Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 470.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2023-03-21 23:07:33+00:00
From: Thomas Gloning <thomas.gloning@germanistik.uni-giessen.de>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.467: excitement everywhere all the time, but no Oscar
Expressions like "I am excited... " are not reports about one's real
inner feelings (that might or might not be appropriate for someone in
his or her 40ies), they are rather polite instruments of appreciation
towards one's audience. Nothing wrong with that.
If one takes them at face value like understanding "How are you" as
asking for a report, one might get mistaken.
If we want to look at our practices in giving talks, asking and
answering questings at the end of talks ("great question"), we might
rather take something like an ethnomethodological perspective. What are
these people doing when they say "I am excited..." or "Great question"
(even if they deep inside think that the question is not a great
question) ...
One of the perspectives of investigation might be the theory of
politeness and respect and the question of how we express politeness and
respect in the context of talks. As for these practices, there are
intercultural differences. To call something "spannend" in German ...
All best, Thomas
Am 21.03.2023 um 08:57 schrieb Humanist:
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 467.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2023-03-20 08:58:46+00:00
> From: Tim Smithers <tim.smithers@cantab.net>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.462: excitement everywhere all the time,
but no Oscar
>
> Brilliant, Jan!
>
> -- Tim
>
>> On 20 Mar 2023, at 06:04, Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 462.
>> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
>> Hosted by DH-Cologne
>> www.dhhumanist.org
>> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Date: 2023-03-18 05:37:58+00:00
>> From: <jkrybicki@gmail.com>
>> Subject: RE: [Humanist] 36.460: excitement everywhere all the time,
but
> no Oscar
>> I'm truly excited and delighted and thrilled to see that it is not just my
>> cynical self foaming at the mouth when I see all those "excited to be giving
a
>> talk at the conference..." tweets. Excited, really? Man, you're 40, you
should
>> not be excited anymore whenever you talk at other people for 20 minutes in a
>> room with a screen (half of those people are tweeting about something else
>> anyway). I wonder if this is not just the same false excitement we see in
>> commercials when that laxative really does the job on the acting persons'
>> entrails.
>>
>> I guess it makes sense in very competitive academic climes (you know where).
>> It's interesting how hyperbolical the traditionally unemotional Anglo-Saxons
>> have become. I don't see a lot of that excitement ("podniecenie" or
>> "ekscytacja") in my native Polish in this context; I guess it's because our
>> academia is so underpaid that the competitiveness evaporates before it's even
>> born. But that is another story.
>>
>> Cynically, then,
>> Jan Rybicki
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
>> Sent: 18 March 2023 06:18
>> To: jkrybicki@gmail.com
>> Subject: [Humanist] 36.460: excitement everywhere all the time, but no Oscar
>>
>>
>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 460.
>> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
>> Hosted by DH-Cologne
>> www.dhhumanist.org
>> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Date: 2023-03-18 05:14:48+00:00
>> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
>> Subject: excitement everywhere all the time, but no Oscar
>>
>> Since I no longer have to mark papers, Lorna Finlayson's offering in the
> latest
>> London Review of Books, "Everyone Hates Marking", didn't at first look like
it
>> would strike home with quite the force it once might have. But that judgment
>> proved premature. Note her second and third sentences:
>>
>>> But the university is not the safe space for complaint that it once
>>> was. Negativity, even ambivalence, is frowned on. Nothing less than
>>> complete enthusiasm will satisfy: you must at all times be thrilled to
>>> announce, excited to be part of, delighted to share.
>> This got to me because of the many announcements I see buzzing with pretended
>> excitement, or alternatively so peppered with asterisks as to blank out the
>> communication which the author obviously intended to dress in urgency. Under
>> such a regime quiet statement shouts far more loudly, or rather, satisfies
and
>> draws attention by understatement, don't you think? But yes, if you're
writing
> a
>> letter of recommendation for someone applying to an institution in a country
>> where overstatement is the norm you do have to add loads of glitter, or the
>> reader will assume the worst, I'm guessing.
>>
>> Back to Finlayson: why the put-on enthusiasm? Are we (as possibly we should
> be)
>> so worried that the anxiety of identity (and everything else, all the time)
is
>> creeping in everywhere? Perhaps play-acting calm would prove therapeutic?
>>
>> Yours,
>> WM
>>
>> --
>> Willard McCarty,
>> Professor emeritus, King's College London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science
>> Reviews; Humanist www.mccarty.org.uk
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