Maureen Murdock quotes

All quotes are taken from this article: Maureen Murdock interviewed by Mary Davis

“The feminine journey is about going down deep into soul, healing and reclaiming, while the masculine journey is up and out, to spirit.”

“I saw in my therapy practice that women worked hard to make it in a man’s world and then were often experiencing enormous spiritual aridity and deep wounding of their feminine nature.”

“The hero’s journey is focused on the adventures: slaying the dragon, finding the boon, meeting the goddess. For the heroine, the first part of the journey is the separation from the feminine, because of the focus in our culture on the idealization of the masculine. The individual in a patriarchal culture is driven to seek control and power over themselves and others; still slaying the dragons, internally and externally, and finding the boon, more externally. But for women, this doesn’t feed our nature. We ask, ‘What happened to my desire to write, to paint, to dance?’ And then, we experience the descent. So, there’s a split when we focus more on making it in the world, rather than on listening to our deep self.”

“Murdock writes about outward success not being enough.”

“When the heroine says no to the next heroic task, there is extreme discomfort…When a woman stops doing, she must learn how to simply be. Being is not a luxury, it is a discipline. The heroine must listen carefully to her true inner voice. That means silencing the other voices anxious to tell her what to do. She must be willing to hold the tension until the new form emerges…”

“The main thing about the descent is to give yourself permission to be there, to listen to the dreams, and then to follow the images. The experience of the descent is that it is timeless; you feel as if you are in a different culture, in a different landscape.”

“Draw the images that come to you, write poetry, dance the images! … It’s about being in a state of ritual, in a sense, a sacred space. Listen to your inner knowings. For many women and men the descent is a period of voluntary isolation.”

“I am a member of the Women’s Leadership Collaborative, and we meet three times a year. As we sit in a circle, I notice that out of 23 women present, 18 are knitting. There’s a desire to reclaim the feminine arts like knitting, sewing, beading, making scrapbooks.”

“Part of this desire is to reclaim the wisdom, compassion, and the discernment of the sacred feminine.”

“…darkness is as important as light for flowering and for birth, remembering the importance of roots.”

“The hero’s journey is up and out, with a big splash, to the light, while the heroine’s journey is down and in, to the cave.”

The Heroine’s Journey in fantasy film – an essay

The mythologist Joseph Campbell discovered that a large number of myths from different time-periods and cultures had a common pattern and structure. He described it in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) (Veale). Campbell proposed that a hero’s journey, or the “monomyth”, consist of up to seventeen elements that fit into a three-part structure: separation – initiation – return (Indick). Campbell believed this was the formula for the “The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero,” (Campbell, cited in Indick). Campbell’s model has become highly popular, especially with screenwriters, mainly because its three-unit structure works well with the three-act structure of screenplays (Indick). Campbell’s monomyth has been widely used in many blockbusters, from Star Wars to Disney animated films. It can also be recognised in the plot of most superhero flicks.

However, one feature of the monomyth is that most characters Campbell studied were male and the hero’s journey unfolds from an inherently male perspective (Veale). Only two of the 17 elements Campbell describes feature women (Priester): “the meeting with the goddess,” where the hero meets the idealised mother-goddess, such as the Athena in The Odyssey (1997) that offers guidance and inspiration, or the “woman as temptress,” where the hero faces “temptation that threatens to divert him from the path of his destiny,” (Priester) such as Calypso, in the same film. These characters are represented as stationery obstacles or rewards for the hero, but do not themselves evolve.

One of Campbell’s students, the psychotherapist and author, Maureen Murdock, questioned Campbell about the heroine’s journey. He responded, “The Heroine is the object of the Hero’s Journey,” adding, “She doesn’t go anywhere, she’s what the Hero is journeying to” (Murdock, cited in A. K. Anderson). Murdock felt that this model did not respond to the spiritual and psychological needs of contemporary women’s journeys (Books) and later wrote her own book, The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness (1990), in an attempt to bridge the gap in Campbell’s framework. Murdock proposes a mythic structure for heroine that is relevant to contemporary women (Indick).

The language of popular television: David Letterman & Jamie Oliver

The main objective of commercial television is to make a profit, by selling time-slots between and during shows to advertisers (ad breaks). Popularity, or high viewership of a show, is a determining factor in establishing how much advertisers will be willing to pay for advertising in those slots. This essay will examine how the use of language on television helps to create viewer appeal through the example of a Jamie Oliver starring on David Letterman’s Late Show (Peppiesg, 2008).

This video clip is a combination of two genres: A late-night talk show and a cooking show. Both genres are wide-spread on television and profitable. They are relatively cheap to produce (Penz, 1996), and appeal to a wide range of audience (Xu, 2013). However, because today’s television viewers are spoiled for choice, the individual success of a particular show depends on the details, such as the use of language. David Letterman is a popular American host, known for his quirky humour (A+E Networks, 2013). His guest on this show is Jamie Oliver, an English celebrity chef, famous for his easy-to-follow recipes and “blokey” presentation. The show’s aim is to provide entertainment and it engages the audience through being humorous, spontaneous and informative. These effects are achieved through the contrasting styles of Oliver and Letterman, the active use of various features of language play, creating a sense of inclusion for the audience and constructing conversations that serve a myriad of language functions.

Semiotic Analysis of Gender in Advertising (2013 essay)

Inverse for men by Kylie Minogue

The advertisement of Kylie Minogue’s fragrance for men, Inverse (Study Guide), is a good example of the fluidity of gender roles in today’s society. Atypically the ad portrays the man as a sexual object, while the woman (Minogue) is portrayed as the dominant figure without being overly sexualised. This dominance is portrayed through her confident body language and the way she embraces the nude male figure while herself being fully dressed. It is also enhanced by her recognisability as a brand. The figures in the ad project wealth, success and power – desirable qualities for the consumer, which is one of the most common tools in advertising. However, the ad also challenges the traditional values and stereotypes associated with gender and the relationship between men and women. It plays on how masculinity and femininity are seen today and portrays gender as multifaceted.

Which Species Has a Language Most Like Human Language

In order to understand how our ancestors have communicated and how it developed into modern language, scientists studied communication of various animals. To differentiate human language from other systems of communication, a number of parameters have been developed known as Design Features of language (Bauer, 2006, pp.7-17). This essay, will look at five of the more important design features and use them as guidelines for establishing which species – vervet monkey, dolphin or dog, communicates in a way that is most similar to human language.

Linguistics: defining concepts

Pragmatics and the discontinuity problem

Pragmatics is concerned with the use of language in relation to the social context it is used in (Thompson, 2003, pp. 36-45). It deals with such factors such as multiple meanings of words and phrases, and distinguishing between utterances such as requests, questions, statements, apologies, etc.

Although a sentence is grammatically and semantically correct, it may be unacceptable within particular situations, or be interpreted in a number of ways. For example, in English, a simple phrase like “good day,” may have several meanings: It may be used as a statement, a greeting, a farewell or as an indication of the intention to end a conversation. It can be used differently in different countries or communities even though they speak the same language.

Understanding of pragmatics links to the ‘appropriateness’ of the use of language or communicative competence (Finegan, 2008, pp. 5-10). Communicative competence requires a good understanding of context and ability to effectively determine meaning of figures of language that may be ambiguous.

For example, when using the sentence “Must you be so loud?” the speaker is usually requesting you to be quieter, rather than asking a question of whether maintaining that decibel is a requirement for you. The failure to understand this will cause a breakdown in communication and may result in you being seeing as rude.

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The discontinuity problem can be explained as the lack of evidence of stages of development of language from a primitive state to it’s current complexity (Bauer, 2006, pp.7-17). If we assume that language originally didn’t exist, but evolved from giving things names, for example, we will struggle to find links that lead to the development of grammar and being able to express abstract concepts.

The discontinuity problem can be further illustrated by discussing some theories by nineteenth-century linguists. The ‘bow wow’ theory suggests that language arose from recreating sounds of nature, like sounds of birds, howling of wolves, etc. However, this theory does not explain where all the other words come from, as in every modern language a range of words representing sounds is quite limited. Similarly, the ‘pooh-pooh’ theory does not explain how language as we know it could have originated from emotion-related sounds: sighs, grunts, cheers.

Modern linguists have also encountered this problem when trying to explain the origin of language. It has been suggested that language is a result of physical changes to the brain and oral cavity that occurred as part of the evolution of homo sapiens and allowed humans to generate a wide spectrum of sounds. However, this does not explain the emergence of grammar to relay meaning, instead of developing further phonetical messages. The attempt to overcome this problem could be to propose that grammar was developed to prevent the phonetical structures from becoming too bulky and complex.

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References:

Bauer, L., Holmes J., and Warren P. (2006). Language matters (pp. 7-17 and 49-55). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Finegan, E. (2008). Language: Its structure and use (pp. 5-10). Boston: Thomas

Thompson N. (2003) Communication and Language: : A handbook of theory and practice (pp. 36-45). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Photojournalism and Representation – an essay

Image by Brian Snyder, The Times

This essay will explore the role of the media in defining for the public what news is and how to understand these by analysing a piece of photo journalism by Brian Snyder published in the Time Magazine (Altman, 2013). The photograph is of a naturalization ceremony in Boston where immigrants are granted American citizenship. The photograph is accompanying an article about the challenges faced by the US Immigration Bill. The photo creates a visualisation of an abstract concept of immigration, but also simplifies, personalises and dramatises the issue through focusing on an individual, his symbolic gestures, and using artistic effects that enhance the visual appeal. The photograph demonstrates how decisions made by media representatives, such as the choice of image, composition, focus and symbolism within it result in a prescribed reading that is based on existing knowledge and values of the audience. This reading often supports the ideology of the ruling class, in this instance the US government, This reflects Chomsky’s idea that media is democracy’s tool of control (Sikorovsky).