Task #1: What’s in my bag?

(In the photo from left to right: iPhone charger, teacher’s planner, wallet, work keys and whistle, hand lotion, hand sanitizer, lip balm, hair clip, iPhone, water bottle, measuring tape, car key, pencil case with sticky notes, small scissors, eraser, stickers, white out inside and multicoloured pen)

The bag I chose to represent in this activity is my ‘purse’ which is more like a medium sized backpack. The items I have in my bag are important to me and my personal/work life for a variety of reasons. First, they are all objects that aid in my organization, health, communication, and security in both my personal and work life. Second, they make me feel at ease and the connection I have with all of these objects makes it feel as though I’d be missing a part of myself if I forgot one. These items may be considered texts as they open many doors for communication in different forms every day. Items such as my iPhone, teacher planner and pencil case may be considered text technologies because they require oral, written and visual text knowledge in order to use them properly to aid and maintain a certain level of organization and connection. Since I have both written and technological means of text represented in my bag, this says a lot about how I feel about language and communication. In other words, I feel better when I back certain aspects of my life I’ve put online up by also documenting it on paper. I would say I am a cautious communicator in the sense that I take many steps in the things I carry with me to ensure maximum engagement with language in its many forms at any time of day. Since the items in my bag largely revolve around communication and organization, it says a lot about the functionality of the literacies I have and surround myself with. The narrative of the contents of my bag similarly compares and positively correlates with the narrative produced by the image I have of myself. The contents of my bag are kept very organized and often all serve one or more purposes on a daily basis. My bag is very similar and telling of how I actually perceive myself as a very focused and goal-oriented person. If I were to think about what I would have packed in my bag 10-15 years ago, it would look a lot different based on the fact I’d still be a preteen/teenager attending high school.  It would have been relatively organized as I’ve always been a tidy person and relatively ‘written text’ heavy in the forms of books with virtually no emphasis on online text technologies as I did not yet have a computer or cell phone. In conclusion, I suppose if an archeologist were to find my bag filled with its current contents, they’d assume (in order) that technology, water and paper is fundamental for one’s survival in the 21st century.

Task #2: Does language shape the way we think?

My response:

In watching Lera Boroditsky’s lecture, I found her standpoint and examples on whether language shapes our thoughts so intriguing. My mother’s side of the family is Russian where I’ve grown up hearing it but have never been taught the language myself sadly. It was really interesting hearing Borodistky talk about Russian in her lecture and how it is such a gender focused language because my mom always tried to explain that to me. I remember asking her on many occasions when I was younger, “mom, do you think in Russian when you’re talking, or do you think in English and then just translate it to Russian as the words come out?” She said she thinks in Russian and I always remember that baffling me! Boroditsky makes a good connection when she states that people must consider the context of information they are being preloaded with prior to speaking or making judgements as what we are exposed to previously dramatically affects the outcome. Around the 30 minute mark on her lecture, she states “The kind of language that swims around you, changes what you attend to even when you’re looking at new events unrelated to what you’ve just been hearing about.” Therefore, in this case, language does seem to have a causal relationship with ones’ environment and experiences.

Task #3: Voice to Text

My unscripted story using Chrome app “Speech Texter”:

This summer my friends Madison Alex and I went to New York City in August. We arrived on September 20th in SoHo which is apparently a really nice place to stay in New York cuz it’s pretty Central. We got to our Airbnb and got ourselves organized and situated and began exploring the city right away. The first stop on our list was to go get a few slices of New York City Pizza and I will definitely tell you it did not disappoint. After that we went out and got ourselves a bit of dessert and after that we headed back to our apartment. The next morning we got up and started exploring New York City, we got ourselves some Subway tickets and took the underground Subway around New York two different spots starting at the Rockefeller Center the Empire State Building on the first day. We then got back on the subway and headed back to our apartment to get ready for a comedy club that we booked ourselves into. The Comedy Cellar was definitely a highlight of my trip, we saw many comedians and they were all hilarious. We then continued our night at a place called The Groove and got seated in the front row where we watched a band play soulful music until about 1 a.m. My friends continued with their night and went out to a few different bars while I headed back to our apartment as I was getting really tired because I’m pregnant. The next morning we got up early and headed down to Central Park rented bikes and rode around for a couple of hours seeing all of what Central Park had to offer. It was a really nice day thankfully and we had a lot of fun doing that but it was extremely humid and hot we were exhausted at the end but still had half the day left to go of New York City which took us another couple of hours and bought some artwork and took pictures with some cool sculptures and different sites. We needed to cool off so we all headed into the Chelsea Market which is an indoor market and hung around there for another couple of hours. There were some really neat shops and we all found something to bring home with us as a keepsake. I bought a nice antique gold ring for myself and for another one of my friends and I bought some baby stuff for mybaby. We’re having in January. That night we went to a Broadway show and it was called The Book of Mormon – we all absolutely loved it. It definitely was hilarious  and I told people all about it when we got home I would definitely go again if I would ever go back to New York. On the third day we call the Subway early in the morning and went down to the site of the World Trade Centers got to witness Ground Zero which was very surreal. It was amazing how emotional hundreds and hundreds of people were standing there witnessing the memorial seeing it first-hand, the most I opening part was seeing the flowers placed on the names of the people who were born on that day that we were there. That for me was the most emotional part. I also took the time to go inside of the memorial where they had pieces and artifacts and fire trucks even from 911 which were damaged in the wreckage on display. This again was really emotional for me as my husband is a firefighter in Vancouver City so I could just imagine how hard this time was for all of those families of NYPD and FDNY families watching their significant others go into the abyss not knowing if they’re going to come out again. After coming home and telling my husband all about itoh, he suggested that we go back together as he would love to see the memorial and witnessed that for himself. I hope next year when we have our baby boy but I can surprise him with a trip there for a few nights and so his dream of seeing Ground Zero and the memorial. We did a lot more stuff than I mentioned but  Those things were the highlights of my tripped. We eventually made it home after a five-hour layover and I was exhausted from putting on Miles and Miles of walking everyday.

My Analysis:

I found this ‘unscripted’ storytelling task very intimidating once I started! I found myself thinking quickly for ideas to put down and memories to draw upon as I was forgetting them as soon as I started recording. I found my voice was robotic at some points and would sound very uninteresting to any audience listening to me speak. I think if I had the chance to ‘script’ my story, it would have gone way smoother. Scripting the story, although would take more time and effort, would ultimately feel more natural as I would probably be able to get way more detail in within the 5-minute timeline and would talk with more enthusiasm. If I had the chance to script the story, I would have put more effort into punctuation to make my ideas flow. I also would have spent more time on thinking about using descriptive language to make my story more meaningful and interesting.

The most common mistakes in my text include grammatical and punctuation errors. Some of my sentences got broken up into two sentences which makes the story harder to follow. There are errors throughout, mainly periods, commas and unnecessary capitals. I also found a common mistake was some of the words I said were translated differently when converted into text which makes the story almost hard to decipher in certain areas. I consider these mistakes because they were translated into text completely differently than what came out of my mouth. Perhaps this is my fault due to not enunciating my words clearly.

I believe oral storytelling differs from written storytelling in the sense that in written storytelling you have more time hence less pressure to think about what it is you want to say or get across to your audience. With unscripted oral storytelling, you are limited to what you can come up with on the spot as there is more pressure to think about what you are going to say next while you’re saying it – sort of multitasking in a way. Scripted oral storytelling still presents more pressure than written storytelling, but at least you have something in front of you to guide you through, unlike unscripted. I also believe that an argument can be made for how oral storytelling allows an audience to get a better sense of your story based on the voice you use. Emotion is more easily identifiable in oral storytelling than written storytelling.