I was feeling a little bit uncertain about what is ending up as my main source of information about yodeling in general. I read the preface and the author admits that his qualifications for writing the book are a bit weak. That doesn't mean that the book is unreliable but it does make me feel like I need to look a bit more at other sources to verify. I wish there were more sources! I am just a little shaky about his authority. This was validated for me when I revisited the table in Callison's book about "Six Questions to Ask About Any Media Message." (p.77) As the parent of a small child, this is something that I think about all of the time and what I try to teach to her: always ask yourself "who has a stake in my consumption of this information." Since she is just five, it looks a little simpler.
Ginger: Mommy, why is there a fairy on that (fill in the blank)?
Me: Why do you think?
Ginger: Because they know little kids like fairies and they want us to buy that (fill in the blank again.)
It makes a mother proud. Anyway, I came across a great quote during my readings last week and emailed it to my friends. It was this:
A way to approach Media Literacy is to "take materials directed at the senses and reposition them within the framework of critical reason and thought."
Stuart Ewen, Chairman-Communication Department, Hunter College, NY
http://digitalliteracy.mwg.org/studies.htmlI love the way that illuminates the issue.
I don't necessarily think that Bart Plantenga is trying to sell me on yodeling, but sometimes it just seems like he isn't saying anything, or he is too concerned with being clever than he is with being comprehensible, which makes me a tad worried that maybe he is more interested in being clever than he is in being accurate.
So I went to the Eiteljorg Museum of Western Art today and talked to the folks in the resource center. They found me a book with musical scores of Western songs. They each had notes about the songs but I didn't see any mention of yodeling anywhere. This fit with Plantega's assertion that there is no written or recorded evidence of yodeling in any authentic cowboy songs. So, maybe Plantega's right.
I am at risk of getting way bogged down in the task of preparing my final product for this project. I want to use at least audio clips and so I took our kind professor's advice and downloaded the Audacious software so I could cut out short clips of songs. I am spending a lot of time fiddling around with that. We'll see how it goes.
2 comments:
Shellie - First of all, I love the "Twister board" analogy. That's hilarious, and I think that's often how students feel when trying to synthesize a lot of information into a cohesive unit.
Another interesting thing you bring up here is the question of authority. First, I wonder why in the world someone would write a book if he or she had little credibility in that area! I suppose a frustrated writer could search for topics with very few sources available and say, "I am going to write about 'X' since no one else has!"
It's something that I struggle to explain to my students, especially with websites. "Wikipedia is NOT a legitimate site!" I tell them. It's hard to explain to them exactly how to determine credibility beyond the site looking nice and being well-written. When it comes to books, I can't imagine trying to explain to a kid that a particular book isn't good enough for research!
Brian,
You know, I think that is exactly what happened with this author. He couldn't find any books about yodeling, so he wrote one.
Shellie
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