Week 5

1
Week 5

• Ofri, Sanders, Tan

2
Ofri - Language

• Take a look at the language of the medical
  profession that is used in Ofris essay. How
  does this clinical language reflect the larger
  issues in Ofris essay?
• This is a case of a twenty-three year old
  Hispanic female without significant past medical
  history who presented to Bellevue complaining of
  a headache. Why do doctors say the patient
  presents rather than the patient shows signs of
  or came in with a headache?

3
Ofri Language contd

• Medical language tends to be precise, economical,
  cold and distant. Is this a desirable effect
  for a physician or an unfortunate side effect?
• Do doctors deliberately use a secret code of a
  language to somehow perpetuate the mystery and
  status of doctors as somehow divine or god-like?
  
• How does Ofri use and also play down such effects?

4
Ofri - Structure

• The time period covered in Ofris essay is about
  a month. However, she does not approach the
  essay chronologically. She begins at the
  conference and then goes back, telling the story
  chronologically. Why does she structure time
  this way? What does she describe in detail and
  what does she skip over?
• What effect does this structure have on the
  presentation of Mercedes the patient?
• What effect does this structure have on how we
  see Ofri?

5
Ofri Perspective

• Why does Ofri write this essay?
• Who is her intended audience? Doctors? Patients?
  Relatives of patients? Fans of t.v. medical
  shows?
• Think about what each of these intended audiences
  might respond to Ofris essay and how it might
  help their interaction with the medical
  profession.

6
Sanders - Language

• When Sanders compares the grain in the claw
  hammers wood to the grain in his grandfather and
  father who owned the hammer before him, he
  exhibits his tendency to expand metaphors that
  contain parallels (hammer and men). Where else
  does Sanders place two ideas, a tool and an
  aspect of character or a metaphysical
  observation, in parallel?
• Where else does he find the human in something
  that is not human, such as tools?
• How are these metaphors apt for crafting an
  essay about carpentry?

7
Sanders - Structure

• This is an essay about inheritance and the
  progression of time. How does Sanders get to the
  past and back to the present?
• Why does Sanders structure his essay around the
  day his father dies? What effect does this
  structure have on our sense of time and patterns
  of events?
• How does he emphasize parallel past events?
• What philosophical point is he making with this
  structure?

8
Sanders - perspective

• Why all the detail about carpentering procedures
  and tools?
• What is Sanderss tone in passages about making
  good joints, slotting a wall or planing a board?
• What attitude does he have toward his work?
• What aspect of memory does Sanderss narrative
  pattern of looking at his work and then
  recounting memories capture?

9
Tan - Language

• This essay is about languageall the Englishes
  that helped shape the way Tan saw things and made
  sense of the world.
• How easy is it to understand the English of Tans
  mother? Do you find it vivid, direct, full of
  observation and imagery as Tan does?
• Tans mother uses almost no verb tenses in her
  English which is probably a reflection of her
  native tongue. Do you see reflected in Tans
  portrayal of images, things, and ideas, her
  mothers disregard for the rules of English
  grammar? That the most important part of
  communicating is the action, the thing itself,
  and not so much the form?

10
Tan Structure

• How does Tan intertwine her accounts of her
  mothers language, her own education, and her
  writing? What would be the effect if she had
  separated all of these out and dealt with them
  individually?
• How are different languages integrated in real
  life (school, home, work)?

11
Tan - Perspective

• For what audience does Tan seem to be writing
  this essay? American? Chinese? Popular?
  Scholarly?
• What does her choice of language, structure, and
  anecdotes tell the reader about her intended
  audience?