Friday, December 2nd, 2005

Time	Event
2:09p	Response to a missing comment about collage-books... Someone posted a comment suggesting that the collage-book medium be used to make individual poetry anthologies -- and then must have deleted the comment. Or perhaps it's lost in the cybervoid; at any rate, I can't find it. But I wanted to say what an excellent idea that is, and what very fine holiday gifts those anthologies would make. You could write your own poems and do collage-books (or altered-book collage-books) with them; or you could go to the incredible abundance of poetry in public domain that's on the Net, print out poems chosen for the person you're gifting, and cut them out and use them for the text portions of your book. You could do a whole anthology of poems about a single topic -- birds, golf, trains, cooking, whatever -- that you know someone is interested in. You could do a whole anthology of science fiction poems, or cowboy poems, or erotic poems. Many possibilities; excellent idea. And it's something kids could do; I can't imagine a grandparent who wouldn't be delighted to get one of those books as a gift. My thanks for the comment, whoever you are and wherever it is. (7 Comments | Comment on this)
5:38p	Linguistics; Ozark English; "About Cows, and Ozark English Discourse" About Cows, and Ozark English Discourse Let's just suppose that when someone is about to speak they have four broad goals for the language sequence they use: that it be understood; that it be believed; that it give pleasure (or at minimum that it not provoke hostility); and that it be remembered. The way in which these goals are ranked in importance for the speaker is a matter of personal choice, with the most typical order probably being understanding, then believing, then either pleasure or remembrance -- depending. A crochety and elitist professor might rank a classroom utterance as RUBP; that is: "I want you to remember this. I hope you understand it. I'd prefer you to believe it, but if you don't, so be it. And I'm not particularly interested in whether it gives you any pleasure or not." The politician making a routine political speech might choose BPRU. The Ozark speaker who makes choices that strike the purist as excessively nonstandard usually does so deliberately, based on the ranking given to those four communication goals. Which brings us to those cows. Consider this: 1. "Come get your cows." This utterance puts understanding first; it's in English, it's an unambiguous command, and it has no extra words in it to interfere with comprehension. It puts belief next; nobody would say such a thing if the cows weren't really there needing to be retrieved. Remembering follows; any Ozark English speaker knows this utterance is so rude that it's unforgettable. As for giving pleasure, the speaker is either almost indifferent to this goal or is deliberately working against it. [It wouldn't be true to say that the speaker hasn't considered giving pleasure at all. There are worse things that could have been said, such as "Come get your damfool cows" or "Come get your cows, or else."] Here are some of the many alternative ways to start letting somebody know that their cows are on your property and should be removed by said somebody -- with the stipulation that they're all said neutrally, not sarcastically or condescendingly or with hostile intonation. Examples 2-9 are Ozark English; example 10 is not. 2. "Guess what I just saw in my front yard?" 3. "You might want to take a look at what's in my front yard." 3. "You'll never believe what I just saw in my front yard." 4. "Might could be you'd want to take a look out your east window toward my front yard." 5. "You know, I do believe your cows are out." 6. "I'm wondering ... do you know where your cows have got to?" 7. "Hey, guess where your cows are? [Or "are now?" Or "are this time?"] 8. "I do hate to say it, but I'm about at the end of my tether with your cows." 9. "I'm truly sorry to have to tell you this, but your cows are in my yard again." 10. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your cows are in my yard again. I'm afraid you will have to come get them." Each of these utterances demonstrates a speaker's strategy based upon a particular ranking of the four communication goals. Because come the day your neighbor's cows are in your yard and you want that neighbor to come get them, you can't say just any old thing. Cows are a nuisance in a way that's almost awesome. And if you don't choose your words with care, you'll find yourself with one of two outcomes: (a) your neighbor says, "Be damned if I'll come get 'em!" and hangs up on you; or (b) your neighbor says, "I'll get to that, first chance I have." Either of those responses means you're in for a bad day, and there is no County Cow Catcher you can call for assistance. The list of good excuses that can be offered for not yet having come to get those cows is as infinite as any formal construct you might care to devise. Do not think that if you decide you'll just get rid of the cows yourself it will be easy. It is easier to move a department chairman than it is to move even one cow. Fire a .45 over the head of a department chairman or drive straight at one with a pickup truck, he (or she) will move; a cow will not. I have tried both of those tactics any number of times, and no cow has ever so much as budged. It's not just a matter of saying, "Shoo, cows!" Trust me. If I were actually to say to you, "Come get your cows," one of the two things I want you to understand is that I don't give a hoot how you feel about that utterance or how you feel about me personally. "I'm afraid you will have to come get them" is almost as bad. I know someone who would say that, because that someone would rather suffer the consequences of cows than stoop to the use of Ozark English. That someone will forever suffer the consequences of cows-in-the-yard, and many other unpleasantries -- but it is her conscious and deliberate choice. It is a militant refusal to speak OzE. Publicly, she will blame Providence for the perpetual presence of other people's cows on her property, but she knows better. It happens that the best choice on that list, the one least likely to end you up with a chronic cow problem, is the entirely nonstandard #4 with its double modal. That example has as its metamessage: "Now, there's a problem over here, and I'm not pleased, and we need to talk about it, and you need to fix it. But I want you to know that I am on your side and that I admire the way you look after your cows." And its ranking is UPRB. (192 Comments | Comment on this)
5:55p	Recommended link, in case you don't know about it.... This website -- which lets you check URLS for their popularity quickly and conveniently, and throws in handy graphs as well -- is a bit addictive. Also very useful. It's at http://tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop/plapp/publinkpop.dll/publinkpopTest . (Comment on this)
7:51p	Cow-whacking.... rbos commented, on the subject of persuading cows to move: "I find that whacking cows with a shovel gets them movin' pretty quick." Which reminded me.... One of the most terrifying things I've ever had to do was to stand in a field -- looking at the video camera and trying to talk without fainting -- when I knew there were live and unrestrained cattle standing behind me. It was part of filming a segment on Ozark English for the PBS "Human Language" series, some years ago, and I'm still amazed to be able to report that I did live through it and I didn't faint. If the creatures behind me had been bears, or dinosaurs, or axe murderers, I'd have been a lot less scared. Scared, sure, but a lot less scared. I am really afraid of cattle, and locally that's what I'm famous for. "You know that woman that she lives down by the ford and she's scared of cows?" That's me. And so the people at whose farm we were shooting the video (let's call them Frank and Mary to protect their privacy) knew how scared I was, and they were concerned to make me as comfortable as it was possible to do under the circumstances. The other segment we filmed at the farm was more complicated than just standing around talking. It involved having Mary run a couple dozen cows -- and one huge bull -- down a hill toward me and then divert them into a handling area before they got to me. Mary and Frank had assured me that this bull -- call him Buster -- was "as gentle as a kitten." [The expression "gentle as a kitten" is de rigeur when talking about your bull in the Ozarks. Never gentle as anything else, always gentle as a kitten.] Mary was running behind the cattle and urging them along with a broom, when Buster suddenly decided he had other ideas. There were big round bales of hay in the field where we were -- incredibly heavy big round bales of hay that you have to handle with winches and forklifts. Buster decided that the thing to do was to go scoop up a bale with his horns, bellow, pitch the bale through the air, bellow some more, and then go get another bale and repeat the process. He did that while Mary got the cows into the chute, and then she went after him. And she ran him down the hill to where the cows were, whacking him on the rear end all the way, and yelling at him: "Dammit, Buster, I knew you were going to disgrace me in front of Suzette! What is the matter with you, anyway, have you lost your entire mind??" And similar warbles. Verbal abuse of a bull, right to my face. I was awed. Never mind your superheroes. The idea of her whacking that bull's behind with a broom all the way down the hill while he ran for his life -- gentle as a kitten -- and chewing him out at the top of her lungs .... I'd never seen such courage before, nor have I seen it since. I wouldn't have gone near that animal with a machine gun and a shield and a platoon of knights. [The only thing powerful enough to motivate me to get involved in this fandango was the fact that the film about Ozark English was going to be Part Four of the PBS series, and it was going to demonstrate that speaking Ozark English does not mean that you are ipsofacto ignorant. There were some very nice riffs included that showed the elegance and complexity of Ozark English, and I was willing to do almost anything on their behalf. I was so sorry when the series came out and there'd only been funding enough for Parts One, Two, and Three. The Ozark footage has never been aired. So. I was all that brave -- nothing compared to Mary, but brave for me -- for nothing. Drat.] (49 Comments | Comment on this)

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