Blog #4

Question- is there a difference between reading the Shaggy Dog Stories out loud versus in your head?

Gee's language tools-
A. What social languages are involved?
B. What socially situated identities and activities do these social languages enact?
C.  What Discourse or Discourses are involved?

Specific Examples-
A. How people say certain words. One person might say a word differently than another depending on their accented word. Some people might emphasis on certain words for example the pun at the end of shaggy dog stories. For example at the end of the friars florist shop, the pun is "only Hugh can prevent florist friars."
People can say the end of this joke anyway they want to get their point across. 

 B. This concept bring people together. The people who understand the pun at the end of the joke will discuses how funny it was. Where as other people who do not understand the pun will not understand it. Some people who read the joke to themselves may not fully grasp the joke , where people who read it out loud might put a spin on the pun to emphasis the meaning so that people will understand the joke.

C. People need to have a background knowledge of the meaning of the joke before they can understand the full meaning. If people do not understand the meaning of the joke they it will just pass by them. Where as other people who understand the joke will be laughing about it for a period of time. People who say the joke out loud to a group of people might emphasize certain words to try to make it funnier. Other people who read the joke to themselves will just read the joke as it is and not put a lot of emphasis into a part of the joke. These types of jokes can be taken in any direction that people want to.        

Patterns- The joke starts off introducing a genre that joke will be about. It goes into the plot of what the joke is about. It sets up a story line. At the end there is the pun. All of the Shaggy Dog Stories that I have read all have this similar set-up. I am not sure of any other patterns that I see. I will be looking further into this to develop more patters. But for right now I have noticed the set-up of the jokes.

My Analysis- My analysis/ theory of the question that I posed is as follows, yes there is a different between people reading the jokes out loud versus reading them in your head. People will put emphasis into certain words more than others, for example the pun. People will put more emphasis into the pun because they want people to understand the joke. When reading the joke inside the head, it as emphasized as you would like it to be. Unfortunately we do not have control how people tell jokes. We can only control how we tell jokes.