So far, this class has already impacted the way I think- that's a good sign, one week in.
I'm looking around and starting to question, though as I reflect upon my reflections, I do have to wonder if what I'm thinking is more anthropological in nature than sociological. Still, these are things I have thought about, though the specific knowing of the names and people who started this discipline has been interesting.
Walking out of class, I saw a flyer tucked away in the top shelf of one of those clubs fair/volunteer opportunity/bus schedule catchall paper holders. It was pink and caught my eye- the header was something along the lines of People of Color Mentor Program. I stopped and stared and thought about the things we'd learned in class that day- the common perception of the black man as 'dangerous' and 'violent', themes engrained within society hundreds of years ago, still tugging at our perceptions. I hadn't even been aware of it.
Even as I sit here in my grey cubicle, filled with silent loathing and boredom, I find myself feeling aggravated by the length of last names. 'Why is it,' I grump, 'that these latino surnames have to be so damn long??' But then, thinking about that from a sociological perspective, we would want to examine the length of surnames from different parts of the globe and study the social reasons as to why those names are long. What types of societies and cultures create those long last names? For that matter, why are 'typical' (IE anglo-saxon) last names shorter as opposed to longer?
Sociological linguistics- I wonder if that is a 'doable' thing? How would you begin to analyze -that- field? What sorts of questions would one ask? 'Why do some languages have gendered articles and others do not?' might be a good one. And then you could cross-examine the cultures with gendered articles and those which do not, and so forth and so on. Or you could work the -sound- of the language- why, for example, does German sound so guttaral? Why so heavy, in comparison with nearby France? Although, come to think of it, some of the throat noises in French sound similar... so why do these Europaean countries have throat noises, when Japanese does not?
For that matter, isn't it kind of a Euro-centric viewpoint I'm taking?? What about the question of why some languages- Vietnamese, I believe some Chinese dialects, others that I don't know- lilt as part of the function of the language, while others- English, German, ???- do not? Whereas in American culture, tone and inflection shed emphasis or impart emotion, in other cultures and languages, tone and inflection COMPLETELY CHANGE THE MEANING OF THE WORD. Like, from duck to candle.
Am I even doing this right? In the textbook it talks about comparing non-specific incidences to try to shed light on an issue or example. I'm basing these off of that... but I have the feeling that I'm not 'doing it right'.
