My father was gunna name me Joaquin. Luckily, my mother shot that quasi-spiritual name down, which ironically my dad, was nothing of the sorts (he missed that Woodstock ’69 bus). My mom named me after her favorite living boxer, Nicaraguan hero Alexis Argüello. Biblically, Alexis means “God’s Helper”, and it comes from the Greek root Ἀλέξανδρος translated to Aléxandros.

Aléxandros, being the quasi-Nietzsche origin, that all other suffixes of “AL” derive from, despite an etymologist who can illustrate how Alexis became Alexis, I can confidently guess how it’s root name came about. Before I illustrate this, I will point out a general concept to the genesis of a word (specifically a name), where Saussure states—and as I input an example between parenthesis & brackets—

(pg.861) “…the linguistic signifier (sound-image of Alexis [Ah-lex-cis]), which is not phonic but incorporeal—constituted not by its material substance (concept of Alexis [God’s defender]), but by the differences that separates its sound-image from all others (Aléxandros; Alexandra; Alexo; Alex).

My argument, for today’s blog, occurs same page paragraph above, where Saussure downgrades the non-Saussure value of the sound, or phonetics, in being an equal, or possibly greater contributor to the creation of a Saussure sign.

To begin, lets consider how the Greek name Aléxandros came to be: generally speaking, the purpose of “naming” a human was to “identify” tribe members within. When humans began to “symbolize” objects/things—for example, (The Religion Book, pg. 22) the primal beliefs of the Sub-Saharan /Xam San, where they viewed the deity of the sky name /Kaggen, also know as Mantis (who could morph into a praying mantis) as the overseer of the earthly realm—the nomenclature of a given group would symbolize first names, by moral meaning (signified) first, and name (signifier) second: like in Aléxandros: The Defender, The Warder, etc.

My hypothesis is that: phonetics assisted by the moral meaning, was way more important than Saussure systemically believed. Staying with the name Aléxandros for the remainder of the essay, the name had to sound like its moral meaning. Specifically, it had to sound strong, grounded, higher purpose. So, how in the world do you create a name that represents these loosely based virtues? In the book, “Euphonic” by John Mitchell, firstly, to answer who became that nomenclature, JM states Greek philosopher Socrates reasoned “someone skilled in the art, having talent for making verbal imitations of things.” Continuing with Socrates (389D) “…must know how to embody in sounds and syllables the name of each object which is naturally appropriate to it.”

Now the fun part begins: I will break down the respective letters of “A-léx-an-dros”, illustrate its meaning given by JM, and decipher the eight separate meanings, by grouping the four syllabic vowels that are phonetically stressed. For note, I give deciding weight to the vowels, because it’s the sound utterance that the nomenclature intended to drive the syntax of the individual word; like in an opera, where the brass is the overtone, and the woodwinds are the undertones.

Eight Letter Meanings

1^st Syllabic Set

A – [vowel] characterize of uplift, whether in body or spirit

(ex. Audacious avian arise! Ascend aloft to azure skies.)

2^nd Syllabic Set

L – light and clarity

E – [vowel] short e too common to have individual character

X – paradox, suggestive, teasing

3^rd Syllabic Set

A – [vowel] refer above

N – inwardly denying

(ex. No, nay, non)

4^th Syllabic Set

D – implies loss or lessening, demotion, dismissal, diminution or degradation

R – rapidity and hardness

O – [vowel] noble, rolling, resounding, over-aweing

(ex. [Odysseus] Ocean, the source and origin of the gods.)

S – sibilant, amiable or hostile

Four Syllabic Meanings

1^st Syllabic Set

“A” being the only letter, thus:

Characteristic of uplift, whether in body or spirit

2^nd Syllabic Set

Sonically, light L quickly gives way to modest E, which extends toward a sustained sound for suggestive X, thus:

A paradox between light modesty and strong suggestiveness

3^rd Syllabic Set

Uplifting A greets negating N, thus:

Grounded

4^th Syllabic Set

Dismissal D, rapid R, and noble O sonically share equal weight, while sibilant S has extended aftertaste. Thus:

A rapid crescendo from underworld to the sky, and gradually curves down.

Conclusion:

Sonically, Aléxandros begins body/spirit lifted in air, finds itself modest, yet carnally suggestive, where it descends upon the firm earth, temporarily driving itself underground, where it springs out the earth, and returns to the sky, where it finally tapers off. In short, it is dynamically well aware of the three portions of earth, and has an inclination to return, hence the tapering toward the ground, to be friendly or hostile.

Returning back from poetry land, there are obvious holes in my argument, where (1) one could counter the entire phonetic alphabet and my conclusion, saying it’s not grounded by objectivity. Or let’s say you agree with my breakdown and agreement, with the moral meaning and root name, you could argue (2) other name-meaning pairs may not work, let alone in other languages. To you I say, [1] because there is no extensive research in a poetically phonetic alphabet, does not negate that there is an alphabet, which insinuates that sound has a greater play in sign-creating than Saussure believed; and [2] since no one has given a whack at proof-correlating root first names with moral meaning, again, doesn’t negate my attempt, and relative-impartiality to my argument.

Finally, the strongest case for phonetics is how relevant it is in U.S. entry-level job market. The unfortunate importance of first names, outweigh any biblically meaning, for it is undeservingly given association, by employers, to racial stereotypes relative to other (“white”) names. Evermore unfortunate, due to me already exceeding the word count, I can’t outline this argument concretely, but I will provide one National Bureau of Economic Research link in the bottom.

Thank you for your time.

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

In “The Eiffel Tower” Barthes argues that while being the universal symbol for Paris, visited by thousands of tourists each year and seen by every Parisian every day, the Tower is, in fact, nothing.  It is a signifier, something which humans appoint their own meaning to, derived from their own experiences and knowledge.  For some, the Tower might signify love and romance, for others, the glamor and high fashion of the city, and still for others it might be a symbol of the rise of modern innovation.  Each individual’s experiences and values shape the way the Tower speaks to them.  Barthes continues to say that “The Tower is an object which sees, a glance which is seen; it is a complete verb, both active and passive” (4).

How can the Tower see?  It isn’t the Tower itself that sees, but the visitors who make the climb to the top and look out.  What was unique about the Eiffel Tower (that isn’t so much anymore) is that the view to been seen from the top is a city.  A man-made nature.  Whereas one might have climbed a mountain for a view of the landscape, or the top of a ship’s mast to see the horizon, a climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower gives the viewer “a new nature, that of human space […] an immediate consumption of humanity made natural by that glance which transforms it into space.” (8).  

What is to be seen when you reach the top?  A panoramic, bird’s-eye view of Paris.  According to Barthes, the “marvelous mitigation of altitude the panoramic vision added an incomparable power of intellection” (9).  When we see the world from above, it gives us the feeling of understanding and intelligence, it “permits us to transcend sensation and to see things in their structure.” (9).  I don’t think it actually makes us smarter, but it’s nice to feel that way.  When we see our familiar city beneath us, we begin to unconsciously discern where we are in relation to familiar points.  The Eiffel Tower offers visitors the opportunity to reconstruct the city from above.  

In addition to the need felt to decipher the topography of Paris while in the Tower, there is the inevitability of imagining the growth of the city’s history, from small sections of land covered by water to what it is today, a modern city.  This is exactly what is done in the elevator of the Freedom Tower in Manhattan.  As you rise higher, the landscape transforms from a forest to farmland, then settlements, and a city, expanding to include buildings, piers, and bridges.   It makes you fathom the history of a place, and see it juxtaposed with the modernity before you.  This is even more so true with Paris, a city that is thousands of years older than New York.

The commercialization of the Tower was inevitable, with the installation of shops, restaurants, and vendors.  It is now a place where someone can have the complete experience of modern comfort; sights, sounds, food, and fun.  It is an open structure, yet encloses it’s own world, where “one can feel oneself cut off from the world and yet the owner of a world.” (17).

I hate phone calls. I especially loathe making calls. The thought of calling anyone fills me with an almost ridiculous amount of dread. However, I wouldn’t call it a phobia because there is no fear involved— I simply just don’t want to do it. Phone calls are annoying and unpleasant.

In this article Bogost begins by explaining that Millennials not only have a distaste for phone calls, but actually have a kind of “telephoniphobia”. Bogost states, “When asked, people with a distaste for phone calls argue that they are presumptuous and intrusive, especially given alternative methods of contact that don’t make unbidden demands for someone’s undivided attention.” I partially agree with this statement because speaking on the phone is intrusive and when one speaks on the phone there is this pressure to avoid awkward silences unlike texting where there is no such thing as awkward silences. You don’t have to have a whole conversation at once, if you decide to finish it at all. You don’t have to reply right away and you are not even expected to carry on a conversation in real time. You can reply to a text, carry on with your activities for as long as you like (be it minutes or hours) and simply pick up the phone, compose a text and continue the conversation when you want to. It’s a beautiful thing.

Bogost goes on to talk about the technical aspect of the telephone, thinking that perhaps the unreliability of wireless networks is to blame for the declining interest in phone calls among young people. He says: “On the infrastructural level, mobile phones operate on cellular networks, which route calls between transceivers distributed across a service area. These networks are wireless, obviously, which means that signal strength, traffic, and interference can make calls difficult or impossible.” I agree, my cell service is not the best sometimes but that isn’t a true reason why I prefer not to make phone calls. I think that what Bogost and older folks fail to realize is that texting is simply just a better option. Texting is asynchronous, low bandwidth (full attention not needed; answer when ready) and convenient in almost any situation— not to mention it is quiet and confidential. Calling is synchronous (both parties must be present at once), high bandwidth (full attention needed) and almost always inconvenient for one party (phone calls can be loud and not private). They also consume relatively long periods of time and in this day and age nobody has an extra hour and a half to spare on a conversation with their aunt about what wacky thing the cat did the other day.

Bogost concludes the article by saying: “It’s not the phone call we should hate, or the phone. Technology isn’t the true culprit of making us less intimate, it’s a lack of effort in each person to make it more personal. It’s the lack of time we make to fit another person into our busy, bustling lives”. I may sound brash by saying this but who cares? Perhaps I am bias because I am an introvert but I fail to see why the “decline of face to face social interaction” is such a big deal. I feel that these types of articles have a certain judgmental tone to them and I don’t understand why that is. Yes, we are social creatures by nature and so I understand that we need the company of other humans but what is so wrong with seeking that company digitally? We are still communicating with each other, we are just doing so in a way that is more convenient for us in this day and age. I think what most older folks fail to realize is that the world and its people are just NOT the way they were 20 or 30 years ago— people are too busy. The cost of living is ridiculously high and therefore people don’t have the luxury of meeting up for lunch or staring into each other’s eyes for an hour in order to satisfy that necessity for social interaction. Texting is just fine. Avoiding phone calls isn’t laziness or a phobia; texting is just a better option. If the technology is there and readily available why NOT use it? Make a phone call or send a text— who cares? We’re still talking aren’t we?

In 2017, phone calls are special. They’ve acquired a new intimacy, at least for myself, because of their rarity. I only ever call my family, my favorite take out places, or occasionally, a small handful of friends when they want to relay an important life update that’s too long to explicate over text. Bogost’s ‘Don’t Hate the Phone Call, Hate The Phone’ is a nuanced take on how the 21st century’s loss of interest in phone calls and its unique pecularities can be attributed to loss of quality, design failure, and a host of reasonable points. Yet, at times Bogost seems to veer dangerously close into ‘millennials have killed x’ territory; the thinkpiece sinkhole that has entrapped many an op-ed writer. It’s true that our world has been attempting to phase out the phone call bit by bit, but that doesn’t invalidate the new ways in which we connect with one another via technology, some of which do help us ‘reach out and touch someone’.

Bogost makes some salient points when he discusses how the auditory quality of phone calls have dwindled in this day and age. Part of this is the unreliability of the wireless networks that cell phone reception is now dependent on, coupled with the fact that phone calls are now only associated with emergencies and a sense of immediacy; meaning, a dropped call feels more dire than ever. The physical space that encompasses a phone call has changed as well. Telephony has always been relegated to static areas of privacy where one can hear and be heard more clearly as they talk inside a phone booth, or into a stationary landline phone at home, at the office, etc. But, the portability of smartphones has brought phone calls out into the public sphere where the person on the other line battles with a cacophony of city sounds.

Design is also an important factor in the shrinking aural, as well as tactile, qualities of telephone calls. Bogost particularly lauds the design of the Western Electric 500 telephone, the classic and easily recognizable mid century model. What made the Western Electric 500 different, and arguably better for speaking on the phone, is the weighty receiver that covers the entire ear and speaker that lays close to the mouth. It’s a fair point that smartphones are more concerned about hiding speakers as much as possible, flattening and hiding the technology so deep into the phone that it equally flattens and conceals the sounds of the phone call. However, Bogost is particularly hung up (pun intended) on the loss of sensory involvement and closeness in phone calls.”…the 500 handset’s ultimate victory was one of intimacy. The handset made telephone calls an undeniably carnal art, one in which a foreign apparatus came into close contact with one’s face, ear, and lips.” The evenly distributed weight of a Western Electric 500 phone in hand, the finality of pressing the phone down when hanging up, being able to twirl the cord around one’s finger in anxiety or anticipation of what’s to be said on the other line; these are all ways the telephone call and all that it meant physically extended into the speaker/listener. “The handset made telephony a tactile activity as much as an auditory one.”

Yet, it is unfair to suggest that this experience has been eliminated entirely. Even Bogost himself admits that he is not ignorant of the ability of our touch screens to connect us to one another, only that he laments that the innovation of objects like the Western Electric 500 isn’t present in the oversaturated, app obsessed world. I counter that apps like Facetime have become a new form of telephony that still involves tangibility but in different and unique ways. When opening a Facetime “call”, it rings as you wait for the other person to pick up. You’re met with a satisfying whirr when the face of your loved one pops up on the screen. You are able to simultaneously hear the other’s person voice and see their facial expressions and body language, which helps further contextualize what is being said and what the other person means. Not to mention, there is a smaller square of yourself in the corner where you can catch glimpses of your own unconscious reactions. You hold your phone in your hand and can adjust the angle of the camera in a variety of ways, depending on what you’re trying to show the other person.  Just as the “handset grew warmth with use”, heat emanates from your iPhone when you’ve been talking for hours, as if the phone matches the warmth and closeness you feel with a person with whom conversation seems endless. Some of these telephony-like sensations still persist through this new mode of communication.

Ultimately, time goes by, Western Electrics fall out of use, and sound and image is combined in the 21st century as a new way to call each other, for better or worse. But, the unceasing human desire to create new ways to connect with one another continues to evolve and millennials be damned or not, that’s still something worth celebrating.

Roland Barthes’s “The Eiffel Tower”, is an essay commenting on the duality of meaning behind the famed landmark. This universal symbol of Paris and travel, he states, is in actuality quite useless; it is a structure comprised of beams and metal, giving off an essence of exteriority. Although he agrees that there was a stated “purpose”, almost an excuse, for building the tower, which is its scientific usage and significance, he states that ultimately, “the Tower is nothing, it achieves a kind of zero degree of the monument; it participates in no rite, no cult, not even in Art; you cannot visit the Tower as a museum: there is nothing to see inside the Tower”(7). In fact, it is true; when we enter the Tower, we see everything in Paris but itself, because the landmark becomes the point from which we observe.

His argument about its duality comes later in the essay, in which he conceives this supposedly meaningless monument as a sign representing a multitude of conflicting ideals. While most signs, as in Saussure’s philosophy, function in the sense that “Dog” refers us to an image of a furry creature which pants and barks, the Tower, in Barthes’s mind, does something completely different. The writer considers the landmark “a pure signifier, of a form in which men unceasingly put meaning[…]without this meaning thereby ever being finite and fixed”(5). Signs are usually defined by a specific, narrow signified, and the vastness of what that signified is not. The Tower is a sign in the sense that it signifies something, but because it signifies a great deal of ideas, it does not function in the way that signs typically do.

Barthes’s idea of what the tower allows us to do contributes to its duality. When we go to the top, we enter into an experience where we can see everything. We are so far away from Paris, and yet have a better understanding of it as a whole because the entirety of its landscape is laid out for us. This distance also affects our understanding of humanity as well. We can see the residential areas, the commercial areas, the business areas: all aspects of human life. Yet, the height functions as a barrier, keeping us from it. The landscape of Paris also evokes a sense of history and modernity at the same time. Being up high in this metal structure, which represents the modern experience, allows us to think about how Paris must have changed over the years. We can see its historic buildings, for example the Notre-Dame and the Pantheon. However, we also can consider the modern Paris, with the Radio-Television building or the UNESCO building.

The author says that “the Tower can live on itself: one can dream there, eat there, observe there, understand there, marvel there, shop there[…]one can feel oneself cut off from the world and yet the owner of the world”(17). While I agree that our commercialization of and familiarization with the tower allows us to make ourselves comfortable with it, I think that the landmark’s transformation into what I’d like to call a “super-sign”, does not allow us to “own” it. The Tower, as Barthes describes, is full of duality. It contains and represents history and modernity, connection and disconnection, humanity and lack thereof. If signs are supposed to allow us to define and categorize, the Tower’s lack of specificity in meaning makes it indefinable. The monument therefore shows us that experience is not rigid, that meaning is fluid and comes at us from unexpected places. The fact that it means so many things to us gives it a kind of ambiguity; the Tower is not controllable, just like the human experience itself.

Men used to court women for weeks and months at a time before asking her out on a date. Nowadays, people can swipe right across your screen on Tinder and the app will match a couple up. With technology advancing as fast as it has in the past several decades, things are bound to change.  These days, you can order pizza, listen to music, chat with your friend, read a book, and even go shopping without getting out of bed. Technology has completely changed the way we live our lives compared to how it was decades ago. In Ian Bogost’s “Don’t Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone,” he talks specifically about how the phones and phone calls have changed since landlines were popular.

Bogost begins by explaining that Millennials not only have a distaste for phone calls, some actually have a kind of telephoniphobia. With chat apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, and texting, interacting with people have changed to less personal means of communication. Bogost states, “When asked, people with a distaste for phone calls argue that they are presumptuous and intrusive, especially given alternative methods of contact that don’t make unbidden demands for someone’s undivided attention.” I agree with what people stated in regards to phone calls. The way technology has shaped the way we interact, leaves phone-to-ear conversations obsolete. We use our cell phones in our everyday lives. We spend most of our daily lives on the go and we use our cell phones whenever we have a small break, whether it is ordering coffee, riding the train, or while running errands. An incoming phone call can be intrusive or presumptuous if you’re in the middle of a meeting or in class. As technology advances, the way we do things become easier and quicker but we have also become busier because we are able to tend to more obligations leaving us little time to spend talking over the phone and directing us towards texting.

Cell phones nowadays are designed in a way where it isn’t easy to talk live on the cellphone as compared to landlines in the 20th century. Bogost mentions, “On the infrastructural level, mobile phones operate on cellular networks, which route calls between between transceivers distributed across a service area. These networks are wireless, obviously, which means that signal strength, traffic, and interference can make calls difficult or impossible.” Cellular networks are unreliable, calls get dropped, the audio is subpar, and with signal loss as well, telephoning through a cell phone is untrustworthy and unpredictable, therefore, unlikely to initiate a phone call.

The Western Electric model 500 was a popular phone in the 20th century. The phone was designed to conform to the ergonomics of listening and speaking. It had a solid feel yet not too heavy to hold it for long periods of time. There were many ways to hold it, whether you grasp it at its center, cradle at the rounded mouthpiece, or wedged between the ear and shoulder. It was a tool made for the sole purpose of telephoning. As technology advanced, the phone’s shape begin to change and shrink until it is a flat rectangular piece we’re used to today. The tiny microphones and speakers are designed to be hidden inside the piece making sound difficult to be projected in and out of the device. Bogost finally states, “Telephone calls haven’t declined because we have become anxious or lazy. They’ve fallen out of favor because using the telephone feels mechanically ungainly as much as socially so.” I wholeheartedly agree with this. Cell phones are typically used for almost everything but phoning. Its whole design is made to make phone calls less convenient. The device is constructed to do more than that, it is designed to match the era we live in; it is designed to match our fast paced, efficient, and bustling lives.

Telephoning is a means to interact with another person on a more intimate level than texting or using a chat app. The telephone or landline was invented as a tool to communicate with another person, just as a cell phone is. Many people complain, with technology now, texting and chat apps have driven us to be more cold and distant in comparison to calling someone but ultimately, we forget that though calling may be more personable, it does not replace face-to-face interaction. These tools, both landlines and cellphones were created to make socializing and interacting quicker but both at a cost of losing intimacy. Before the invention of these devices, we would rendezvous with a friend for lunch to talk about each other’s’ lives. Technology has replaced this in the 20th century with landlines, and now with cell phones. It’s not the phone call we should hate, or the phone. Technology isn’t the true culprit of making us less intimate, it’s a lack of effort in each person to make it more personal. It’s the lack of time we make to fit another person into our busy, bustling lives.

I do not call people. Ever. Anyone I need to reach can be contacted via text, or in some cases email, and when it comes to takeout, GrubHub is a life saver. Until reading this article, I largely placed my fear of speaking on the phone on my social anxiety, but that of course does not make much sense when calling my grandmother, who in no way should trigger that. Now that I have read Ian Bogost’s article “Don’t Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone”, my fears of speaking on the phone, which I can now classify as “telephoniphobia,” have a very reasonable explanation.

Bogost starts his argument by first explaining the reason why we hate the call. When asked why people hate phone calls, the answer is that they are “presumptuous and intrusive, especially given alternative methods of contact that don’t make unbidden demands for someone’s undivided attention,” and this is true. When it comes to emails or texts, one can take as long as they feel necessary to reply, or even ignore it all together. Like Bogost also mentions, texts and emails also let people craft their ideas when responding rather than saying what comes to their minds first, which is what happens in most “live” conversations. He then goes on to explain that these reasons are not the only ones that make us shy away from picking up the phone.

He goes onto explain how cellular networks, and the lack of reliability of them, add to our stress of calls. The “cellular infrastructure has conditioned us to think of phone calls as fundamentally unpredictable affairs.” The cutting in and out of voices when trying to carry out a conversation is very annoying, and can easily be avoided by texting. On top of this, if you are able to have a phone call with great connection, you will most likely be struggling to hear one another do to the fact of all the background noises of the street you are walking down or the coffee shop you are in, but the background noise may not even be the real problem. Bogost argues that the fact we can talk to one another on our cellphones anywhere we want is, at the core, the reason that phone calls are not the marvelous thing they used to be.

Because of our new, small, made perfectly for the pocket cell phones, the “Western Electric model 500” no longer dominates our phone call experience. In Bogost’s argument, this phone model is the signifier for a sort of “ideal” phone. Not only is it the symbol in which we still connect to phones, but it also holds a much deeper meaning. The phone’s design “maximized the telephone’s ability to contain and direct speech while limiting noise pollution and increasing privacy.” On top of that, Bogost argued that there was some sort of intimacy connected to the phone, not only through the way it felt, but also in the action of the phone call it was used for. He finishes the article by saying “That icon on your phone app isn’t just an icon for a function, it turns out. It’s also an icon for a complex of feelings and sensations, all of which once added up to the tingly-anticipation of connecting your body to someone else’s through a molded plastic housing over a copper wire.” This statement, written with a little too much admiration for a phone, does stir up some feelings of sadness that this experience has been taken away from modern times, but I do not think our modern cell phones have taken away the ability to “connect” with people through our cellular devices.

iMessage and FaceTime are both ways of communication that most of the younger generations cling to, and while texting may be a stretch in terms of intimate connection, FaceTime, I feel, can be equivalent to the “connection” phone calls used to have. Getting to see the face of the person you are talking to is an amazing way to feel close to them, and because of the need for wifi and/or data to use this video chatting app, most of the time people are FaceTiming in a more private setting. I do not think just because the beloved landline is gone that so is connection over calls. While this article is a great one in explaining why most people no longer like to make phone calls, I also feel as though it is just another “shaming millennials for their generation’s advancements,” or “millennials are killing phone calls” type of article.