In Class Writing #2: The Story of Nacirema

            During class, I did not know what "Nacirema" really meant. I thought it was a real tribe that exists in North America. During class, I wrote about the reason why Nacirema had a strange culture that was described in the print out and that the world should try to protect and preserve it. I spend a lot of time thinking about this passage but did not recognize what "Nacirema" really means until class ended. This is what I wrote during class without knowing the meaning with a little revision. 

The Story of Nacirema

           We are waiting for the oven to open. We can smell the sweat smell and hear the crispy baking sound. The bell rings and we open the oven. Surprisingly, instead of a delicious cookie or bread, there is a woman who is baking her head. Of course, this is extremely unusual to us, but for Nacirema, a North American group, it is just a part of a ceremony.  Like this, Nacirema have an unique tradition that shocks the world. This tribe has these traditions because of the following two reasons.

           First, the culture of Nacirema has a tradition that has a long history for a long period of time. To anthropologist and us, it is a concept that we have never seen before. It is not natural to make a hole in their teeth to arrest decay and to draw friends. To people who have never experienced this, it seems inhuman. However, to this tribe, it is their everyday life. The culture has been created from ancestors and has a history. Thus, people do not question or analyze this but accept it as their life. For example, to other people, it is disgusting to eat a snail in France. However, this dish has passed down from ancestors and French people just eat it without thinking what it wrong. Thus, these traditions are not strange to them because the long history has made it familiar.

           Moreover, the people have developed a sadistic specialist. Most of the tradition is very violent. It seems like the people inflicting the pain and receiving the pain both enjoy it. The personality structure of this tribe is different from others. Furthermore, these people enjoy violent tradition that involves pain. For instance, the medicine men make a hole in the teeth. When doing this, the medicine men, patient, and observers smile and are interest, instead of crying of pain. Plus, they scrap and lacerate the surface of their faces with sharp instruments. To majority of people, it will hurt and we will try to avoid this. However, to this sadistic people, it is their entertainment and joy.

           All in all, the Nacirema culture is becoming an interest to many anthropologists. This is done because it is an old tradition and these people have a sadistic behavior. It will seem crazy and mad to the world but these Nacirema people think it is natural. As long as this tradition does not disappear within the tradition, we should not destroy it. The world should respect and help preserve this culture.

 

         After class ended, friends began to talk about the topic. When they said "Nacirema" was the opposite spelling of "American", I could not believe it. I felt very futile because I wrote the essay with a lot of effort thinking it was a real tribe. I lost the chance to write a better essay knowing the true meaning of "Nacirema" and the author's style. Instead I decided to research about the Body Ritual Among the Nacirema.

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema by Horace Miner (Text of the original version)

Key to Helping You Re-read
 

Notgnishaw, the Pa-To-Mac, and the cherry tree with the Spirit of Truth	America lies between Canada and Mexico.
Shrines with a box or chest in the wall	Bathrooms with medicine cabinets
Medicine men	Doctors
Ancient Code/Secret Language	Refers to the Joke that a doctor’s handwriting is illegible, particularly on prescriptions
Herbalist	Pharmacist
Substantial Gift	High prices of prescriptions
Font	Sink
Holy water	Holy water
Holy Mouth Men	Dentists
Ritual ablution of the mouth for children	Cleaning their mouths out with soap if they say something wrong
Small bundle of hog hairs and certain magical powders	Toothbrush and toothpaste
Highly formalized series of gestures	Brushing teeth
Men scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument	shaving
Women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour	Old-fashioned hair dryer at a beauty salon
Latipsoh	Hospital
Thaumaturge and group of vestal maidens	Doctor and nurses
Magic wands in the supplicant's mouth	Thermometer
Listener	Psychologist
Limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon	Birth control pills
Phrases in story	True Meaning

         In this text, in order to understand it fully, we have to know that "Notgnihsaw" is the opposite word of "Washington". Plus, if you write "Latipso" oppositely, it is "Hospital". Horace Miner wrote about how the Americans were during the 1950s. Common daily life such as going to the dentist, taking medicine was described critically. The writer wanted to say that culture is based on rituals and that each culture defines its reality, acceptable behavior, and authorities by rituals. These rituals help us discover our knowledge because the rituals that the authority follows knows the truth as our society defines it. Sociologists define rituals as what you do on a regular basis, repeated over time. Rituals support social order and roles and shared sets of values holds people together. Since rituals enforce these roles and values, they create social solidarity. Rituals are part of what makes a society; therefore, we must think outside the box that is America’s way of viewing things.

 All the people who was explained about "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" were tricked.

 

               This really impressed me because the author is also a part of the tribe. He is an American who is doing the daily routines explained in the treatise. He goes to the dentist, take medicine, brushes his teeth, shaves, and go to hospital if he is sick. The way he described these actions was like looking from the eye of someone who had never did this before. Explaining this like a real unique tribe tricked all the people including me.

 

Toefl Essay Workshop-권하람, 김지호, 인혜민, 장석우

TOEFL Essay Workshop

10a1 김지호, 권하람, 인혜민, 장석우

1) Chosen Essay : The essay that our group chose for this workshop is Jiho Kim’s Essay

2) Why we chose this essay : The idea about changes in transportation in the near future was creative.

3) Merits&Shortcomings

① Merits

- Inspiring ideas about changes in transportation

- Organized well

- Clear body paragraphs

② Shortcomings

- Some of the sentences too wordy

- Little or no example of each idea

- Minor grammatical mistakes

4) Revision

In order to fill up the weak spot of the essay, each of us came up with some examples to support the ideas. Since the essay is about the expectation of future technology, most of them are corresponding examples from the past or present.

Also, we tried to revise the essay according to concision. This was done by erasing some unnecessary parts or changing sentences into more concise ones.

5) Original version

As time goes by, world is changing faster and more drastically than before. As technology develops, and as the world gets more complicated than before, changes are so fast that it’s next to impossible for people to catch up the changes. Among these changes, transportation will change drastically to be faster, more comfortable, easier, and more environmentally friendly.

 

First of all, transportation of 21 century will be much faster and more comfortable than the past. As the word globalization implies, it is impossible for people to live without the contact with foreigners and their cultures. Confronting such differences is much important for young people who will live in a world that is more complicated and which requires broader sight with vision and creativity. Such need will make the transportation to develop so that it can transport people faster and more comfortable since it will become a norm unlike before where only few needed to move such long distances..

Not only this, but it will be much easier for people to move around than now. Even though transportation system has developed a lot compared to the past, the process that we are required when going from one country to another is so complicated and hard for those who are trying it for the first time. 21^st century being the century of speed and simplicity, such processes will also get much simple so that people don’t have to worry about it even if it’s their first time. It might be hard to become true for another decade or so, but it seems possible that roads and rails would be constructed between countries so that moving between countries would be just like moving from one village to another in their home country.

          

Finally, more transportation will use environmentally friendly substances as their fuels instead of fossil fuel. The main reason why such change can be predicted is because the world is running out of usable fossil fuel. Humans used too much of it for past century, and it’s time for use to change different way that will allow us to keep the transportations moving. The second reason for this change is because more people are getting aware of the seriousness our environment is facing. Too much use of fossil fuel and exploitation of nature made the environment to get barren and dirty. Knowing that environment is one of the most important thing to us, it is a social trend to think more about the environment before trying anything. Such trend will also have a significant impact to change in the fuel used to run transportations, making technicians to invent cars and airplanes that can go by solar power or hydrogen.

          

To sum up, transportation will take more parts of people’s life as time goes by. More people will feel the need for better transportation than before, meaning that there will be drastic changes in transportations. Predictions mentioned above might not become a reality, but it’s certain that transportations will change a lot in one way or another.

6) Revised version

As time goes by, world is changing faster and more drastically than before. As technology develops and the world gets more complicated than before, changes will be made so fast that it will be next to impossible for people to catch up (concision). Among these changes, the change in transportation system will be drastic, changing transportations to be faster, more comfortable, easier, and more environmentally friendly.

          

First of all, transportation in the 21st century will be faster and more comfortable than the past. Let’s take an example of the development of ships. Starting out as a small raft, it eventually developed into sailing ships, steamships, merchant ships, and even cruise ships in order to fulfill the need of people. Especially, it is impossible for people to live without interacting with foreigners and their cultures, since the world we are living in is a “globalized world”.(Changed the structure of the sentence) Confronting such differences is very important for young people who will live in a world that is more complicated and which requires broader sight with vision and creativity. Such need will make the transportation to develop so that it can transport people faster and more comfortably since it will become a norm, unlike before where only few needed to move between such long distances.

          

Not only this, it will be much easier for people to move around in the future. Even though the transportation system has developed a lot compared to the past, the current immigration policy(concision-too wordy) is too complicated and hard for those who try it for the first time. 21^st century being the 'century of speed and simplicity,' such processes will also get much simpler so that people don’t have to worry about it, even if it’s their first time. Such drastic change will need another decade or so to actually happen(concision), but it is highly likely that roads and rails will be constructed between countries so that moving between countries would be just like moving from one village to another in one's home country. Existing tunnels like Mont Blanc Tunnel have been thought as impossible until they were actually built. Just like it was a innovation in transportation, numerous tunnels, rails, and roads will be built in the future as a way to innovate the transportation system.

Finally, more transportation will use environmentally friendly substances as their fuel instead of fossil fuel. This is easily predictable just by the fact that usable fossil fuel is running out.(concision) Humans used too much of it for the past century, and it’s time for us to change into a different way that will allow us to keep the transportation moving. Another reason that this change is predictable is that(changed structure in order to fit the rest of the revised sentences)more and more people are getting aware of the seriousness about the environment. Too much use of fossil fuel and exploitation of nature made the environment to get barren and dirty. Knowing that environment is one of the most important things to us, it has become a social trend to think more about the environment before trying anything. Such trends will also have a significant impact to the consumption of fossil fuel, making technicians invent cars and airplanes that can go by solar power or hydrogen.

 

To sum up, transportation will take a bigger part of people’s life as time goes by. More people will feel the need for a better transportation, and as such, bring (concision) drastic changes in transportation. Predictions mentioned above might not become reality, but it’s certain that transportation will change a lot in one way or another.