A year older, none the wiser

Well... "the former native speaker" is a year old(er) today. A lot has happened in the past year (most of which, unfortunately, I can't talk about in this forum). One thing that hasn't changed, though, is that Lien Chan and the KMT aren't giving up on their search for "the truth" about President Chen and V-P Lu's shooting (even the pro-pan-blue China Post puts quotes around "the truth"!). But at least PFP Chairman James Soong had the sense to stay home from yesterday's protest march.

[Update: this is what I get for trying to be clever--my own brother (who knows my bd is in January) e-mailed me to ask if I'd changed my birthday and thinks I'm talking about "my" birthday and not the blog's birthday... (I'll resist getting into any mumbo-jumbo about mediated selfhood... for now... and just say "thanks" on behalf of the blog to those who wished us/it/me a happy birthday!) And now I've added quotation marks to "the former native speaker" which will probably make it clearer (or perhaps even more confusing...).]

Just a note here to myself, to read Amardeep Singh's post "Francis Fukuyama: The Protestant Ethic in an age of Islamic Terrorism" when I get a chance...

"...false friendships, deals, grudges, acts of political sabotage, indecorous alliances, favoritism"

"V. S. Ravens" writes about "The Limits of Tenure" at her large public university in the U.S. What strikes me is that her description depiction of dirty campus politics in the U.S. is remarkably similar to the way some folks describe depict university life in Taiwan. Which is to say, to quote Erma Bombeck, "the grass is always greener over the septic tank". (Gotta remind myself of this sometimes...)

(I should also note that I'm not particularly sympathetic regarding her attempt at what she admits was a "political deal" to remove "the department's ineffectual staff member". It comes off sounding both underhanded and politically naive at the same time.)

Hmmm... don't think they asked anyone around here...

According to a BBC World Service poll, most people see the PRC's influence in the world as positive rather than negative.

The small print that accompanies the graph, though, notes that the margin of error for this poll is + or - 2.5%-45%...

Hu Shih and public speaking

I was looking through Two Self-Portraits: Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao and Hu Shih and came across Hu Shih's description of how he learned how to be a public speaker in English. He was a student at Cornell when he first took a course in public speaking in 1912. As he describes the experience,

My professor, Professor Everett, was a very good teacher. Summer school began in July, and the first time that I was called upon to make a speech, I actually trembled. I had made some speeches before, but this was the first time that I had had to get up and speak in a class of public speaking. Though it was a hot July day, I felt so cold that my feet trembled, and I had to hold on to the small table while I tried to think of what I had prepared to speak. Professor Everett noticed that I held on to the table, so the next time he took away the table and I was forced to think of my subject unaided. In thinking of the subject I forgot my cold feet, so I did not tremble, and that was the beginning of my career as a trained public speaker. (216)

I want to mention this to the students in my FENM class on Friday--I think the Chinese majors in particular will appreciate it...

[3/6/05 Update: At first I thought the "Professor Everett" Hu Shih mentioned was Everett Lee Hunt, one of the early members of the "Cornell School of Rhetoric," according to Thomas W. Benson. But Benson says it wasn't until 1913 that Hunt graduated from Huron College in Huron, South Dakota, "whereupon he was immediately hired [by Cornell] as an instructor in Oratory and Debate" (5). Perhaps, however, Hu Shih was mistaken about the year he took the public speaking course.

Work Cited: Benson, Thomas W. "The Cornell School of Rhetoric: Idiom and Institution." Communication Quarterly 51.1 (2003): 1-56.]

Weather

Here it is only March 2 and it's already rained for about 300 days this month...

Today we did an impromptu speaking activity in FENM (Freshman English for Nonmajors) class. (I always feel like an enormous fraud conducting this kind of activity because I'm about the worst impromptu speaker on the planet... er... well, come to think of it, there's always GWB to make me look good.) In her speech, a student expressed her preference for Taichung because it's not as rainy and windy in the winter as Taipei. It's hard for me to believe that right now, given the rain and wind that have been pounding our apartment this evening, but I suppose it's possible that it's even worse in Taipei right now.

And I just bought a Lonely Planet guide to Belgium that suggests I take an umbrella with me because April is a rainy month...

This one hits home!

"My Day..." from "Stupid Undergrounds" cracked me up... (but rang too true...)

Scholarly publishing in the humanities

James Aune over at the Blogora raises an interesting question: why should scholarly journals in the humanities refuse to allow multiple submissions?

[And here's more discussion from Crooked Timber on the speed (or lack thereof) of academic publishing...]

Language teaching conference cfp--last call

Got this call for papers in my e-mail box the other day. It sounds interesting, despite its use of the dreaded "interrogating". Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to submit anything. But you can!

FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
INTERROGATING THIRD SPACES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING,
LEARNING AND USE

CENTRE FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS
(CELTEAL), UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

27-28 JUNE 2005

This conference, hosted in the multicultural and multilingual city of Leicester in the centre of England, marks the establishment of CELTEAL (Centre for English Language Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics) within the School of Education in the University of Leicester. The theme of the conference, 'Interrogating Third Spaces in Language Teaching, Learning and Use', derives from the interests of the group who have all been involved in working across multilingual and multicultural contexts.
We would like to interrogate the concept of third space which has been in use for several years in cultural studies and applied linguistics. We believe it is time now to explore the validity of this concept, both theoretically and practically in terms of its applicability to a wide range of applied linguistic topics. We would like to take the opportunity to invite those with an interest in the idea of third spaces to engage with us in discussion of its potentials and problematic.

Plenary Speakers

• Adrian Holliday
  
• Bonny Norton
  
• Ben Rampton
  
• Helen Spencer-Oatey

The intermediate spaces - linguistic, discursive and cultural spaces - between established norms have habitually been seen as problematic, because they constitute neither one thing nor another but are, by definition, in-between. A result of contact, they are heterogeneous spaces, but they can also reach autonomy, transcending their component sources through a dialectical process to make a new, expanded space which had not been dreamt of before. On the other hand, the very concept of 'Third Spaces' presupposes, and thereby reinforces, relatively stable and homogeneous norms in the 'first' and 'second' spaces, and this presupposition needs to be examined.

Postmodern theory, particularly in anthropology and cultural studies, has taught us to celebrate these intermediate zones, which have been named 'Third Spaces', because through the struggles of those who create them they present the possibility for stimulation and renewal, as well as threat. But we do not need to adopt postmodernist theory to begin to value these third spaces, whether they become stable or are always in transition.

This Conference will examine what there is to celebrate in the existence of third spaces, and will interrogate the usefulness of the concept itself, in the following areas:

• How language learners construct (or are constrained from constructing) learning experiences that are meaningful for themselves out of what teachers and others intend for them.
  
• How inter-language (phonology, syntax, pragmatic strategies, discourse strategies, genres...) thrives as an independent system in the spaces between the norms of L1 and L2, as fossilised forms, pidgins, idiolects, emergent systems and 'errors'.
  
• How language varieties emerge against established standards, in regional and sub-cultural pockets.
  
• How particular teachers and learners in particular classrooms adopt, adapt, co-opt and corrupt teaching methodologies, course materials, syllabi, curricula and examination systems, and make them work for themselves.
  
• How participants in multi-language interactions mix, switch, translate, and otherwise manage to communicate in one language or another.
  
• How identities are lost, reduced, confounded, re-shaped, and re-made in the move from one language to another.
  
• How learning to write in academic and other genres means finding a way between the established conventions and how you want to express who you are.
  
• How readers extract and impose their own meanings from and on texts, moving themselves towards the text, and the text towards themselves.
  

Submitting abstracts:

Abstracts of 250-300 words, in English, should demonstrate a clear relationship to the conference theme. Deadline for submission of abstracts is 7 March 2005.

Papers will last for 30 minutes, including at least 10 minutes for discussion. PowerPoint and OHPs will be available as standard.

Abstracts should contain:

• Title of presentation
  
• Name(s) of the author(s)
  
• Affiliation of the author(s)
  
• Both email and postal addresses
  
• Telephone and Fax numbers
  
• Any special audio-visual/IT requirements
  

Abstracts should be submitted as email attachments by 7 March 2005 to the following address: email:its2005@le.ac.uk

Details about registration, accommodation, etc. can be found on the conference website: www.le.ac.uk/se/conference/its2005/

Book meme: 123.5

(After reading the chutry experiment)

1. Grab the nearest book.
   
2. Open the book to page 123.
   
3. Find the fifth sentence.
   
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
   
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.
   

Well, this definitely won't impress anyone:

Note that M. and P. before names may be abbreviations for the titles Monsieur 'Mr.' and Père 'Father' (M. René Char, P. J. Reynard). (123)

From the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, sixth edition. (Yeah, I'm working on my Research Methods syllabus...)

Online resource for Chinese speech communication study

Found this website in my travels: 網上口語傳播研究中心 (Speech Communication on the Web), set up by Jack Tzu-hsiang Yu of Shih-Hsin University's Speech Comm. department. It looks like he hasn't updated it in a while, but it has some interesting links, such as to the full texts of most of the R.O.C. presidential inaugural addresses, resources on debating, and resources on interpersonal communication. (It's mostly in Chinese, I should mention.)

Identity crisis

Hmmm... might use this to start off my presentation in Belgium...

Googlism for: taiwan

taiwan is business as
taiwan is the future of china'
taiwan is safe for now
taiwan is qualified for membership of the international
taiwan is getting ready for a war with china
taiwan is integral part of china
taiwan is an inalienable part of
taiwan is "very dangerous"
taiwan is ready
taiwan is a province of china
taiwan is a province of china?
taiwan is now available for temporary importations using a tecro
taiwan is committed to reunification
taiwan is developing advanced technologies for electronic warfare
taiwan is inextricably linked to security
taiwan is this
taiwan is uncertain 6/16/
taiwan is independent"
taiwan is taiwan"
taiwan is business as usual
taiwan is a 'state
taiwan is key issue
taiwan is looking good for 2000
taiwan is not a part of china
taiwan is here
taiwan is ignored
taiwan is a beacon of hope for chinese
taiwan is an important reminder to us all
taiwan is not a province of china
taiwan is to auction five 3g mobile phone licenses in october
taiwan is not a member
taiwan is nobody's pawn
taiwan is experiencing job losses due to global it slowdown
taiwan is a rabies
taiwan is an unwatered region
taiwan is an island and the main water resource is precipitation
taiwan is my harashi
taiwan is a de
taiwan is the future of china' jimmy lai on feeling lucky
taiwan is safe for now the washington post
taiwan is the `motherland'
taiwan is standing in china's way
taiwan is not china by jeff jacoby
taiwan is qualified for membership of the international community
taiwan is down
taiwan is expected to grow to more than us$60 billion by 2010
taiwan is getting ready for a war with china the relations between china and taiwan could be best described with one phrase ? no peace
taiwan is integral part of china member states of the shanghai cooperation organisation proceed from the fact that the chinese
taiwan is an inalienable part of china"? taiwan has belonged to china since ancient times
taiwan is "very dangerous"
taiwan is an internal affair of china
taiwan is a matter of honour
taiwan is ready; are you?
taiwan is 394 kilometers
taiwan is a province of china"
taiwan is now available for temporary importations using a tecro / ait carnet
taiwan is rare and valuable
taiwan is uncertain
taiwan is a sovereign state
taiwan is independent"
taiwan is taiwan"
taiwan is business as usual by bruce einhorn
taiwan is in the first place of the worldwide cd
taiwan is not troublemaker
taiwan is not a part of china in the first year when yung
taiwan is a modern industrialised megalopolis clinging to the fringes of an ancient culture; a string of teeming cities at the feet of a glorious
taiwan is an independent sovereign country
taiwan is ready on 16/7 http
taiwan is not a protectorate of any country
taiwan is a multi
taiwan is world's second
taiwan is world's third
taiwan is ___ island
taiwan is not a member of the who
taiwan is
taiwan is a part of china
taiwan is experiencing job losses from global it slowdown
taiwan is a modern industrialized megalopolis clinging to the fringes of an ancient culture; a string of stinking cities at the feet of a
taiwan is the right thing to do
taiwan is not united with china
taiwan is by definition independent of people's republic of china
taiwan is a thriving free
taiwan is a beautiful island home to over twenty
taiwan is so convenient i wonder if it's a bit much
taiwan is now
taiwan is ready to produce its own submarines
taiwan is a small island on the west side of the pacific
taiwan is free for evangelism
taiwan is turning its back on software from the likes of microsoft to
taiwan is easy to find
taiwan is now ranked among the top countries in the number of sci papers published per capita
taiwan is a small island with a population of only 23 million people
taiwan is an island of 36
taiwan is probably not the first country mentioned when the conversation turns to the spectacular scuba diving that exists in asia; but
taiwan is one of the few countries in the world that has been barred from the 190
taiwan is made a province of china and liu ming
taiwan is a stable democracy
taiwan is controversial
taiwan is at a point about midway
taiwan is a very delicate question because of the tenseness that has historically
taiwan is a modern industrialised megalopolis clinging to the fringes of an ancient culture; a string of teeming cities at the feet of a glorious mountain range

New journal on Taiwan Studies

Just received this information about a new journal:

New Journal

Taiwan Inquiry

Editor: Wylie I. Lee

Editorial Board

Ching-chi Chen, Southern Illinois University-Edwardville; Wen-yen Chen, University of District of Columbia; Y. Frank Chiang, Fordham University; Shutsung Liao, University of Chicago; Bao-tyan Wang, Changhwa Chirstian Hospital; De-min Wu, University of Kansas; Shi-kuei Wu, University of Colorado-Boulder.

Editor, Media Graphics: Bor-jiunn Niu

Assistant Editor, Final Proof: Taitzer Wang

Taiwan Inquiry is the new official publication of the North America Taiwanese Professors' Association (NATPA). It is intended to be published twice a year, but the first phase of publication will be annually. The journal invites the submission of original articles on Taiwan in all disciplines of the social sciences and humanities with a close examination of matter. All articles are refereed for acceptance.

Manuscripts, in English, must not exceed 25 pages and should be typed and double-spaced. Footnotes are to be typed at the bottom of the text, with references at the end of the manuscript. For information on styling, please consult The Chicago Manual of Style.

Please send two hard copies of your double-spaced manuscript and a Windows compatible disk, preferably in Microsoft Word, and a short biographical note to:

Dr. Wylie I. Lee,

Editor-in-Chief

Taiwan Inquiry

TI_editor@natpa.org

8 Bayonne

Mission Viejo, CA 92692

International publishing and local academic discourse

I was working on another post re: the SSCI discussion(s) from here and Scott's blog, but the discussion that has gone on in my absence has made my comments sort of irrelevant. (Don't you guys go anywhere for Lunar New Year? ;-) )

It seems that the discussion has moved from how much we should push individual professors to try to publish in SSCI (or A&HCI) journals to the (possible) effects of SSCI-type criteria on publishing within Taiwan. I think Michael and Clyde are correct that the long-term effects of this new emphasis could be positive if the system leads to a careful reevaluation of what consitutes good research, rather than simple mimicry (or worship) of the Western system. I still share Chu's concern about a "blind following of Western theory"--particularly Western theories of what constitutes "knowledge."

To give an example: Suresh Canagarajah (who grew up and taught in Sri Lanka until 1994) writes about how an article of his was rejected by an American journal partly because of the article's "'unnecessarily hostile tone ... towards western society and values in general'" (this is quoted from a referee's comments). Let me quote from his book, A Geopolitics of Academic Writing:

Consider the many ironies behind my own experience of writing a paper on the social and cultural conflicts for local students in using an American textbook in ESL classrooms. I sent the paper to an American journal after considerable revision, well aware of the need to restrain the expression of feelings in my writing. However, no amount of postgraduate training in the West and further efforts helped to efface all direct indexes of affect (some of which were necessary to carry out my purposes in that paper). The paper was subsequently rejected, primarily on the findings of the referees that a demonstration of excessive feelings betrayed my ideological biases. This is how one referee stated his or her judgment:

Certainly, impassioned writing is to be admired, especially if it is grounded in theoretical writings, as much of this article is. ... Despite these valid aspects of the article, the unnecessarily hostile tone of the writer towards the specific materials used and towards western society and values in general undermines the logic of this argument. ... While I will always support provocative articles which enable readers to re-examine long-held beliefs, articles whose logic is obscured by hostility are counterproductive. Rather than open dialog, they preclude it. For this reason, I am not recommending publication.

It is interesting how in such an important gatekeeping context this reviewer adheres to the classic Western stereotype that feelings are automatically opposed to logic. Feelings are translated as "hostility," which is then rules as "unnecessary" and turns out to be a reason to bar the paper from publication. It is significant how easily something "critical" becomes something that is "hostile." It is in this sense that writing conventions can become a weapon for suppressing positions oppositional to the dominant discourse. Style colonizes! (153-4)

Note also that this article was rejected despite the admission by the referee that it was well-grounded in theory. But the theory upon which rejection was based was the "classic Western stereotype" regarding what constituted acceptable expression of emotion (coming out of the mind/body logic/feeling divisions that still have a great deal of influence in Western academia, despite postmodernist and feminist critiques of these divisions).

This kind of example indicates to me that Western academia has some way to go in opening up to the concerns and ways of knowing of non-Western thinkers. I hope that what happens as a result of local adoption of SSCI/A&HCI is not a one-way transfer of a system of evaluation. In terms of Taiwan, what I hope will come out of these experiments by the MOE in the long run is some kind of understanding of academic discourse that irons out some of the practical problems that Clyde, Michael, and others see with the local academic scene and usefully complicates the standards handed "down" from the West so that we can address the legitimate concerns of people like Chu.

Research in Taiwan in an international context

Now that the semester is over, I had some time to go over some of articles in the "Forum" section of the Taiwan News. Two articles were particularly interesting to me for their attacks on the Ministry of Education's (over-)emphasis on international ranking criteria such as SCI, SSCI, and A&HCI:

1. "Academic Production Amid Global Neo-liberalism" by Chen Kuang-hsing (published Nov. 30, 2004)
   
2. "Reflections on Academic Evaluation and Academic Production: Taking Economic Sciences as Example" by Chu Wan-wen (pub. Dec. 1, 2004)
   

These two articles focus on Taiwan's academic production in a global context and how the push for publication in international academic fora have both disadvantaged Taiwanese researchers and led researchers here to neglect local concerns in favor of broader international issues. (Note: there has been extensive discussion on Scott Sommers's blog about this. I just want to point out two other places where this issue is being discussed.)

Chen argues that the government-encouraged value of competing internationally in the academic marketplace (including having the goal of placing a Taiwanese university among the top 100 of international universities) has led Taiwan "to treat academic production as a quantifiable indicator that counts toward national competitiveness and to implement rewards and punishments based on quantified scores." International academic production necessarily means writing in English instead of Chinese and writing for an audience that is perhaps not so interested in the Taiwan situation for its own sake, he continues.

At the same time, if researchers must use the theoretical framework and language familiar to the English-speaking world in exchange for the possibility of publication, then in the longer term the context and concerns of our society, politics, culture, and history will gradually be hollowed out and publication in the humanities and social sciences will more and more resemble that of the natural sciences and become equally monadic. This obviously runs counter to the recent trend in world academia of emphasizing diversity and heterogeneity.

Chu agrees with this assessment, pointing out that

international evaluation criteria do not attach importance to the functional goal of "serving the needs of the local society." The problems that international journals are concerned about, their problem awareness, is led by the European and North American (it would be more accurate to say the U.S.) academic circles. While these concerns also have their universal significance, they do not necessarily have a lot of overlap with the immediate concerns of Taiwan and any other region.

Chu goes on,

The globalization phenomenon of the humanities and social sciences in catching-up economies like Taiwan is not at all an "international division of labor." Instead, under the shroud of U.S. cultural hegemony, we invoke on our own account U.S. criteria (that we affirm) as standard for mutual evaluation. This might lead to a blind following of Western theory. At the same time it might translate into the commitment of vast academic resources for the research of U.S. mainstream issues as well as the examination of local issues from an American perspective and American problem awareness.

Chen and Chu both argue that Taiwan scholars and government organizations like the Ministry of Education should be aware that using "international" criteria for judging academic production can come with a price if the concept of international standards of quality is conflated with the goal of publishing internationally in Western (mostly U.S.) academic journals. What gets lost is a concern with locally pressing issues and concerns.

Comments on proposal to classify Taiwan's universities?

From the January 21 Taipei Times:

Plan divides universities
A proposal championed by the Ministry of Education's higher education department for universities to be classified into a number of categories was the subject of heated debate yesterday during a national conference of university heads. Participants in the panel discussion, which was presided over by Mou Tsung-tsan (牟宗燦), chairman of the Association of Private Universities and Colleges, were divided on the proposal, in which universities would be divided into four categories -- teaching universities, research universities, professional universities and community universities. Due to a jump in the number of institutions, universities have shifted from providing an elite education to a universal education, which has resulted in financial pressure, lower quality graduates and low competitiveness, an departmental official said. To iron out these problems, the department proposed that universities be classified into the categories and that the government offer them funds based upon specific needs, the official said.

Intriguing idea, I must admit--at least on first glance. But also a little scary. Anyone know more about this?

Too young to feel this old...

I'm a little slow in linking to this, but this post from Wil Wheaton's blog cracked me up. His conversation with his kids about why Phil Collins could possibly have been "an international superstar" in the 80s and why Bono sported a mullet ("'The mullet was the official haircut of rock and roll,' I said") reminded me of how I feel every year when I'm facing a new group of students. I don't quite have the same experience over here, but I have noticed that some of my students don't know that Zhang Fei and Fei Yuqing used to have a weekly show together... (OK, I'm not even going to try to explain that reference...)

"Institutionalizing Rhetoric"?

Although I've taken the Blogora off my "Other blogs I frequent" list (b/c I don't look at it very frequently anymore), there was an interesting post (to me, anyway) up about the future of 'the profession' of rhetorical studies in the U.S. (or at least North America, I take it). (Hmmm... 3 parentheticals in one sentence--overkill?)

I'm not much in contact with other rhetoricians in Taiwan--this is something I hope to start doing if and when I get that &#@!!*& dissertation done. But I wonder if they have a similar situation. I get the impression they (we?) are primarily in English (Foreign Language) and Communication departments here, too. Wonder how they (we?) see their (our?) future as a profession here. Any Taiwan rhetoricians reading this? What say ye?

For starters, I have a heckuva time figuring out how to classify my work according to the National Science Council's classification system. They have a category for Communication Studies (fairly recently added, if I'm not mistaken--it used to be part of Sociology, I think). But last time I submitted a grant proposal (I'm doing historical work on language/rhetorical education in Taiwan), they didn't feel my study fit into that category. I forget what they ended up classifying it as, but my proposal got rejected, partly, I imagine, because it didn't fit the category into which the NSC folks placed it. I suppose I could do more "traditional" rhetoric studies such as work on public address (actually, I'll be doing a presentation on p.a. in April), but I'm a little concerned about having my research program determined by the NSC's classification system.

Not really a surprise...

"Satan-Worshipping Bushes?" (from Language Log)

Joining the crowd at the donut shop

Well, I succumbed to the donut craze that has been sweeping the island recently and stopped at our new local (well, not that local) donut shop to buy some donuts--or as they call them here, 多拿滋 duonazi (no, that's not pronounced "Nazi"--it's more like nah-dz). As mentioned by Poagao and in the Taipei Times, folks in Taiwan have been going nuts over donuts recently, with Mr. Donut opening in Taipei and a Japanese place opening around here called 威力 (Waili, they spell it, although it should be "Weili" The word means "might", "force", or "power"). People stand outside these places for hours waiting for their chance to buy donuts.

I didn't stand outside for hours--when I got there this evening there wasn't a line outside (only inside), so I went directly in and bought a few donuts to sample. So far I'm unimpressed, but I guess these are better than the stuff you find in supermarkets around here. My wife says the Waili donuts are more suited to Asian tastes--kind of chewy and not too sweet. I haven't tried their coffee yet (which was the main reason we always went to Dunkin' Donuts when we were in Syracuse). It might be a while, though, since going there always involves braving traffic and waiting in lines.

"I read the comics so you don't have to"

Found this site--joshreads.com--via Collin's blog. Being a Spider-Man fan, I went directly to the posts about the Spider-Man comic strip. Hilarious!

"Danger" + "Opportunity" = "Crisis"?

There's a little discussion going on at Languagehat about whether or not the popular saying, "The Chinese word for 'crisis' (危機) is made up of the words 'danger' (危) and 'opportunity' (機)" is accurate or meaningful. I've been guilty (if that's the word to use) in the past of repeating this saying, so I wondered what the problem with it might be. (I knew there might be a problem when my Chinese history professor rolled his eyes after I repeated the saying. On the other hand, one of my professors in the rhetoric program thought it was pretty cool. Guess it depends also on who you repeat the saying to.)

Anyway, it seems that a lot of the problem boils down to two things:

1. whether or not we should say "ji" (機) should be translated opportunity
2. whether or not this kind of "etymological" understanding (if it's a real etymology) reflects some sort of deeper Eastern (or at least Chinese) understanding of the notion of crisis.

The discussion grows out of a post to the Pinyin.info website by Victor Mair. (Mair also has his own blog, "Pinyin News", for those of us who can't get enough discussion about romanization and East Asian writing systems. I've added it to my blogroll to the right...)

W learns himself someuthat speech act theory

From The Guardian:

"Sometimes, words have consequences you don't intend them to mean," Mr Bush said. "'Bring 'em on' is the classic example, when I was really trying to rally the troops and make it clear to them that I fully understood, you know, what a great job they were doing."

Sampler of a sampler of "Ask Mister Language Person"

Mark Liberman has a post about Dave Barry up on Language Log that includes a sampler of quotable quotes from Barry's "Ask Mister Language Person" column. At the risk of putting together a sampler of a sampler, here's one of the quotations below. Go to Language Log for the rest of the sampler.

Q. Please explain the expression: "This does not bode well.''
A. It means that something is not boding the way it should. It could be boding better.

Last day of ICC

Today was the last day of Intercultural Communication for this semester. We spent the class (and last week's class, too) talking about the students' research projects that are due next week.

Several folks are doing cross-cultural comparisons of corporate websites and advertising, which will probably be a direction we will pursue in more depth the next time I teach this class--they seem pretty interested in it, but we (including the former native speaker!) need to develop more knowledge about how to analyze visual material from a cross-cultural perspective. I have found a few articles from technical communications journals that discuss website design from a cross-cultural perspective, but I need to do more research into this. (Another reason I am taking at least a semester off from teaching ICC!)

I also want to incorporate blogging more into the ICC class. We had some fits and spurts of group blogging this semester, but it kind of came to an end before midterms. I'm not sure why that happened (one reason might be that I didn't really require it consistently). I'm also not sure if my long and windy blog entries did more to encourage talk or discourage it!

Overall, I think I learned a lot from class this semester--as I have each time I've taught this course. I'm looking forward to a break, though, so I can take some time to figure out what is working and what isn't, and what I might be leaving out. Suggestions welcome!

Yahoo! video search

Yahoo! now has a beta version of a video search engine up and running. Some of the students in my Intercultural Communication class have been looking for different countries' TV commercials for the same product (for instance, Mitsubishi ads from Taiwan and other countries). This might help.

Naming Taiwan(ese) students

We're nearing the end of the fall semester here (not a moment too soon), which perhaps explains my recent inattention to this blog. I've finally managed to match the (mostly English) names of my 65 first-year English students with their faces; I suppose when we come back from winter break I'll have forgotten again. Fortunately, first-year English goes for a whole year here (is "fortunately" the word I should use?), so by the end of next semester I'll have their names and faces all matched up again.

We're using Neil Anderson's Active Skills for Reading in our class; I told my students that back when Dr. Anderson was teaching at Ohio University, I had the honor of taking a summer class in language testing with him. One of the things that struck me the most was that he could identify every student by name by the end of the first class (and there were over 30 students, if memory serves me). And he didn't forget our names after the first class. Of course, I'm a little embarrassed to mention that, since it has taken me so long to remember my own students' names...

Slow relief efforts in eastern Sri Lanka

The BBC News has several articles about the slow relief efforts in eastern Sri Lanka. The efforts in this part of the country are being hampered both by seasonal rains and flooding and by the political situation.

I've been forwarded this information about how to aid people in this area:

The following is a fund by the Bishop of Batticoloa in the East of the island. The money should get channelled to the people who are not getting any help from governmental organizations at present.

Name of the Account: "TSUNAMI-2004 Quake Disaster Relief"

Account No. 810 5008632

Name of the Bank: The Commercial Bank of Ceylon,
7056 - 105,
Batticaloa, Sri Lanka.

Swift code: CCEYL KLX

That cold Taichung weather

I see that the Weather Channel "magnet" says it's 45 F right now, with winds at 15 mph (that must be in the city--up here on Dadushan, they almost picked me up off the ground). And yes, the wind chill is about 38.

SEA-EAT blog

It's quite possible you've seen this blog already, but if you haven't, The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami weblog provides information about Dec. 26's earthquake and tsunamis, and about related relief efforts and opportunities to help out.

More and less interesting ways to use a "cheat sheet" during a supposedly memorized dialogue presentation

Had dialogue presentations in class today. (For the blissfully uninformed, this is where students write a dialogue, have me correct the grammar, memorize the corrected version, and present it in hopefully an entertaining fashion for their classmates who are themselves desperately trying to memorize their own dialogues before they have to present or who are relaxing after having presented their dialogues.) Noticed that some students (not all, not even most, I'm happy to say) felt the need to have the dialogue script nearby as they presented. Sometimes they actually used it (which resulted in my lowering their grade, since they were supposed to memorize the dialogue) and some, I think, just felt they needed to feel its aura near them as they presented.

Some students gave the script to someone sitting in the front row, so that person might hiss a key word at them if they forgot. Some students used the scripts as props, pretended they were newspapers or DMs (direct-mail advertising flyers). Some students propped the scripts up on the chalkboard, in full view of everyone (one pair was doing a good job of facing the audience when they spoke--except when they forgot what to day and had to turn around to look at their script). And one student spent a lot of time looking at her forearm--on which, as it turned out, her lines were written. It reminded me of a picture I once saw of the "cheating shirts" that civil examination candidates sometimes used to help them remember the Chinese classics. It also reminded me of the "cheat sheet" that I took to one of my comprehensive exams. We were allowed to bring in a "cheat sheet" so long as it was only one page (double-sided was OK). I managed to get my font size down to 7.5, with margins of 0.2 cm all around.

Christmas dance parties

The Christmas parties and dialogue presentations that are going on downstairs are competing with the Scholars Baroque Ensemble recording of Handel's Messiah that I'm playing in my office. I break out the CD every year around this time to try to get me into some sort of Christmas mood.

Every Christmas things get particularly noisy around here as a party atmosphere sets in. Our school is famous--or notorious--in these parts for a huge Christmas dance party that students hold every year. It's a loud monstrosity that backs up traffic on Taichung Harbor Road as students from all over the area ride their motor scooters to the school's gate and park along the road, covering the sidewalks with scooters. Then there's usually a rock band of some sort and a lot of screaming. I live about 5 or 10 minutes (by car) from the school and some Christmas Eves have heard the yelling and cheering from my house. I've always thought Christmas dance parties were kind of weird, and I've tried to explain my feeling to students in terms like "Would you go to a dance party held on Chinese New Year?" This usually gets responses like, "Oh no. That's a family holiday."

All crankiness aside (and the above is probably just an expression of crankiness that has little to do with the student Christmas party), I'm happy this year because my brother and sister-in-law are coming for Christmas. This will be the first Christmas I've had with my brother in 13 years and the first Christmas ever with my sister-in-law!

Ahem. Not to brag, but...

Which File Extension are You?

The former native speaker's kitchen self-destructs!

We were awakened this morning to a horrendous crashing sound. At first we thought our enemies were finally attacking us directly. (Yes, the former native speaker has enemies...) But no, the culprit turned out to be some worn-out screws that were holding our kitchen cabinet to the wall. What a disaster, though! Here are some pictures:




So we've got some shopping to do this weekend... *sigh*

Quotable quote

My brother, referring to his breakfast in Tainan this morning:

I liked one of the intestines better than the other.

Post-election news roundup

Just in case you weren't watching, the pan-blues (the KMT, New Party, and PFP) retained their majority in the Legislative Yuan yesterday, 114 to the pan-greens' (DPP and TSU) 101. I imagine this will result in continued gridlock in the legislature, as the pan-blues do their best to make Chen (and by extension, the DPP) look incompetent as a president. This, unless the two sides manage to overcome self-interest and actually try to work together.

The Taipei Times has an editorial arguing that the "low" turnout for the election (66%, they say, but the China Post says under 60%)* had to do with people becoming "sick and tired of politics". The editorial also argues that the strategy of allocating votes (basically asking the party faithful to vote for one pan-green candidate instead of another because the former is more likely to lose than the latter) hurt the pan-greens. These claims are in contrast to analysis from sources like the PRC and CNN that have attributed low turnout and the pan-green camp's loss to Chen's pro-independence stance.

*Note as of Dec. 14: Either I've got 老花 eyes or the Taipei Times has changed its turnout figure: it now reads as 59% on the website.

T.G.I. this particular F.

Tomorrow's election day. Today the parades have been following us wherever we go, shooting off firecrackers and generally just snarling traffic. Pre-election day news:

From Free-for-all marks penultimate day before elections (China Post):

One typical family — in Kaohsiung — has three generations each prepared to vote for as many parties.

A matriarch of the family, a staunch supporter of President Chen Shui-bian, will vote for whoever the Democratic Progressive Party wants her to vote and requires her two children to do as she tells them.

The grown-up children are Kuomintang supporters. They want to follow the opposition party's vote rationing directives and have been clashing with their mother at dinner table every evening over the last week.

Her grandchildren, three of them eligible to vote, want to stay at home on Election Day. They dare not tell their granny of their abstention plan, which, however, has been intimated to their grandpa, who is prepared to vote for the New Party.

From Chen says will back Guggenheim if Hu supports DPP candidates (Taiwan News):

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday urged Taichung City Mayor Jason Hu (­胡志強) to support the city's four pan-green legislative candidates, in exchange for his backing to push through the Guggenheim Museum project in a "green" Legislature.
[Sounds like bribery--or blackmail? to me...]

Can't wait till it's over...

Reactions to Chen's name-changing proposals

Today's Taipei Times reports (and editorializes) on several reactions to Chen's proposals to change the names of de facto embassies and state-run organizations:

• Name changes would violate 'status quo': US (not very surprising)
• DPP caucus defends name-change plan (no surprise, either)
• Airline, other firms resistant to name change proposal (they say it would be expensive)
• Editorial: 'Taiwan' means what it says (again, nothing surprising)

One thing that comes out of all this is that it's much clearer that the name change has more to do with sovereignty than with clarifying easily-confused names. (This, again, isn't a big surprise--I was purposely taking Chen's comments at face value in my previous note, but I don't think that's necessary anymore.) It's also quite clearly being discussed right now because of the legislative elections. I've seen at least one "green" representative say that those who don't approve of the change "don't love Taiwan." We'll see what happens to these ideas once the elections are over...

Naming Taiwan

(also the title of a paper I'm working on for a conference in April...)

In Chen Shui-bian's 2004 inaugural address (English version), and in at least one interview before that address, Chen explicitly raised the national identity issue--in the former, by the statement "regardless of whether an individual identifies with Taiwan or with the Republic of China, per se, a common destiny has bequeathed upon all of us the same parity and dignity" (不管是認同台灣或者認同中華民國，其實都是相同的歸屬). In the interview, he said:

For the 23 million people of Taiwan, whether our country is called Taiwan or the Republic of China, it doesn't change the fact that we are an independent, sovereign country. We are not a local government of another country.

In both of these statements, Chen raises the national identity issue (R.O.C. or Taiwan?) as a point of equivocation--while it is an issue that has never before been so explicity raised by a sitting R.O.C. president, it is also quickly waved away by the act of equating the two possible names or identities. This is a new version of the balancing act that Taiwan (or is it the R.O.C.?) has performed ever since it lost international recognition as a sovereign state.

Now Chen is proposing to change (or "rectify") the names of state corporations and government agencies so that they use the name "Taiwan" rather than "China." Chen claims that this would be done in order to reduce the confusion that results from the word "China" in the names of those organizations. He also implies that this is not the same thing as a formal name change.

To some extent he's probably right--people in other countries are probably not always aware that "China Airlines" is from Taiwan, or that "China Petroleum" is also a Taiwan(ese) firm. The word "China" or "Chinese" often gets applied to Taiwanese organizations and people more in ignorance of the geographic origins of those organizations or people than in recognition that the "China" or "Chinese" refers to the Republic of China (rather than the People's Republic). (Ask any Taiwanese student in the U.S. who gets labelled a Chinese student whether or not s/he wants that label.)

When it comes to the names of some of Taiwan's de-facto consulates, which usually include the name "Taipei" instead of "China," Chen could run into some trouble. If the main purpose of the change is to avoid confusion, rather than to press for a de facto "Republic of Taiwan," then it's not clear how calling the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (Taiwan's de facto embassy in the U.S.) the "Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representative Office" will make any difference, since the word "China" isn't in the name right now. (I suppose if you want to go along with Vice-President Lu Hsiu-lien's argument that people might think TECRO doesn't represent Taichung or Kaohsiung, you could say a name change would reduce confusion. But I wonder if the confusion is as great as she implies, or if it's just her impression of the situation--as it was with the "UNFAIR" ad campaign.) At this point the name change comes close to an official name change.

When Chen Shui-bian was reelected in March (let's leave aside the controversies regarding the election), he won by a margin of about 30,000 votes, or less than half a percentage point. That's not much of a mandate. (Even Bush got more of a "mandate"--ugh.) Do these proposed name changes reflect the will of the people (the 23 million people of Taiwan that Chen often invokes in his speeches)? Since Chen's proposal is closely tied to the legislative elections that will be held on Saturday perhaps Saturday's results will tell us the answer.

[Update: May 15, 2005: The English quote from Chen that's at the top, about "parity and dignity" is obviously different from the Chinese version. In my paper, "Naming Taiwan," for the conference, I translated the Chinese version as "no matter whether one identifies with Taiwan or with the Republic of China, actually it's the same thing". It's a rough translation, but it's closer to the Chinese than the official translation.]

Late season typhoon

Taiwan just got hit by typhoon Nanmadol, which is (according to the Taipei Times) the first December typhoon for Taiwan "in recorded history."

A few trees got knocked down around here, but today we have a beautiful clear sky. Other parts of the island weren't so lucky, though.

End of November wrap-up

I've added a couple of goodies to the blog, including the Blogrolling-managed list of blogs and the Weather Channel weather magnet. For a while I was contemplating a move back to the Weather Underground one, but actually I like the appearance of the Weather Channel one better. Sorry for all the trouble, you folks at Wunderground! (But you shouldn't have gotten me worked up about the "CN" in the first place...)

Life has been ... interesting in other ways this month, but I won't be going into that for a while. (Reminds me of the "Human Bomb" episode of the old George Reeves Superman series--"No comment until the time limit is up!")

See you in December! (Some folks literally...)

Dubya the movie

You've probably seen this "trailer" for "Dubya the Movie", but I've got to make a link to it. It's just too perfect--especially the actor they've got playing him.

Response from Weather Underground!

I received a response from Weather Underground about my complaint! "They" wrote:

Thank you for the bug report! We're aware of the problem and we'relooking into it. We hope to have it fixed today.

A "bug"? Well, if you want to call it that... Anyway, here's the revised/original sticker:

Or this one:

But now I've got to decide whether I should put the sticker back in its old place or not...

"Contesting Public Memories" conference

Syracuse University will be hosting a conference on public memories next year. Here's part of the call for proposals:

The "Contesting Public Memories" conference seeks to expand the broad interdisciplinary conversation about public memory. Conference organizers invite submissions focusing on the dynamic interplay between and around public memories. While the conference theme is designed to be broad and inclusive, our sense of the contention of public memories includes: efforts to resist, resurrect memories, or redefine memories, etc. This broad theme, in turn, is organized around three sub-themes: Places, Events, and Persons. Within these sub-themes, we envision topics ranging from theoretical to practical, and from global to local.

Proposals are due April 1, 2005. Wonder if anyone will be submitting proposals on 228? (See the National Archives exhibit [in Chinese]; see also George Kerr's book Formosa Betrayed, which describes 228 in detail.)

Adventures in gardening

Well, the edible amaranth (a.k.a. "Chinese spinach") that we planted a couple of weeks ago started sprouting last wek, and then a couple of days ago all the sprouts, with one accord, died. The coriander and the Chinse celery never even came out of the ground. And the cactus I bought from the landscape architecture students last year got some sort of fungus on it and died a few months ago. I think we have a feng shui problem (or maybe I'm just an incompetent gardener...)

The politics of weather goes underground...

You might have noticed that I've taken the "Taichung" (or "Taizhong") weather sticker off of this site. The other day I visited my site and found the letters "CN" after "Taizhong" on the sticker. I immediately removed the offending code and sent this e-mail to the folks who run the "Weather Underground" site:

I used to have a weather underground sticker for Taizhong, Taiwan on my website http://jonintaiwan.blogspot.com. Now I've taken it off because someone added "CN" or "China" to the sticker. Why in heaven's name did you have to politicize the WEATHER, of all things???

Jonathan Benda

We'll see how they respond...

A note from an Ohio "Blue"

Eric Gardner, my long-time friend, fellow OU alumnus, and man of a thousand beard styles, sends this from Cleveland (I'm quoting with his permission):

Greetings!

Just a note of hello and reassurance. Even though Ohio went "red" (for Mr. Bush), there exist here a sizable (no, not all overweight, although too many of us are) minority of "blues" (and we are unrelated to the"Blues" and the "Talls," those extra-terrestrials purported to be living in our midst out in New Mexico).

In "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau reminds us that voting is much more about expediency than it is any sort of guarantee of determining correct moral or political action. He cautions us against weakly expressing our desire for virtuous outcomes by way of voting and instead implores us to "Cast [our] whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but [our] whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight."

"Blue" Ohioans will surely exert positive resistance to check any extremist or absurdist "red" policies--Thoreau's "counter friction to stop the machine" [of government]. We must continue to educate and inform ourselves to do so best. Let us begin each to resist positively in our own way. I have already shaved my mustache and am growing a Lincoln beard ("Mr. Bush, I knew Abraham Lincoln...and you're no Abraham Lincoln.").

I hope this note helps. I find it hard to speak for and defend the whole state of Ohio, but even at the risk of megalomania, felt I should say something.

Best,
Eric

Faith and rhetoric in the U.S. election (and beyond)

E. J. Dionne, Jr. has made some important points about the language of faith in his recent Washington Post column (registration required):

What's required is a sustained and intellectually serious effort by religious moderates and progressives to insist that social justice and inclusion are "moral values" and that war and peace are "life issues."

Much to some intellectuals' dismay, a lot of people (Dionne, Ellen Goodman, and others) are suggesting that Democrats need to reach out to the people who voted for Bush because they felt he was a moral man and a man of God. As Goodman and others have said, we have to get beyond being embarrassed by words like "morals" and "faith" if we're going to persuade anyone that we have an agenda and values worth taking a look at.

One thing a lot of Democrats are thinking about these days is "what went wrong?" How did so many people go for Bush despite all the evidence that he had done a terrible job in his first term? How could they not have gotten Kerry's message? CNN.com quotes Representative Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota as remarking that "the Democratic party nationally is perceived as being out of step with mainstream values."

Chris Dykstra, writing on the New Patriot blog, addresses the need for Democrats (and liberals in general) to reframe their arguments in ways that ordinary Americans (the ones who voted for Bush) will understand and accept. He argues that one of the main reasons that Bush is back in the White House for another four years has to do with the way the Republicans have used language to try to evoke particular emotions in Americans:

Radical Legislation is gilded with emotional titles, such as "Patriot Act" for example, or "Clear Skies." The justification for war is simplified and reduced to words a child would understand and repeat. Why do they hate us? "They hate us for our freedom."

Dykstra uses such words as "propaganda" and "packaging" to describe what the Republicans have done (and what he thinks Democrats need to do), but what he's basically talking about is rhetoric. Although his article doesn't use the word "rhetoric" (at least not in any positive way), he's basically arguing for liberals to use the same strategies as the Republicans in order to gain a hearing by the people who voted for Bush last Tuesday.

This suggests that the Democrats need to go back to the Republicans' speeches and writings and identify those commonplaces that resonate with those who voted for Bush. They have to understand how the Republicans used those commonplaces to invent arguments justifying actions like going to war with Iraq and supplying Federal financial support of church-run organizations. Then the Democrats need to invent their own arguments based on the same commonplaces and use them repeatedly, consistently, and fearlessly. Dykstra gives an example:

Democrats must begin to use the language of faith. Even if our intent is secular, i.e. the separation of church and state, prayer in schools, etc. it must framed as a way to support faith. In other words, strong legislation prohibiting prayer in schools must be called the: Faith Protection Act. The argument would be that limiting prayer in schools protects all faiths from government control. We must proactively identify a progressive legislative agenda (separation of church and state) then sell it by framing it as a way to protect something conservatives cherish (faith) from something conservatives fear (government control).

The use of commonplaces might strike some liberals and intellectuals (and even rhetoricians?) as embarrassing--or even worse, lazy and possibly even ethically suspect. Richard Lanham has suggested that in modern times, rhetors are less likely to use commonplaces "because we no longer trust traditional wisdom, are far more interested in investigating the world anew" (170). We're much more comfortable with complexity because the world seems much more complex than the Republicans would lead us to believe. We don't trust appeals to emotion because we believe decisions should be made based on evidence and rational deliberation. As a group of people who claim to represent diversity (as opposed the Republicans, who are often accused of really representing only the rich and the Christian Right), liberals often seem to take an unnecessarily narrow view of the kinds of rhetorical approaches that we should use to forward our beliefs. But as Lanham reminds us, "[f]or an oral culture, ... commonplaces, like all formulas for thought, were where thought and utterance began, not just where they were conveniently parked" (170). This suggests to me that while we need to "simplify" by going back to the commonplaces, we needn't avoid complicating the simple. We need to work out strategies to appeal to the beliefs of at least some of the 51% who voted for Bush while at the same time pushing the envelope on what can be said.

(I notice that I've moved from referring to Democrats and liberals as "they" to "we." Oh well... I suppose that wouldn't be any surprise to anyone...)

I just found out that Haloscan is holding the comments to my older posts hostage until I pay them US$12. I also see that Blogger has its own comments function, so I'm going to switch over to that and gradually get rid of the Haloscan comments by downloading them or something. So in the mean time, please click on the "Comments" link on the lower right hand side of posts you want to comment on. Thanks!

Update as of Nov. 13: As you can see, I've taken the Haloscan comments off of my blog. The comments that I could "save" have been copied to the "Blogger" comments section. Sorry for any inconvenience!

A note on English departments, applied and otherwise

Scott Sommers has a thoughtful post on his blog about the curiously named "Applied English" (or "Applied Language") departments that are popping up in universities around Taiwan. I want to add a few thoughts about this phenomenon and its disciplinary and administrative contexts. When I first heard of Applied English departments (Chaoyang University's was the first one I ever heard of), I had the impression that they were the "wave of the future" because they seemed to address some of the concerns I had about the relevance of the traditional English major to students' futures.

My perspective is that of a teacher in a more traditional English major program. One of the challenges facing traditional (literature-based) English programs in Taiwan (and abroad) is that of demonstrating their relevance to students' futures in the marketplace. As an advisor last year, I often heard students express concerns about whether their education would help them get a good job. They had the feeling that all the coursework they had to do in literary studies wasn't going to help them very much after they graduated. When I told them about Applied English programs, some of them seemed interested in the kind of curriculum I was describing to them--light on literary studies, heavier on language skills and business-related English training.

Traditional English majors, like (according to Scott) Applied English programs, are in large part a product of R.O.C. Ministry of Education policy. The curriculum of English or foreign language and literature departments in Taiwan was up until very recently mandated by the Ministry of Education. For years, the MOE had a pretty heavy load of required courses, including two years of British literature and one year of American literature. Individual schools could require more, but not less, than what the MOE mandated. The MOE-mandated English major was in large part a literature major.

When the MOE relaxed its hold on Taiwan's English departments, they were left with the task of figuring out for themselves what their educational mission was. Some programs are still trying to define their mission, in an age when prospective English majors are increasingly seeing little relation between the literature-heavy curriculum of the major's program and their future needs in the workplace.

Furthermore, as universities are pressured to professionalize by hiring more Ph.D.s and publishing more scholarly research, literature faculty in traditional English departments will probably find more and more of a gap between some of their teaching activities and their research activities. There are a number of ways in which this gap might be negotiated: some faculty will try to teach more courses that relate to their research (including offering more specialized courses in graduate programs); some might attempt to refocus their research to make it relevant to what they are teaching.

A third possibility is that the undergraduate English major will also have to professionalize along with the department as a whole. My department, for instance, recently passed a motion to require English majors to take more electives within the major than they previously had to take. One justification for this new rule is that undergraduates need to see their major as training for the profession of English studies rather than simply as training in language skills.

What effect this new rule will have on enrollments in the major is yet to be seen--even with the availability of major requirement information, many students still wander into the English major quite unaware of what they're getting themselves into and shocked at the amount of "impractical" content they need to study. This requirement is, however, an attempt to move the program in the direction of professional training, which seems to be "the trend" (as my students put it). There is also the potential for some redefinition of "English studies," as new courses might be added to the menu of electives students can take.

One colleague mentioned that this new approach (though it's not really that new, since it partially reinstates some of the courses that the MOE required years ago) indicates a change in the department from a "liberal education" ideal to a professional (or pre-professional) training mission. Interestingly, while the English major program at my school is developing a vision of professional training in terms of disciplinary training, the school's administration has recently raised the idea of creating an Applied English department in addition to the current major. Whether or not this will happen is anyone's guess at this point, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

[Add your conclusion here.]

"Record" voter turnout in U.S. election (?)

CNN.com reports a "record" voter turnout for Tuesday's U.S. presidential election: citing Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, the article says: "Gans put the total turnout at nearly 120 million people. That represents just under 60 percent of eligible voters -- the highest percentage turnout since 1968, Gans said."

"Just under 60 percent of eligible voters"--it sticks in my throat. Why would there be such a low "record" turnout? Is it really possible that 40% of eligible voters didn't see enough of a difference between Bush and Kerry to bother going out to vote? Last Sunday's Washington Post Magazine has an article interviewing a nonvoter (registration required) that suggests as much. The election--and the government itself--seems a long way from the concerns of these people. Perhaps the problem of nonvoters has more to do with the choices than with the eligible voters themselves.

"Doom, despair, and agony on me..."

Everyone's reporting that Kerry conceded. The only site that hasn't confirmed it as of the time of this posting is the Kerry/Edwards official site. (Those poor saps are always the last to know... or at least the last to post...)

Anyway, how does the rest of the song go?

Deep dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Doom, despair, and agony on me...

A new rhetoric blog

The Blogora, "a public blogspace about rhetoric and rhetoricians sponsored by RSA [the Rhetoric Society of America] and hosted by the CWRL [the Computer Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin]" is a new space for discussion about rhetoric. It appears that there will be featured "bloggers-in-chief" who will run the discussion for a period of time.

Right now the discussion seems mainly about the political situation in the U.S. The posts are interesting and I'll probably continue to follow this blog, but I hope in the future the U.S.-centric focus will broaden out. (An example of this is that the category for posts about the U.S. presidential election is simply called "The Election.")

"Blogora" is a reference, by the way, to the "agora", which, according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, was

in ancient Greece, the public square or marketplace of a city. In early Greek history the agora was primarily used as a place for public assembly; later it functioned mainly as a center of commerce.

The agora is often used metaphorically (?) to describe the Internet.

Daylight-Saving Time: A Weird U.S. Tradition

CNN's website has a little interactive report on Daylight-Saving Time. Check it out.

A change of heart

After viewing the Yes, Bush Can website, I've had a change of heart. It was the Fact Check page that really convinced me. Locked up here in my ivory tower, I wasn't aware of all the ridiculous things that were being said about our CEO President.

Unfortunately, it's too late because I already sent in my absentee ballot, but I hope that my dear misled readers (and if they're reading this blog, they must have been misled) will see the light after a trip to the Yes, Bush Can site.

Although I cannot correct the terrible mistake I made, I am considering taking the Patriot Pledge as a kind of penance. I'll also be passing the "Smokey the Log" petition around the office very soon.

The "Plagiarism" responses

I've posted a few of the responses to the questions about the "Plagiarism" chapter on my Research Methods site. I have to admit I was a little surprised that most of the students expressed agreement with Gibaldi's moralistic language regarding plagiarism. Maybe I should have told them they were allowed to question him...?

Update on Research Methods class

I mentioned in an earlier note that my Research Methods class was focusing on "plagiarism, copyright, and intellectual property" this semester. Here's what has happened so far.

We had a holiday last week so the Research Methods class couldn't meet. In the mean time I noticed 2 news articles that showed up on CNN's website that related to plagiarism: one about a playwright accused of plagiarizing from a book and a magazine article, and another about a Harvard professor who admitted plagiarizing from another book. I also noticed that if you do a full-text search for "plagiarism" or "plagiaris*" in an online encyclopedia like the Columbia Encyclopedia at Bartleby.com or the encyclopedias in the Grolier collection, you'll often get a lot of results that relate to literary authors who were accused of plagiarism. Wonder what that means...

I'm assigning my students the second chapter of the new (6th) edition of the MLA Handbook. The chapter is about (surprise!) plagiarism. It's quite a hoot in places... Here are the questions the students are supposed to answer about the chapter.

1. Why do you think Gibaldi has this as the second chapter in the book?
   
2. What words seem to you to be the strongest (or "key") words in this chapter? In other words, which words stand out the most to you? Why?
   
3. Knowing that the author is writing with students like you as the audience, how do you think he wants to make you feel about plagiarism?
   
4. How do you feel after reading this chapter?
   
5. What questions do you have about plagiarism after reading this chapter?
   

If I get any really interesting responses, I'll post them.

More revisionist history-journalism

Not to be outdone by the China Post (see my earlier note), the Taipei Times declared Sun Yat-sen "Taiwan's founding father" in an article in today's paper.

More on the moribund state of democracy in the U.S.

The Christian Science Monitor has an article about the persecution of anti-Bush protestors. I mentioned in an earlier post how Glenn Hiller of Hedgesville, WV got fired from his job after asking Bush some tough questions at a rally. The Monitor describes another incident in West Virginia, where two anti-Bush protestors were arrested for "wearing T-shirts with anti-Bush slogans" and "refusing to relocate to an area for protesters" at a July 4 rally. According to the Monitor,

At Bush campaign stops, attendees sometimes must sign a loyalty pledge, and staffers screen those who would ask the president questions.

Doesn't sound too different from what usually happens across the Strait from me...

In other news from West Virginia, AP reporter Ron Fournier quotes Allan Ramsey, "a 67-year-old retiree" from Hedgesville who said he was "disappointed in the president's performance" in the debate and thinks he found "reasons to maybe vote for Kerry" after listening to what Kerry had to say in the debate. Let's see... Ramsay can't lose his job, since he's a retiree, so I guess Bush will have to figure out some way to arrest him...

"I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect America. That's my job." GWB

Hopefully not for long...

"I sit down with the world leaders, uh... frequently..." GWB

From listening to the debate on NPR (via the Internet), I'd say Kerry did do better than Bush, despite the rules that hamstrung him (rules that Bush broke on one occasion, according to an AFP report by Stephen Collinson). I don't know if this qualifies him as "better than Cicero," but he definitely sounded more presidential than Bush.

Transcript of first debate (NPR)

Guess Bush won't be visiting Crawford as often in the future

The Lone Star Iconoclast, a Crawford, Texas, newspaper, has endorsed John Kerry for president. I don't know much about the Iconoclast, but it doesn't seem like a left-wing paper (not that that would be a problem for me...). In the editorial, the publishers write that they "endorsed Bush four years ago" and supported the invasion of Iraq. But now they seem to regret those earlier positions and recognize that Bush's leadership (in the U.S. and abroad) is fundamentally flawed. As they put it,

What has evolved from the virtual go-it-alone conquest of Iraq is more gruesome than a stain on a White House intern's dress. America's reputation and influence in the world has diminished, leaving us with brute force as our most persuasive voice.

They endorse Kerry because they believe he "can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves."

At least my cellular service is OK

I got a free mountain bike for resubscribing for cellular service. My bike came today. It's a Merida 218 DX--a model that you can't find anywhere on their website, probably because they're embarrassed by it. It looks like Merida makes some pretty good bikes (even some nice looking real road bikes). But this thing is as heavy as an SUV and looks like it was welded together by a 13 year-old in shop class. Well, I guess you get what you pay for. I'm just glad none of my old cycling pals live in Taiwan.

Google's news service in China doesn't give the whole story

As mentioned on CNN's website, Google has bowed to pressure from the Chinese government and doesn't include results from news sites that are censored by the PRC. Simon Thomas from The Epoch Times, one of the online papers banned by China, has commented on this turn of events. As he puts it,

Many in the U.S., both in government and in the corporate world have the idea that if we do business with a corrupt government, then we'll reform them.

It hasn't worked out that way in China. It seems the opposite happens, and the government corrupts you.

Don't know much about history?

A China Post article from yesterday that describes the rally against arms purchases includes this slightly confusing sentence:

The demonstrators included many retired generals and veterans who personally took part in the war against invading Japanese to liberate Taiwan and the following civil war against Chinese communists.

Did I miss something? Which army fought against the Japanese "to liberate Taiwan"? Is this sloppy reporting or the China Post's attempt, in some weird way, to "nativize" by randomly replacing the word "China" with "Taiwan" in their news reports?

Of chocolate mooncakes

It's that time of year when we're bombarded (OK, that's too strong a word) with mooncakes. The mother of one of my wife's students even made her own mooncakes this year! Knowing that I'm a foreigner with a sweet tooth, she concocted the first cross-cultural chocolate mooncake that I have ever tasted.



Good stuff! Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

John Kerry is "better than Cicero", says leading Republican strategist

Time magazine has an article about how Bush and Kerry are preparing for their debates. The Republicans are trying hard to "even" the playing field between the two candidates and to lower people's expectations about what Bush will be able to do in the debates:

Bush's chief strategist, Matthew Dowd, says he knows Kerry's record and is not spinning when he describes the challenger as "the best debater ever to run for President" and even "better than Cicero."

Of course, Dowd knows that if Kerry can't live up to that kind of praise (and how can he, given how the 32-page debate agreement has hamstrung his speaking style?), Bush will get the better post-debate "bounce".

Dr. Pepper binge, anyone?

The Wellcome (the way they spell that store's name always drives me nuts) nearby got in a welcome shipment of Dr. Pepper a couple of weeks ago. I've never been a frequent visitor to the import stores here in Taichung. I guess I'm too busy and they're too far away. So it was nice to see cans of my favorite soft drink available, no matter how temporarily. Judging from what usually happens with imports like macaroni & cheese and Grape-Nuts, I suspect the store won't be getting Dr. Pepper on a regular basis. *Sigh* (I have a plan, though. I'm currently binging on it so much that by the time Wellcome is no longer carrying it I'll already be sick of it, so it won't matter.)

I've been 'unblogged' recently because the semester will be starting soon here. (Yikes! It's going to start on Monday!) I'll be teaching Freshman English for Nonmajors again (for the first time in 11 years), a section of Research Methods (I've taught all 4 sections, for the entire sophomore class of English majors, for the last two years--I needed a rest!), and a section of Intercultural Communication.

I've been working mostly on redesigning my Research Methods syllabus. We're going to focus as a class this semester on the topic of "plagiarism, copyright, and intellectual property." I'm going to be putting myself in the interesting position of encouraging students to examine critically the history and politics of plagiarism while at the same time trying to teach them not to plagiarize. We'll also be looking critically at the issue of international copyright, but at the same time I'll be requiring them to buy the textbook (no photocopying allowed). We'll see how that works out... I'll try to provide progress reports if anything interesting is happening.

So what do you think?

This is one of the ads that the government is circulating around New York to press for Taiwan's entry into the United Nations:

Vice President Lu Hsiu-lien thinks New Yorkers might get confused by the ad (although she evidently hasn't asked anyone there). She says that people might believe the government is saying that the UN is being fair to Taiwan. I don't think the ad is as confusing as she thinks. After all, there is no space between "UN" and "FAIR" to make people believe these are different words. Furthermore, why would Taiwan's government initiate an advertising campaign to tell people that everything is OK? (Hmmm... Maybe the PRC can put out some ads doing that. I can see the copy: "UN FAIR...") One of the Taiwanese stations interviewed some New Yorkers on the street and none of them seemed to be confused about the meaning of the ad. What do my readers--particularly those who study visual communication/visual rhetoric--think? (Do I have any readers who study this???)

International Conference on Cross-Cultural Communication CFP

Was e-mailed a call for papers for the abovementioned conference, to be held July 6-8, 2005 in Taipei. The conference's theme is "Modernization, Globalization and Cross-Cultural Communication." Here's the conference website.

End of August notes

An Olympic moment:

• A belated "Hooray" for the ROC/Taiwan/Chinese-Taipei (whatever you want to call it, as long as you don't call it China) Olympic team. Taiwan got its first gold medals ever--two of 'em! Congratulations to Chen Shih Hsin and Chen Mu Yen of the Taekwondo team!
  
• I'm still waiting for China to claim credit for those gold medals, or press the Olympic Committee to retract them, or...

And on another note:

• Does anyone know how I can find a copy of a book titled Arts, Literature, Philosophy in Taiwan, by John Deeney, S.J., and Jean Lefeuvre, S.J.? The publication information I have on it is "Hsinchu, 1968," which suggests Fu Jen University, but their library catalog doesn't list it.

Hmmm... maybe democracy is dead after all...

News from the folks back home: A couple of weeks ago, Emperor Bush II spoke to some of his subjects at Hedgesville High School in West Virginia. A man named Glenn Hiller was there and called out some "pointed questions" to Bush about Iraq. Hiller was fired the next morning from his job at Octavo Designs in Frederick, MD. I found an article about this situation here. According to the article, Octava got some tickets to the speech from a client and the client was "embarrassed and offended" by Hiller's actions. Hmmm... I'm embarrassed and offended by Bush's actions--does that mean I can fire him?

Notes on the weather and diabetic dogs

So far it doesn't seem like Typhoon Rananim is going to have much of an effect around here. It looks like it'll be affecting the north more. We did have pretty heavy rains last night, though; my wife and I were driving home from the vet, where we left our dog Mei-mei so she could get her kidneys inspected. Mei-mei has had diabetes for the last 6 months or so (*sniff*) and we were worried that her kidneys might have some problems recently. (The good news, as of today, is that her kidneys are OK.)

I have some "pre-diabetic" pics of Mei-mei up here (they'll open in a new window). She has lost a lot of weight since she got sick--went from 38 kg to 18 in just a few months. But her spirits are high, despite having to get insulin shots every day and despite losing her eyesight to cataracts (and developing glaucoma). She's taught us a lot about dealing with adversity, though. I guess that's her purpose in life right now.

Last night I finished reading The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, and I must admit I haven't yet figured out what Isabel Archer is going to do (or has done) at the end of the novel. I think I need to reread the last portion of the book a little more closely.

What I really find interesting--disturbing, actually--is that my first reaction upon finishing the novel and experiencing confusion about the ending was to say to myself, "I guess I'll have to surf the Web tomorrow to see what interpretations people have about the ending." Even more horrifying was my second thought: "Wonder if they've made a movie of this?" (I see they have.)

In praise of Taichung's DMW

We foreigners often like to complain about things in Taiwan--I do this a lot, negatively comparing institutions here with those in the U.S. But one government organization that I've never had any reason to complain about is the local Department of Motor Vehicles. Every time I go there to get my license renewed (now it's every two years due to new regulations [hmm... that sounds like the prelude to a complaint, but I'll let it go]), it takes me less than five minutes to get in, pay my NT$200 renewal fee, and get my new license. Compare that with the time I've spend in DMVs in West Virginia, Ohio, and New York--in those places, sometimes you end up waiting in line for hours even when there's no one in front of you!

The staff at the Taichung DMV on "Big Stomach Mountain" (大肚山) have never snarled at me, either, like some of the folks in U.S. DMVs have when I've interrupted their reveries to renew a license or otherwise make them do work. Back when I got my Taiwan license (in 1993), they even let me take a different color-blindness test after I failed the first one (couldn't see the numbers among all those little colored dots). For the second test, I just had to identify whether a light was red, green, or yellow--a much more practical test, in my view. (Don't let it frighten you that there's a color-blind driver on the streets of Taichung. From what I can tell, I'm not the only one.)

So say what you want about Taiwan's bureaucracy--I know of at least one place where things are going right.