thinking is the new black

Following yesterday’s cat theme – I discovered today that Miu Miu is her mother’s daughter. I’m so proud! I doubt there are many people who can claim their pet has read Das Kapital.

It all began very early this morning when I was looking for something else entirely on Adfreak and came across a blog post about cats getting a PR overhaul. It seems not everyone loves cats as much as me. Wierdos.

The US based website CatChannel.com are running a competition asking people to create a 7″ x 10″ ad that shows the world the value and importance of cats. As they say cats are terribley misunderstood. “Throughout history, cats have been the victims of superstition and misunderstanding – and even today, cats are in trouble: More than 70% of cats in animal shelters are euthanized (compared to a still-shocking 56% of dogs).”

Anyone who knows me knows I love cats. More than that, I worship my very own mini-panther, Miu Miu. Not in a sad, lonely, cat-spinster way, but in a cats are the thinking mans best friend way. I can say this confidently as a) I’m not a spinster. I have a v nice b.f. who I knew was a keeper when I met his mum, who has 4 cats of her own and who gave me a present to give to my cat & b) I’m not alone, because I shone a spot light on the t’interweb quickly to see just how big the cat loving community was, and there are flippin loads of us.

awww little Miu Miu, constant companion &
critic to my PhD.

Cat lovers share a very special unspoken bond and this fascinates the ethnographer in me and I think the online cat loving community and social networks such as Catster are simply ter-riff. I have kown of the existence of catster for some time, but only just found out about mycatspace. Thrills. I am very taken with the idea that people are blogging on behalf of their cats. Check out the homage to the late great Albert. I mean, seriously? SERIOUSLY!!???

one more piccie of iccle miu miu for good measure.

I’m not a linguist. Phew.

I had a minor set-to last week with the discourse analysis section of my consumer interviews, which has knock affects on the overall final structure of the thesis. Being so near the to the end, at the time this felt somewhat of a minor disaster, and sent my bonce in a right old spin.
There are many styles of discourse analysis, all slightly different in nature and therefore consequence and, some favoured more by certain disciplines than others. My research is what is known as “interdisciplinary” and I have been feeling a little tugg of love between humanities and social sciences lately, perhaps confounded by the fact that I have 2 supervisors who’s areas of experience and expertise have a humanities/soc-sci split. This has actually worked really well for me up until now, but last week during a meeting, it became apparent that there was an atmosphere of concern over the way I have analysed the interview data. Obviously it is good to know these things now before submission and viva, and that it what supervisors are for. However it is an unpleasant feeling when the output of nearly 3 years toil is called into question.

Two pieces of advice that I’ve constantly echoing in my head (which actually come from the Gaunlett article I mentioned in a previous post) are

Don’t let the PhD over run 3 years, get it finished.
Stop reading, start writing.

So consequently I’ve been all 6s & 7s this past week because, I ‘ve been in the library doing desk work on theories of my method and have lost writing time, because I am reading. However in the words of Tammy Wynette I am going stand by my method. A little known fact is that Tammy originally wrote her famous hit about the insecurities she had over an emerging field of data analysis she was developing. At the very last minute she changed the lyrics from method to man, to avoid alienating fans without a university education.

Back to me. I went away after meeting the supers, with a sense of impending doom that I was going to have to review all my data and produce a corpus and would bankcrupt myself doing the PhD forever. I spent a day looking through all these hideous methodology papers on sociolinguistics, speech act theory, and pragmatics looking for clues. There were tables and graphs and metrics and grids and diagrams and, and, YER- UCK! You have to understand that it you cut a slice off one of my limbs, that it would say “qualitative” in sugary pink writing like a piece of Brighton rock. I am qualitative in the way Cathy was Heathcliff. I loathe numbers. I can’t even remember my mums phone no, which she has had for 15 years. Then I came across some comforting words on Foucault from the lovely squishy cultural theorist par excellence, Stuart Hall, that made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

“The first point to note is the shift of attention in Foucault from language to discourse. He studied not language, but discourse as a system of representation”.

That’s what I’m talking about, discourse as a system of representation. Language and practice – language and practice. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Discourse is something we do. No piece of software, or visualising metrics, table thingie is ever going to provide insight into the ideological biases and power relations explicit in discursive formation as far as I’m concerned. What good would a graph do in offering perception of socio-cultural context? Numbers Pah! It’s back to my first love of social –semiotics for me. I’ll be applying Saussure & Barthes on the ones and twos. Words as signs; iconic, symbolic, indexical. It’s denotation and connotation all the way. Yes sireeeee.

In the interests of balanced debate, here is an article from my friend Shirl biggin up graphs. Shout out to the graph collective. RRrrrspect.

My favourite reality TV show of all time is still C4’s Chaos at the Châteaux, about the couple who went to Slovakia to open a boutique hotel. When the producers discovered the living legends that are Ann & David, they struck reality TV gold. I’ll never forget the episode when the little sausage dogs were murdered Don Corlone stylee by a vengeful local and, the butler who was not unlike Fronk from Father of the Bride wept into a silk hankie when he found one of the dogs had been strung up.

Never the less, coming in an extremely close second has to be The Apprentice. I realise it is probably deeply unfashionable to say so, but I love Alan Sugar. I think he is brill, and I absolutely worship this new series. Plus, The Apprentice is fantastic material for anybody studying ideological theory. I’ve used clips from previous series in discourse analysis workshops that I’ve run and, witnessed the thrill of the proletariat turn on the bourgeoisie in a minor revolt during last weeks episode. (All the while annoying my two poor tenants what a fab example it was of classic Marxism sorry ladies ).

I didn’t think it would be possible for BBC2 to find contestants as annoying and despicable as last years, but good ole beeb, they’ve only gone and done it. Not only that, but the boys team this year look like a Take That tribute band. I am fully expecting the launch of a group named “Back for Good”, on the wedding and working mans club circuit when the show finishes. You heard it here first.
10 minutes or so into the 1st episode I was already shouting “I HATE YOU” at entrepreneur Raef.

I’m always suspicious of such job titles anyway and I think entrepreneur in these sorts of circumstances hides a career of imprecision and under achievement. Also Raef is posh and moronic, I mean really so. He looks like a 1980s Ralph Lauren model, with the most incredibly, annoying, thick, eye-brows, which I wish to climb inside my tellybox and pluck. He says stupid things that have no meaning such as “Yah chaps lets rarely sturr it up yah, and rahse our game.” I was in rapture when it looked as if he might get the heave ho at the end of episode one for being utterly rubbish, and delivering the line “I am friend to prince and pauper Sire Alon”, during a class war boardroom debate, but alas no, he made it through. The you’re fired sequence that week, was sooooo not about the boys team and their inability to do the task but, actually a real life enactment of Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and cultural capital. It became quite apparent during the task that there was a serious class division within the team as the ruling classes began to close ranks on the proletariat, despite hideous Raef being amongst the posh posse who f’up the pricing on the fresh lobsters. Ha! My favourite at the moment is no-nonsense ex-army working class Simon. God did he graft during the laundry task.