Tuesday, 15 September 2009

Nation's favourite, and other quotations


I propose a Nation's Favourite Blogger poll. The choices are:
  1. Me
  2. Julie Heyward
  3. Felix Grant
  4. Dr C



Vote for the most memorable quote



- Ray


  1. Why is that video squashed? I can't tell if that's Bale, Cruise or Hawk or ...?

    Anyway, I agree on your grumping about voting for "favorites" -- whether from a limited list or even free choice.

    Short quotes used over and over again in various often inappropriate contexts make me think of those dolls that talk (or do other things) that we discussed in comments somewhere on this blog a while back. Disconnect the response from its original cause and you get a bunch of Pavlovian droolers.

  2. Dunno: all the ones of that scene I've found so far on YouTube have the same aspect ratio problem: it's Bale, anyway.

    Short quotes used over and over again

    Eurgh. I've bitched to Felix about this; it's particularly noticeable in the Quotations section of Yahoo! Answers (where the questioners are largely US teenage students). The impression I get is that US English literature teaching is obsessed with soundbites by Thoreau, Emerson, etc. Students get set essays to explain what various quotes mean; and conversely, if they want to write an essay or presentation, first thing they want to find is a quote to hang it on.

    There's immense emphasis on providing the correct bibliographic format for quoting, but virtually zero discrimination in where they find it: any old website will do as long as website citation format is adhered to. Mostly they try to brain out quotes in isolation, minus context. Also it usually gets at least one negative rating if you identify a misattribution: "This isn't by Jefferson, and here's why..." is evidently viewed as a wrong answer to "Explain this quote by Jefferson", rather than a sign of someone having the initiative to do some research.

    Not the students' fault: they're clearly being taught this tunnel-vision approach to quotations.

  3. Hey, not one good pun in the bunch. And where is the non-Groucho "Time flies like an arrow..."

  4. Julie: aspect ratio sorted (and I found how to deep-link to a specific start time in a YouTube video).