Fallacy: Al Gore

As most people know, Al Gore spent much time, money and effort promoting his film "An Inconvenient Truth." This film aims at educating the public of the dangers of global warming. As a solution to this problem, Gore supported and endorsed the "Earth Hour" event, which calls for people to turn off their household electrical appliances for one a hour a year. However, on that particular night, Gore was caught with his lights on by Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research (TCPR). This sparked much criticism and he was labeled a "hypocrite" by many.
This particular incident is an example of "Special Pleading." Special Pleading is a type of fallacy where someone applies a standard to other people in a particular situation, while taking himself to be exempt from that standard. In this case, Gore urged American citizens to respect this Earth Hour and turn off their lights. However, he did not do so himself, thus being guilty of a fallacy. Just because he was an important leader in this environmental movement does not mean that Gore can ignore the standards he sets for everyone else.

Here is a link to Drew Johnson's Facebook note describing Gore's house during Earth Hour.

Jon Stewart's Comical View of Public Discourse

In a recent monologue, Jon Stewart satirically criticizes CNN, one of the largest and most popular news companies, and their public discourse. Stewart begins by talking about the big news that made the headlines recently--football, the Obama's whereabouts, and popular box-office hits. He sarcastically lists these unimportant events to highlight the idea that the news fails to cover meaningful happenings, such as protests. Stewart then discusses CNN's tendency to not "fact check", or establish and assure the credibility of the sources they get their information from. Rather than find legitimate sources, CNN resorts to Saturday Night Live sketches for research. Moreover, when delivering specific numerical data to their viewers, CNN reporters offer a wide-range of numbers and fail to cite their sources. The next criticism, and perhaps the most hysterical one, is CNN's habit of saying "Let's leave it there" without completing an argument and drawing a conclusion. Stewart shows numerous clips of CNN dropping that infamous line, often cutting off people from finishing what they had to say and leaving the initial debate issue unsolved. Lastly, Jon Stewart discusses news reporters' failure to conduct thorough and relevant issue. On a clip from CNN, when asked whether we can check how much our health insurance premiums go up, a reporter responded by saying, "That's a good question." For such a widespread news organization that should be informing the public, that is simply an unacceptable response. Reporters should know these things before going on air, and because this particular woman did not do proper research, Stewart joked about it.

As you can see, Jon Stewart has found many flaws in media practices and public discourse. In turn, these flaws would not and should not find its way in academic discourse. Academic discourse, unlike public discourse, focuses mainly on showing a wide range of views for students, and from there, allowing those students to construct new ideas and develop a stance on the issue or debated topic. Also, public discourse does not spend much time establishing the credibility of their sources, but rather goes to great lengths to push their thoughts into other peoples' minds. On the other hand, academic discourse is typically associated with well-cited sources from various points of views. Therefore, perhaps if news outlets adopted some ideas of academic discourse to their programs, they would be more credible, informative, and not end up at the butt of Jon Stewart's jokes.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-october-12-2009/cnn-leaves-it-there

Extra Credit: Sacred Language, Spoken Language

Nurit Aviv's film Sacred Language, Spoken Language interviews a handful of Hebrew speakers, writers, and poets on their views of this revived language. As Etgar Keret put it, "the history of Hebrew is unusual," as it was once "frozen for two thousand years, then defrosted." This "defrosting" was brought upon by the Zionist movement, which supported the reestablishment of Jewish people in Palestine, thus leading to the rebirth of their ancient language. According to the first speaker (Haim Gouri), the Hebrew language was the foundation of the national revival--"Without the language, no rebirth of people." From a linguistic standpoint, this statement is quite significant. It shows the importance of language not only as a means to communication, but also as something that holds a culture together.

As a consequence of the language being dead for so long, words had to be taken from different languages (borrowing) and new slang had to be invented in order to be better suit the current world. While this modernization was essential to the revival and maintenance of Hebrew, it took some of the ancient cultural significance out of the language. Some of the people being interviewed in this film even referred to these new Hebrew translations as "soiled" and "profane". Many of the people also noted that the Hebrew they know today is comprised of two layers: the scriptural and daily, the sacred and profane, the paternal and maternal. The former descriptions in each pair are the ancient language, seen in the Bible and Tehmad. The latter describes the language spoken and known by all Hebrew speakers today. Therefore, while modernization was inevitable, some of the ancient Hebrew spoken long ago was preserved.

As a linguistics student, I found this film quite interesting. For a language to have been dead for so long, its people had to work extremely hard to reconstruct and revitalize it. It was fascinating to listen to a wide range of peoples' views on the Zionist movement. I found Ronit Matalon's interview particularly interesting. As a writer, she must understand the two layers of Hebrew, then must utilize both the ancient and modern forms in her writing. She concludes her time by saying, "It's the right, the responsibility, the freedom to use the language you want to use. You are not judging the words, the sentences, the expressions you use by their origins but by the way they sound, how they're used, what they mean." In other words, people choose to speak a certain way not because of the history behind that certain dialect, but because it conveys a certain message or emotion that they want to get across. From a linguistics view, this sums up perfectly the use of language.

Maintaining a Non-Standard Dialect: The Advantages!

All traditional varieties and dialects hold a special place in the culture of their speakers. As Andrew Woodfield once put it, "A language is not just a medium, a symbol-system or a code. It is also the repository of a cultural tradition, a way of living, and of expressing which helps to covey a sense of identity upon its native-speakers." Thus, maintaining non-standard dialects would be advantageous in the sense that it would preserve cultural diversity and identities. Many speakers of AAVE, Hawaiian Pidgin, and Swiss German (all of which are "lower prestige dialects") have developed a pride in their mother tongue, as it gives them a sense of uniqueness and culture. Taking this away would result in a bland, monotonous world.

Also, maintaining non-standard dialects also may improve the education of the speakers of these non-standard dialects. Because culture and language is so closely knitted, children would be able to learn Standard English much easier if they are taught using their mother tongue as well. Often times, learning ASE is not only difficult to learn because of its grammatical and vocabulary technicalities, but also because it is so much of a culture shock or culture clash. Thus, since children would be able to understand concepts better in their inherited language, they might improve on their acquisition of the standard language.

Fallacy: MasterCard

We've all seen MasterCard commercials before, and they've all ended in the saying, "There are some things money can't buy--for everything else, there's MasterCard."  As catchy as it may sound, MasterCard's mantra does not contain much truth.  It is an example of a fallacy, particularly a false dilemma.  This fallacy, also known as "black and white thinking," involves a situation where only two alternatives are brought up, even though there are many more possibilities.  In other words, false dilemmas cause people to think that they must pick between two choices, when in actuality, there are much more.  

In the specific case of MasterCard slogan, they present us with just two choices: 1) you don't need money for some stuff and 2) for the stuff that you need money for, you use MasterCard.  As an advertising strategy, they chose to omit other possibilities, such as using money, Visa, American Express, etc.  Thus, they are putting people in a false dilemma since we actually have many choices to choose from.

Our Green Future: America's Young Environmental Leaders Speak Out

This past Tuesday, three Brower Youth Awardees discussed the environmental problems we face and the great accomplishments that they have achieved at such a young age.  Unlike the first lecture of this debate series, I believe that Rachel Barge, Billy Parish, and Erica Fernandez presented their material in a more interesting and believable manner.  One of the big mistakes that many people felt Simran Sethi made was that she did not go into detail about what we as students could do to help the environment.  These three speakers, however, showed us how much they achieved as college students.  Rachel not only raised a lot of money for the environment's sake, but she also was able to snag some of Berkeley's valuable land as a permanent residence for her on-campus organization.  Billy has helped provide jobs to those who are interested in saving the planet and are fresh out of college.  What was most inspiring, however, was Erica Fernandez's speech at the end.  Sure her English was not the clearest and she clearly recited her speech countless times, but her passion for her cause was evident.  Just a sophomore in college, she has accomplished so much, particularly creating a safer and cleaner environment in her neighborhood.

Overall, I believed that these three speakers were so effective because they were recently college freshman just like us and it was very easy to relate to them.  To see what they've accomplished in their youth makes us more hopeful about what we could possibly do for our earth now.

My Fair Lady Review

My Fair Lady follows Professor Henry Higgins and his student Eliza Doolittle.  Professor Higgins, a linguist who can distinguish different accents from all across Europe, takes on a bet in which he says he can transform Eliza, a lowly flowergirl, into a lady who speaks, acts, and dresses properly.  Eliza eventually succeeds at becoming a more "genteel" woman, and even attracts the attention and adoration of a young aristocrat.  Eliza's makeover is apparent in the way she talks (how she enunciates her vowels), the way she dresses, and the overall way she handles herself.  However, when she overhears Prof. Higgins taking all the credit for her unbelievable transformation, Eliza leaves him and Prof. Higgins realizes that he misses her.

From a linguist student's point of view, this film is interesting, as it allows us to listen to many different dialects of the English language--from the rough way of speaking of Eliza to the more refined speaking of Higgins and his colleagues.  My favorite part of the movie was in the beginning when Prof. Higgins went around listening to people to talk and telling each one of them exactly where they came from!  He mentioned that he could distinguish where someone is from within 3 or 6 miles!  I also found it interesting how Eliza wanted to change her way of speaking so she could find a better job and make more money.  This shows that her dialect was of the low variety and that she would have to change that if she were to speak in a different, higher domain of life. 

Overall, My Fair Lady was a good musical which successfully incorporated different dialects to teach the differences between high and low varieties.