The Construct

Author’s Note: Did this quite hastily the day after the SONA. Forgot to click the Publish button.

I’ve been looking forward to Noynoy’s SONA not in a strictly political standpoint, but as a discourse analyst. Having wrestled with GMA’s nine SONAs, I’m intensely curious about the linguistic profile of Noynoy’s. Now that it has been delivered, I can give it a go.

Tagalugin mo kasi.The SONA contains 1,256 unique words with more than 60% of which are Filipino words. As such, analyzing the SONA’s text through existing semantic tagging software will be problematic since the software will fail to accurately tag 60% of the data. Interestingly, the “at” string, which can occur as both Filipino (as conjunction) and English (as preposition) only occurs as the Filipino conjunction.

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[R]ight now, you’ve got ability. But painful as it may be, ability don’t last. And your days are just about over. Now that’s a hard motherfuckin’ fact of life. But it’s a fact of life your ass is gonna hafta get realistic about. See this business is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don’t. -Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction

The Philippines hasn’t really been a football nation. Never mind if we used to be quite good at it and if Barcelona FC’s legend’s part Filipino. Only a few people would ever associate the town of Barotac Nuevo with football. Yet, for the past month, everyone’s into the sport thanks to the World Cup.

Who can blame people from showing interest? It’s suddenly fashionable.

And we can only expect it to be a flash in the pan in our consciousness. Much like pearl shakes, Havaianas, and badminton.

***

I wouldn’t say I hate people who suddenly found themselves interested in the game. I think it’s great that people suddenly find an interest in a team sport where our short stature are not necessarily liabilities unlike with basketball. The state of football locally is just plain dismal and a new interest in the sport might spark potential talent to explore it.

I just don’t like how some turn into soccer elitists despite being flash fans themselves. I don’t appreciate how they’d assert their new-found knowledge about the game as expert opinion and I don’t like how they berate others for not agreeing with them.

What do they really know anyway.

***

So Spain won and their run got a lot of Filipinos cheering for our former colonizers. Sense of history. Meh.

One of the huge reasons why I’ve become so jaded teaching in UP is the shifting demographics of the student population.

Usually, a discussion of starting salary’s one of the most interesting portions of my English 30 class. Everyone was keen on sharing their opinions on the matter.

Not these days. Today, it’s one of the shortest since the shared opinion is that “We don’t really have the pressure to earn so starting salary’s not an issue.”

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So for starters, Noynoy ordered that all siren-equipped (wang-wang in Filipino parlance) cars be brought to justice.

If simply for that reason, I can like the guy. I have, time and again, expressed my dislike for politician convoys that bully taxpaying motorists while on the road.

But his move of following the same rules for himself? I think that’s just plain bollocks. I don’t buy all that “So that the traffic rules will also apply to the president and that he’s not that different from the rest of you” malarkey.

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