Studying Abroad

            Adrienne Stoner’s research on studying abroad vs. new media was very effective in my opinion.  I think it is interesting that she made the connection about having a serious immersion in another country with our social media outlets.  I also think it is important and amazing to study abroad if possible, but I also think students do not just have to go abroad concerning their studies.  I think there is also a very high culture shock without the university studies.

            Personally I experienced what it is like the just pack up and go abroad for over a month after high school.  I knew some German and I went to Germany and the time I spent there was in the apartment/dorms of others, so it was a very involved student lifestyle.  From what I experienced I learned to speak German much better, I attended a few lectures as a student’s guest, learned about their student government, and a lot about the German culture.  Most of the German I learned was from interacting with my friends and the locals.  On top of these experiences I had absolutely no cell phone or way of contacting my parents except for the occasional expensive text.  I would definitely agree that having little contact with home helps in the development of international skills.  I think that me going abroad gave me insight to another culture and prepared me better for starting college.  It really had nothing to do with getting credits or increasing my language.  The language progression was just something that happened naturally.  I also think it is nice to go abroad and not have to worry about school because after I was done with Germany I went to the Czech Republic and Italy and I didn’t know their languages either.  Yet again I learned tremendous amounts of history and culture from going there.

            In the end I would advocate students to study abroad, but also if they feel threatened by a language barrier they shouldn’t be discouraged from going abroad in general.  The opportunities UIC has to offer are very wide and students can find places where people speak English or whatever it is their language is and study there.

Professor Barnhurst: Introducing Us to Labov?

Professor Barnhurst began his lecture with an activity to teach the class about the similarities we all have telling stories.  We all tell stories in a similar fashion, starting with an announcement of the story or an abstract.  This lets the listener know what is to come.  We give listeners details such as who was involved, why it happened, and when it happened.  Then we have a response to the situation we were in, which is when we might say, “Then I walked out of the room!” or “I told him off!”  All of which give tons of insight to the receiver/listener (or decoder) on how we feel and think about what happened.

After revisiting Tubbs Transactional Model, Barnhurst’s storytelling lecture can be applied directly to Tubbs’ model.  If we apply Barnhurst’s storytelling steps to Tubbs Transactional Model it’s easy to break down and understand why storytelling happens so often and why it is so natural for us to use as an effective form of communication.  The encoder sends the message, an abstract, to the decoder.  The decoder then gets an idea of what the story will be about and sends back a message that they want to know more.  The next few passes in the conversation will bring the story to a climatic point and draw the conclusion.  From here, the message is clear with the help of intonation and body language.  

I think Barnhurst was basing this storytelling process on Labov, the sociolinguistic expert, if I heard him correctly because he seemed to care a lot about the tone of voice people were taking (and he mentioned Labov).  I think he was trying to go further with this idea of storytelling to also teach a bit about the tone people use.  In that case, this lecture would be opening the door to many of the other communication techniques we use and have learned about in Comm 101. Labov is interesting because he conducted observational research on communities; one I am familiar with is Martha’s Vineyard.  Labov compared the locals of the island to the tourists, but mostly focused on how the locals behaved and spoke.  Much of his results showed that what made locals different in comparison to the tourists had a lot to do with their tones of voice while either talking in their vernacular speech or a formal specch.  We touched a bit on voice clarity and volume in our class and I am sure there is much to cover on just the intonation of communication.   Overall this lecture was a very involved introduction to a part of our commonly used communication skills.

Professor Bui's Research Response

            In Professor Bui’s lecture she focuses on how Americans see Vietnamese women as representation of Vietnam.  Since Bui is Vietnamese herself, she took a very intimate research approach.  She examines three films, Heaven and Earth, The Quiet American, and Three Seasons, which are all supposed to be an example of a Vietnamese woman.  In each, the main character woman is representing Vietnamese women and their culture.  Bui goes further to examine why the movies had the effect they did on Americans. 

            As we learned in class, framing is when certain parts of a “perceived reality” are highlighted in order to make people notice it.  Bui says that one of the only ways American’s will understand what is happening to people in other countries is when they are able to witness a sort of victimization.  This is the kind of thing we latch on to and continue to watch.  I think framing best describes what the directors were trying to do.  This is something all three directors had in mind.  They broke down the main female Vietnamese character they wanted and put together a woman that represents Vietnam with fear, and victimization in order to get the effect they were looking for from the Americans and other countries.

In the three films Bui talks about each main character is the victimized female Vietnamese woman who is unable to gain control of her life.  People see on screen a woman who is displaying faces of terror, sadness, and needing others to help her.  They also see these women resorting to a sexual image such as prostitution, lust, and marriage.  Also in the films most of the Vietnamese women have a longing to return back to Vietnam.  Bui stressed that this is a very romanticized idea of Vietnam and the directors were making it look like a heavenly place. 

One of the most important things I gathered from Bui’s research is that viewers of these movies are not given a chance to see a true Vietnamese woman.  These women do not represent all Vietnamese women.  A few of the directors chose Vietnamese women whose stories are so similar to the characters stories that they are hardly even acting.  The only difference is we cannot see the future plans and dreams the woman has.  We can only see a version of a girl from Vietnam who has been tortured and hurt, but even after that still wants to return to Vietnam.  So this is a difficult schema to break because it has been built up through films like these.