Brendan Keys
http://dba-oracle.blogspot.com/2007/10/double-entendre-web-site-names.html
http://kenoath.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/double-meaning.jpg
Sexual innuendos have become increasingly popular in recent years among authors, producers, and directors. In many new literary forms sexual innuendos have become a regular and it seems it is almost necessary to become popular. Take current TV shows or top 10 songs on the radio, all filled with these dual meanings. Is this much different then Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin heteroglossia? Bakhtin, a philosopher, introduced the term saying “base condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance” meaning that most statements have multiple meanings. Would it be fare to say that many of today’s advertisements have the same concept of heteroglossia that Bakhtin was referring to hundreds of years ago?
My text is an advertisement that has a large screw on a black and white poster with the phrase “Screw me.” Now this can be taken many different ways, some may think that a picture of a screw and saying screw me would obliviously imply the screw itself. But what this under the picture leads to a completely different interpretation. “More than 50% of people in the U.S. will get a sexually transmitted disease in their lives.” This makes the viewer come to a drastically different conclusion about the meaning of the sign. This advertisement is most likely designed to make people aware of the increasing problem of sexually transmitted disease but depending on the viewer it can be understood in many different ways.
In most texts, the creators are using many different techniques to help grab the attention on the viewer. Heteroglossia has been used for a long time to help do this in many different
In response to your email, Brendan (Language of God or Screw Me Ad) I think either would work.
ReplyDeleteThe ad. is interesting at a number of levels. It evokes some of the paintings "This is not a pipe" that we looked at.
The ad also plays on the word "screw me," as it is both a reference to a sex act and to the colloquial expression of frustration ("I'm screwed").
The ad uses this tension of ideas and references to make its point regarding STDs.
So, if you choose this ad, your job would be analyze the ad: How does the play of language help to emphasize the message?
If you choose "Language of God,"your job would be to talk about normal/abnormal discourse and the authority of knowledge.
In a nutshell? The Language of God would make for more of a Bruffee-based paper and the ad would make for more of a Bakhtin-based paper.
Either one works, depends on your interests.
Brendan:
ReplyDeleteYour thesis of this paper seems to be the heteroglosia found in this STD poster. The rest of the paper describes the mechanics of the double-entandre, and how this poster is a prime example of both.
The idea itself if a very good one to work with, but I don't think that was very much open interpretation about the poster itself. You can do some easy expansion of the paper (and its word count) by considering a new way to look at the text for your interpretation. Your selection is a prime example for heteroglosia, so im a little jealous about that.