Happy Valley Photo Essay

[_beastie]

Satan stirring up the hearts of men against righteousness and truth?

No doubt it's nothing more than that.

[_Radex]

If you could negotiate social conventions and communication cues, you would've known that I was referring to much more than just that in my response. Asking what "social convention" was invoked in Ardis's post is akin to your post in Zeez's thread on translating the Phaistos Disc, where you ask everyone to be sure to include "cues" in their posts so you can interpret them. You continually concentrate on small details abstracted from their larger context. It is in the larger context that things like social cues, conventions and assumptions reside; they are not statements directly made in a text but everything that enables one to make sense of a text.

With the understanding that I very well may get it in the neck, curiosity compels me to ask you a sincere question, Blixa.

How does one negotiate communication cues when those cues consist of text rather than spoken words and physical nuances? Should one be expected to navigate such cues with the same finesse as with verbal/body language cues?

[Anonymous]

If you could negotiate social conventions and communication cues, you would've known that I was referring to much more than just that in my response. Asking what "social convention" was invoked in Ardis's post is akin to your post in Zeez's thread on translating the Phaistos Disc, where you ask everyone to be sure to include "cues" in their posts so you can interpret them. You continually concentrate on small details abstracted from their larger context. It is in the larger context that things like social cues, conventions and assumptions reside; they are not statements directly made in a text but everything that enables one to make sense of a text.

With the understanding that I very well may get it in the neck, curiosity compels me to ask you a sincere question, Blixa.

How does one negotiate communication cues when those cues consist of text rather than spoken words and physical nuances? Should one be expected to navigate such cues with the same finesse as with verbal/body language cues?

It's a good question and a good analogy.

Yes. Because one is using the same/similar codes to make any text (written or not) intelligible; in this case: the discourses of message board posting in general, the history of this message board in particular, the previous posts of the writer in question, other exchanges with this writer, other exchanges with other writers, etc.

I usually use some variation of Roman Jakobson's semiotic schema when teaching in order to demonstrate how meaning is not "in" the text, but produced out of a web of historically situated codes in which a reader encounters a text:



(there are simpler variations on that schema, but I thought you might want to see the most detailed one I could google up)

It's quite easy to run through a number of different concrete examples using different texts, or different kinds of texts.

Suffice it say, this is why its usually easy to "drop a hint" to another message board poster, especially when one has had several years of exchanges with them, on board and off (including other online spaces and in real life). Communication between you and I, Radex, is quite different than communication between myself, and say, runtu. But over time, and probably quite quickly, we would have a sense of where the other was "coming from." And we would be deriving that knowledge from a number of sources: our specific exchanges, knowledge of the other's posts in general, as well as knowledge of the history of this message board, knowledge of the larger arguments in which this message board is embedded, as well as basic conventions of social interaction, among other things. I think you'd find that something very much like the "verbal/body language cues" you asked about, is just as present.

I hope this answered your question. It's the last day of my semester and I need a break from teaching! But I'd be happy to talk more with you and take you through some concrete examples if needed. Drop me a pm and I'd be happy to explain further. I really don't want to draw this thread back to this topic any more.

Edited to add: I am very tired and rushed this morning, so I hope that explains why I didn't go with the more simple explanation that just occurred to me. To begin again:

Yes. That is why one can make sense of things like metaphors and literary allusions (which depend on familiarity with rhetorical codes and conventions as well as general knowledge of literature) when reading a poem. It's also why unsophisticated readers have problems reading poetry in particular, since it is a form in which subtext and context, as well as the play of language in general, is highlighted. Questions like "why didn't the author just state his meaning directly," stem from lack of familiarity with the conventions of figurative language as well as other various codes of reading. Unsophisticated readers are overly literal: they can only see the words on the page in their most denotative dimension. An illustrative anecdote from a colleague: While reading Emily Dickinson's poem, "I heard a fly buzz when I died," as student raises her hand and asks, "Wait. How did she write this if she was dead?"

Hopefully that simplifies my explanation. Either way, feel free to pm me if you like.

[_MrStakhanovite]

as of 6 hours ago, Dan is still writhing in agony on the cross:

And, as regards my supposed propensity to threaten legal action, it's true that several lawyer friends, aware of the Stalker's anonymous multi-year effort to publicly destroy my reputation, have told me that it has sometimes crossed the line into flat-out libel and have encouraged me to go after him. And I've advised him of this, thinking that it might, perhaps, cool his jets a bit. However, it hasn't. But I'm not a litigious sort, so it's quite unlikely that I'll ever take legal action against him. (I happen to think, quite seriously, that he may be mentally disturbed.)

[_Kishkumen]

as of 6 hours ago, Dan is still writhing in agony on the cross:

And, as regards my supposed propensity to threaten legal action, it's true that several lawyer friends, aware of the Stalker's anonymous multi-year effort to publicly destroy my reputation, have told me that it has sometimes crossed the line into flat-out libel and have encouraged me to go after him. And I've advised him of this, thinking that it might, perhaps, cool his jets a bit. However, it hasn't. But I'm not a litigious sort, so it's quite unlikely that I'll ever take legal action against him. (I happen to think, quite seriously, that he may be mentally disturbed.)

LOL! Quite seriously?

(Pensive, Kishkumen stirs the sugar in his Earl Gray with a silver spoon and carefully adjusts his monocle.)

Oh, Daniel. Well, now that Doctor Scratch is aware of this tactic (doubtless he was already), I am sure that it will continue to be extremely effective.

[_Buffalo]

as of 6 hours ago, Dan is still writhing in agony on the cross:

And, as regards my supposed propensity to threaten legal action, it's true that several lawyer friends, aware of the Stalker's anonymous multi-year effort to publicly destroy my reputation, have told me that it has sometimes crossed the line into flat-out libel and have encouraged me to go after him. And I've advised him of this, thinking that it might, perhaps, cool his jets a bit. However, it hasn't. But I'm not a litigious sort, so it's quite unlikely that I'll ever take legal action against him. (I happen to think, quite seriously, that he may be mentally disturbed.)

Someone ought to get a sponge full of vinegar for him to drink while he's up there.

[_Doctor Scratch]

This is my favorite new addition:

Plainly, the over-the-top hostility comes from elsewhere, and was already in place when this thread opened.

Why? In most cases here because those posting hate Mormonism with a passion and because, for whatever reason, I've become a very visible defender of Mormonism. Therefore, they concentrate their loathing on me. In certain respects, it's analogous to the current situation among Islamists. They hate and despise the West, for reasons good and bad. And, even though most of the injuries done to them under Western imperialism were actually done by the French, the British, Czarist Russia, and several other lesser European powers, the United States is now, by far, the preeminent Western nation. Hence, Islamists tend to focus their hatred and resentment on the United States.

So, I guess--as Mr. Stak points out--DCP is dying for all the sins of past Church leaders. Really, though, the myopia is remarkable. "[F]or whatever reason, I've become a very visible defender of Mormonism." LOL! What a happy accident!

He just flat-out doesn't get it. Here's a hint, though, Dr. P.: there is a reason why Elder Packer tends to be the focus of more ire than the rest of the Brethren. Even if one grants the existence of "anti-Mormonism," and even if one accepts that there are Church critics out there who "hate Mormonism with a passion," the fact remains that some LDS representatives are more disliked than others. Some LDS react to criticism and "anti-Mormonism" with kindness and restraint. Other LDS do not.

[_Kishkumen]

LOL! What a happy accident!

ROFLMAO!!!

Oh my! There he was, minding his own business of being a professor of Middle Eastern Studies, when out of the blue he started getting angry, accusatory emails from random anti-Mormons. Who could have imagined that the way his hands accidentally fell on the typewriter and computer keyboard, serendipitously constructing long diatribes and jeremiads about criticism of Mormonism by random chance, could have possibly resulted in the completely unprovoked and unfair ire of so many demonically possessed Mormon haters?

The chances of this are surely %.000000000000000001 at best, and yet, by some amazing miracle, it happened. What is a poor BYU professor to do? Regrettably, it is his great burden to defend his unenviable position by comparing it to the victimization of the United States by radical Islam. WOW.

[_Kishkumen]

Is Daniel Peterson related to Newt Gingrich by some chance?

[_Doctor Scratch]

I liked this part too:

Mr. Scott Barton, echoing (as several here have done) thoughts first expressed on another board where a number of those who have posted here give each other pep talks and work out their lines of attack, wonders why "this sort of thing tends to follow Daniel C. Peterson of Brigham Young University around the innerwebz."

In an analogous but (in every respect) much smaller way, of course, anti-Semitism tends to follow Jews just about everywhere. Mr. Scott Barton, reasoning analogously, might suggest that the Jews bring it on themselves, just as Mr. Scott Barton, again reasoning analogously, might opine that rape victims dress and act provocatively.