Learning Culture & Language Using Memoria

In keeping with the habit of featuring blogs and websites about memory, I want to highlight Simon Ager's "Omniglot--The Blog". Ager is a fella from England who has learned several languages, including French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese, and is currently studying Czech. In "Writing and Memory," Ager talks about the use of memory in learning a new language. He states that relying on written notes--when learning a new language--proves faulty because it discourages the use of memory when the learner actually uses the learned language in conversation. In having written down notes during the learning process, the brain, Ager believes, dissolves all the recorded information that was studied. Although, I'm not sure if this is quite so because I continue believing that speaking and writing are different psychological processes.

Nevertheless, Ager's posting is salient because it reminded me of the discussion about memory and writing between Socrates and Phaedrus in Plato's Phaedrus. Plato's Socrates recounts the story about Thamus, King of Egypt, and Theuth, "the father of writing" (79). Theuth tells Thaums that writing will make people wiser and sharpen people's memory skills. However, Thamus counters Theuth by stating (in the words of Socrates):

"O most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so." (79-80)

Thamus' words perfectly describe what Ager says in his posting about the injurious nature of writing on the use of memory. However, in Ager's case, we are dealing with the learning of a new language. Those that simply recall information mimic, yet those that use this information through memory, in converting theory into practice, are those that are truly learned and wise. This point emphasizes the often ignored difference between mimicking and truly being learned, between performance and substance. More importantly though is the most ignored factor in all of this conversation--culture.

One cannot ignore the cultural factor when learning a new language. One cannot forget the historical conditions of a particular's culture's use of language. Language cannot just be learned with a sharp memory. Learning another culture's language requires the learning of that culture's history. A sharp memory learns a culture's struggles and their use of language as a means to shape their identity and how power has circulated within that culture. Therefore, cultural memory is so important. So, in becoming a polyglot, aim to become "polycultural". N'est pas?

Hasta la proxima.

h

Quote of the Day

"Memories connect you not only to past images and past senses, but also to past emotions. That is because whenever a memory is stored, bits of it get connected through nerve pathways to those centers in your brain that add an emotional charge -- the amygdala for fear and anxiety, the nucleus accumbens for pleasure. Nerve cells in each emotional center in the brain make and release different nerve chemicals that help cement the memory: dopamine for pleasure and addiction, adrenalin-like norepinephrine for fear. The brain’s stress center, the hypothalamus makes the stress hormone CRH, corticotropin releasing hormone. Through hard-wiring and these nerve chemicals, memories formed at the same time that a strong emotion is experienced are seared indelibly into the brain."

Esther M. Sternberg, M.D., "Writing, Emotions and Memory"

Back to Memoria/Memory is Blind

I took the quals last weekend and used this week to get back into the groove for teaching and, of course, for finishing up my diss. proposal. I've already gathered quite a bit of articles that I'll be featuring on the blog. Also, I've found some important dissertations on memoria and rhetoric that I have to feature here as well. I'll stay focused as to featuring only these articles and dissertations since I know I've been getting off track with the purpose of this blog. My apologies.
Now if I can only get over my allergies and get my energy back! :(

Anyways, check out Charles Q. Choi's article "Blind People Have Superior Memory Skills," which describes a small study that proved that sequencing lies at the root of why blind individuals have a sharper memory than individuals with the sense of sight. These findings recall what we know about the art of memory with regard to the placement of constructed images both in the background and foreground. However, in this study, constructed images by the imagination are replaced by the sequence of names or objects that facilitate the retention of information in the mind.

This article makes me think alot about Quintilian's association of memory with arrangement in terms of how a text's strong organization was key to it being successfully memorized versus the challenge of memorizing a disorganized text. Also, it makes me think about Aristotle's discussion of how images from memory are only able to be derived from sense perception. Therefore, if blind individuals are without this perception, they rely on sequencing to memorize, and a lot of this sequencing is, I think, based on sound, as in the case of how the study participants had to memorize a list of 20 words. This sequencing is important because its raising issues of of arrangment, but also important because it raises the issue of concentration, which Quintilian believed was crucually instrumental to enhaning memoria. No doubt that blind individuals have sharp concentration skills.

Muy interesante todo esto...verdad?

Hasta la proxima!

Thank You Lila & Chavela

At a stressful point in time, I always rely on the music of Lila Downs and Chavela Vargas to allow room for me to breathe and remain calm.

Thank you for your music, Lila and Chavela!

Check out Lila's interview about the music featured in the film "Frida" (which also features the amazing Brazilian composer Caetano Veloso).




Lila's interview was posted by OmarLA

Also, check out Lila's rendition of "Paloma Negra" (it's right up there with Lola Beltran's version). Que gran voz!




Lila posted by 2Hermano

And la Diosa, Chavela Vargas, singing "Que Te Vaya Bonito". Te amo, Chavela!

(posted by NPerry5000)

One More Day Before My Comp Exam!

One more day before my Comprehensive Exam! The pressure is on! I'm going to need lots of Tylenol and Mylanta! Yes indeed!



I've been studying Stuart Hall's "Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance" and wanted to feature the page with Hall's academic background. In this particular article, Hall builds on the work of Gramsci and Althusser. Hall remains a seminal theorist in Critical Race Theory. Check out one of Hall's discussion about globalization at London University.


Also, currently studying Steven Fenton's "Ethnicity and the Modern World: Historical Trajectories," which makes the claim for the construction of ethnicities and how they are "sociologically grounded". This excerpt was salient with respect to the sociological and the role of memory:

"...people really do participate in collective memories, do share a language through which sentiment and shades of meaning are expressed and music and love are made, and learn within families the custom and practice of a wider community" (59).

Check out the links to these important thinkers.....

Wish me suerte!

Hasta la proxima!

Quote of the Day

“Women historically linked to Africa have been speaking in public arenas, writing, and thinking critically about writing and themselves as writers for many, many centuries. A challenge for rhetorical history, then, is to imagine the possibility, even the likelihood, of a comparable trajectory for the participation of women of African descent in rhetorical history, theory, and performance as well. When we establish a less Western point of view, based on the idea that humans have the capacity to use language resources well wherever they happen to reside, how far-fetched can such a possibility really be?”

Jacqueline Jones Royster, “Disciplinary Landscaping , or Contemporary Challenges in the History of Rhetoric” (2003)

James E. Porter on "Intertextuality"

A couple of days ago, I finished reading James Porter's "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community," which was first published by the Rhetoric Review (Vol. 5.1, Fall 1986) and republished in Composition in Four Keys: Inquiries into the Field. (Eds. Mark Wiley, Barbara Gleason, and Louise Wetherbee Phelps. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1995). The article's main claim about the nature of intertextuality, which is a term and concept coined by Kristeva (during the late 1960s) and its pedagogical implications, have me thinking a lot about the nature and function of autobiographical writing. The relationship between intertextuality and memory is something that I want to explore further. It's also making me think about the way in which the film Memento is presented to an audience. It's also making me think about fragmentation. Lots of thinking right now.

Here is Porter's online bio and CV which includes other publications that will help illuminate the nature of his thought in order to prevent us from judging Porter based on this one article which, alone, is enough to strike a nerve among those that continue to insist on a romantic view of writers, as well as upsetting traditional historians. His grounds for the claim about the writing of the Declaration of Independence no doubt should raise lots of eyebrows! Check it out for yourselves!

Also, check out Dr. Porter's excellent online webpage for his "Rhetoric Theory and History" course. Amazing!

Hasta la proxima

Quote of the Day

"Speech is a powerful lord, which by means of the finest and most invisible body effects of the divinest works: it can stop fear and banish grief and create joy and nurture pity."

Gorgias, "Encomium of Helen"

(photo courtesy of "The Athenaeum Reading Room"

Xicana Escritora Talks to KVIA-Channel 7

"Home is where your books are." Ana Castillo, 2007

KVIA-Channel 7--a channel I rarely watch (heck, I rarely watch TV)--has impressed by featuring an interview with escritora extraordinaire Ana Castillo, who just released a nueva novela titled "The Guardians."

Check out the interview and Ana's website.

For All Music Lovers...

For all music lovers out there, check out "Hospital Music," the newly released CD by writer, activist and musician Matthew Good, whose website merits being part of your Yahoo Favorites. Great songwriting and memorable melodies.



Who says us fellas who wear glasses are not talented?!