Web Page 13: Looking Back on my Web Pages..

My first web page published in November dealt with the relationship between meaning and language. In this discussion, I suggested that that the relationship between linguistics and written expression was one that could never fully capture the intent, passion and nature of one’s thoughts. One argument I provided, for example, suggested that perhaps when one simply and eagerly seeks meaning within and behind words only, one may lose or overlook the truest and utmost intent or passion. Perhaps, I argue, one or many words simply cannot capture or express that intent or passion. Words do fail us; evidentially, linguistics cannot.  

The next four web page postings dealt further with this relationship between meaning and language. Describing characters from both Chaucer and Beowulf, I attempted to distill and convey the author’s message. Chaucer, for example, describes the knight as not having flashy attire or shiny armor; he wears commoner clothing or a “fustian tunic.” Through this descriptive language, one can infer that the narrator looked-up to the Knight, not for what he could be or for what others think he should be, but for whom he was: an ordinary person who did extra-ordinary things, but never boasted about what he did.

Two web postings dealt with Carlyle and Wife of Bath, expressing how the author uses rhetorical devices and other techniques that authors or speakers use to convey to their audience meaning with the goal of persuading such an audience toward considering a topic from a different perspective. In the Wife of Bath’s Tale, for example, Chaucer uses alliteration, similes, and allusions as rhetorical devices. Here’s one simile used in the Tale and discussed in the posting: “Here was but heaviness and grievous sorrow; For privately he wedded on the morrow, And all day, then, he hid him like an owl; So sad he was, his old wife looked so foul’’   ( 226-227). This simile compares the Knight to an owl, comparing the Knight’s hiding from his wife-to-be (fiancée) all day, as does an owl hide all day, for they are nocturnal and only come out at night. A few of my web pages, entitled, The Motivation of Learning, James Baldwin and Education deal with the issue of society and education. For example, in James Baldwin’s essay, A Talk to Teachers, he states that society’s only hope for change is through those individuals who question.  If no one questions life about and around them, Baldwin maintains, everything remains the same and no change occurs or can occur. Baldwin suggests that tension occurs when society suppresses this questioning.

Three web page postings, Technology Versus Morals, Francis Bacon and Poverty, I consider outliers as they do not fall into the main discussion categories of meaning and language or society and education. Technology Versus Morals, for example, dealt with values (both  people and society) and how each influences our technology but I find that it does not really fit neatly into any educational aspect of discussion.

Web Page 12: Thomas Carlyle

Carlyle uses many literary devices to boost his argument. Carlyle writes “In this mitigated form, however, the distemper is of pretty regular recurrence; and may be reckoned on at intervals, like other natural visitations; so that reasonable men deal with it, as the Londoners do with their fogs, — go cautiously out into the groping crowd, and patiently carry lanterns at noon; knowing, by a wellgrounded faith, that the sun is still in existence, and will one day reappear.” Here Carlyle employs the device of imagery, equating human thought and theory, from religion to science, as a fog from which we all know sooner or later will lift. Before the fogs lift, however, we walk about with our lanterns (light or thoughts) and bang into one another, perhaps, much like religious or scientific discussion. The image is concrete.

            Carlyle writes that “there is a deep-lying struggle in the whole fabric of society; a boundless grinding collision of the New with the Old. The French Revolution, as is now visible enough, was not the parent of this mighty movement, but its offspring.” Here, Carlyle commands an oratory, a high speech, much like that of the great orators he mentions within this satire. Employing such terms as “fabric” and placing it against such terms as “boundless grinding collision” escalates the manner of speech to oratory. With such oratory, Carlyle’s satire becomes less argument and more poem.

Carlyle writes that “the King has virtually abdicated; the Church is a widow, without jointure; public principle is gone; private honesty is going; society, in short, is fast falling in pieces; and a time of unmixed evil is come on us.”  Carlyle employs a few devices or techniques here to win over his reading audience. In one, he uses personification (Church and widow), which lowers the institutional level of the Church to a more personal level, to the reader’s eye-level, if you will. The Church is no longer stone but flesh. Second, we notice the quickening pace of this passage as it descends: abdicate, widow, gone, going, fallen to pieces. The world is unraveling, from King to Church, public to private, until we arrive at evil. Carlyle portrays this “sky is falling scenario” in quickening, abrupt phrases. Carlyle condenses this free fall and accelerates it again through simple punctuation. As we pass each stop (semicolon) we gain more momentum until we hit the period at the end.   

Web Page 11: Synthesis Essay Response

Poverty, it seems, is much like pornography. As one Supreme Justice and decision often quoted reflects: You know it when you see it. That is, an agreeable definition and measurement of and for poverty is lacking. Poor is poor. But when is poor poverty? Several arguments from researchers admit that no agreement exists on the very definition of poverty but research nevertheless attempts to suggest viable measurements and methods to better characterize toward a working definition of poverty. Based on a lack of agreement on a definition of poverty and how best to measure it toward such a definition, one may be best left with “I know it when I see it” understanding. 

Atkinson writes that “the methods employed in the measurement of poverty have been

the subject of criticism,” examining the three basic issues in measuring poverty, which include, the “choice of the poverty line, the index of poverty, and the relation between poverty and

inequality.” Atkinson acknowledges that there remains a “diversity of judgments which enter the measurement of poverty.” Atkinson’s definition of poverty remains judgmental.Glennerster discusses the American contribution to the study of poverty over the past 25 years, viewed from a “comparative perspective.” Glennerster argues that the “U.S. poverty line” has “remained fundamentally unchanged” since 1977 “despite increasingly important deficiencies in the way” poverty was calculated.” The definition of poverty through metrics did not change for Glennerster.

Brady suggests that to derive a definition and better measurement for poverty, one should consider and do some of the following things. One should first measure comparative historical variation effectively and be relative rather than absolute. One should conceptualize poverty as social exclusion and assess the impact of taxes, transfers, and state benefits. And last but not least, one should integrate the depth of poverty and the inequality among the poor.

Atkinson, Glennerster and Brady, researchers all, fail to adequately define, measure and quantify a usable “talking point” about what poverty is. Ask an impoverished person for a definition, accurate measurement or quantification and the impoverished might simply point out that you must know me because you are asking me. You know it when you see it. Apparently you can’t easily prosecute it.

Web Page 10: Synthesis Topic

Poverty:

(1) http://www.oed.com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/

(2) On the Measurement of Poverty

A. B. Atkinson

Econometrica
Vol. 55, No. 4 (Jul., 1987), pp. 749-764

Published by: The Econometric Society 


(3) United States Poverty Studies and Poverty Measurement: The Past Twenty‐Five Years 
Howard Glennerster

The Social Service Review
Vol. 76, No. 1, 75th Anniversary Issue (March 2002), pp. 83-107

Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/324609

(4) Rethinking the Sociological Measurement of Poverty

David Brady

Social Forces
Vol. 81, No. 3 (Mar., 2003), pp. 715-751

Published by: University of North Carolina Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3598174

(5)http://www.onedayswages.org/about/what-extreme-global-poverty

(6)http://www.policyalmanac.org/social_welfare/poverty.shtml

Question: 

In what ways can poverty be defined?