CMNS 304W Lecture 1
CMNS 304W
Instructor: Terry S. Neiman – terryn@sfu.ca
604.266.7227
Downloadable course information can be found on
SFU Canvas.
1 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
NOTE: This course might give rise to
discussions about conflicts of identity,
oppression, or violence. However, this
course is not a forum to praise or denounce
ideologies or belief systems. Students are
expected to take part in lectures, dialogue,
and communication exercises – and – they
are free to opt out of any particular activity
for personal reasons.
2 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
Q#1) What is the language of everyday life?
Q#2) How does communication play a part in
making people certain about things that – by
their nature – cannot be known with certainty
(e.g., climate change, the Big Bang, the origin
of the term twerking)?
Q#3) Why is Q#1 ambiguous, and Q#2
specific?
3 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
…a story…
4 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
…an exercise…
5 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
A) Today we are going to look at some of
the logistics of the course, commence
our experiential pedagogy of epistemic
frameworks for situating quotidian
deictic expressions and hermeneutic
paradigms within the dialectic of
structure and agency in everyday
discourses.
6 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
B) Today I am going to talk about some
stuff and you will do some exercises.
7 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
C)
8 of 33
Today we will review the syllabus, I will
introduce a key course concept, and we
will practice ways to find contradictory
or hidden meanings in texts.
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
A) Today we are going to look at some of the logistics of
the course, commence our experiential pedagogy of
epistemic frameworks for situating quotidian deictic
expressions and hermeneutic paradigms within the
dialectic of structure and agency in everyday
discourses.
B) Today I am going to talk about some stuff and you will
do some exercises.
C) Today we will review the syllabus, I will introduce a key
course concept, and we will practice ways to find
contradictory or hidden meanings in texts.
9 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
“…The goal of this thesis is to investigate the production of
female subjectivities in the university by exploring emergent
modes of feminist resistance within and against the
neoliberalization of the Canadian academy. Against this
backdrop… my thesis examines and theorizes three pairs of
contrasting female subjectivities within the neoliberal academy:
the professionalized female academic versus the feminist
academic; the entrepreneurial female student versus the
indebted student; and the self-securitized woman versus the
autonomous woman. Through the investigation of the resistant
subjectivities in each of these couplets, I argue that it is integral
for feminist movements on campus to combine a critique of
patriarchy with a critique of the neoliberal university.”
10 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
Keywords: Neoliberalism; subjectivities; Canadian universities;
feminist resistance; critical discourse analysis; corporatization
11 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
12 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
Noise Control Bylaw 6555
Regulates noise or sound within the City of Vancouver.
Noise Bylaw highlights
Animals
Noise from household animals must not cause an
unreasonable disturbance.
•
Neighbours
Sounds from a radio, television, musical instrument or
voice amplification equipment must not cause an
unreasonable disturbance.
•
13 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
This version of CMNS 304W
• Writing-intensive process:
o research,
o planning,
o drafting,
o editing.
• Personal point of view.
• Two tracks:
o academic,
o practical.
14 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
… a model…
15 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
A simple tool for textual analysis
Ask the following:
1. Who is the author?
2. What position does the author take?
3. How does the author argue the position?
16 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
1. Who is the author?
• Background
• Status or rank
• Biases, education
• Personal, political, and social agendas
• Allies and enemies
17 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
2. What position does the author take?
• What does this person argue for or against?
• What does this person claim to be true or false?
• What solutions or actions are recommended?
• What does this person want you to do, think or
believe?
18 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
3. How does the author argue the position?
• How does this person argue for a particular position
or against others?
• What facts and logic are used?
19 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
Reminder
Semantics: the study of meaning.
DENOTATIVE à CONNOTATIVE
à DEEPER CONNOTATIVE
à DEEPER CONNOTATIVE
(exercise: “Pat chews on pencils”)
20 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
Reminder
Semiotics:
Signifier (sign or symbol)/Signified (what it means)
The logic of signs
If sign A = sign B
and
sign B = sign C
Then à A = C
21 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
…an exercise…
22 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” 1922.
23 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Randall Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” 1945.
24 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
25 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
26 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
27 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
28 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
"A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50
caliber machine-guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine
guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down
in his little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were
armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose." -- Jarrell's note.
29 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
Exercise
It is very important that you learn about traxoline.
Traxoline is a new form of zionter. It is montilled in
Ceristanna. The Ceristannians gristerlate large
amounts of fevon and then brachter it to quasel
traxoline. Traxoline may well be one of our most
lukized snezlaus in the future because of our zionter
lescelidge.
30 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
Directions: Work with a partner to answer the
following questions in complete sentences.
1.
What is traxoline?
2.
Where is traxoline montilled?
3.
How is traxoline quaselled?
4. What is the most important thing you know
about traxoline?
31 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
A framework for organizing our interpretation of
texts in CMNS 304W:
The dominant discourses* of Western society are
• Capitalism (in commerce)
• Christianity (in religion and morality)
• Empirical science (in epistemology [knowledge])
* but, not the only discourses
32 of 33
CMNS 304W Lecture 1
…a few important people…
33 of 33