Hi~ my name is Vincie, currently a 3rd year majoring in linguistics and minoring in psychology. This is actually my first time writing a blog, so I feel kinda excited lol.
I’m from China, and I speak both Mandarin and Cantonese as my first language. Besides that, I actually quite enjoy acquiring and communicating in other languages, despite the fact that I don’t like the process of learning… lmao. I also speak English (of course lol), Korean, and a little Japanese. I think that’s why I chose linguistics as my major, I love discovering interesting parts about language, and some interesting cultural aspects that influence how language is used. As mentioned during the lecture, “Literature is a form of writing that forces us to pay particular attention to how language works and the mechanisms of representation.” Part of the reason I took this course is that I need to fulfill my literature requirement for Bachelor of Arts, but I also want to get in touch with more literature stuff, taking a closer look at “how language works”. On the other hand, through the words of a book or a novel from another language, although it has been translated, you can still see the reflection of the unique culture and the shape of society that is associated with the original language, which is also a really attractive point to me.
I love reading, but only those interesting novels, most other books or novels or essays are really just strong melatonin to me lol. In the previous two lectures of the first week, we talked about what literature is. I said, literature pieces are serious readings, they are deep, heavy, and mostly contain some sort of reflection on one’s life or society. Like almost all the required readings in elementary school or high school, my stereotypes to literature are the most meaningful ones, and to a non-native speaker of English, the most hard to understand ones and even boring ones (I think I should apologize using the word “boring” since it is my fault that I didn’t understand the text so that makes it boring, but I couldn’t find another word for it). But in the lectures, I found out that what I thought was so one-sided, and the world of literature is wonderful and amazing. There are interesting ones that don’t require the reader to reflect on something or what (although most of these literature pieces are said to be rubbish… is that another stereotype?). As I plan for my readings for this course, I really hope that I can find some interesting pieces that make me fall in love with reading again, and hopefully keep me awake for at least an hour…?
Anyways, I’m a messy writer, I write whatever comes to my mind. That’s not literature. But it can become literature somehow… right? If I improve my wordings, if I use complex sentence structures, if I tell a good story, if I reflect on my (boring) life, if I am the reincarnation of Shakespeare (jk), I can create literature!