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Final reflection: Goodbye

I think we all have the responsibility of having a reflection of almost everything that exists around us. Social media is undoubtedly a very common thing that impacts very deep in the people’s lives. Hence, that impact that social media has, can be positive and also negative, thus, we have to reflect on that same impact. Memes are part of that social media, a part so important that they make some people spend hours and hours watching memes. Those memes can have a “brain washing” effect in some people, so we should really spend some time thinking in how memes can affect our ways of thinking. Another interesting things that we can think about are the elements of the movies we watch. Among these elements, the plot and characters, but also the audiovisual resource movies have. If we can understand how to appreciate those elements, we will have a better understanding in what the movie is trying to communicate. In this semester I learned a lot of new things. The academic things I learned can be widely applied to the real life and entertainment. I learned how to appreciate a movie and analyze it. Also, how to analyze a meme and see if it is dangerous. The things I take away from this class vary a lot. I learned how a teacher can be very supportive to his students, and how a class can be enjoyable. I remember that in my first english class we did kind of a game where we all created a story, and in the last class we spoke about what we would do with our lives in this new stage. We created a story in this class, these two years were transformed into a new story, and now that the time has come to create a new story on our own, I can take a lot of  things away from this class. Even though I were not the best student, I actually learned how to endure and do my best when working and accomplishing my dreams. I learned to be a better person as I learned how to work hard and be ethical, and always try to help other people.

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reflection

This was a very complicated week. Amid a world economic crisis, a virus that created an ignorant social paranoia, and a feminist week for Mexico, we read a variety of text that spoke about women and men literature. These text would depict some of the differences that we can encounter when reading novels that were written by men or by women. I would consider them feminist texts as they were often talking in a positive way about women, even though not completely. They would also mention “bad” features of women’s literature. I think that Margaret Atwood wants to reach men by persuading them to realize a lot of things about women’s literature that they had probably never thought about. She may want to make men think about the real value of texts written by women, and what they are really about. She maybe wants to break this social construction that women cannot write as well as men do. She maybe wants women to also have a reflection about their own literature, and also, appreciate more that literature. What I personally take away from these texts is a good reflection on what women try to communicate in their literary texts, as well as how do they communicate it.

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Reflection 11

Advertising is usually related to propaganda. The both have the purpose to persuade different groups of people to something, or think in some way about something. Companies design their advertising campaigns usually with the aim of getting people to buy the company’s products. Hence, the companies often (and probably should always) do a marketing research where they identify the needs of their customers, and they create big advertising campaigns to make those customers see that the company has the necessary to satisfy their needs. Advertising usually applies the principles of propaganda in advertising as they are both trying to make people to do something. If we can understand all the different elements that convey the meaning of an advertising campaign, we can understand better what the company is trying to sell. For example, companies usually try to sell something through different “hidden messages”, and, when knowing the elements of an advertising campaign, it is easy to find that “hidden messages”. The visual text is usually something that helps a lot the expression of an idea, so as graphic resources such as photographs help to produce more “visual” ideas in the minds of the customers. Visual text, so as the type of fond helps the audience to understand more easily the meaning of a campaign. If you want to write a comic, there is literally a fond called Comic Sans MS. And obviously, culture affects how someone reads and interprets something. If we grew in a culture, advertising from our society will satisfy our needs whilst it could not satisfy the needs of any other society that is different in their way of thinking.

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Reflection 10

The propaganda and the advertising are similar and different in several points of view. For example, it could be said that the propaganda differs from the advertising when it comes usually from organisations like the governments, etc. And, the advertising comes from different private companies such as Coca-Cola, etc. The similarities found between advertising and propaganda lie on their purposes. They are both to persuade people to do something or believe in something, either a cause, a person or even a symbol. The advertising usually tries to make people buy, whilst propaganda tries to make people follow a political party’s ideals, religious ideals, etc. The role of language in propaganda and advertising is vital. As we had seen in previous classes, there are different techniques for propaganda, such as name-calling, etc. This is how a political speech, or even euphemisms in advertising can reach the deepness of people’s mind. From looking at my classmates campaigns, I learned that an advertising campaign can be always fixed. There are always specific things that can be changed to reach a deeper level in a person’s mind. I can apply all this knowledge about propaganda and campaign in my daily life in several ways. I can notice when I am biased because of advertising or propaganda. And when I see different things in the world that surrounds me, I can be aware of what companies, religions or governments want me to believe. Being aware of this makes me more of a critic.

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6th semester reflection 1

Propaganda has had a big impact in every aspect of my life. It has modeles many decisions and opinions I’ve thought and made. For example, I think that capitalist propaganda usually wants to persuade people to have a specific way of life in which we think we are happy. Usually propaganda says we should go after money, travels, gifts, cars and expensive restaurants so that we become happy the rest of our days. Nowadays, I have realised about it and I have tried to be more conscious of how different propagandas have biased various aspects of my life. By this way, I can make sure that I am aware and I can aware others. Even thought that it is sometimes complicated to make people realise about propaganda as they are fully immersed in it. Also, if I were to persuade someone to do something, or if I were to persuade a group of people to do something or think in a specific way, I would try to use the different techniques of propaganda in order to accomplish it. But now that I kinda understand how propaganda works, I know that all propaganda should be cautious and responsible as it can be used as a dangerous weapon. The ethical issues that can sometimes emerge when using propaganda are those that end up by corrupting people’s minds. If propaganda is not used in a proper way, radical point of views and these radical point of views can lead to usual social shocks. An example of this is the ISIS, Nazis, Trump, etc.

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Reflection 3

I’ve learned a lot of things in this term. What I most liked was the structuralism research. It’s very interesting, and, if we know the principles of it, we can apply it to basically anything. Hence, there is an aplicación of it on the literary works. We studied how the narrative structure relates to the actual expression of the text. The usual structure, introduction, development, conclusion, climax, title, narrator, etc. All of them have a vital role in the way the plot of a text develops. And, we can notice that there are some patterns in the narrative structures of different text. 

     The text we read in this last term was The Man in the High Castle, in this novel, we can perceive a debate between the morals and ethics of the different characters, and, the actual context they are in. This difference leads to other themes such as the prejudice, power, or even the fate and the free will. This novel is just amazing as how it makes us think about our sense of community and ethics. While The Man in the High Castle shows an alternative history of humanity by presenting a different ending of the World War II. When Nazis won the war (in the alternate reality), also the Japanese empire had its piece of cake. San Francisco was taken by the Japanese for example, and by different descriptions, there comes to be a mind challenging theme, the morals of the different characters against their context. This novel can be compared to some other literary works that we have studied before. For example, we can compare it to Oedipus Rex by how the culture is related to the characters. Also, with a broader perspective we can see other themes, such as hope and adaptation. We see this as how some characters have the hope in the “revolution”. v

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Final term

The literary theories help us by giving us different ways to interpret different texts and literary works. Focusing just into one or a few aspects of a text gives us more insight as we put all the analysis in just one thing, hence, we can understand and know a text with good depth. Knowing the different parts of a text gives us a “medical insight” of the text, as we can know the structure and how the structure relates to what the text wants to express. What I learned from A Distant Neighborhood is that all our choices affects all the different aspects of our lives. And, that we cannot change our past but learn from it and change our future. Oedipus Rex and A Distant Neighborhood are related basically as they both speak about time and destiny. Nevertheless, the only thing that Hiroshi learns from his past, and Oedipus literally goes blind because of it.

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Final term

The literary theories help us by giving us different ways to interpret different texts and literary works. Focusing just into one or a few aspects of a text gives us more insight as we put all the analysis in just one thing, hence, we can understand and know a text with good depth. Knowing the different parts of a text gives us a “medical insight” of the text, as we can know the structure and how the structure relates to what the text wants to express. What I learned from A Distant Neighborhood is that all our choices affects all the different aspects of our lives. And, that we cannot change our past but learn from it and change our future. Oedipus Rex and A Distant Neighborhood are related basically as they both speak about time and destiny. Nevertheless, the only thing that Hiroshi learns from his past, and Oedipus literally goes blind because of it.

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Oedipus and Hiroshi

1.-the main themes in Oedipus Rex is the hubris, the narcissist feeling and prepotency that Greeks most feared. The main theme in a distant neighborhood is the making of your time worthy, as Hiroshi goes back to his past, he realizes of all the good and bad choices he could make. 2.-I think that A distant neighborhood is linked to Oedipus as the two literary works have the time as one of their themes. 3.-the greek conventions in their theaters could have helped the spectators to understand the hubris and the fate of Oedipus, as the chorus sang the “theme” or “argument” whilst the spectators would try to understand the actors. 4.-time in A distant neighborhood is very important as the plot is basically about time and the different questions there can be made while you “travel” in time. Time in the plot is not linear, Hiroshi comes and goes around his memories, while he actually goes back in time. 5.-the different point of view of the reader/spectator and the writer can change how the work is seen and understood. In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles could’ve seen his play and the spectators would have had the same opinion and fear of that hubris I talked sooner. But if we, after almost two and a half millennia read the play, we would fear no hubris, but rather just think about the fate and destiny that is presented. (We wouldn’t forget to see the hubris). 6.-as readers or spectators, we would have to keep on mind the set, the time, the chorus, the plot, the characters, descriptions and the themes in order to understand and analyze a literary work.

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reflection.

Recently, we finished the analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale, and, The Tragedy of Macbeth. Both literary works are masterpieces, yes, they obviously have big differences, but, the themes that they can portray with different resources are impressive. By one side, The Handmaid’s tale has two main themes in my point of view, the why and how are women utilized as objects for political reasons in the Republic of Gilead, and, how the language can be a resource of the theocracy to maintain the people under control. In Macbeth, we can see primarily the ambition of the characters, such as the treasons. We can see how the characters can reverse their roles, specifically between Macbeth and lady Macbeth. Retaking the point of the language and power from The Handmaid’s Tale, the discourse within the novel is a great tool to even understand or have an idea of our real world. The fact that the system of Republic of Gilead has created, or reused biblical words for control purposes is a good example of how a categorised language can categorise a society. As for the character development in the two different masterpieces, there is a huge contrast between them. Shakespeare develop his characters in a more forceful way, as it is a play, it has to begin in A and then have a lot of exponential changes, as if it was A-B-C=D. Atwood’s characters development is more implicit. Another important point is how Shakespeare discourse about women. Lady Macbeth is a sneaky character, full of ambition in the beginning, and, these facts lead the mind of the reader to think that lady Macbeth is an evil character, but the real truth is that she is not. At the beginning, she is blinded by ambition, but at the end, she ends up being the victim of the same. Both masterpieces have a discourse for women. A discourse of inequality and oppression. Macbeth themes are still relevant to these days, ambition, greed, treason, victims, all of them are still existing in our world today.

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Macbeth

In the last weeks of our english literature classes that we have had, we have been studying Shakespeare’s Macbeth literary work. In it, we have found an interesting change in the characters and the perspective we have about them. One of the most important examples of this is how Shakespeare depicted the women of his time. The perfect representation of it, is lady Macbeth, a woman who seems to be malevolent and heartless, yet sly. Through reflection and inquiry of the lady Macbeth, we could come out with the conclusion that she is just a woman that want to reach her desires, but, the perspective of men to her make her seem to be the sneaky character of the play. Maybe lady Macbeth can even be represented with the phrase “the end justifies the means”, but as she is a woman, she is criticized by the manly bias of the time. Hence, not only lady Macbeth is criticized for her actions because she is a woman, but all women were prone to be criticized for the same matters. Also, Macbeth can be compared to the greek tragedies. Shakespeare was inspired in some extent by the greek tragedies, and as we can see, macbeth is not a virtuous nor evil character, but he looks for his desires. The main themes in Macbeth are full of greed, gender roles, desire and treason. The characters in Macbeth can be seen as round and flat. Some are more round than flat, others, the opposite. While Macbeth can be seen as a round character, Duncan can be seen as a flat character. Also lady Macbeth is round. Also, a lot of them are complex characters. Duncan is naive character, a flat character that is not complex. Macbeth is a complex character that is guided by his emotions and desires.

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Reflection about Poe and Shakespeare

These last weeks were very interesting. We learned a lot about two different and magnificent authors: Shakespeare and Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe expresses some intense and gothic description and statements about the dark nature of humanity. He usually uses some rhetorical devices to support those statements. Shakespeare, instead, he makes some poetic and vivid statements about the human nature. Let´s not forget that there are some crucial differences between the cultural contexts of Poe and Shakespeare. Allan Poe lived in the dawn of a changing world. The scientific revolution and the progress of humanity (especially in England) made some people start thinking that humanity itself was turning “inhuman”. William Shakespeare lived in the same country, but two hundred years before. The literature of Shakespeares´s time was poetic and it often was more about witches and kings. Poe´s style, so as Shakespeare´s have endured because they introduced new topics and new ways of expressing feelings and statements. Poe´s life was difficult, so he used to express his emotions and thoughts through a gothic style full of descriptions (usually those descriptions were used for the death matter). Shakespeare´s Works and literary style have also endured because his writing themes and arguments can also be found in the modern day problems. For example, Macbeth´s problematics and fights for power can be related to the modern world fights for power around this Earth. Also, Shakespeare was often a romantic poet, hence, his works are often full of that romanticist essence. Thus, these two writers are perfect examples of a differential contrast in the literature of two important times for the written art. Also, as it was mentioned above, the cultural context molded the literary style of these writers, but, also the life´s of the authors molded the way they wanted to express their feelings.

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R1

The past three weeks have been very interesting. Me and my class have been studying and learning a variety of different things regarding the literature and our writing style. First, we started with an interesting task that consists on a self-diagnostic of our essay writing skills. Although this work did not mean anything for our grades, it was a very useful tool and work to understand and realize the things in which we are strong and weak. The real interesting work started with the reading of three stories by Edgar Allan Poe. It is to mention that the way in which Poe writes is kind of difficult to read at the very beginning, because even though Poe does not uses “very old” english, he uses some words that are difficult to read if english is not our first language so to speak. One of the activities that was more challenging to us was the treasure hunt. Inspired on “The Gold Bug” by Poe, we had to create different codes with our teams, and, at the end, we exchanged those codes with another teams, in order to find their treasures. Regarding to the way in which Allan Poe writes, as I said before, the idiomatic expressions, and, the linguistic style of his Works is kind of a challenging thing to read at the beginning. Then, we could mention the rhetorical devices we have studied and identified in Poe’s Works. By the task I mentioned before, about the codes and treasure hunt, we can mention the importance of understanding the different codes that can be immersed in a literary piece. Within the lines of a literary piece, we are likely to find different “hidden” messages or symbols that represent something specific, and often, those symbols and messages carry the real importance of the piece, as it is the speech. I can use this knowledge to improve my way of writing different texts because these last weeks have been improving my vocabulary, such as my way of understanding the literature and its tricks.

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taboo words

The last week, my class had a rare, but interesting task. We had to look for some swearing words, in order to make a list of these. We also learned the difference between the different kind of “bad words”, such as cursing, and some other words. We could see and think about the power of a word, and even the history of some of them. So, these taboo language has a particular effect in the human daily life. Some of those words can release pain and scare. For emple, if you hurt yourself with a knife, you will not say something like “well, that hurts” instead, you will probably shout something like fuc”! Then it is particularly interesting to see the impact of these words on a society, as they are part of the common language and expressions. Another important fact, is that these taboo words utterly depend on the context they are used. For example, if you use one of those to classify a person because of an accident, that will be offensive, but if you use that same word in another context that does not attack anybody directly, that word will loose it´s offensive meaning. I personally think that there should be more education about the taboo words. As I said before, the taboo words dependo n the context, so, if someone uses those words to affect someone, then, a strong regulation should come and punish that offensive indiviual, but, as the taboo words are part of the usual social language, eduaction should make people have a different perspective. At the same time, it would be also good to educate people to use taboo words only when required (like really necessary to do so) for example, only if a person is feeling pain or something, because if they use taboo words on the Street, infront of other people, that could be so annoying.

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Speeches.

The last week, the tasks we needed to complete took all my attention. We needed to choose an special speech, and then, we needed to, make a presentation about it. The presentation was in teams, and, as it needed to have a lot of different parts, the work was kind of divided between all of my teammates. This, as a lot of the past tasks, teach me to work in team. But, the real thing that the work taught me was the power of a speech, of a discourse, and the reasons of a speech. We decided to present “We choose to go the moon” by JFK. The spacial race is a particular interesting topic for me, and, as one part of the presentation was the historical and social context, I though that I use the task as an oportunity to expand my knowledge of the topic. As there are a lot of classmates, there were a lot of presentations, but, there was a team that presented a speech from Chaplin’s The great dictator. Personally, that has been my favourite speech since I was a kid. The speech presents a discourse with such powerfull words, and emotions that it motivates everybody to follow the voice of Chaplin. Speccially, as that speech is based on the WW2, the thoughts it express are some kind of moving. Cholins mentions the changing humanity and its lack of humanity while the abundance of technology. This kind of motivating speeches and the analysis we did to the can be applied to all our lives. The way we understand the “how” and “when” tos ay something that can be exponential for motivation can be used in all the speeches we may want to créate, say, and write. So as I have said before, the speeches are a great source for the understanding of an specific time.

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Political speeches.

The last week, we learned a lot of different thimgs in the english class. We had an specifically difficult task (not difficult, but big). That tas was to read and analyse two different speeches, and, the, we had to answer a series of different questions regarding to the speeches. The interesting thing of the task, was not only to read those large speeches, but to find and analyse their respective discourses. The first speech was about the russian revolution and its impact in a variety of things. The second speech was about Israel’s actions and its conflicto with Egypt (the speech was presented to the United Nations. Throughout that task, we could learn how to reason a text, speech, etc. And, we were able to learn how to find a discourse. Finding the dicourse is not too easy nor too hard. Besides, a discourse helps us to have a better and a broader perspective and understanding of the historic and cultural context of any discourse we may find. The other big thing we started to do the last week, was to start a presentation about any speech we wanted. In that task, we should explain the cultural and historic context. We should explain the discpurse, and some other different things. We decided to analyse a speech that changed everything in the future of humanity. The speech we started to analyse was “We choose to go to the moon”, by John F, Kennedy. We presented interest on that speech because it shows how the USA wanted to beat the Soviet Union in the space race. If we remember those history lessons, the USA space program wasn’t so strong as the Soviet space program. But, with that speech, the perspective of the americans changed. When Neil Armstorng and Buzz Aldrin stood on the moon, the future of the space race had changed.

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Discourse.

A discourse can be understood as a way of communication by words that can be spoken, or, written. But, if we want to know what a discourse is, we should be able to understand that a discourse is the real and the deepest meaning of a speech, or a formal written piece. Then, as the discourse is the meaning of a speech, we are forced to undertand the discourse if we want to use the speech as a point of reference, or, to work that we want to study. For example, the historians jobs are used to work on the written pieces of the time they are working. If the historian is not able to capture the discourse of the written piece, the salary will be lost money. The discourse itself has to get the attention of the listener, or the reader. It needs to express a real thing, because, it is the discourse what will have an impact on the people beholding it. A discourse is the way of expression of every pure idea from any speech and written work. So, the discourses need to be precise if we want them to have a major impact in the people's mind. We can use a lot of different kinds of discourses, such as narrative, argumentative, persuasive, and some others. Also, we can have in mind that there are seven different types of meanings according to semantics, so, if we use them all in a correct order, with a correct vision, our discourses couls have a major role and a major influence in a person's life. As I have said these, everybody should try to get and understand the very exact meaning of a speech, because it is possibly the only way in wich we can understand what the author tried to express.