This assignment is described as:
"In this 5-page paper, your job is to identify, discuss, and analyze a “paradigm shift” you recognize in our cultural past or contemporary moment. In addition to recognizing a certain kind of change and analyzing its potential meaning(s), you might trace the significant “moments” of this shift as well as discuss possible ramifications in terms of where our culture is “heading” and how we have come to view or value certain things. The change you recognize might be as simple as the popularization of a word or new usage of a term in relation to consumerism, civic life, or popular accounts of science and technology. "
I opened this essay with one of my favorite stories ever. I'll never forget the first time I sat back to think , "Seriously how the heck did gay go from meaning happy to gay to ice being slippery...". So when my professor proposed this assignment, I knew instantly what I wanted to research. After the intro, I started out by describing how the term "gay" is used today, which I think was more beneficial than going straight into the history of the word, especially since I opened up with a modern meaning in the introduction.
One of the best sources I used was GLAAD, which showed how journalists use. or rather don't use the term gay in order to be politically correct.
Also, this essay has my favorite joke of all time- " "The late 1700s brought this definition to describe poetry as the gay science- no, not homosexual people performing science experiments in a lab". I laughed about that one for days. I also casually slipped in a stab at Tiger Woods, since womanizers were considered 'gay' in the 1920s.
The evolution of the term was easy to track, I did surmise that calling something stupid gay was in tandem with saying that everything gay is stupid. I went further than what was asked of the assignment by going into how our current society is trying to eradicate the use of the word 'gay as a derogatory term.
My favorite line in the essay is in the closing sentence, "It is shocking to recognize that there was a time where politicians envisioned gays as people with horns, and that homosexual love was once known as the love that could not speak its name. Now it is spoken, loud and proud, fighting against all those who would wish to silence them".
Though, now that I think of it, I should have used the term "it" rather than "them", but I think I was referring to the homosexuals themselves and not the love that resides between them.
"In this 5-page paper, your job is to identify, discuss, and analyze a “paradigm shift” you recognize in our cultural past or contemporary moment. In addition to recognizing a certain kind of change and analyzing its potential meaning(s), you might trace the significant “moments” of this shift as well as discuss possible ramifications in terms of where our culture is “heading” and how we have come to view or value certain things. The change you recognize might be as simple as the popularization of a word or new usage of a term in relation to consumerism, civic life, or popular accounts of science and technology. "
I opened this essay with one of my favorite stories ever. I'll never forget the first time I sat back to think , "Seriously how the heck did gay go from meaning happy to gay to ice being slippery...". So when my professor proposed this assignment, I knew instantly what I wanted to research. After the intro, I started out by describing how the term "gay" is used today, which I think was more beneficial than going straight into the history of the word, especially since I opened up with a modern meaning in the introduction.
One of the best sources I used was GLAAD, which showed how journalists use. or rather don't use the term gay in order to be politically correct.
Also, this essay has my favorite joke of all time- " "The late 1700s brought this definition to describe poetry as the gay science- no, not homosexual people performing science experiments in a lab". I laughed about that one for days. I also casually slipped in a stab at Tiger Woods, since womanizers were considered 'gay' in the 1920s.
The evolution of the term was easy to track, I did surmise that calling something stupid gay was in tandem with saying that everything gay is stupid. I went further than what was asked of the assignment by going into how our current society is trying to eradicate the use of the word 'gay as a derogatory term.
My favorite line in the essay is in the closing sentence, "It is shocking to recognize that there was a time where politicians envisioned gays as people with horns, and that homosexual love was once known as the love that could not speak its name. Now it is spoken, loud and proud, fighting against all those who would wish to silence them".
Though, now that I think of it, I should have used the term "it" rather than "them", but I think I was referring to the homosexuals themselves and not the love that resides between them.
RSS Feed