The royal we

There are days when first person plural pronoun irritates me.
Yes, I realise is a bit of a wide thing, to be annoyed by grammar.
But while 'I' and 'my' are perfectly sensible words, 'we' and 'our' frequently piss me off.
Because saying 'we' either includes the listener without asking them, or excludes but outnumbers them. And honestly, far as I can tell, the vast majority of the time the speaker means 'I but with a bit more authority'. Like when they're talking about schemas and they say 'our schema', and how do they know what my schema is? Or anyone else? They don't, they just want to make their own look bigger.
My schema is regularly rather different than that of others. I mean, when she asked us to say the first word came into our head about the word 'funeral' there weren't anyone else said 'Buffy'.
I realise I'm strange.
But this is why I don't like 'we', especially about schemas. Every individual has their very own, and quite often they don't quite match.
And once you set one up as 'our' then any that disagree are 'not-ours' and then suddenly it turns into a right and wrong sort of a thing and it winds me up no end.

Everyone have different schemas, different maps inside their head. Is one why that everyone has different interpretations.

Mind you, this book chapter started off talking like words have inherent meaning, because 'we all know' what they mean. And right then author loses *all* his points, because the hell we do. Meaning is totally arbitrary, and quite different in each and every mind. I mean, if I say 'tree' he reckons everyone knows what I mean. But I reckon everyone will have quite a different tree in their head, or a whole folder of different trees, and people that don't speak english won't have a tree like english speaker tree at all. Unless other languages happen to use the same word. I don't know that.

This to me is obvious, and I can point to the other book as says it is obvious, but this book here doesn't seem to think so.

The chapter is about assumptions and how we bring relevant knowledge to bear on a text in order to figure it out. And I think it has thus far failed to mention the *really really important bit*, which is that such knowledge is culture bound, is like common sense, is full of hidden and very variable when you get right down to it. I mean it mentions that we have different schemas, but then it goes on like... like they're all referring to actual facts outside someone's head, which don't strike me as true.

It winds me up.

... Which doesn't mean the stuff they're writing about is useless, because if people come up with any kind of shared similar meanings from a text at all they're obviously doing something shared and similar, so I keep learning the words and thought tools. I just, you know, rant about it on LJ and scribble in the margins a lot.

I'd say it were silly to get wound up over this stuff, but it do seem to suggest I'm studying the right subject area...

Urrrgh... essays...

Okay, so I finally got around to picking up the assignment again.
I much prefer the reading new things to the trying to make a point scoring answer out of them.

"Write a close critical analysis of two of the given extracts, from Great Expectations and Beloved, relating both form and themes to the rest of the novel and to the development of the novel as a genre."

Number of words: 1200

That's 600 per book.

How the bloody hell are we supposed to write anything useful in six hundred words?

I told the teacher I was a bit worried about the word limit, and she said so was she. Which, you know, accurate but not reassuring.
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I really don't like the assignment parts. Studying yaay, proving learned unyaay. Which, you know, not uncommon reactions.



I've been told not to put my essays on LJ until I get the marks back and they're all done. Because of plagiarism. Partly that the computer program to check for it may get confused, and partly because other people could read me.
That didn't occur to me before. Why would anyone cheat off *me*?


There's also the issue with taking notes and where I got ideas from and that. I, er, have done about as well as usual with keeping things taged as to who said them... I still maintain it's quite irrelevant outside of assessment, and therefore unnatural to need to keep the tags. But that would be my long words way of sulking when I forget to write down what I read. I know there was stuff from the library where I worked through the reading list without checking books out. I don't even remember all the ones I did check out. At this point I'm tempted to stick the reading list on the end as a bibliography, because I can be pretty sure on some sections I didn't read it yet, but others I... probably picked it up at some point. But then I also picked up the one next to it on the shelf, usually, so the whole thing is... complicated.
I don't know, do I put a whole semester worth of reading on the essay or just the ones I actually opened after I got the assignment? Bloody annoying either way.


... I'm going to go read another theory book. I *like* reading theory books. I know I'm going to have to hand in something in, um, 11 more days, but... well, I'll get back to it later.

600 words! Gah!


PS when the instruction book keeps on going on about how 1500 words is the xactly perfect length for an essay it doesn't help. That would be another half a book, that would. We have to put up with 1200+10%=1320 (yesno?) and that's way shorter.

(no subject)

Essays are bastards.
Bastardy bastards of utter utter b... well, you get the idea.

I read the sample close readings we've been given. They have nothing in common. Nothing. I don't think they're even the same length. They don't use the same bits of theory, which is handy because they each illustrate what we were working on that week. But now I try and write something roughly like them? They aren't like themselves!

B.



Also, I ate too many donuts. Again. 0 to sicky in three hours flat.
I always feel so stupid.
This time it was because I put the tub somewhere out of the way and then discovered I could reach it without moving when I was sitting where the sofa is now.
I know better. Essay + snacks = sugar overloaded leg bouncing mind whirling nausea and not a whole heck of a lot of words written.

sulk.


Anyways, as I said, 11 days left. That is quite a lot of days really. Done a bunch of stuff. Even if I don't feel like I'm making any progress.
:-/


... Yes, this is what my LJ is going to look like for the next couple of weeks. Possibly longer, if I have another episode of hiding under my duvet instead of handing the damn thing in. Which hasn't happened since... er, this time last year? ... Ah.

... Still, that was an entirely different subject. If I can't witter on about fiction by now...

*wanders off muttering*