The language of misunderstanding Essay Example For Students

The language of misunderstanding Essay David Mamets new play, Oleanna, is an urgent, upsetting examination of sexual harassment, a subject that has gripped America since the Clarence Thomas hearings. When the play premiered last October in Cambridge, Mass. (produced by Mamets own Back Bay Theatre Company in conjunction with the American Repertory Theatre), Mamet was attacked by people on both sides of the sexual battlefront. Your play is politically irresponsible, one female student challenged the playwright. You dont take a position. Your political statement is wrong. What has Mamet wrought? Is he just another macho playwright lashing out at guerilla feminists? Or does his play legitimately explore the gender gap? Or is it about two human beings who misread each other, tragically? As a playwright, Mamet answered the student, I have no political responsibility. Im an artist. I write plays, not political propaganda. If you want easy solutions, turn on the boob tube. Social and political issues on TV are cartoons; the good guy wears a white hat, the bad guy a black hat. Cartoons dont interest me. We are living through a time of deep transition, so everyone is unsettled. Im as angry, scared and confused as the rest of you. I dont have answers. We will write a custom essay on The language of misunderstanding specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now If Mamet believes an artist has no political responsibility, what then is the function of theatre in society? In his collection of essays, Writing in Restaurants, Mamet provides an answer: In dreams we do not seek answers which our conscious (rational) mind is capable of supplying, we seek answers to those questions which the conscious mind is incompetent to deal with. So with the drama, if the question posed is one which can be answered rationally, e.g., how does one fix a car, should white people be nice to black people, are the physically handicapped entitled to our respect, our enjoyment of the drama is incomplete we feel diverted but not fulfilled. Only if the question posed is one whose complexity and depth renders it unsusceptible to rational examination does the dramatic treatment seem to us appropriate, and the dramatic solution become enlightening. Currently running at New Yorks Orpheum Theatre with Rebecca Pidgeon and William H. Macy, Oleanna focuses on a female student who accuses an older male professor of sexual harassment. Although the plays polarized subject matter might lead one to expect an overtly polemical approach, Mamets use of language gives the play rich texture. Speaking past each other and often at cross purposes, the two characters get trapped in a tragic comedy of errors in which misunderstanding piled on misunderstanding builds a labyrinth of ambiguity. Formalized, repetitive, hypnotic, Mamets language is both real and surreal. In his hands, it ceases to be a transparent medium of communication, translating thoughts and feelings clearly and unequivocally from one mind to another. Instead, language spins its wheels and gets nowhere. Sentences refuse to complete themselves; they run on, loop back, start over, peter out, or suspend flight mid-air as the other character butts in. This stop-and-go creates an hallucinatory rhythm, a litany of broken sentences. Rhythm gives Mamets dialogue its undeniable theatrical punch. When asked about the difference between dialogue in a novel and dialogue on the stage, Mamet made the following observations: I grappled with this problem when I was adapting The Postman Always Rings Twice for the screen. Once you take dialogue out of a novel and delete the descriptions and the |he said |she said, once you put pictures with this dialogue, it collapses. The rhythm is wrong. The rhythm of a line of prose on a page is not the rhythm of a line of dialogue on a stage. If you break the rhythm, you break the meaning. Rhythm conveys meaning. Its puzzling. I cant explain it. But my ear hears it. Each medium has its own rules. .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 , .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 .postImageUrl , .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 , .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503:hover , .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503:visited , .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503:active { border:0!important; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503:active , .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503 .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u209e982e7134688919d52ac94c078503:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Fire down below EssayThe rhythm of the language translates directly into the rhythm of the scene in performance. During a rehearsal for the Cambridge production, Mamet talks the actors through the violent final moments of the play: Filming Homicide, I learned the traditional bang-bang-bang way is wrong. Its too fast. Do it like a slow dance. Let the audience take it in. Be gentle with the violence. Then it terrifies. Then drive, drive, drive to the end. The blood sugar level is a little low. Let me hear those words full voice. This play is a protest. Protest from the bottom of your balls and the bottom of your ovaries. The last 90 seconds are the most important part of the play. Wrap it up, but dont tell the audience something they already know. To act is to do, Mamet says later, casting himself as the, Hemingway of directors. The difference between what is actable and what is not is physical. Emotions are not important in acting. An actor cant act angry. But a reprimand can be acted, and the reprimand will convey anger to the audience. You get at the inner thread of a play by what a character does. If you write a play correctly, you dont need stage directions. Let the script do the work. A director brings the actor in line with the text. And the director must always remember that on stage, as Stanislavsky found out, real palm trees from Yalta look fake. The purpose of theatre is to express, not duplicate. In Oleanna, Mamet also exposes the contemporary university as the graveyard of our culture. As an institution dependent on language for its very definition, the university is revealed as little more than a house of cards, subject to linguistic instabilities. A thicket of questions emerges from the play: How does one define an educated person? What is the purpose of education? How is it best accomplished? What does one need to know to face the 21st century? A top-notch diploma today can run $100,000 is it worth it? As universities raise their tuition, they resort to Madison Avenue marketing techniques to lure dwindling students, Mamet suggests. The halls of ivy are now patrolled, on the one hand, by the guardians of political correctness, and on the other, by semi-literate students who cant read Charles Dickenss long sentences, but who deploy a brilliant array of blackmail tactics to con a grade. This befuddled situation, notes Robert Brustein, artistic director of the American Rep and professor of English at Harvard, reminds me of nothing so much as an academic version of the Stalinist purges. Mamets play functions like one of Strindbergs steam valves, explosive and angry. On an archtypal level, Mamets play a sexual minuet of violence deals with the unending struggle for power between male and female. Deep within, men and women mistrust each other, and the relationship between them can never be easy, owing to primal fears: the male fear of castration and the female fear of male force and rape. The play unsettles spectators because it taps deep into the collective unconscious where these instinctive fears lurk just beneath waking life. This archtypal level gives Oleanna its muscle. The moment this mythological situation reappears, writes Jung, is always characterized by a peculiar emotional intensity. It is as though forces whose existence we never suspected were unloosed. With his back to the wall, the professor discovers brutality within him he never knew existed. Mamet sums up his play with questions, not answers. My play is about two people looking for answers and torturing each other. Both characters are in a state of flux. In this play the unthinkable, the unbelievable becomes real. The point of the play is, at the end, to ask, |How did we get here? The professor adores his students and prides himself on being a good teacher. How did he wind up thrashing a student?

3 Questions About Emphasis

3 Questions About Emphasis 3 Questions About Emphasis 3 Questions About Emphasis By Mark Nichol The following questions from readers, and the responses, pertain to how words are formatted to provide emphasis. 1. When writing business documents such as Standard Operating Procedures or Workflow processes, my understanding has always been that you capitalize titles. An example of that would be â€Å"The Project Coordinator will send the Systems Architect the following information to begin the quoting process.† When you are describing a specific role in a business process, is it OK to capitalize the title? In legal documents, descriptive terms for entities such as Plaintiff or Corporation have traditionally been capitalized to emphasize for the purposes of legal precision that they refer to specific entities and not, for example, any plaintiff or corporation in general. This usage apparently spilled over from the legal department into the rest of the corporate headquarters without question at one time and became entrenched. It is â€Å"OK† to capitalize job titles as you have shown, but there’s no reason to do so, and it has a distracting, cluttering effect. I recommend reserving capitalization for when it provides clarity, as in communicating that a phrase before a person’s name is that person’s official job title, not just a description of or label for his or her role. For that matter, though you may title a document â€Å"Standard Operating Procedures† or â€Å"Workflow,† in your first sentence, you are referring generically to the type of documents you are writing, not to specific documents so titled, so the terms should not be capitalized. 2. In a document in which personality characteristics are used to describe roles in our company, we are using labels like â€Å"The Champion† and â€Å"The Catalyst.† Is the way the labels have been formatted correct? [Editor’s note: The labels were not only capitalized and italicized but also styled in boldface in the reader’s email message.] Several layers of emphasis have been used for these labels, which is redundant. Only one is necessary, and simple capitalization of the key terms is sufficient to indicate that you are naming well-defined roles. The article the should not be capitalized, however. (Nor should quotation marks be used to frame the labels in the actual document.) 3. I think that in the following sentence, infrastructure should be italicized, but my manager disagrees: â€Å"By infrastructure, we mean the company’s policies, internal activities, organization, reporting and systems related to managing risk.† Who’s right? You are. For the same reason that infrastructure is italicized in your opening statement and here in my response- we’re both using the word to refer to the word itself, not to the phenomenon of infrastructure- it should be italicized in the example you gave: The sentence defines not the concept, but the word by which the concept is known. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Style category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:15 Terms for Those Who Tell the FuturePeople versus Persons20 Slang Terms for Law Enforcement Personnel

Dokdo Islands are Korean Property

Dokdo Islands are Korean Property The Dokdo Islands have been administered by South Korea since 1954, and yet Japan still claims that the Dokdo Islands are theirs. What Is an Expository Essay? An  expository essay  is a type of written discourse that serves the purpose of explaining, describing and providing information to the reader. This is a simple expository essay definition. Expository essays can also be fairly accurately termed ‘information’ or ‘informative’ essays. 50 MOST POPULAR EXPOSITORY ESSAY TOPICS If you are looking for expository essay examples here is a great one below Expository Essay Example: Dokdo Islands Are Korean  Property The Dokdo Islands have been administered by South Korea since 1954, and yet Japan still claims that the Dokdo Islands are theirs. South Korea is still trying to claim that the Dokdo Islands are theirs and theirs alone as well, and the two nations have been fighting for the right to the islands for more than fifty years. Both countries keep trying to dig back into their respective histories in order to find historic land claims that will validate their present ownership of the islands. However, the Dokdo Islands belong to South Korea. For the sake of international relations, Japan should respect that. Their Word Against Theirs The strategy of both South Korea and Japan in many cases has been to try going back as far into their respective histories as possible to find evidence of their historic claims to the Dokdo Islands. These two nations have literally gone back to the seventeenth century in order to find what theyre looking for, and they have still failed to produce the historical artifacts that will painlessly resolve the situation. Essentially, when it comes to sheer historical documents that will conclusively prove which country is the rightful owner, both of these countries are more or less even. After decades of trying, they havent been able to succeed through the use of the legal argument. There is no reason to believe that they should succeed now. Doing what is best for the international community makes sense, and keeping this terrible land dispute going is certainly not helping anyone. Focusing on Present Land Claims Even if Japan could find such a document, it should not give them any power over the land in the twenty-first century. South Korea has been handling this land since the mid-twentieth century, and its theirs. Different groups have occupied and controlled different land areas for a long time. The distribution of world nations and world politics was completely different in the seventeenth century. Going that far back in order to get land claims means distorting the current world order. South Korea has been controlling the land for decades in modern times  and should continue to do so. The few government workers and residents of the islands are all South Korean. In so much as the islands even can belong to anyone, they belong to South Korea. Japans History of Imperialism Korea is a country that has been torn apart by imperialistic powers for a long time. Japan is one of those imperialistic powers. While the modern nation of Japan has usually become a much more peaceful nation, the incident with the Dokdo Islands seems to suggest that Japan still has not entirely recovered from its violent imperialistic past. Many Japanese conservatives still fail to acknowledge the violent and relatively recent chapter in Japanese history, and modern Japanese people have a responsibility to show the rest of the world that their nation is different now. South Korea and Japan have both failed to find evidence of historic land claims that will completely clear up the situation, and they probably never will. These have always been disputed territories and dragging the past into it just sustains the controversy. When it comes to settling land claims, the distant past shouldnt matter. The needs of people today should matter. In the context of the needs of people today, South Korea should have the Dokdo Islands. Japan should not be able to invalidate everything that has happened to them for decades as a result of a dusty land claim from four hundred years ago, which Japan still cannot find. Japan was fighting to control the Dokdo Islands in the mid-twentieth century, shortly after Japan lost World War Two and should have been fully making amends for its horrific actions during the war. Japans actions now are insensitive, given the history of these islands, and the fact that Japan keeps on pursuing them anyway suggests that its modern cons ervative population may not have learned anything from the past. If you are looking for an excellent expository essay that will be written according to your requirements, will contain proper formatting, language, and structure, feel free to contact our writing staff and  place your order  with us. We have written hundreds of expository papers in the past and have developed extensive expertise in expository essay writing.

Motivation in a Multigenerational Radiologic Science Workplace Research Paper - 1

Motivation in a Multigenerational Radiologic Science Workplace - Research Paper Example This paper illustrates that organizational behavior has changed tremendously since the industrial revolution, and so have the ways for employee motivation.   Since the inception of management-related studies, the area of employee motivation has been emphasized in various ways. This discourse presents a brief review of motivation factors for radiological sciences workforce based on a specific study conducted by Kalar. Earlier, classical management theories proposed employee motivation practices such as incentives and bonuses.   The pioneer of scientific management, Fredrick Taylor asserted that the main aim of management should be to secure maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for the employee. Taylor believed that extra income will motivate employees to work extra and with greater efficiency, and hence incentives would be an effective way to motivate the employees. Later, the human relations movement led by Hawthorne experiments of Elton Mayo p roved that employee motivation can be enhanced through employee participation and involvement with the leadership teams. From a motivation perspective, numerous theories can be found, in the literature that describes various motivating factors and ways to motivate. A few of these theories include the Maslow’s needs theory, Alderfer’s ERG Theory, Herzberg’s two-factor theory or the motivation-hygiene theory, McClelland’s 3-needs Theory, Vroom’s expectancy theory etc.  

Reflection paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 11

Reflection paper - Essay Example Specifically, the emotional intelligence (EI) skills I have learned in this semester shall enable me to understand my strengths and weaknesses as a public administrator, the effects of those qualities on my workmates and the public in general as well as my effectiveness in different capacities. The EI skills shall enable me to acknowledge the origin of tension and other risks that impede normal working relationships in public administration and identify emotional undercurrents that work best in every situation. As such, I will be more capable to manage my impulses and emotions as well as maintain knowledge of the social needs and interests of various stakeholders in public administration1. The capacity to identify and summon appropriate emotions within me and in others will definitely contribute towards my effectiveness as an administrator. By accurately assessing the feelings of my subordinates, for instance, I will use the outcomes to manage their emotions so as to achieve the overall goals of the organization. This is especially true considering that knowledge of the emotions will play a pivotal role in improving my decision making capacities in respect of their administration. And researchers have noted, owing to my massive EI skills, I will be able to make accurate assessments of emotions and thus make an effective judgment about those which are associated with opportunities or challenges, and thus make appropriate decisions based on their respective potential impacts2. In addition, the EI skills I have obtained already will enable me to develop the capacities to motivate subordinates by identifying their emotions and modeling their behavioral changes to the better. As a public administrator, I will be ready and better-placed to handle conflicting demands of administration policy requirements and public needs, for instance, by managing stress occasioned by the conflict by taking a middle-ground stance. A public

Gothic Horror Stories Essay Example for Free

Gothic Horror Stories Essay Gothic horror is a type of romantic, horror fiction based on irrational fear that predominated in 18th century England. The term gothic originated from the architectural style of the middle ages, but came to describe the dark, terrifying tales that achieved such popularity. Gothic horror can be determined by many things which exist in all gothic horror stories, for example eerie settings such as gothic monasteries, bleak comfortless castles, grave yards and cobwebbed rooms lit by guttering candles. It can also be determined by a unique character such as a beast, monster, ghost, evil creature and innocent person. Usually the innocent person is killed by the evil creature in a gothic horror story. Fear, supernatural and the macabre were also essential elements in gothic horror. I looked at six stories but I will focus on three of the stories which appear to fit the genre, these stories are The Judges House written by Bram Stoker who lived from 1847 to 1912. It is about a person called Malcomson who moves into an old house. He gets disturbed by rats while living in the house and then gets killed by a judge. The Tell Tale Heart written by Edgar Allen Poe who lived from 1809 to 1849. This is about a man who is killed by another man at his house, police go to the house after getting a disturbance call from the neighbours then the killer confesses about the murder to the police. The Signalman written by Charles Dickens who lived from 1812 to 1870. The story is about a signalman who sees a ghost and every time he sees it, the ghost shows something in the future which is going to happen. The signalman tells a passing man about this incident, the man and him become friends. Then the signalman sees his own death without knowing, he tells the man about this, they think of a rational reason for this but however the signalman dies. All three stories were written in the 19th century. They were all set at the same time when they were written. This is a good effect because at the time when they were written, horror stories containing superstition and the macabre were popular because the people at that time believed in witchcraft, ghosts and demons. The location of the action is of great importance in the gothic novel because it creates an atmosphere and feeling to the story. The Judges House is located in the dining room of an old, quiet and isolated house. An old, rambling, heavy built house, this creates a scary atmosphere thus matching the typical setting of a gothic horror story. It goes on to describe the dining room as a, room in darkness, this also creates a scary and terrifying atmosphere because you cant see in the dark and you dont know whats in the dark, this also is an essential gothic horror element because darkness creates a creepy and scary atmosphere. The Tell Tale Heart is located in a house that is probably old as a lantern is used by the narrator, this creates a scary atmosphere like the Judges House because you cant see in the dark and you dont know what is in the darkness so the reader imagines things that create the scary atmosphere, for example, the reader may imagine evil creatures emerging from the darkness, or someone suddenly jumping out from the dark surroundings. The Signalman is located in a railway station that is isolated which is gloomy and dark. This creates an intimidating atmosphere because isolation makes the reader think why it is isolated and the darkness as I said before creates a scary atmosphere. Also it refers to the place as being a great dungeon which is a typical setting of a gothic horror story. From the three stories I have read, the plot in the story was similar, it is really about good versus evil and because its a gothic horror story evil is supposed to win. The Judges House it is about a person called Malcomson who moves into a old house because he wanted to get on with his studies he was doing, in this house Malcomson gets disturbed by rats, especially one rat that was bigger and looked evil. Then one day he was killed by the judge that haunted the house, who was in fact the bigger and evil rat. This is a typical gothic horror plot because the good is killed by the evil. I think Stoker wrote the story well because he always throughout the story created a scary and macabre atmosphere by using descriptive words baleful eyes to describe a thing such as the rat which would produce a frightening image in the readers mind. I think Stoker did this well because his usual style is horror. This is a typical gothic horror plot because the good is killed by the evil. The Tell Tale Heart is about a crazy man who kills an old man because he didnt like the old mans eye. I think Poe wrote the plot as he did because his usual style is being a critic, so he put a bit of criticism in the story as the man killed the old man because he didnt like his eye, he thought it resembled that of a vulture. This also is a typical gothic horror plot because the innocent person (the old man) is killed by the evil person (the crazy man). The Signalman differs from The Judges House and The Tell Tale Heart because the evil doesnt kill the good or innocent this time. The Signalman is about a signalman who sees a ghost which warns him about something which is going to happen. The thing which the ghost warns the signalman about is his death, and then the signalman dies. This isnt really a typical gothic horror plot. I think Dickens wanted to create a mystery in the story as well as horror because his usual style of writing is mystery and horror, so he put mystery in because he is use to it. Characterisation plays a major part in all three gothic horror stories. In The Judges House Malcomson is studying mathematics and people who study are thought to have a more mature approach to the supernatural, this is why he laughs when Mrs Dempster, the charwomen, warned him about mysterious somethings I think Stoker chose this character because he would fit a typical character as he is a innocent and rational person, Stoker knows this because horror is his usual style of writing. Also Malcomson is a very intrigued in his studies, I think Stoker gave these characteristics in Malcomson because Stoker himself went to college and knows how studying is interesting and affects a young person. The judge, who is another main character, only comes in the story at the end, but at the end we also find out that the judge is in the story before the end as the big, evil rat. I know that the judge is evil because every time this big rat comes, all the other rats go because of its present. I also know its evil by how Stoker described the rat, baleful eyes, and these descriptions produced, an image in my head showing that it was evil. The judge meets the character determinant as he is the evil creature, he is like a ghost that haunts the house and he is described in a certain way to make him look wicked and evil.

Vice-Principal :: essays research papers

Introduction The doctrine of employment-at-will emerged in the nineteenth century in the United States in a climate of unbridled, laissez-faire expansionism, social Darwinism, and rugged individualism. It is often referred to as Wood's Rule, named after Horace C. Wood, who articulated the doctrine in an 1877 treatise Master and Servant. No doubt the title of the treatise says all that need be said regarding Wood's view of employment relations and, unfortunately, the view shared by most of his legal contemporaries (Mauk, 1985). According to Wood, an employee must be free to quit at any time, otherwise there is the possibility of involuntary servitude, which is prohibited in the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The doctrine of mutuality of obligations then required a symmetrical right of the employer to terminate the employee at any time. At- Will Employment: Definition and Application In its narrowest sense, the doctrine of at-will employment only speaks to when an employment contract can be terminated: the contract can be terminated at-will of either party, i.e., at any time. A separate issue is why (i.e., for what reasons) the employment contract can be properly terminated. From the beginning, the concept of at-will employment meant that the employment contract could be terminated for any reason by either party (Mauk, 1985). Most employees of state governments in the USA are not at-will employees. And most members of labor unions in the USA are covered by a written contract, called a "collective bargaining agreement† that contains a clause specifying that their employment can be terminated only for just cause. This clause makes union members not at-will employees. Recognizing that this rule of law is too harsh, courts in the 1960s began to develop an exception to the absolute right of an employer to terminate an at-will employee, in cases where the employer violated a clearly expressed public policy. The process of developing the public-policy exception to at-will employment accelerated during the 1980s and 1990s, not only with judicial recognition of public policy, but also legislatures passing statutes providing whistleblowers with protection from retaliatory discharge (Mauk, 1985). At St. Thomas the Apostle school, we have a part – time Day Care provider, who works for our after school program and might be fired at the end of this school year. She has displayed unethical behavior towards co-workers, unprofessional attitude toward parents and students, and illegal actions by displaying negligence to safeguard students under her care. Therefore, a panel of several administrators has met to discuss the different legal issues that might arise before termination is announced to her this June.