Somewhat Off-Topic: Teaching Anthro in Large Sections

[King, Dr Alexander D.]

Back to the off topic of cultural anthropology. I think the Next Gen
episode "Darmok" (season 5, episode 2?) is a great episode for
learning culture. It is not a problem of language, since the universal
translator works fine. It is a problem of listening to stories,
learning key symbols and understanding the other's metaphors. The
writers did a good job of making these radical Others not primitive,
at least in terms of weaponry. That means that myth is just as
important for modernity as for primitives. If you are short on time,
you can skip over the scenes on the ship and just show Picards
experiences on the planet with the alien captain.

I also love Hocket's essay 'how to learn Martian', which was written
for Amazing Science Fiction in the fifties. It is the most lucid
description of the concept of phonemes. I introduce it with a two min
clip from Voyager, where they answer a distress call and B'lana ends
up with a space shrimp attached to her vital organs. Janeway has the
computer assign a symbol to every single sound in the alien message,
and it looks complicated. Oops, those writers needed to read their
back issues of Amazing Science Fiction and get a clue about
meaningfully differences. The main point of the Voyager episode, btw,
is the ethics of using Nazi science to save lives now.

I think that C Nolan's movie Memento is a fascinating meditation on
field notes, but probably not appropriate for intro.

Alex


Sent from my iPhone

On May 2, 2010, at 7:21 PM, "Darin Len Arrick" <darrick at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU
 > wrote:

> Dr. Kephart:
>
> On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 9:55 AM, Kephart, Ronald <rkephart at unf.edu>
> wrote:
>> We usually do a language analysis problem in Klingon
>> and I keep meaning to show them the video short of Mark Ocrand (sp?)
>> explaining how he created Klingon, but I always forget to take the
>> video
>> with me from home (it's on Disc 2 of "The Search for Spock").
>
> There is a 5-part series by Marc Okrand totaling about 20 minutes on
> Youtube. Is this it?
> YouTubeDaq jabbI'Idmey vagh.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph77eTMZIhs
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boOi7rkGZhE
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiiqwVivIsc
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2AZW1vplFA
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUWnhw0WeA
>
> Also, don't forget "Earthlings: Bags of Mostly Water", a documentary
> about people who speak Klingon.
> "Earthlings: Bags of Mostly Water" yIlIj.
>
> http://www.earthlings-movie.com/
>
> I would love to see your Klingon language analysis problem (e-mail me
> off-list). I find it fascinating that you're using a constructed
> language in your linguistics class. I'm a fluent speaker of Esperanto
> and have been toying with Klingon lately.
> tlhIngan Hol qay' vIleghneS'a'.
>
> Qapla'!
>
> --
> Darin Arrick
> The University of Arizona
> Undergraduate Class of 2012
> Majors: Linguistics & Classics
> darrick at email.arizona.edu


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