Accepted

Sent in my dissertation proposal, which has been accepted. I am going to research the portrayal of the first person narrator in the words of the songs of Leonard Cohen. I am so excited, as these songs are really intriguing poetry.

I'll  be using stylistic analysis as well as computer methods (corpus linguistics).

And we are going to see him perform in three weeks time.

Restructure

So instead of structuring the essay around stylistic features (deviation, parallelism, point of view etc), I've decided to make it more interesting by defining all the technical terms at the start and then arranging it by location, characters and events. This makes more sense because a lot of the stylistic features occur together, emphasising the same point, so this way collects it together and stops a lot of repetition. Its quite a lot of work to rearrange it, but I think the end result will be worth it.

Its hot and uncomfortable here and its difficult to stay motivated, concentrate and get the work done but I want it done in the next few days so that the learning advisor can see it again before I submit.

Went to see Old Faithful yesterday, so my hair is nicely shaped and much cooler. TSH arranged my birthday present - we're going to see Leonard Cohen again. 'Like a bird on a wire ....'

Broadband rubbish

So I'm trying to get back into the course. I have submitted the final short task for stylistics and now I'm starting on the assessment. A stylistic analysis of a piece of flash fiction of less than 300 words. I have read a sample stylistic analysis from the course web-site and I am totally intimidated. The writer (who is our lecturer for this course) refers to dozens of books and journals and knows enough about what is in them to write a few elegant paragraphs explaining the similarities and differences.
Now looking at so many sources on-line is non-trivial. Some of them don't exist electronically and for those that do, my line keeps going down at the moment, so thanks, Talktalk for not helping. And I have spent many hours this week trying to get them to understand how bad the service is. which is difficult when the operators do not speak good English and have no empathy with the position we are in.
I think I may just have to adopt my usual stance of describing a couple of books I can get hold of and ignoring the rest. This is why I will never get a Distinction. I do not have the study skills for this and have been saying so since the start and there is no provision on the course for helping. This kind of study skill was not part of the selection process as far as I know.

Stylistics assessment

The question for the assessment has now been posted. Very straight-forward - a choice of 4 texts for stylistic analysis. I have chosen the flash fiction - a complete short story in 295 words. And I have to write 5,000 words about the language choices and effects. Am I making it difficult for myself? But I don't fancy any of the others and for discourse analysis I wrote 5,000 words about a marketing postcard - I don't have a mark yet.

I listened to an eye witness report on the radio today and the woman speaking made two classic language choices. 'I am standing there watching it happen' - the dramatic present  tense and 'At first I thought it was a car crash' - establishing herself as a trusted narrator whose thought patterns are just the same as everyone else's. I still find it slightly surprising when the theory they teach us can be observed in practice in such a classic way.

Hair cut and styled today and nails sparkly purple. Roll on summer!

Best zoo - Chester

A day at Chester Zoo was our best day out in ages. Actually, the weather has been so awful it was our first day out in ages. Sunny warm(ish) weather so most of the animals were on view. Spectacled bears, baby giraffe, baby okapi, baby rhino. And we saw the elephants having their shower - well, some of them did. Some of them don't like water and they lurked well out of range. There were two baby elephants and we saw a group of females (communal young rearing) use herd persuasion to get one of the babies into the pool. And the most exciting bit was two jaguars fighting over a sack. The most dramatic bit of jaguar action we have ever seen. And TSH got a photo!!

Stylistics analysis is the scene in Atonement where Celia and Robbie are by the water. They struggle over an antique vase, break it and Celia strips off, goes in and retrieves the bits before stalking off. And then we get Bryony's version from an upper window. She thinks he's proposed!!  Fascinating comparison.

Good day

As a reward for handing my assignment in, I spent the day dressing up. Going  through my wardrobe to check what I've got for the summer (if it ever happens). I really enjoyed it - it was like retail therapy as I've got lots of things I'd forgotten. And everything still fits! Can't justify buying anything much, since we don't get to wear summer clothes that often. Except new sandals for smart/casual evenings. And an ivory camisole for under jackets. And I think I'll try some leggings for under long tops.

Then its on to stylistics and a poem about pain. We are looking at the use of metaphor at  the moment and how people use it  to describe pain. I think its a dreadful poem.

Pompeii, Herculaneum and Roger McGough

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.

Structure improving

Yesterday I was really depressed about the assignment about the advertising postcard for Boundary Mill. Yes, I know, trying to write 5,000 words about a discount store postcard. What did I expect?

I spent  yesterday afternoon doing little more than staring at what I had written and doing a bit of 'rearranging the Titanic deckchairs'. But today, I have been a lot more focused and I fixed the structure. I am going to follow Cook, who deals with material (its a postcard), language (words, grammar, colour, typeface, layout) and then people (readers, writers). I now have over 4,00 words, although they won't all make the final cut. I still have a tendency to retreat to my spreadsheet and count something else. Because I can. And I'm a nerd at heart. All those years of maths and IT are deep in there and I still feel I'm a cheat as an arts graduate. Me, with a BA!!

And the next problem is what to wear next weekend. Its the start day for the next module, which is stylistics. And I don't know how the weather will be. Its getting a bit warm for full-on winter but its certainly not summer. Is any of last year's spring wardrobe smart enough?