Research Plan

1. My group’s has decided to do our research topic on Alaska Native oral storytelling. Some questions:

-When do storytellings occur? Are they told often or only on special occasions?

-Is there music playing during the storytellings?

-Do the animals in the stories represent the same thing in all the tribes?

-Are the stories told in their Native languages or in English?

2. Living in Sitka, the Tlingit tribe was prominent everywhere. When I was little in school, I remember going to the Naa Kahidi House (the Tlingit ceremonial house) and watch dances and listen to stories told by an Elder. I also learned about the Raven being the creator but also a trickster. The stories were pretty interesting/entertaining (from what I remember). From that, I want to learn more about storytelling in general throughout the different tribes and why storytelling is important to tribes.

I think the audience for the wiki would be anyone who wants to learn or is interested in Native oral storytelling.

3. During the beginning stages, we all decided to find as much information as we can about storytelling and then share it with one another. In our individual portions, I have been delegated to write the music sections of the wiki.

4. I think that by finding sources about the general information of storytelling, I could find more sources/links to the subject I am looking for.

5. Outline/Timeline

By April 2 – Have general information about oral storytelling

By April 9 – Have more information about specific subject

By April 14 – Bibliography due

By April 14 – Rough draft due

By April 26 – Final draft due

In high school, I was discouraged to cite Wikipedia as a source because it was unreliable. Though we weren’t allowed to cite Wikipedia, some teachers suggested using it to find sources that were listed on the bottom of the page. With the fact that my high school is banned from editing any Wikipedia pages for vandalism, I didn’t think of it as a very reliable source. But I still used it for homework. Knowing that Wikipedia is cracking down on vandalism and misinformation, I am becoming less skeptical of Wikipedia, but I still wouldn't use it for any research paper.

Reading Response #5

In “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell writes about how the written English language is becoming bad due to the lack of honesty and of its vagueness.

To me, this whole essay was a blur. What I really got out of it was that some people write long, complicated paragraphs that make no sense, politicians are “dumm[ies]” who are vague and dishonest, and that there are rules Orwell thinks everyone should follow so they can write well.

Most of Orwell’s examples of bad language were confusing to me. I did not understand what the writer was trying to say. It’s filled with long words that made the text sound smart but also made me feel a little dumb for not knowing the words. In the beginning, I wondered if people actually did that. Do people actually change simple understandable sentences/paragraphs and turned them into long, extensive, ambiguous ones? Do people just string along pointless phrases and call it good? Then I realized that I sometimes change words or add phrases to make my paragraphs longer and make my sentences more complex than it should be, so I can’t really judge.

 Orwell talks about how politics/political speeches are a good example of vagueness and dishonesty. Politicians use words that have different meanings to people, so when giving a speech, what he says can be interpreted in many ways depending on the person and that can be completely different to what he is really saying. Most of the time, it is unclear to what the politician is really trying to say. I think politicians are vague and use certain words is to try to please everybody. I think he relies on the audiences’ imagination to figure out what he means under their own terms. He lets the audience manipulate what he is saying to what the audience wants to hear.

I see why Orwell was perturbed with the written language. Instead of straightforward sentences, some people, especially politicians, weave through their ideas but do not actually make solid points. I would be really mad if I had to read a long, confusing passage that really had no point or meaning to it. It’s like watching a movie with no story; the movie may seem all exciting and thrilling and all that, but in the end, what was the whole point of the movie?

Orwell also appears like a jerk in this writing. It seems like he feels superior in writing because he is a renowned writer. He’s putting down writing styles of other people and saying its wrong and that people should write more like him. Even though I agree with some points he makes, I wouldn’t go and publicly write an essay about how bad people write and show/criticize their works.

The Cove Review

After watching The Cove, it made me very mad and angry towards Japan. Even though I knew it wasn’t Japan as a whole but certain people, I always found myself upset with the whole country. The style of the movie was very affected as showing how awful dolphin slaughter, especially in Japan.

A lot of the movie played on the audience’s emotions. They showed how dolphins were self-aware and were conscious with their surroundings. They had emotions too. They showed how dolphins are sensitive to sound, can have stress, and are aware of what is happening to them. They portray them as being able to feel like we do. Since we feel connected to the dolphins, it seems more wrong to kill the dolphins and we feel horrible and sad about the whole ordeal.

The word choices they used helped the movie. O’Barry used the word suicide when he described how Kathy the dolphin died. I do not know if dolphins are capable of committing suicide but the way he described Kathy’s death seemed like it was suicide. Using the word suicide helps the audience relate better with the dolphins.

The way the filmmakers portrayed the Japanese government and the people associated with the slaughters as malicious and having no remorse. In the film, the Japanese government was corrupt who recruited “bankrupt nations” to help them legalize whaling. They portrayed the fishermen as apathetic; in one of the hidden cameras, they were happy and laughing throughout the whole killing process.

The filmmakers left out a lot of statistics. Most of the statistics were about dolphin killings. The filmmakers did not include how many dolphins there were in the world, so we weren’t able to compare how many dolphins were killed to how many there were in the world. Without being able to compare, 23,000 dolphins a year is a really large number and one could assume that the dolphin population is depleting rapidly.

During the spy-ops scenes, the film felt like an action/suspense movie, with way it was in night vision mode and the music playing in the background. During those scenes, I felt nervous and anticipated what would happen next. It also made the activists seem like the good guys. They were doing this to save the dolphins no matter what laws were broken.

 Since most of Japanese did not know about the slaughters nor did they eat dolphin, I think they were first mad and upset that this was happening in their country. Then I thought afterwards that maybe they didn’t want to show the world that this was happening in their country, maybe feeling ashamed that it is happening there. I wouldn’t want the whole world knowing that there was something bad going on where I lived. It’s like the dirty secret I wouldn’t want anyone to know. It also portrays a bad image towards the Japanese people even though the filmmakers were targeting only the government and the fishermen/fisheries. If there was a movie that made me seem like a bad person, I wouldn’t want to shown worldwide.