Pygmalion Blog Post

Pygmalion threw me off slightly when I started reading it.  Everything I have read up to date in this class have been very old writings that are pretty hard for me to understand.  Reading this more up to date play was pretty refreshing.  It is very easy to understand and is fairly humorous like the part where Higgins and Pickering meet.  Pickering gets all excited to see him and Higgins is just like “Come and see me tomorrow.”  The only problem I have with this play as of yet, is that I don’t really see a purpose for it.  I’m sure it will develop later in the poem however.

I thought the preface to Pygmalion was very interesting as well.  Shaw talk about how the English have no respect for their language and I think this relates to our society today.  We are always looking to shorten words to make it easier for us to learn and comprehend.  When we are not writing formally, we use things like lol, wbu, and tons of other little abbreviations to save time.  I know I use them too, but a lot of the time I spell them out so I do not get into the habit of writing like that.

Politics and the English Language

This article really interested me for several reasons.  I have always hated seeing bad grammar on websites and similar places, although I can’t seem to see it in my own writing.  I read a lot of articles on football and I can just read through briefly and find about ten mistakes of varying degree.  It is like they don’t even re-read what they have written or something. 

Abbreviations also get on my nerves really bad.  I obviously use them while texting sometimes, but sometimes I even see them in essays.  In high school, my senior class was looking at some sophomore or junior student’s papers, and the one I was reading actually had lol and other things like that in it.  I could not believe that students actually believed that this was acceptable.  I guess when you get so used to using it every day, you don’t even think about it.

Another thing that I see a lot is the incorrect use of their/there/they’re and to/two/too.  I mean this is just basic English and most people do not know it.  I want to correct it, but this would obviously make me look slightly odd, so I refrain.  I realize that Orwell is talking about slightly more complicated things than this, but this is how bad it is getting.

Wuthering Heights Feminist Criticism

I found several interesting things about this reading that I had never thought of before.  One such thing is how the author, Kristeva, associated feminine writing with the female body.  She then goes on to say that when women write, it also gives them more sexual freedom.

            I also thought the part where it shows the terms father/mother, active/passive, masculine/feminism, sun/moon, head/heart, son/daughter, intelligent/sensitive, brother/sister, form/matter, phallus/vagina and reason/emotion.  Some of these are kind of obvious, but I had not heard of others.  I did not know that the sun and moon were related to this so that was pretty cool.  The form and matter relation didn’t really make sense to me though.