Shaggy Dog Stories

What experiences/backgrounds does someone have to have to like the joke? (Like an insider/culture)

Based on the readings and analyzing we did from Gee, we all agree that the background and audience play a big role into who would like the joke and understand it. For example, if someone foreign from another country came and heard the first "joke" from shaggy dog stories, they wouldn't understand the intertextuality. The fact that words in shaggy dog stories have double meanings could even prose an issue to those that aren't familiar with the meaning of shaggy dog stories. For example, let's say you told a lawyer to read the one about the mail and the check. He/she may take it offensive, so the audience is definitely something to consider as well as the age. We wouldn't want to tell this to a 10 year old because of their understanding and knowledge. Not only would they not understand but we feel that there’s an excess amount of violence on it.

 A man shot a female bear who wasn't even the one who ate the lawyer's friend.

"Don't trust a lawyer when he says the (Czech)oslovakian is in the male"

Along with the double meaning word standards, the pattern of grammar is something I feel that we (with some English background *whether major or minor*) have better preparation to understand than a mathematician or scientist.  I feel that due to their (scientist and mathematician) immense technicality they would read it plainly as in oppose to us that understand the word order because we're more trained in English than they are. In order for someone to like or understand a joke they would have to be within the same Discourse as the person telling it in order for them to fully understand the puns or humor in the joke. We have attached a video from “Dwight” from the office. He explains from the vantage point of an actor how Ricky Gervais (creator of the office comedy) capitalized on the shift on what counts as humor in this generation- which is reaction to behavior rather than the traditional "set up, set up, punch line". Hence, it explains why lot of people shaggy dog stories may not be as funny to people now.

http://youtu.be/aIiErKX6JDY

Blog 2 - Define analysis. Describe how you might use analysis and Gee's building tasks to study one of the areas of interest you mentioned in your first blog.

     To me analysis is a word describing the process of discovering an answer.  The process you go through from determining what you are looking up all the way until you discover your final result, to me, would be the idea of analysis. I feel like analysis is used in many different forms.  You can analyze data in science or you can analyze a piece of writing in literature.  Like I said in my own definition of analysis you need to have some kind of idea what you are looking for in the beginning of the analysis process otherwise you not properly analyzing a part of the selected piece of work.  

     Because I have not yet narrowed my search down to a particular topic I am not sure what I will be analyzing yet, but I think that Gee's building tasks could be used.  Although vague I know that I want to investigate the use of language through different media sources an how it differs from that of a person's spoken language.  This topic is a great one to use Gee's building tasks because all of the different tasks are applicable to this topic.  The language is unique to the environment, the identity used varies, the relationship between users is considered, connections are required, etc.  Gee's building tasks would actually be a really useful way to analyze the topic of the language in a variety of technologies.  

Blog 1: What kind of writing studies research are you interested in working on?

     Gee talks about language being more than just what you say and he says that it is based on relationships and environment and multiple other factors that influence the words that are said.  I think that because of this I am interested in researching the technological side of writing.  I think that there is something that is different when someone writes something through a text message or on social media.  How the message that you write is perseceived depends not only on the words typed on the screen but also the person who is reading the text.  I think that researching something to do with the technological writing would be very interesting.  There are multiple dimensions of the technology so I think that maybe focusing on one aspect of it would be better than doing a broad range of technology in order to receive a more detailed conclusion.