Friday, March 28, 2014

Speculation About Punishment and War Literature...And Morrie

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So, I love the BYU English Symposium. I really love it. I got to go to the panel chaired by Dr. Westover entitled "How We Talk When We Talk About War: Language and War Literature." It was so interesting, and I loved listening to the three women present their papers. One was about Robert Frost, the other alluded to Billy Joel and the Wicked soundtrack as well as neuroscience, and the last was a compelling paper about profanity in war literature.

For some reason, as I was sitting there listening to thsoe presentations about war literature, I started to speculate about the language used in Tuesdays with Morrie, and I remembered something that Morrie said about society. Mitch mentioned something about how difficult it is to be a good person in today's society, and Morrie said something very insightful--in a nutshell, if the society doesn't work, don't buy into it. Easier said than done, of course, but a fascinating idea. If you don't agree with something, don't go along with it. I started considering this and trying to figure out if I should backtrack through my paper and try again, writing about the language.

Then, during the presentation about profanity in war literature, I started to think about the different types of words we use to punish people--the kind of language we use when we say harsh things. I'm not sure how (or if) this ties into my paper at all, but it's been lurking at the back of my mind all day, so I'll try to pay some attention to it over the weekend and see what I come up with. Basically, attending the English Symposium gave me tons of ideas, but I'm not sure how to use them in this paper. But I had a lot of fun!

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad you felt it was interesting and worthwhile to attend the symposium. If it got you thinking about language with respect to literature in a new way, it was well worth it.

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