Underlying Discourse

In the last class, Dr. Edwin explained to us more about the underlying discourse and implicature. The example he gives us is about the mother who doesn’t want her son to go out and she gives a lot of reason for him to stay. She didn’t really say that she doesn’t want him to go but she said it indirectly. It is really up to the other person to understand the reason behind all these new reasons she comes up with and relate it with the real intention of her not wanting to let him go out. With this underlying discourse, we can also find out about a person’s character. In the case of the mother, we can make a conclusion that she is a rather obsessive, possessive and lonely woman whereas the son can be said as a polite person as he tries to reason it out with his mother. The implicature from all the mother’s underlying discourse is the son not listening to any more of her speech. Maybe the mother would want a different implicature from it, which would be the son not going to that party.

Stage Direction

Today, when we were learning about stage directions, Dr. Edwin asks of us to think about how to act out a few dialogues with very few stage directions. He chose a few groups to demonstrate and it was a nice experience alright. By just manipulating with the intonation a bit, we can know whether the relationship between both characters is close or not. I also found out that that same dialogue can also be played by three actors. There is not much difference when they are three actors as when there are two. He also gave us an example from other class about a chicken writing on the sand using his feet and another one trying to figure out what he is doing. Another example is two prisoners in two different cells trying to make friends. To me that is really creative. Most of us never really go beyond that, I think. Even my partner and I did the same as the few chosen groups to act out. The setting of our conversation is in a café drinking coffee and the characters are journalists.

The Comparison

Hi again! During last class, Dr. Edwin asks of us to compare how a few writers perceive live in their respective works. There are four works to compare which are “As You Like It” and “Macbeth” by the ever so popular William Shakespeare, “Four Ages of Man” by William Butler Yeats and “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles. Shakespeare in both “As You Like It” and “Macbeth” perceived life as a play with human as players on a huge stage. In “As You like It”, he split human age into seven stages. At first the infant then the whining school-boy, the lover, a soldier, the justice, the lean and slipper’d pantaloon and lastly, second childishness and mere oblivion. Shakespeare made it seems that there is a certain pattern of growing up that all of us humans experiences. It’s sort of a cycle because we start of being an innocent infant and goes back to having what he refers to as “second childishness” or senile in my own word. In “Macbeth”, he refers to life as a candle. The life span of candle is not that long, and he connects it with the life span of human to make a comparison. He also said that the candle is not that important and it signifies nothing. To me, he is actually saying that there is no particular point or direction to which the person whom he called “actor” is going and life of the “actor” is pretty much meaningless as everything must be done according to the so called “script”. William Butler Yeats, in his poem “Four Ages of Man” perceives life as a struggle. He, like Shakespeare also divided human age but he divided it into just four stages of struggle. The first one is the struggle going outside of our mother’s womb. The second struggle is a struggle with heart, innocence and peace going stronger or weaker. After that comes the struggle of the mind where he no longer feels too deeply emotional and become more matured. The last struggle would be the struggle with God where he is at the brink of death and of course in the end God will win. In “Oedipus the King”, Sophocles wrote that Oedipus had solved the riddle of the Sphinx and win the land of Thebes. The riddle talks about three ages of man. Sophocles said that when we are a toddler we are on four feet, and then when we are a kid, teenager, and adult we are on two, and lastly when we are really old and walk with a stick, we are actually walking on three feet. That is how Sophocles views life; as three very different stage.

First Day of Class

Hmmm.. Let's see. Where do I start? Okay, how about expressing my feelings on starting this course. Hehe. I really love to watch literature work being performed instead of reading it because sometimes the language can be quite a huge barrier to overcome and we can only turn to the actor’s actions to compensate what they are actually saying. I am also really interested in acting although memorizing lines is never an easy job for me. To me, giving life to characters really gets my adrenaline running and there will always be some message that the playwright or writer tries to convey by the end of any play. That is the beauty of any forms of literature.
What else? Now let’s talk about our first class. It was a one hour class and Dr. Edwin started off his lesson by giving us sort of a questionnaire. Dang!! How I had the shock of my life. I thought of starting things fresh, you know, forget about what pointer I get last semester and start off with a new semester's resolution. Thankfully, he said that it was just for the review of last semester's course. I really hope I didn't get evaluated for that particular task as I didn't really think I did well. Oh, and about the questions, he asked us about what we have learnt and remembered from the previous course we had with him (Teaching the Language of Short Stories) which I enjoyed very much. The questions are all about point of view. The only point of view I can remember that day was omniscient, 1st person, 3rd person and limited "something" point of view. I couldn't make up my mind which was it; whether it is limited omniscient, limited 1st person, or limited 3rd person point of view. So, I cancel that answer out. In another worksheet he gave us that day, there is an explanation about the types of point of view and I found out that there are some which I am not familiar with such as objective point of view. We also found out on this day that Dr. Edwin's no longer teaching us tutorials and that we only get to see him two hours a week. This saddens me a lot as I really want the expert in the field to teach me but one should never be too greedy, should he?