Back home, and very satisfied indeed with the course. Not only did we get a grounding in rhetorical analysis, various definitions and theories on pragmatics and how to interpret Aussie speech patterns; we also learnt about the rhetorical kiss and increased our stock of political jokes.

So it was both fun and inspiring, but as I said also seriously exhausting and I’m feeling more than a bit wrung out. I think at least part of today must be spent in the sun with a book.

So I should have made it clear: the NSM is not devised or intended to serve as a descriptor of culture, it does not claim to describe national characters or anything like that. What it is created for, and what I believe it does, is to describe cultural key concepts in a non-ethnocentric way. It’s intended for the use of linguists, to describe speech acts.

So maybe my observations about the freedom script in the previous posting were not quite relevant; the concept is quite correctly described I believe, and I am not sure how much it matters that it’s not realised in many people’s realisation of the concept.

And I think I should stop talking shop in this blog. It’s impossible for me to do it without falling into jargon, it seems. Possibly because I’m not entirely sure of what I’m writing about.

Örebro University Library has a very nice and flexible computer usage policy, which allows me to blog at least occasionally; the computers themselves leave something to be desired, being rather slow and with uncooperative keyboards, but I’m not going to look gift access in the mouth.

The course is good but exhausting, the other participants a frighteningly clever bunch of people and the lectures and seminars very interesting. I’m particularly fascinated by the NSM — natural semantic metalanguage — concept, which seems to be an extremely sensible way to analyse language; the problem is getting the explications exact and objective enough. Take the example of freedom in the Anglo-American sense, where one of the NSM cultural scripts used to explicate the concept is

People think:

no-one can say to someone else:

“I think like this about something

you have to think the same”

this is good

Now, this is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of the American concept of freedom, which in turn is a key concept in the Anglo-American culture and way of thinking. And it seems very reasonable, and every Westerner can recognise it — yet it is the absolute opposite of what the reality is in America, from the reports from various different sources. I am talking again of the recent war, of course, but I think that is only one example (war being after all an extreme situation) : the “If you do not support this you are against us”, “If you do not wear a pin with a flag you are anti-American”, “This is how we think in America”. The whole concept of “anti-American ways of thinking” is such an oxymoron; surely freedom, being after all the corner stone of America, means (as the NSM script says) that people are allowed their thoughts and opinions!

I could go on about this for a long time, but I shan’t. I’ve always seen myself as a pretty broad-minded kind of person, but I think this course is making me more so, and that can only be a good thing. The group is diverse and six nationalities are represented, so the opportunity for reflections about one’s own presuppositions, culturally induced or not, are almost endless. And NSM is a good way to try and do away with them, insofar as they are false. I’m going to try and tackle the three Swedish verbs for “to think” and see if they can be explicated; we almost did it with tycka during yesterday’s lunch; tänka is simple but tro poses a real challenge.

My postings may well be more sporadic than usual, or even nonexistent, for the next 8 days or so. When I return, there is some risk that my entries will be in NSM — won’t that be fun!

Last night, something extraordinary happened. I renewed a friendship that’s been dormant for nine years, and it happened quite effortlessly, without even the slightest hesitation or awkwardness. It’s as if we were back where we were nine years ago; not to say that either one of us is anything like what we were then, we are both different people and our lives are very different now from what they were then, but the conversation was as relaxed as if we’d never stopped hanging out at all. And I’m not somebody who easily relaxes in company unless I know the company very well.

So that was good; above all, it was fun. I like being around people who laugh at the same weird things I do.

Am ridiculously nervous about the course, now. Not just about the reading — I think I have that reasonably under control — but from fear I’ll make a fool of myself. The participant list shows a pretty distinguished crowd, whereas I am not. Distinguished, I mean.

Well, we’ll see — I have done most of the reading anyway.

I imagine that my readers may be growing tired of my obsessions with various online games. Nevertheless, here is another one: Buttonmen, an online version of a Cheapass game. Unfortunately, I’m not quite convinced I’ve got the right kind of brain for it — I do enjoy playing but I feel that I’m not doing the game justice. Anyway, for mathematically-inclined people it’s a nice pastime, and one that doesn’t have to occupy many minutes of any given day.

All of a sudden the bird cherry is in bloom! When did that happen, and how? The lilacs will be next, and then it’s full summer… May is such a stressful month, and that’s such a pity for this is when the world — this part of the world — is at its most lovely. Well, at least I will spend most of today out of doors.

The next hit this page gets will be the 10000th since I started keeping the hit counter (which is at the very bottom of the page), almost exactly a year ago. That ain’t so bad.

Is there no end to the amount of work that can be laid upon PhD students? I mean, I like doing this, I’m not complaining about that, but. . .

Here is the thing. Sara and I are going to another university next week, for a 10-day course. We get five credits for the course, which is equivalent to five weeks’ study, normally; the course as I said is 10 days (8 of them with lectures and/or seminars as they managed to put the course in the week of Ascension day, which is a holiday, and we also get the Sunday off) and to get the credits we must participate and also hand in a final paper, the length of which is as yet unknown. So far so good.

But the last few days the university in question has been sending us the required pre-reading in thick envelopes, every day; not counting the books we have to read we have so far received papers amounting to about 540 pages, and as I say, on top of this there are several books. We clearly have different notions of what is a reasonable amount of text to read in one week’s time (as we are leaving next Thursday, that’s all we have!) not to mention the fact that the amount of text and the diverse areas covered correspond more to a 15-credit course than one for five credits. Our supervisor tried to get the powers that be to change the course description to give us 10 credits for it, but to no avail. . . fortunately it’s all very interesting, but how on earth we are supposed to internalise it all by next Thursday is beyond me.