Adventures with Ideas: Truth, Beauty and the Paradoxes of Life
Juliet Bennett's Blog
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • Home
  • Truth
  • Narrative of the TXT

Narrative of the TXT

6 Mar ’10 Leave a Comment Written by Juliet Bennett

Do you ever send a text later wonder if the receiver interpreted as you intended? Do you ever receive a text and wonder what the sender meant?

On my walk this morning (my ankle is finally better!!!) I found my mind applying narratological concepts to txt messages and facebook.

When I received a text message my interpretation is influenced by more than just the words it contains. The narrative of the text is also determined by: who sent it, my relationship with that person, my past experience with that person, the day and time the message was sent, and finally the words the text contains interpreted within the context of my personal understanding of my and the sender’s language and my and the sender’s culture.

Let me give you an example:

Once upon a time a male friend sent me a message in the early evening that told me about his day and said he ‘should be back in Sydney around 10…’

Ok – what’s that supposed to mean?

‘It’s a booty call,’ another platonic male friend told me.

Seeing I was attracted to the guy who sent it, and seeing as the guy was having troubles with his girlfriend, and seeing as our culture reads such a message in such a way – I had to agree. It took will power, but I didn’t reply.

Questionable narratives are often embedded in the text messages I send with the intention of making a witty jokes, but which after sending I rethink, wondering whether or not the receiver has instead taken my words seriously.

For example last night another male friend sent me a txt that read, ‘I was in paddo all night tonight and totally forgot to call you…’

In the context of who this guy is (cute and I think single), my relationship with this person (platonic thus far) and past experience (flirty but does not go anywhere, and who I haven’t spoken to in over a month), the time (3am after a Saturday night out) combined with his choice of words led me to read his txt as a message send more or less to just say hey. So I replied jokingly, ‘Well that makes me feel special ; )’

But then the rethink: will my text be received as the light-hearted joke I intended? I rely on that little wink to notify receivers that I’m not serious – but do they read it the way I intend? I guess the local moral for any of my friends reading this blog is that if my texts contain a wink then, as an old friend used to say, “it’s a joke, you may use it,” and I hope that, even if my jokes are not very funny, you will laugh 😉

Wider questions also arise: be it in a txt msg, a status update, a telephone call, or even face-to-face communication what is narrative do people interpret from our texts? How can we prevent our intended messages from getting lost? Or is the ambiguity of texts and the openness for interpretation all just part of the fun of it?

Truth
philosophy
Similar posts
  • Business leadership in climate change — I am consistently surprised by the initiative and leadership taken by businesses to address the climate crisis. Not all businesses obviously (e.g. ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers and the other vested interest that have funded climate denial movement and created vast climate confusion), but MANY businesses and business analysts, scholars and consultants are doing a extraordinarily better job than many governments [...]
  • Orwellian Australia: the “[Un]F... — On 15 April 2016 the so-called “Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015″ was “Lapsed at prorogation” and the current status on the bill is (thankfully, at this stage) “Not proceeding”. I’m not sure whether this is a permanent status, or whether they just ran out of time and will return to the bill later…  When I see the word “fairer” associated with this bill [...]
  • A new lens to view the world: the wor... — My PhD is essentially an exercise in communicating and examining the potential for an  alternative worldview to the mechanistic materialism offered by process philosophy to contribute to addressing structural forms of violence and working toward peace. Process philosophy is too rarely taught in university philosophy as the current fashion there is divided between analytical or postmodern navel gazing. Yet process [...]
  • Thoughts on a morning walk — On my walk this morning: –       I realised that truth, reality, and illusion, are completely relative and self created –       the truth of a religion is truth for that person, it is made real by the stories that are told, and because each moment is in a way timeless, these truths are eternally real –       yet when truths are examined [...]
  • Boundaries between Self and World — “Your skin doesn’t separate you from the world; it’s a bridge through which the external world flows into you, and you flow into it.” More Alan Watts? Yes, it’s always a good time for more Alan Watts. Over and over and over, repeat. “The whole world is moving through you, all the cosmic rays, all the food you’re eating, the [...]
A time for everything
Richard Dawkins and WHAT is God?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

TRUTH

BEAUTY

ADVENTURE

ART

PEACE

  • Popular
  • Recent
  • Comments
  • Is “God” a Fractal?
    15 Feb ’11
  • Is Lindt chocolate slave chocolate?
    11 Sep ’09
  • Creativism – a philosophy for life
    10 Sep ’09
  • Free Documentaries: The Truth Is Free
    17 Apr ’10
  • Coming to grips with the elephant in the room
    28 Jun ’10
  • Optimum Trajectory, swimming against the current, and man who stare at goats.
    4 Aug ’10
  • A short biography
    2 Sep ’09
  • Sex or chess? Peace, the world’s trump card
    13 Apr ’10
  • Alan Watts Fan Club
    3 Dec ’12
  • Big History Blog Series: Chapter 1 – The Big Bang
    25 Mar ’10
  • My policy wishlist for Australia’s response to climate change
    17 Jan ’20
  • Business leadership in climate change
    1 May ’19
  • A story of (mis)fortune: the farmer and his son
    8 Oct ’18
  • What is life really about?
    1 Mar ’17
  • Why the right (brain) is right…
    22 Feb ’17
  • New life: reflections on being a new mum
    29 Dec ’16
  • Orwellian Australia: the “[Un]Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015”
    1 May ’16
  • Alan Watts’ ‘dramatic model’ and the pursuit of peace
    18 Mar ’16
  • A new lens to view the world: the world as process
    14 Jan ’16
  • 2015 in review
    1 Jan ’16

Adventures with Ideas... on Facebook

Archives

Categories

  • Academic (35)
  • Adventure (119)
  • Beauty (23)
  • Featured Posts (10)
  • Peace (124)
  • Random Life Stuff (102)
  • Truth (164)
Constitutional Recognition

Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Statement

As a "non-indigenous" Australian living on what was once the land of the Cadigal and Wangal Wangal communities, I wish to acknowledge the inter-generational responsibility that I feel toward the colonial past. As a beneficiary of "White Australia", to the Eora people of Sydney, I request your forgiveness. I stand in solidarity with your rightful demands to self determination and active participation in governmental decisions, and I hope I may learn from your eco-spiritual connection. May we, as Tom Trevorrow of the Ngarrindjeri puts it, learn to 'respect, care and share' the gifts that our planet offers us.

Tags

Alan Watts Atheism Big History Bridge Series Central America Chocolate climate change Conflict Transformation Creativism Ecology Europe God Health India India/Nepal inspiration Life in Oz Life philosophy Meaning of life Modeling My Brazilian My Christian Journey Narrative Narratology Occupy optimal trajectory Panentheism peace philosophy Photography Politics population Potentialism poverty religion slavery social construction South America The Pyramid Travel United States War What is God Wikileaks Yoga

Related posts

  • philosophy
    • Is “God” a Fractal?
    • Optimum Trajectory, swimming against the current, and man who stare at goats.
    • Joseph Campbell – The Hero’s Journey
    • Modeling Tips: Where to Begin
    • Are the laws of science and “God” the same thing?

Donation

evolve theme by Theme4Press  •  Powered by WordPress