We went to the British Museum exhibition about Pompeii and Herculaneum - the two cities destroyed by the AD79 eruption of Vesuvius. The presentation was excellent - they started us off with a film which alternated historical facts with footage of present-day Naples. This brought home the fact that the people who died were real people with lives not dissimilar to those we lead today. Although I have visited both sites, there were many objects which I have never seen before, such as carbonised recognisable food. And the models of the victims, created using the moulds they left behind, were chilling. Much to be recommended.
And the latest 'face-to-face' session was stylistics, which is really the literary use of language. We looked at a Roger McGough poem http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/roger-mcgough/first-day-at-school/ which I had never read before. Stylistics is very dependent on the effect sometimes ambiguous language has on the reader. Many of the people on the course are teachers, so they know far more than I do about today's pupils. But when it came to the line 'I wish I could remember my name', all I could think was 'there's something wrong with this child'. But all the teachers were understanding and thought it was normal to be in such a panic. Now, I was timid (still am, honestly), but there was never any possibility of forgetting my name. Does this really happen?
This part of the course looks really organised - all the materials are there already, as they should be, so we can work at our own pace.
Meanwhile, back to Critical Discourse Analysis and my Boundary Mill postcard.
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