This week I read two articles. Both of them are written by Yi-fu Tuan. In the following review, A is for the response to Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Descriptive Approach; B is for the response to Space and Place.
1) List the most pressing thought and discussion starting question that each reading raises for you.
A. In Tuan’s passage, he pointed out the thought that human’s interaction with the world has something in common with the way non-human animals react to the world. People have privileged access to states of mind, thoughts and feelings.
The most pressing discussion starting question for me is why the castle changed after Hamlet lived in it, although facilities and settings did not.
B. The most pressing thought is that language has a strong power of both ameliorating and destructing a place. With this thought, I will see and think of places as living and emotional beings.
The pressing discussion starting question for me is when commenting on a place, how one can find the appropriate place between moral obligation and the obligation of honesty.
2) Summarize each reading (200-300 words)
A. In Yi-fu Tuan’s article, he uses the examples of Paul Tillich and Hamlet’s castle to introduce the idea that place is different from space. Space represents unfamiliar environment but carries freedom and attraction, while place is intimate and known by individual. However, he starts to argue that space can become place as people form more and more attachment to it.
Inquiring how people get to understand the world, he first emphasizes that human has similar sense of place to the world with non-human animal. However, the patterns are not entirely same because human also respond to the world with an experimental perspective, which is adventurous but inspiring.
People not only learn the world from the outside, they also meditate on their own experience at the time of perceiving the external space. Tuan believes that experience consists of two essential parts, feeling and thought, which are closely related to each other. Feelings including sense of taste, smell, skin, and hearing that function differently. They collaborate to enrich people’s awareness of the world. At the same time, the active and reflective mind of people reveals how the outside world influences one’s internal world. In addition, human also embody their experience to achieve tangible construction in reality instead of merely reflecting on the world mentally.
B. In this article, Tuan argues that language plays an essential role in building a place. Disagreeing with geographers and landscape historians, he thought that place is not only the result of nature’s material change. He thinks the linguistic aspect such as discussion and command is also crucial to the maintenance of place. By attracting people’s attention and conjugating unimportant entities into important beings, speech substantiates things that could have been ignored.
Tuan listed and explained three linguistic methods of building a place. The nature of language itself comes as the first approach to “linguistic place-construction.” Tan writes that language’s grammar reveals the emphasized aspect of an object and serves to call people’s attention to it. Moreover, it is the usages of metaphor that personalize objects and places.
“Socialinguistic in emphasis” comes as the second approach. In some particular social context, verbal exchange along with visual images becomes a necessary method of planning and construction.
Although based on the first two approaches, “Narrative-descriptive” does not include detailed analysis of theory that potentially supports a group of complex phenomena that are present to the audience. Tuan supposes that the application of this method enables the readers to gain intellectual pleasure.
Tuan believes words play an important role in the transformation of a space to a place. They make the formerly overlooked attributes of a space real and noticed. Particularly, naming helps the settlers differentiate various spaces at the very early stage. A place is endowed with meanings as people’s perception and attitudes toward it change. Oral and written works mold people’s impression of a place and thus personalize it. Although words’ importance differs from culture to culture, they function similarly to supplement the meaning and enhance the value of places that could not have been represented by the places themselves. However, the linguistic construction process can either be positive or denigrating. A subjective conversation or description may distort the image of a place.
3) Write a Summary Tweet (that's right - 140 characters ONLY) of each reading
A. People apply experience that consists of thoughts and feelings inside themselves to gain familiarity and understanding of the world, which turn space into place.
B. Language enables people to understand the quality of place better. Meanwhile, this linguistic construction process is not a morally neutral evaluation.
4) Synthesize (200-300 words): how are the two selections relevant to one another? how do the ideas they present interact with and relate to one another?
Both readings written by Yi-fu Tuan talked about how an authentic “place” gets constructed and developed. They concurrently distinguished the definition of “space” and “place.” The main idea shared by them is that “space” is merely an objective existence, and “space” is able to convert to “place.” As living experience in a specific space accumulates, people’s perception of it changes. Incessantly, they assign meanings and form attachment to the space. This process of transformation is then a subjective and spiritual one rather than an objective and physical type.
However, these two readings discussed the transformation of “space” to “place” from two different aspects. In Space and Place, Tuan argues that people develop their understanding of the world through individual experience. Five senses play an important role in helping them perceive and explore the environment surrounded. This kind of personal interaction with the world motivates interpretations and help people form bonds to places.
In Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Descriptive Approach, Tuan introduces the idea of “linguistic place-construction.” This approach focuses on languages’ effect on the process of developing “places.” Naming a place that is formerly invisible makes it observed. Speech is an indispensable part when people exchange ideas, make plans and build places. Nevertheless, Tan also points out that literary work and conversation can also destroy the reputation and image of a place.
5) Write a Synthesis Tweet (yes - 140 characters that sum up the synthesis writing you did in 4)
The physical Space can transform into the place with meanings and value. Individuals’ experience including senses and thoughts, along with language all contribute to this process.
6) Reach Out (in 200 words or less): how do the selections you read relate to Lahiri's "Rhode Island"
Theories and examples from Tuan’s two passages help me analyze Lahiri’s experience as an immigrant to Rhode Island. Although Lahiri was born in London, she identifies Rhode Island as her home when asked by others. London, according to Tuan’s definition, means a space to her, while Rhode Island is a place.
Living in Rhode Island since three makes her involve in the local community. The components of her experience are nearly all from Rhode Island. Individually, she interacted with the environment and attributed meanings from her perspective to it. Using speech and written texts, she exchanges her ideas and stories with other residents in Rhode Island. By this process, she manipulates the image of Rhode Island and acknowledges its value. Therefore, it is not only Rhode Island that orients her perception and living experience. She is also determined to mold Rhode Island.