The Construct

Have we really reached the tipping point? A lot of people have been killing themselves recently but the one that still sticks to my mind was the case of Janeth Ponce.

On Tuesday [September 9], Janeth Ponce, 32, forced three of her children to drink a bottle of liquid toilet bowl cleaner before drinking the same substance herself in Magdalena town in Laguna province. Television reports said Ponce’s husband worked as a construction worker in Manila and has not been able to send them money for over a month.

Former cabinet member Dinky Soliman labeled the case as a reflection of how Filipino society is reaching its ‘tipping point.’

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I hate the Filipino mobile phone culture. I hate how it became a status symbol. I hate how people let their phones govern their lives. I hate how companies developed this mobile lifestyle equating phone use to necessity. To some extent it has become one but isn’t it ironic how people have money to burn for credits and yet complain how their wages just won’t suffice.

For me phones are simply pang-text and pantawag. I own a year-old Nokia 6020. It has SMS and MMS capabilities and a crappy 1.3 MP camera. And even my scope of use doesn’t maximize its capabilities. The phone still works fine but it’s casing had seen better days.

I happened to be washing my car yesterday and spied our neighbor’s help fiddling with her phone. It was one of those fancier ones. I didn’t feel sorry for myself, I felt sorry for my phone. On the pecking order of cellphone elitism, even our neighbors’ help’s cellphone would put my trusty phone to shame.

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This post is an offshoot to a Plurk I posted to which only Jester was gracious enough to oblige with comments and I’m following it up with this post.

Today’s the day many Filipino bloggers have been waiting for – the 2008 Philippine Blog Awards night. I wish every nominee the best of luck. I do think that the PBA is a great effort in acknowledging the effort and talent that Filipino bloggers poured into their blogs.

Still, I’d like to bring up a key issue regarding this effort. The PBA has so much at stake for one not be critical about it. Every blog nominated and every winner will be elevated to an elite status that virtually raises the credibility and authority of the blog as far as the Pinoy blogosphere is concerned. Whenever we have an institution doing this, we are subscribing to the idea that these awardees, are indeed, the best of what the Philippine blogosphere has to offer.

The important question – How do we decide which blog is “the best”?

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Who would have thought that a thesis on blogging would require so much theorizing. Since I have yet to encounter other critical discourse analysts’ application of methods and frameworks to blogging, I am in the process of shaping a framework and method that I can apply to my target data. However, in the process of settling with the basic concepts that I am to use, I meet a roadblock as to how I’d define ‘authority.’

As with words, one can go to the most general definitions of the word and consult a dictionary for denotations. Here’s a part of Merriam-Webster’s entry that I find readily applicable to this discussion:

Noun
1 a (1) : a citation (as from a book or file) used in defense or support (2) : the source from which the citation is drawn b (1) : a conclusive statement or set of statements (as an official decision of a court) (2) : a decision taken as a precedent (3) : TESTIMONY c : an individual cited or appealed to as an expert
2 a : power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior b : freedom granted by one in authority : RIGHT
synonyms see INFLUENCE, POWER

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Author’s Note: This is a take in progress. I’m constantly revising this despite its published state.

This take will focus on the Philippine case and will be a quick one too. I have been doing studies and short papers on English use by Filipinos over the Internet and I have to acknowledge the sheer difficulty of managing such endeavors.

More than once, a student has knocked on my door and consult with me on how to go about researching Internet-based data. While I do have senior colleagues who have more experience doing language research, I would be bold enough to say that among us, I bear a relatively deeper understanding of the technology. And it can’t be denied that doing language research on the Internet demands that. To some extent, I pity these students, since researching about the topic is no walk in the park and they get to talk to a greenhorn to help them understand some concepts regarding the phenomenon.

With this take, I am simply presenting my hypotheses on the possible obstacles that Filipino language scholars who are studying Internet data can encounter during research. Most of these takes are based on observations from my own research and some from shared insights with students consulting with me.

If by any chance, my takes criticize the people and resources in our field, then probably that’s the first thing that I have to acknowledge. In my opinion, English language research in the Philippines involves a lot of brilliant scholars but is (perhaps a decade) behind in terms of output and diversity compared to the rest of the world.

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