gary’s blog

Comic2-betweenspace2

So, obviously this one is a follow up to my previous post. Here The discussion on lexical and syntactic ambiguity goes a bit further. And, you know, since I am writing a paper on how these two facets of ambiguity negatively affect communication between customer/employee relations, I have to say that it is intriguing to "propose a rigorously defined language w/out Syntactic or Lexical ambiguity." But, in reality, Who could live w/out puns and "delightfully sexy double entendres"? 

Good Day!

MY LAST TWO POSTS WILL BE DEDICATED TO MY ALL TIME FAVORITE COMIC, WHICH I NEVER WOULD HAVE FOUND HAD I NOT BEEN STUCK ONE DAY TRYING TO FIGURE OUT SOMETHING TO POST.

so, on that note, here come t-rex........

Comic2-betweenspace1

Good Day!

I made a small mention of my GM at work and some fears he has, like his own shadow. Well, I started thinking about the maxims some more and it dawned on me that my GM violates the Maxims of Relation and the Maxim of Quantity and the Maxim of Manner on a regular basis.
The other day, my GM was training a new employee and he was, at the very best, attempting to explain how the register works at our store. First off, if someone can't figure out a register with pretty colors and big words on it, they probably don't need to work there. Anyway, I was listening to my GM as he was explaining himself to the employee and I couldn't help but notice that everything he said was saturated with obscurity, ambiguity, a whole bunch of unnecessary prolixity, completely uninformative contributions, etc.

In my best attempt, I will try to transcribe from memory a small portion of what he said. (beware, it may give you a headache)

GM: ok, so, well, like, you wanna kinda get to know these things here, the ones with the dots, see these ones, you know with the dots, we call those back. and then see if you need to do that you just kinda wait til the customer is done ordering, then, see, well, then, you have to get used to the lists of items. they are here. well not here, but, see if you hit this button, then that button, then scroll, well, sometimes not scroll. Actually, can you hang on a second?

GM: Gary, can you show him how to operate the register?

This is my sad and pathetic work life! ;)

Good Day!

Holly's post inspired me to post this blog entry. (sorry mine weren't up yesterday) Holly's post made me think about how I act with some of my employees. I can think of a thousand times I have been in a similar situation in my personal life, where I would do the exact same thing as Holly did about the movie. On the other hand, when it comes to certain employees that I work with, I find myself battling with negative and positive politeness.
See, most of the people that work where I work are, to be brutally honest, completely worthless. Now, saying that, trying to get them to either do their job right or do their job at all, is a daunting task. And, since my GM is scared of his own shadow, he won't fire anyone for fear of a lawsuit. This leaves me to deal with, for lack of a better term, idiots.

I know I should probably try to care about my job and the people that work there, but I don't. They suck my will to live on a daily basis.

Therefore, I find it very hard to, as Leech states in his politeness principle: 1. Minimize the expression of impolite                                                                                                                    beliefs .
                                                                                                           2. Choose expressions which minimally                                                                                                                belittle the hearer's status.
1. my beliefs are about as impolite as you can get for the people at my work.
2. no matter how hard i try, i can't help but choose expressions which maximally belittle the hearer's status.

This makes it very hard to adopt the maxim of tact, maxim of generosity, and the maxim of praise.

Does this make me a bad person?  ;)

Good Day!

As often occurs in the restaurant business, manners are hard to come by, especially the maxim of manner, which states four rules for avoiding violation. 1. Avoid ambiguity 2. Avoid obscurity 3. Avoid unnecessary prolixity and 4. Be orderly!
Furthermore, spatial deixis aids and abets these violations in my specific work environment. (primarily because we have a menu board as opposed to the menus in full service restaurants)

Cust: "What's that?" (pointing to an undisclosed area on our massive menu board)  [Spatial Deixis?]
Me: "I don't know" (because I really have no idea what they are pointing at)
Cust: The thing at the the bottom on the right next to the words under the heading burritos, but its not a burrito, i know that, at least, but it kinda looks like one, but it's not, i know that.  (Huh?!)  [Violation 3: Avoid unnecessary prolixity.]
Me: "Oh that! How silly of me not to know. They are enchiladas"  [Spatial Deixis strikes back!]
Cust: I guess. I want the enchiladas, please, with nachos." (Nachos!!!!!!!!!!) [Violation 1: Avoid ambiguity]
Me: By nachos I assume you mean chips with queso?"  (I really hate ambiguity)
Cust: "Sure"

Now this conversation went on for some time and the violations of the maxim of manner were rampant. I must admit that I purposefully made the conversation as difficult as possible because I really dislike deciphering utterances that could be easily avoided had the customer just followed Grice's rules. 

I know I am completely unfair.

have a great day!

Sorry my brain is not working today, but, as some of you may know, I love dinosaur comics!  HEHE!
I chose this one because, well honestly, I'm having a hard time today thinking about anything (and it IS about pragmatics). My neurons are simply not firing today.

ENJOY!

Dino2

I was talking to a friend of mine about doing things for people. He was talking about how he has a friend that he goes out of his way to help and his friend is completely unappreciative for it. He said "Ya know? I'm not asking for a Nobel Peace Prize or anything." What he meant to say was that he didn't want a "Nobel Prize" but he mistakenly added "Peace" into the (is it a cliche or idiom?). I knew what he meant to say and he knew what he meant to say but nonetheless, it sounded slightly strange. So I thought of semantic substitution errors, but would this be substitution? There was nothing there to begin with so there can't necessarily be a substitution since there was nothing to substitute. Therefore would this be a semantic Addition error? Thoughts?

I know that we have been off the topic of vagueness for some time but I keep seeing a recurrence of vagueness every time I work. I work in a mexican restaurant and as such, we serve chips and salsa, queso, and nacho platters. However, almost every single person who wishes to have any of the previously listed items as part of their meal, will order "NACHOS". What does that mean? My employees spend more time deciphering the many possible meanings of "NACHOS" than they do actually working. According to most customers, the employees should always have some preconception of what they desire to eat, I suppose. So I have compiled a small list of the various meanings of "Nachos"

NACHOS=
                1. Chips
                2. Chips and Salsa
                3. Chips w/ cheese
                4. Chips w/ queso (this is cheese)
                5. Nacho Platter
                6. Chips with queso and salsa
                7. Chips w/ refried beans
               
These are all I have come up with so far, but I am sure there are more. I never knew just how vague that term is

I am still thinking about the examples that were put on the board on tuesday while we were discussing different types of semantic clash. In particular the example; "The kindergartners were shooting the shit while waiting for the school bus." I can understand why this can be considered inappropriate on some sort of odd moral value system but I just do not understand why it would still be considered an inappropriate semantic clash. I decided to do a little experiment with my daughter. I asked her to tell me what the kids were talking about while waiting for the school bus on wednesday morning. (NO I did not teach her the expression "shoot the shit") Wednesday night I asked her to which she replied that they were just talking about "stuff". I asked her if she thought they were just "shooting the breeze" before school. After explaining the phrase "shoot the breeze" she concurred that if there were a breeze to shoot then yes that's what the kids at the bust stop do every morning.

Therefore, if two adults can make the commentary that "The kindergartners were shooting the shit while waiting for the school bus," and an 11 year old can make the commentary that "The kids were shooting the breeze while waiting for the school bus", can someone please explain to me why there is a conceivable and legitimate SEMANTIC CLASH and not just some moral value judgment on the way kindergartners should be talked about?

Sorry, that just really annoyed me on tuesday