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.
