A significant portion of the time I am able to anticipate the ‘punchline’ that makes the story funny before the storyteller has come to the point of saying it. This is not a situation where there is somethign specific in the actual wording of the ‘punchline’ but rather a general event or circumstance that happened upon the person and the ultimate reason why this story is being relayed. I have also developed a habit (most likely an annoying one), of laughing before the punchline is reached as i have already anticipated what is going to happen. I have also noticed that no-one else seems to do this.

I assume that other people are also recognising where the story is going. Something humorous is expected in the story, we can read this by the delivery style of the story and the conversational context within it is inserted. The story is also usually setting up a situation – a particular environment, certain people – which open up the listener of the embarrassing circumstance or whatever that is about to occur in the narrative. So why don’t people laugh when they come to the realisation?

People in fact usually wait until the storyteller delivers the punchline, or vocalises the event after the setup, before they break into bouts of laughter. This laughter does not have the signals of being forced, but rather is usually spontaneous and sincerely lived out. So it is unlikely they are waiting to laugh after realising the joke.

This makes me reflect on the telling of story as a performance which the audience as well in some respect is contributing to by laughing at the punchline and not before it, by allowing the story to unfold and then erupting. It’s possible even that teh audience is not trying to anticipate the punchline, but is rather letting the story teller perform their delivery – to be part of the performance is to remain purposefully ignorant of what is going to happen (this may account for the spontaneity). Further what is humorous is not simply what happened but also the delivery of the person (you can see the power of delivery by observing the amount of actually unfunny comedic lines which invoke roars of laughter from audiences). To consider this to be true we may want to think of an example where a very funny punchline is unfunny due to the poor delievry.

To reiterate what i mentioned before and what now occurs to me as the most important point, that the telling of a humorous story is something not simply created by a skilled story teller but also by a skilled audience which is able to wait and recognise the punchline and respond appropriately to it. When we engage with the joke, we do so according to conventions and to create some sort of theatrical scene’ which culminates with our laughter, an overall performance that requires both audience and storyteller working together.

This was a very emotional time for my mother. For many weeks prior to leaving the house she would call me to speak about her grievances with leaving the house, her friends, and her routines. In particular the house held special importance as it was perhaps one of teh most significant, physical reminders of my brothers presence. Certain objects they were able to keep: a desk, a bmx and a handcrafted furniture, but the room which he had lived in was to be left behind. My mum had occupied his old bedroom since his death, as a quasi study/relax room/multi-purpose room (my parents also had another study). Part of the process for my parents of leaving this house and the room behind was to paint it a new colour – a a slight transformation of the now bare room and wall from the original colour associated with his presence. Perhaps this made it easier for them to leave. A conscious effort to bury a part of him they had become attached to over the years so that they might move on. Of course, they had actually left some remnants of him  – a set of glow in the dark stars on the ceiling – as if his own way of inhabiting this room might be one day taken up by the new child occupant; their son living on.

This is not exactly what I want to talk about in this post, but I think it really does tie in for me the sentimentality that people associate with homes and objects, and I think to a deeper degree, my belief that leaving behind a place in which you inhabited for so long, was the closest I had experienced that to encountering death since my brother had died.

Of course I have been living out of home for the past 6 years. I had not experienced this sense of sadness  when I originally left permanently.  Although, I always did have the chance to return, though this was usually for short periods of time. Now, whilst I initially dismissed any emotional ties, being fairly dismissive of my mums responses, I gradually found and especially towards the final days an unexpected sentimentality and final sad good by to the house of my childhood.

What bothered me though, what struck me as important were the small things. That never again would I be able to open the fold out cupboard door beneath the kitchen bench and reach down with my left hand to grasp the cutting board. Or to grab with two hands the handles of the pantry and throw the doors open, letting the warm and sweet air of biscuits and spices wash over my sense (alot of good memories for me are from the kitchen). Or to gaze out the kitchen window over the pool and garden at a 3:15 in the afternoon. Thinking about it now, these experiences became intensely unique in the moments you realise that you will never be able to perform such an action again. That you began to appreciate them, these mundane but irreplaceable ways of being.

Iit reminds me of those who come close to death and have a ‘realisation’ at the importance of life in its entirety. Even if a moment is repeated ad nausea throughout your entire life, that very experience is unique within a context that cannot be replicated anywhere else. To miss something, and to feel loss, is to perhaps recognise that fact. The loss is that I will never be able to revisit my ways of inhabiting that space. A space whose character is dependent on my parents having occupied it as well.

I can imagine now, opening the folding cupboard door below the kitchen bench – it is a memory of that experience – but, i can never revisit that experience ever again and its from this the sadness would stem. The familiar possibilities that I had grown up with are now to be denied to me. The way I inhabited the house and in some sense the way in which the house inhabits myself and is an aspect on my own identity is accessible no longer.

This is how I feel about the loss of my brother. Particular ways that I used to hang out with him, play with him or fight with him, are possibilities of engaging with the world that I can never revisit again. The greatest pain I would experience is the thought of him and then realisation that I could never live out that thought. I am denied by the brute reality of his non-accessibility. Even a loved one who leaves forever to another country never to return – surely that teh memory of them does not cause the same pain, since some part of you is aware that the possibility of encountering them again, however small may be fulfilled.

Anyway, point is, is that whenever I get the red squiggle I simply go to google, type in the word in the search engine and get the consensus on whether it is used commonly. If so, I accept its correctness and have again outsmarted my automatic dictionary.

Of course, this does not guarantee that it is an (officially) accepted word that one would find in a dictionary. Just because a large number of people have used it does not mean its ‘good’ or ‘proper’ use of English – whatever that might be. This is how I imagine new words to be created, by its prolific usage within the vernacular. New words get accepted as part of the vocabulary if there is a persitent shared usage and a shared meaning. If we’ve got a another 10000 blog writers in the world with as poor use of the English language as I do, and we each share the same mistake (or creation of – depending how you look at it) surrounding a certain word, such as ‘constructionalisation’ (i dont believe this is a word and im getting a red squiggly line), the this must certainly help elevate it to a real word status.

Actually on googling ‘constructionalisation’, it turns out it is actually a word that is being used. Out of the frst three posts:

1) ANU – linguistics pdf

“3d. CONVENTIONALISATION OF THE WHOLE CONSTRUCTION (CONSTRUCTIONALISATION). The
construction now has a specific meaning of its own and it may not be possible to restore any
ellipsed material.”

fair enough. whatever that means.

2) In a forum

A: “Zardoz, dont you speak the queens english? Constructionalisation, what else would you call it? Building work?”

B: “No. i would have called it construction. Like everybody else would.”

A word having no relation to the meaning of the prior example, and actually a poor and confused expression of a pre-existing word”

3)Chinese thesis

“The Constructionalisation and Comparison of Use Intention Model in Electronic Learning Market”

With the amount of non native English speakers writing on the net in English must surely lead to creative mistakes of words.  Most of the 540 hits on google were related to the repeated reference to this academic paper.

I wonder how many words are beign created, used and reaffirmed each day? Are there any stats on this? Can they be correlated with internet usage? Who is determining these new words?

She made the interesting point that when in the midst of a conversation, what comes out of her mouth has not had precedent as a thought inside her head. That her thinking is not only done by speaking it out loud, but also embedded within a conversation. That is, the expressed thoughts that are mouthed during chatter are at time ill-formed and open to contextual influence notably by the previous response of your conversational partner. This is most likely to occur it seems to me, when one has an vaguely formed opinion that has yet to be properly explored/considered.

There is some truth to this I think.  Old models of the mind give a very clear and reasonable view on how speaking ‘works’. To be crude about it – a thought emerges in the head and this causes sound to emerge. Yet this is not the case -  if you read conversational transcripts, speech is a very messy and spontaneous affair – it certainly doesnt reflect the meaningful coherence of writing

On the other hand I mentioned how at times I believe that in some situations the real meaning of my words are not in the content itself – as if they reflect some preconceived belief but rather the role they play in negotiating power within relationships (I am also a very competitive person so perhaps that is just me). Point is though, at times words could be simply noise that are driven by the undercurrent of emotional engagement between the two conversational partners. In a conversation where each person is trying to up each other, the words only serve the capacity to win the argument. Or in a humorous exchange, words and content and even memories and beliefs are subject to bending a lil in order to maintain a back and forth rhythmic banter.

Of course, as it turns out and far from surprising, the man was more interested in striking up a relationship and finding out if we could be part of our cricket team – citing his excessive use of facebook and recent moving to Sydney as to why he’s looking for some sort of social activity. Upon realising that he was not from one of the three categories, and with aid of my generally open hearted friend, I became relatively relaxed in his presence as we discussed a number of topics.

What interested me the most about this conversation is the types of topics that he brought up with us – in particular about his experience of sydney and certain cultural differences between here and his birth country Pakistan. What exactly they all were alludes me as this conversation was a while ago but I do remember was there was some discussion about his experience of a open gay communities in Australia, how he was  intially taken a-back, but then coming to terms and and accepting the community. This conversation then moved onto the presence of homosexuals and third genders in Pakistan. Inherent in the themes was expressing his alignment with cultural attitudes in Australia, and similarities between the culture here (whether it be homosexuals and cricket) and the culture ‘at home’. Thinking of it now there was also some talk of closed immigrant communities and how he failed to identify with them

It must be incredibly difficult at times to attempt to engage with not only a new set of people. Rarely do I ever have to approach another group of people unless I have some formal arrangement set to begin and structure our interactions. Work for instance would be an example, sporting teams another, or maybe even a shared friend. Even more difficult would it be having to come into contact with a groups of people where you identify yourself and them as culturally dissimilar.

How does a person like the ‘Pakistani’ man we were speaking to and others like him – who attempt to engage in relationships with others outside of formal engagements – imagine others and imagine themselves? From where do they obtain their ideas of how to compose themselves when meeting another and how the other might respond? Do people from different cultural backgrounds position themselves differently when engaging with ‘locals’?

These same problems upon further reflection relate to the Anthropologist (though in some respects she/he has a mask to hide behind) who attempts to create some sort of open and continuing engagement with a cultural other. Anthropologist Michael Jackson noted that any sort of inquisitiveness or direct questioning of his informant Fred was considered unsuccessful though, meaning the mask of the curious outsider is not exactly successful.  It was only through work and shared embodied experience that understanding and trust was formed, stories shared and friendship made.