My experience as a reader of Semiotic Analysis has been tremendously instrumental to my learning. I never thought a little Barbie doll could be like someone who “got her start at the Playboy Mansion” to promote the need to fulfill masculine desire (Prager 613). I also did not think a female who does not care about her hair style “[would] subtly diminish…as a person” (Tannen 622). Barbie has always looked like a cute doll to me because of her beautiful appearance and her nice additional possessions she owns. I never thought that by neglecting my hair I would belittle myself as a person. Thanks to Maasik and Solomon who enlightened me, maybe now I will be able to change my life in a better way by learning the real meaning of “Signs of Life in the USA.” But now I note these brain storms have turned to hurricanes in my mind. Also my friends’ attitudes have changed towards me without reason. I wonder if my significantly more educated brain, after studying in Jim’s class, makes me appear so different now and people around me have simply not grown enough to understand me. One instance was while I was driving in my car with my friends listening to Enya. I personally enjoy Enya’s quiet lyrics that subliminally get me to relax, but at that time, I started to talk philosophically and discuss how this music subliminally affects our culture’s desire of listening to it; and I also talked about what stood behind the message of the music. My friends in the beginning of my monologue supported my sharing of enthusiasm, but soon asked me to not interrupt the composition and enjoy the soothing music. I have revised my blog New Friends, talk and Frapucciono several times. Our discussion in class about “communal egalitarianism” helped me think deeper in my thoughts and see the bigger picture of what’s going on in the Starbucks’ “community” (Solomon 525). For my rewrite, I have divided my Starbucks Blog Post into short pieces and analyzed each piece by thinking from a semiotic approach to make a connection to my reading. In the part of the Blog where I talked to a new friend, I referred to the Braxton article, where he talks about the friends’ support (668). Following this, where I talked about face to face conversation, I applied the Johnson discussion about Web connection (447). To make my blog more meaningful from the point of our reading, I added more related citations to integrate connection into my discussion. It makes my blog look more meaningful and at the same time, lets me demonstrate my familiarity with articles studied in class. The next step I took to improve my writing for a more precise expression of my ideas was adding some details to help the reader better understand the connection between places of discussion and the American values I chose for my blog. For instance, when I convinced my new friend to go back to school to study in spite of her middle age, I made a connection in my blog to Starbucks‘s “communal egalitarianism;” I added the sentence that customers looked like college students of different ages, race, and social level. I mentioned in my blog a Frappuccino name to make my post look more vivid. I tried making a little improvement toward development of my introductory skills. I know that my blog # 4 is not perfect, but I think the main idea of the blog now is clear enough. For my favorite blog, American Dream or American Dreamers, I made up a psychological scenario for the situation I have described later in my blog, and I realized my plan in real life and how it was planned in advance. My blog’s writing process, as a result of an analytical practice of the class reading, provoked me in a sense to become a journalist, a psychologist, or even criminalist. In different situations when I collected the information for my blog, I placed myself into one of the roles. In real life I did not upset people with these sorts of experiences such as being kicked out from a habitual environment and how this will make people pissed off. The purpose of my experiment was to analyze in practice the real idea of American values such as communal egalitarianism and later to discuss the vivid result of that in my blog which has an integrated connection to the discussion of the reading. Even though my American Dream or American Dreamers post was my favorite blog I also enjoyed There is No Unmarked Men. I noticed later that several other classmates took the similar subject to discuss, so it seems that the subject is common to think about. I like this post because I thought it was funny. I took this scenario from real life at the Mira Costa College Cafeteria. At that time, I played a journalist. I went to the cafeteria for the purpose of finding a subject for my blog post story. Our semiotic discussion about American myths played in my head at the time when I observed and analyzed the environment of the student cafeteria. I had a good time at the cafeteria. In one moment when my mind opened, beyond definitions, beyond images, beyond traditions the funny story was born.
http://www.signsabound.com/2010/05/american-dream-or-american-dreamers.html
http://www.signsabound.com/2010/05/generosity-of-amusing-bikers.html
http://www.signsabound.com/2010/05/there-is-no-unmarked-man.html
http://www.signsabound.com/2010/05/friends-talk-and-delicious-frappuccion.html
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