Oxford University Press's Blog, page 318

Power and politeness: key drivers behind profanity and self-censorship [excerpt]

 Social conventions determine why we use profane language. The deliberate use (or avoidance) of profanity is often a socially conscious decision: self-censorship may be driven by politeness, while profane language may be used to establish a sense of power. The following shortened excerpt from In Praise of Profanity by Michael Adams takes a look at the connotations behind of profanity and analyzes the social drivers behind its usage.

Politeness is the linguistic term for the philosopher’s moralized manners, while etiquette is the mere and perhaps not very reliable expression of politeness or manners. Much more is at stake in manners and politeness than in etiquette, though when confronted with a dozen forks at a fancy dinner, etiquette may seem, for the moment, a life-and-death matter.

Sometimes those inclined to proscribe profanity are more concerned with etiquette than with manners. I don’t feel it a breach in manners when a truly frustrated person says “Shit!” Indeed, I may recognize the frustration, sympathize with the person, and experience relief when I hear the profanity. The frustrated person and I share moral aims and I have to make some room for the expression of authentic feeling.

Still, saying “Shit!” may violate a social convention and even if it doesn’t, even if conventions are changing and different auditors gauge the authority of conventions differently, exclamatory profanity nonetheless rubs some “fragile sensibilities” the wrong way. What if your negative face merely wants peace and quiet, or to be spiritually undisturbed? Is someone else’s frustration—when expletively expressed— an imposition on those who unexpectedly witness it? And should we avoid profanity in order to save others’ faces rather than threaten them? These are all reasonable questions, especially if one is cautious about answering them absolutely, because the rules are complex and flexible. In some situations, bitch isn’t face threatening—it’s hard to imagine when cunt isn’t—and Fuck you can be endearing, an expression of intimacy or solidarity, rather than a challenge, said to the right person, for the right reason, in the right tone.

U.S. Route 60 Virginia Beach by Mobilus In Mobili. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

Can’t we all just get along? Surely, we can negotiate our way through our myriad, often competitive needs and desires. Surely, we can find room for strong expression but in less obtrusive forms of speech. Perhaps the very frustrated person could say—as some people do—“Sugar!” instead of “Shit!” Everyone sidesteps a steaming heap of scatology, and no one need take offense. Euphemism compromises strong expression but insists that speakers can say some version of what they want to say. You can avoid saying, “So, your grandmother’s dead” by saying “So, your grandmother kicked the bucket,” though a dysphemistic euphemism like that is likely to threaten a lot of faces, not least grandmother’s posthumous one. But “So, your grandmother’s gone to a better place” gets the death idea across while giving it a positive spin and threatening no face at all. Sugar! isn’t Shit! in expletive force, but it’s at least some sort of release—it expresses frustration as well, some would argue, as politeness allows.

Who can argue against being polite? We interpret politeness as private virtue in the public interest. In general, we follow the principle Edwin L. Battistella advances in his elegant book, Bad Language: “Avoiding coarse language in public signals an understanding of the boundary between public and private discourse and a tacit acceptance of that boundary.” But politeness can be put to complex and, if not malignant, certainly not benign social purposes—power takes advantage of our “tacit acceptance.” The linguistic category politeness may be universal, but profanity isn’t universally or historically framed as impolite. The question arises under certain conditions, as Tony McEnery argues in Swearing in English: Bad Language, Purity, and Power from 1586 to the Present, and he lays them out as follows:

[M]odern attitudes to bad language were established by the moral reform movements of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries . . . [and] were established to form a discourse of power for the growing middle classes in Britain[, and] . . . the moral and political framework supported by a discourse of power can be threatened by the subversion of that discourse.

Thus, the motive for euphemism may be a matter of manners, but manners may be a means of social subordination, and language policy deriving from manners may end up serving the interests of the few rather than those of the mass of speakers.

In the end, whether it’s a matter of deliberate language policy or just the sort of self-censorship we administer when we understand the limits and know we’re going too far, language use conforms to parameters imposed by power. So, Bourdieu says, symbolic power does not reside in ‘symbolic systems’ but . . . is defined in and through a given relation between those who exercise power and those who submit to it. . . . What creates the power of words and slogans, a power capable of maintaining or subverting the social order, is the belief in the legitimacy of words and of those who utter them. And words alone cannot create this belief.

In other words, the “problem” isn’t profanity or euphemism, but the interests outside and beyond them that govern value in social markets.

When we swear, we create and enact power, which is, indeed, related to extralinguistic power, and that power—the nonlinguistic kind—certainly shapes language use but it also simultaneously depends on it. The notion that the power of words and slogans either maintains or subverts the social order doesn’t account for the complexities of profanity. When the vice president uses profanity to construct his relationship to a senior senator, is he maintaining or subverting the social order? Both, it seems to me, and would he have said what he said if saying it had been irrelevant to his extralinguistic power? Isn’t saying it a proof of that power, but also a sign of weakness, in the sense that the power needs proof? In profanity, as well as in euphemism, linguistic and extralinguistic power interact, and the point of profanity might well be to draw our attention to interaction we overlook in commonplace discourse.

Featured image credit: “red-stamp-rubber-censored-censor” by Clker-Free-Vector-Images. CC0 via Pixabay.

The post Power and politeness: key drivers behind profanity and self-censorship [excerpt] appeared first on OUPblog.

Can we reduce the US prison population by half?

Over five years ago, a colleague and I began a conversation that eventually led to the development of the Smart Decarceration Initiative. The aim of this initiative is to advance policy and practice innovations in order to substantially reduce incarceration rates, while simultaneously addressing racial and behavioral health disparities in the criminal justice system and maximizing public safety and well-being. What is meant by “substantially” reducing incarceration rates is a reduction by about a million people over the next 10-20 years, which would essentially cut the US incarcerated population in half. This is a very ambitious goal.

What motivated this goal was not merely naïve optimism, but rather our accounting of growing evidence that the era of mass incarceration might be coming to an end, or at least hovering at a tipping point. The numbers were suggesting it – after nearly four decades of exponential increase, the incarceration rate in the US plateaued in 2009, and it has decreased slightly every year since. Despite that leveling off, upwards of 13 million adults in the US spend time in jail or prison every year.

There was also a growing awareness of accumulating evidence that incarceration was not, in most cases, an effective tool for providing rehabilitation or ensuring public safety. Quite the opposite: incarceration is extremely costly – over $50 billion per year – and most people released from prison end up coming back within just a few years because of new criminal charges. It’s not surprising that people leave incarceration worse off; although about 75% of incarcerated individuals are in need of substance abuse treatment, only 11% receive any while behind bars. The fact that jails have become repositories for people in poverty with mental illnesses is now featured in prime time television. And the injustices of mass incarceration, particularly inequities in how incarceration was dramatically over-applied to African American and Hispanic populations, are no longer being discussed only in specialized academic settings. Instead, they are the stuff of bestselling books such as The New Jim Crow and films such as 13th, winner of four Emmy awards.

But what was truly surprising was how quickly the political rhetoric, on both sides of the aisle, pivoted from a “tough on crime” message to one of general agreement that our criminal justice system is broken and ineffective. The failings of the criminal justice system was a subject largely untouched by any presidential candidate for years, including in the 2008 and 2012 elections. But by the time the 2016 presidential election season commenced, criminal justice reform had become a primary policy issue for nearly every candidate, democrat or republican. Many states, both red and blue, have been making significant advances in changing policy to reduce the use of prisons.  And in his last presidential term, President Barack Obama enacted several major executive orders to decrease the use of incarceration, and in his final days as president he wrote about the role of that office in criminal justice reform.

The emerging era of decarceration is facing a formidable political challenge.

It seemed that the time for decarceration had arrived; we were experiencing the “perfect storm” of economic, social, and political factors that would mark the beginning of an era of decarceration.

And then the 2016 election happened.

The man elected was the one candidate who not only discounted the need for criminal justice reform, he regularly misrepresented facts about crime rates and advocated for a return to “law and order,” an unsophisticated analogue of old school tough on crime tropes. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is certainly not a ballast to these viewpoints. He has indicated plans to reignite the War on Drugs, a prime engine of mass incarceration and racial disparities therein, and perhaps the most agreed-upon failure in criminal justice policy in the last 40 years. The incendiary climate being created by the White House on criminal justice issues certainly runs counter to our perfect storm argument.

There is certainly cause for concern among those of us who aim to advance an era of decarceration. On the one hand, changes in federal policies do not necessarily stall decarceration efforts aimed at state prisons and local jails, which comprise the vast majority of those incarcerated. However, federal funding to states has been a major catalyst for incarceration-reduction efforts in recent decades, and decreases or reallocations of that funding could substantially slow progress. Possibly most concerning is that the response to Trump’s punitive messaging may be embraced by a larger portion of our population than we had anticipated. For these individuals, it is uncertain whether the idea of reversing mass incarceration is unappealing at best and, at worst, antithetical to their view of justice.

Very early in its development, the emerging era of decarceration is facing a formidable political challenge. The current political climate and agenda should not be underestimated, but it also cannot be allowed to debilitate initial gains. For this reason, it is all the more important that the work of the decarceration movement intensify and build. “Smart decarceration” remains not only a possibility, but a critically important financial, social, and public safety goal.

Featured image credit: prison jail detention fence by babawawa. Public domain via Pixabay.

The post Can we reduce the US prison population by half? appeared first on OUPblog.

The life and works of Elizabeth Gaskell

On 29 September 2017, we celebrate the 207th birthday of Elizabeth Gaskell, a nineteenth century English novelist whose works reflect the harsh conditions of England’s industrial North. Unlike some of her contemporaries, whose works are told from the perspectives of middle class characters, Gaskell did not restrict herself, and her novels Mary Barton and Ruth feature working class heroines.

In the early twentieth century, Gaskell was considered a minor novelist and was overshadowed by contemporaries such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and the Brontë sisters. She was perhaps best known for writing Charlotte Brontë’s 1857 biography, which infamously censored aspects of Brontë’s life that were considered too controversial for Victorian audiences. Today, she is remembered as a major English novelist, and her works are celebrated as both social novels and early feminist works.

Discover more about Gaskell’s life as both a writer and social reformer with this interactive timeline.

Featured image credit: Dartmoor by dennisredfield. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

The post The life and works of Elizabeth Gaskell appeared first on OUPblog.

The story behind the image

A clinical placement abroad is a unique and eye-opening experience for any young medic. Away from the organised bustle of the hospital wards and state-of-the art lab equipment, they must learn to overcome cultural, linguistic, and environmental barriers in order to deliver exceptional care to those in need. In June, our 2017 Clinical Placement Competition came to a close. In partnership with Projects Abroad, we offered one lucky medical student the chance to practice their skills, with £2,000 towards a clinical placement in a country of their choice.

We asked entrants to send a photograph with a caption, expressing what the greatest thing about being a doctor is. After careful consideration, we are proud to announce this year’s winner is Roxanne Tajbakhsh. The judging panel was immediately drawn to the intimate image of Roxanne holding a new-born, coupled with a poignant and thoughtful caption about the privilege of being witness to the critical moments in an individual’s lifetime. We managed to catch up with Roxanne to find out more about the story behind the photograph and what her aspirations are for the future. Here’s what she had to say…

The refugee crisis isn’t an unknown phenomenon to those of us in the United Kingdom; it is the largest single migration in the European continent since World War II and has most recently been used as a political chip in elections across the continent. It is an event that has caused strain and division, but also compassion and unity. It has caused us all to hold the spot light on our presumed shared values, and been the source of many debates and discussions. The topic, in some people’s eyes, is controversial to say the least.

For myself? Once I saw the images of people arriving on the shore of Lesvos with volunteers dragging them out of the waves, it was all pretty clear cut: people need help, we have the resources to help, and our privilege prescribed the duty upon us to help. Thus, the process to organise a volunteer trip to Lesvos with a friend who is also a junior doctor begun, and as one can imagine, having our schedules line up was a long arduous process. After six months we managed to set a date, find what we hoped would be the best NGO, and book tickets to the island.

Late night campfire. Image provided by the author and used with permission.

Two days later, breaking news told us of the EU-Turkey deal, with Moria Refugee Camp becoming a detention centre and all volunteers being kicked out and unable to deliver any aid (including basics such as food and drink). Large NGOs such as MSF, who had been the chief provider of medical care pulled out in protest, controversially leaving those imprisoned in the camp with no access to medical care, with only the military providing provisions. We were left to re-evaluate our journey and after some frantic searching, we found a start-up NGO named Team Humanity, whom we felt would utilise our skills the best, delivering aid to the make-shift refugee settlement at the Greece/Macedonia boarder in Idomeni.

Finally, we embarked on our two-week volunteer trip to Thessaloniki (the nearest city to the camp) and continued onto Polikastro, a tiny village where most volunteers stayed, a 20-minute drive from the camp. Our first arrival into what we termed the ‘Idomeni village’ was at midnight and Salam – the founder of Team Humanity – gave us a whirlwind tour of the NGO tents, including the regional ethnic divides and residents, and briefed us on the rulings and systems in the camp. We very quickly realised we’d made the right choice of NGO when we found our team sat amid the refugees around the camp fire, seated along the trenching dug out by Salam himself.

Our team at the time of our arrival happened to be predominantly made of first and second generation immigrant nationalities from all over Europe, the Middle-East, and Americas; half of whom had once been refugees as children. For such volunteers, the crisis was beyond merely an upsetting state of affairs – it was personal. Such a demographic helped facilitate the unique workload our NGO took on in the camp. Idomeni was informally segregated into alphabetical quadrants to try and ensure people in each region had equitable access to resources. Each day, our NGO provided food packs, clothing, sanitary products, and necessary products such as tents or prams. Additionally, we also had a medical tent that provided general practitioner services and a space for children’s activities and sports. It was, however, our team members’ bilingual abilities (an ability that was rather rare amidst volunteers) that quickly lent us to becoming a facilitator between the UN and the refugees at the camp. Thus, we found ourselves at the forefront of a number of emergency situations, especially out of hours, ranging from de-escalating moments of raised tensions to rectifying the consequences of overnight high winds and lengthy downpours on hundreds of people’s shelters.

Though rewarding, it was not our daily activities that stuck with me the most; it was the moments in between, where all I had to offer was a holding hand or a listening ear. A night like the one where, after distribution, a family of three refused to let us leave before they had the opportunity to thank us with some freshly brewed Arabic coffee. They wrapped us in their blankets, refusing to also get under them until they were satisfied that we were thoroughly warmed, and told us stories of their home and the trying journey they had thus far. They showed us pictures of loved ones lost, and family left behind. My Arabic skills were rather patchy and so I garnered roughly 40% of the conversation, and I could sense that they understood that we couldn’t follow them all the way, but upon leaving at 1 am, we were hugged so tightly and thanked so gratefully, with tearful eyes, that it seemed like we’d given the family the world – merely because we stopped and listened.

Afternoon Dabke session

Afternoon Dabke session. Image by the author and used with permission.

Idomeni’s Lyricist, who’s gone on to write for the Guardian

Idomeni’s Lyricist, who’s gone on to write for the Guardian. Image by the author and used with permission.

Our medical clinic

Our medical clinic. Image by the author and used with permission.

The adult English class in EKO

The adult English class in EKO. Image by the author and used with permission.

Our makeshift Church

Our makeshift Church. Image by the author and used with permission.

Salad for 2000 EKO Kitchen

Salad for 2000 EKO Kitchen. Image by the author and used with permission.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the fondest memories I hold to date are the achievements from our team’s projects which gave moments of solace to those at the camp: from the makeshift mosque and church, to the cinema and volleyball court. But the moments that give you the everlasting ‘feels’, even over a year after you’ve experienced them, include the highs during a Dabke and Ataan dance off (Arabic and Afghani traditional dances), or the devastating lows where you spend a morning crying with your dear friend who found out that two of his little nieces were captured by ISIS.

“My favorite thing about pursuing a career in medicine: We get to have a front row seat into humanity, and are gifted the duty of always aiming to see the good in others, and provide care without bias or judgement.” -Roxanne Tajbakhsh. Image by the author and used with permission.

In our short two weeks we witnessed a birth, a wedding, and a funeral.

The caption from my competition photo was a privilege I perceived healthcare professionals to have, but it was one I got to truly experience at the camps. Since then, I’ve had many such experiences when working through my speciality rotations. Yet, for me, Idomeni will forever serve as my starting point. Coming from a family of engineers, I was only truly introduced to a career in medicine through a desire to carry out humanitarian work, and my time at the camps proved that I’d made the right choice.

After leaving I only managed another week in England before I once again went back to the camps. Later that summer, I managed to fulfil our original plans and volunteer in Moria Refugee Camp in Lesvos for a month—an experience which was a world away from that of Idomeni.

Both introduced me some of the most incredible people from all walks of life who were drawn to this single molten pot of nationalities – beyond borders – joined by the belief that the duty of aid to fellow human beings surpasses all races, religions, and granted nationalities. My time there changed who I was in a lot of ways, but it did not change my appreciation for my profession – it fuelled it.

In the future, I hope to carry on my work with refugees and migrants as thousands, many of whom I worked with, are still stuck in limbo in camps throughout Europe. Unfortunately, with the exponential increase in manmade and natural disasters globally, the situation is only set to become worse. The dream a long way down the line would be to pair this passion with my interest in critical care and disaster medicine. Thus, I am hoping to utilise the prize from Oxford University Press and Projects Abroad to carry out a placement in the Caribbean, a region of the world I have yet to experience, to further my clinical knowledge and cultural appreciations. If there’s one notion I could leave you with after reading about my experience it would be this: find a cause you’re passionate about, research the methods in which you can help make an impact, and do it. There is more to life than your next promotional exam. Nothing will build you more as a person, or a healthcare professional, than the connections you make with others.

Featured image credit: The camps first game of volleyball. Photo by the author and used with permission. 

The post The story behind the image appeared first on OUPblog.

Listening to ‘all our stories’: An insider’s guide to #OHA2017 in the Twin Cities

A few weeks ago we began counting down to the OHA Annual Meeting, which is now just around the corner. Today, as promised, we bring you an insider’s look at Twin Cities from Gabriale Payne, who will be our correspondent on the ground throughout the conference. Enjoy her tips, and add your own suggestions in the comments below or on Twitter using the hashtag #OHA2017.

Bridging the gulf between us is hard… But what alternative do we have? The demographic makeup of Minnesota, like the rest of the country, is changing rapidly and radically…. If we are to sort ourselves out and make good lives for ourselves in this ever-more-multicultural landscape, we’ve got to start by talking less and listening more.

We can listen—really listen—to one another’s stories and learn from them. Collectively, we can learn to tell a story that includes all our stories… fashion a mosaic-like group portrait from those stories that we all can agree truly does resemble people like us.”

Over the past year, events in Minnesota’s Twin Cities have made national headlines more times than one can count – at least not without the use of fingers and toes. As much as the residents of Minnesota might appreciate gaining some national attention for something other than their state’s 10,000+ lakes, its famous Juicy Lucy burger, or its

A Conversation With ALSCW President Ernest Suarez, Part 2

Last week, we shared an interview with Ernest Suarez, president of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), the society who publishes Literary Imagination. Today, we continue the conversation, and with it, we are able to get an even closer and more personal look into the life of a literary academic.

1. How would you describe Literary Imagination in three words? 

Engaged, evolving, and necessary.

2. What are you reading right now? 

Kate Daniels, who directs the creative writing program at Vanderbilt University and who will be our new VP, sent me her poetry-manuscript-in-progress. It’s titled Reading a Biography of Thomas Jefferson in the Months of My Son’s Recovery. It is a stunning piece of work, one of the best and most original books of poems I’ve read in years. It’ll be out in a year or so. I’ve also been reading Greg Fraser’s verse. He has several fabulous new poems in the current issue of Literary Imagination. This fall I’m co-teaching a graduate seminar on Lionel Trilling and Robert Penn Warren with Michael Kimmage, a brilliant historian who has written books on Trilling and on Philip Roth—so I’ve been reading Trilling’s essays and I never stop reading Warren’s poetry, fiction, and essays. My son, who is a graduate student in literature at the University of Maryland, and I read lots of poetry together. We’ve been feasting on Wallace Stevens and Yusef Komunyakaa’s verse lately.

3. Where is your favorite place to read? 

We have a cabin on a mountain top in West Virginia. There are sixty mile views from the deck. I love to read and write there, though I tend to hunker inside by the fireplace in the winter.

4. What do you consider to be the best source of inspiration for creative writing? 

I think that strong emotion is the best inspiration for any type of serious (which can include comic) writing. Strong emotion can come from a passionate response to someone else’s writing, be evoked by a work of art, another person, natural phenomenon, a social disturbance, a moment of transcendence, or anything within the realm of human experience. But the writing needs to be controlled, considered, arranged, and tempered, even if what you’re after is the impression of spontaneity. If you’re not moved by what you’re writing about, how can you expect someone else to be moved by it?

5. What are some of the literary works that have had the most significant impact on you personally?

That could be a long list, but Hamlet, Dante’s trilogy, Emily Dickinson’s Collected Poems, Moby-Dick, Middlemarch, Absalom, Absalom!, To the Light House, Invisible Man, One-Hundred Years of Solitude, The Fire Next Time, Roethke’s The Far Field, Dickey’s Poems 1957-1967, Robert Penn Warren’s Collected Poems, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, and David Bottoms’ Under the Vulture Tree are works to which I keep returning.

6. What are some of the benefits your members get from reading the journal? 

Most journals that publish literary criticism tend to focus on a particular era or literature written in one language. Literary Imagination is more eclectic. There might be an article on Homer and another on Natasha Trethewey in the same issue. We also value lucid and accessible prose, and shun jargon. Saul Bellow, John Updike, Ann Beattie, Mark, Strand, Derek Walcott, C.K. Williams, Brenda Hillman, and many other artists have contributed to our pages. When you read Literary Imagination you discover work about and by great writers.

7. Do you have any tips or thoughts for an aspiring contributor on what it takes to craft a contribution to Literary Imagination?

For essays: Write in a manner that’s accessible, lively, and thoughtful. Make sure your reader knows why your subject is important, especially in relation to literary history and/or aesthetics. For artists: Send your best work.

Featured image credit: Writing by Pexels, Public Domain via Pixabay.

The post A Conversation With ALSCW President Ernest Suarez, Part 2 appeared first on OUPblog.

An insight into choral singing in the UK [infographic]

Some say it is the effect of Gareth Malone’s TV programme The Choir, others claim that it is a result of research pointing to the many health benefits to singing in a choir; whatever the cause, it is undeniable that choral singing in the UK has seen something of a renaissance in recent years. The growth in the number of choirs and the number of people singing in choirs is seemly unstoppable.

Earlier this year, Voices Now published the results of their Big Choral Census, a research project to find out how many choirs there are in the UK. The results, showing that over 2 million people sing regularly in a choir of some kind, are both surprising and encouraging. Explore the infographic below to find out more about the state of choral singing in the UK.

Download the infographic as JPEG or PDF.

Featured image credit: Birds swifts singing by Dieter_G. Public domain via Pixabay. 

The post An insight into choral singing in the UK [infographic] appeared first on OUPblog.

Reflections on music’s life lessons

I find myself reflecting upon my own experiences in music as a student, a piano teacher, a performer, a psychologist and a psychoanalyst.  How did I get from “then” to “now”?  Who assisted me along my winding journey?  Do you ever wonder these things about yourself?

As I thought about music in my life, I discovered an article by Tom Jacobs titled, “The Lifelong Effect of Music and Arts Classes” (in Pacific Standard, April 7, 2017).

Mr. Jacobs cited a NEA funded 2012 research study on Public Participation in the Arts  which “examined childhood experiences with music and arts education” as well as more “recent experiences as an audience member and/or creator.”  The bottom line of the data compiled by Kenneth Elpus at The University of Maryland, strongly emphasized, ”If one aim of music education….is to engender a lifelong connection with the arts”, the results of this study  suggest that music – and arts education more broadly – is achieving this aim for many alumni.”  Data analysis included 9,482 American adults who were surveyed about their childhood experiences with music and art. These data are compatible with my repeated assertions that music lessons involve more than playing an instrument.  Music lessons are life lessons.

Are you surprised with these findings?  I am not, nor, do I suspect, are you. Jacob’s article led me to reflect further upon my music teachers and early experiences that have become so much a part of who I am today.  I share some of my memories with you and hope you will take a few minutes to recall your own.

I hasten to add at the outset, I cannot mention everyone who has had an impact on music in my musical life – there are so many people who have encouraged and taught me, including my former students and current and former patients.  I think of my very first music teacher – MA – with whom I began my formal journey at the piano when I was 6 years old.  I had begun to pick out tunes and compose songs at age 4, but MA was my first music teacher.  She was a sweet, kind lady and had the advantage of owning a cute little Pekinese dog who would lap up coffee (with cream) on the floor by the piano pedals during my lessons.  I had my first memory slip when working with her – I remember it vividly (perhaps I will write about that in another column.)  Unfortunately, I stopped making progress and was losing interest in playing the piano.  My mother started looking for another teacher.

She located a wonderful man, SP, who was professor of piano at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia– not far from my hometown.  He was more sophisticated and knowledgeable about teaching music, and he remained my teacher until I auditioned and was accepted at Juilliard.  Even during my first year at Juilliard, I recall always playing for Mr. P every time I went home on break.

Before Juilliard, I had wonderful music teachers in public school music– particularly JL, my high school choir teacher.  I was the accompanist of the Chorus  – an activity I loved.  Mr. L was fun to work with in choir, and he often tutored me privately in theory.  I realized much later how valuable these lessons were, but even at the time, I found them challenging and interesting.  He also signed my yearbook with the message “be sure to keep your options open” – a message with which I took offense because I thought he was telling me that I could not “make it” as a pianist.  In hindsight, it was some of the best advice I have ever gotten.  I have pursued many options since those high school days and have created a very gratifying career blending music and psychology. Thank you, Mr. L.  (JL lives in another state, is retired from college teaching, and we stay in touch.)

JR my teacher at Juilliard initiated me into a larger world of music and professional piano playing.  JR also treated me like a family member –  invited me to his home for family dinners,  studio class parties after recitals, and one time told me that   “I wore too much eye makeup” (he had two daughters to whom he said he could not give this advice.)  I disagreed with him about the eye makeup!!  I recall detailed and intense lessons; I learned more repertoire than I thought I could handle (but did), performed in studio classes and public recitals, and went to his apartment on Riverside Drive for fabulous afterglow parties.  I learned to love green grapes with brie cheese at these receptions.  I watched him show off his cat, Tosca – imploring her to “roll over” as her one brilliant trick (eventually she would roll over, as most cats do, to his glee.)

Aside from JL, none of my music teachers is alive anymore.  Yet all my music teachers, singly and as a group, are alive inside my mind and in my life in everything I do today. All were instrumental in my musical development.  The far-reaching effects of teaching and learning music reverberate forever.  My music lessons clearly were life lessons.

Please take a few moments to revisit your memories as a music student and/or as a music teacher.  How has music affected your life? I would love to hear from you.

An earlier version of this article was published in Clavier Companion, revised and printed here with permission.

Featured image credit: “Dark, spotlight, stage” by StockSnap, Public Domain via Pixabay.

The post Reflections on music’s life lessons appeared first on OUPblog.

How well could you manage a crime scene?

The role of a crime scene manager is one which is complex; it requires a wide range of forensic, policing, and practical knowledge. A crime scene manager must be well organised, observant, and meticulous to ensure that the processing of crime scenes and forensic personnel follow set rules and regulations. It is essential for the integrity of investigations and trials that officers who are responsible for managing crime scenes adhere to strict protocols in order for the evidence collected to be credible.

The mishandling of evidence, unauthorised access, or even an error in a crime scene log can all cause a question of doubt over the reliability of evidence, resulting in a range of consequences from hindering an investigation to causing vital evidence to be thrown out of court.

Take this quiz to see if you have what it takes to be a crime scene manager.

 

Featured image credit: ‘Crime Scene Tape’ by Ash Photoholic. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

The post How well could you manage a crime scene? appeared first on OUPblog.

How ‘green’ are you at work? [quiz]

With sea level rising and ice caps rapidly melting, the danger signs of global warming are evident, increasing the need to be environmentally friendly. However, much of this focus is on being environmentally friendly at home. Many of us spend a large proportion of our time at work, making it just as crucial to be ‘green’ at work, as we are at home.

Find out how friendly you are to the environment in the work place by taking the quiz.

 

Featured image credit: Photo by Roxanne Desgagnés. CC0 public domain via Unsplash.

The post How ‘green’ are you at work? [quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.