Hey Deborah, Do you want to stop for a drink?

I really enjoyed Elyse’s presentation on Deborah Tannen. I knew a bit about Tannen but the report/presentation was enlightening. I feel that her insights into the differences in performance between the genders are over generalized but I think the connections Elyse made to Tannen and performance theory were spot on. Elyse used the Tannen’s example involving a recorded dinner to exemplify how even different regions of the United States “play” by different social rules. It makes me think of this book I read while living in Minneapolis called How to speak Minnesotan. It’s a folksy, Garrison Keiller type book that pretends to be a guide book for non-Minnesotans. In it says that in Minnesota everyone is so polite that they refuse everything three times before they can say “yes”. It’s an extreme exaggeration but Minnesotans are damn polite (Sorry for the diversion).
Michael’s report/presentation about Searle has an interesting connection to English and performance theory through infelicitous speech acts. The idea that dialog from a play is somehow invalid because it is not literal or in an appropriate context seems limiting and highly debatable.
Another report/presentation I learned a lot from was Robbie’s about Bakhtin and the concept of carnival. I have never studied Bakhtin so it was great exposure to something new. I am putting his book Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics on my reading list. I see the concept of carnival closely related to Fanon’s divided-self and W.E.B Dubois’s double consciousness. It is interesting that so much cultural overlap exists. I bet there are other cultures with the same basic cultural criticism.
Overall, the reports and presentations worked out really well. I learned about many different aspects of performance theory. They all have some relationship to the literary arts but also a direct connection to cultural studies.