10 Years After

New Slang

In Lit Crit we went over Freudian literary criticism. Interesting stuff, but nothing startlling new from the discussion. I am still struck by how it seems that all of Freud's followers disagreed on exactly what elements of psychoanalysis were pertinent. Then again, in the scheme of the other forms of literary analysis it isn't different at all. Still, Freud's obession with the penis is a bit unsettling.

After class I stopped by the office of my Dialectology professor. I had made arrangements with him yesterday to talk about the project I am to do in that class. He asked me what I conceived of with my project and I outlined an interview process wherein the subject would be played an audio tape that consisted of sentences using double negatives. The tape would be paused after each sentence and the subject would then rate the sentence's grammacticality on a scale of 1 to 5. This evaluation would also be recorded. The reason for all this use of recording was that our text implies that written surveys tend to cause subjects to use formal/standard English. My professor said he thought, while it would be best, that it would cause the survey to be combersome. Instead he proposed that I perfomr the survey in a written form. He liked my idea of using different forms of double negatives. He also suggested that in addition to the model given in the figure we discussed yesterday in class that I employ some double negatives that are acceptable in formal/standard English (such as He was not unhappy). He thought that 20 or so questions, 5 for each type of double negative, and a sample size of 20 or so subjects would be sufficient. He seemed quite pleased with my idea and that, itself, was pleasing. I had really been sweating this project. Now, however, I am able to merge my personal interest with double negatives (I still feel that it is wholly arbitrary that standard English employs Bishop Louth's mathematical assertion) with a project for Dialectology.

Now to get down to some serious work on my Milton paper that I must present Sunday. . . .

Update: While on my way through the library to check out a few books on Lycidus I ran into the visiting dialectologist. We spoke briefly. She offered to help me with the project for the class and I commented on my visit with the class' instructor. She made some nice suggestions. First, she said I should emphasize that the subjects are to not consider what is formally acceptable, but what they would use in their own casual conversations. Second, that I should tell them I am interested in sentence construction (or some such) and that I should also have some fillier questions that are not related to multiple negatives so that they don't pick up on it and try to over analyze the sentences. Last, she recommended that I use simple sentence structures. I commented on how in my previous survey (for Grammar & Usage) one of the subjects reacted to the semantics of the sentence rather than the grammar. (This was the sentence that stated something along the lines of 'Every finger has a unique fingerprint.' The complaint was that this sentence would never be used in a conversation and it really annoyed the subject.) She commented that that happens. She gave an example of using the name Ernie in a sentence with the color blue. Since children associate Ernie with red it could cause them to reject the sentence based on this association rather than the grammar employed in the sentence. All in all, I felt even more comfortable about doing the project.