Actual line from one of my course readings:
"We may approach the process of entextualization in performance in formal and functional terms by exploring the means available to participants in performance situations to render stretches of discourse discontinuous with their discursive surround, thus making them into coherent, effective, and memorable texts."
I'm taking suggestions on what you think this means, because I have no idea...
(The article is "Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life" by Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs, just in case you want to check out the full text. It's good reading, I tell you what.)
-hbc
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"We may approach the process of entextualization in performance in formal and functional terms by exploring the means available to participants in performance situations to render stretches of discourse discontinuous with their discursive surround, thus making them into coherent, effective, and memorable texts."
Translation: "This sentence exists solely to prove that I am smarter than you."
I've taken to turning on subtitles when watching The Wire (which is the greatest unwatched television drama ever). I often have a hard time understanding the drug dealers' conversations. I wonder if the writers of the show employ linguistic anthropologists...
"discourse discontinuous with their discursive surround..."
This is how hoity-toity english types have fun. Normal people bet on football games, hockey games or movie plots. They bet on things like 'hey, I bet you can't make a sentence where 3 of 5 words in a row all start with the prefix 'dis'...
But I guess once you have a PhD, you need to up your standards a bit... :)
I can't believe with all of the education you people have you can't figure out such a simple phrase. What it says in plain and simple English is "When you write in such a way that people can't understand what you are saying, it is because you aren't saying it in a way that they could understand if you said it in a way that they would know what you were talking about when it is obvious you know what you are talkng about but they don't know what you are talking about because the way you said it isn't in a way they can understand it, but then if you said it in a way they could understand it you wouldn't be saying it in a way that showed you knew what you were talking about and then of course they wouldn't be able to understand you because you wouldn't be able to understand yourself."
disDad discovered discourse disengagable
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