tone inside the article which says that Austin spen...