Blog 6

The foodaway concept this week was very interesting. I suppose I overlook the importance of food in culture. I think of cultural traditions or festivities when I think about culture but food is probably the most identifiable aspect in a person's culture. It was amazing and sad how the Indians in Northern Washington were deprived of hunting whale which was a huge part of their tradition. The whale which was used as a means of food was also utilized in other ways and it was ultimately very symbolic to their culture. The mere ban of hunting whale made their culture incomplete. The rice in South Carolina was an identity to the geechee people. Rice was an overlooked cash crop during the 19th century. The slaves that cultivated the rice ate the rice and created their own community and cultural group based on this particular food. They take pride in how the rice is cook and the rice identifies their past and where they came from. In Hawaii the poy is very symbolic to the people because it is a difficult plant to cultivate, thus has meaning behind its challenge to grow. It is a staple food amongst them and is eaten every day. They expressed that their culture simply would not be the same without this particular food. The influence of food in a person or society's culture is simply fascinating and before I saw the video I didn't realize how important food is especially on my mom's side of the family. My mom tells me all the time that she could not live without her rice and beans. The Mexican food she grew up with is such a big part of her. The tradition and culture behind food is relative to tradition and culture behind even the Latin jokes I am researching because my mom told me that there is a saying or joke in Mexico related to food, and if you eat a certain food it means that you are poor or dirty, so food really correlates immensely into culture.

Blog 5

The concept this week was to grasp how stories are told. I did not realize that myth, urban legend, folktales, and personal narratives were so different from each other. Personal narrative was by far the easiest to separate from the others because it is a story told from the personal perspective of a person. Myth, urban legend, and folktale all meshed together in my perspective before this week. I though myth was known to be untrue to everyone, but really, it is the explanation of something to be true when no other explanation is provided. Urban legend is more untrue and we as a group synthesized that it usually has to do with a great person or real event that was once true but because a popular story for the meaning behind it. Folktale was a little easier as well because all of us as a group thought about the childhood stories and Disney movies as fairy tales. Also, poplar children's books were the representation of fairy tales for us. Folktales always have a moral meaning behind it like snow white's meaning was that good, honest people always prevail and little red riding hood's moral was to not talk to strangers. I thought the Noah's Ark interview was very interesting because it ties into our anthropology class very well. The author looked at the Noah's Ark story from the perspective of all the people that were condemned and that God was killing. She told the story from an insider's perspective which is similar to what anthropologists try to do when doing research in understanding humanity and how other cultures work. They try to see the culture through a different lens. Similarly, that is what I am doing in my research project fro the class because I have to really get in touch with the Latino culture to see why they would think some jokes are funny over others. I have to look at the reasoning for this not as an American cultured person, but a Latino cultured person.

Blog 4

This week's lesson is very similar to my project because we discussed jokes and how they can be offensive. My research is a  tad bit different in the aspect that I am trying to find out what constitutes as funny to the Latino culture based on their culture and why. Some of our classmates got a laugh of the milder jokes on the topic of ebonics and i thought some were pretty funny as well. Perhaps the Latino culture would not find these jokes funny or perhaps they will also find the jokes funny. My guess is that since they are a minority, they may not find jokes that are racist in nature as humorous. What kinds of jokes do Latinos find offensive? My interviewing process is just getting started so I will obtain that data soon. Also, the topic in class about dialect and accent will play into a bit part of my research. I think Americans as a whole like to poke fun at jokes when someone portrays an accent or speaks with different dialect to mimic or mock a different speech pattern. Latinos may not find any types of these jokes to be humorous because they too sometimes have an accent and/or different dialect than other English speakers in this country. Or maybe they just don't find jokes funny that are offensive to others in general. The topic in class about dialect was very informative and gave me a sense of just how linguistically different the United States is and how people can judge others based on their accent or dialect. Also, one can sometimes tell what part of the country a person is from based on their language. The dialect of a person usually has to do a region or group of people they grew up with, thus language is a clue to understanding culture.Like the ebonics example shows us that ebonics is culturally common amongst African Americans because of their slave roots and simplified English from lack of formal learning of the language.