I Love Yous Are for White People free essay sample

I love Yous Are for white People I love Yous Are for White People is a memoir about Lacs journey and his family immigrated to America from Vietnam, after the Vietnams War. Lacs family had to deal with cultural shock, language barrier, and difficulty finding jobs. As a Vietnamese immigration myself, I feel like Lacs experiences live through me because there were a lot of similarities in his memoir compared to my past experiences with my parents. Lacs family and many immigrations families had the same circumstances, that had a hard time adapting to a new cultural, and establish a new life in America. As the result, this environment played a significant role on family conflict, and add to the authoritarian parenting method. This was impacted greatly on Lacs childhood life as he mentioned throughout his memoir. I believe the authors main message to the reader is that immigrant parents do their best to parent their children the best they can as they transition into a new culture and life in the United States. We will write a custom essay sample on I Love Yous Are for White People or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page But the parentings method sometimes will lead to unhealthy relationship between parents and children. This main message is revealed through many scenes of brutal discipline, emotional reactions, and verbal abuse. Unlike the Westerns culture, Vietnamese immigrant parents use the authoritarian parent method to discipline children and often time its leading to family conflict that can have a mental impact on children. According to Perception of Vietnamese Fathers Acculturation Levels, Parenting Styles, and Mental Health Outcomes in Vietnamese American Adolescent Immigrants by Nguyen, Peter V, under VIETNAMESE ADOLESCENTS AND THEIR PARENTS section, it states that Once landed in the United States, these parents must quickly adapt to the new and foreign economic system and immediately attempt to find jobs so they may rebuild their lives and provide for the family. Vocationally, most Vietnamese parents experience a drop in status by accepting mediocre jobs with low wages and begin working in fields that are unfamiliar to them (Zhou Bankston, 1998). This can be a humiliating experience for many parents, which is worsened by their lack of knowledge about the English language. Along the process, most Vietnamese parents must deal with the unfamiliarity of U. S. culture, values, and rules in the working environment and the potential for discrimination. . This section of the article is discussing how Vietna mese immigration parents can be overly stress , and add to the authoritarian parenting method. This kind of behavior from parents can have a negative affecting on children. In fact, it only discourage children from striving for success knowing that there will be no rewards but only criticism. This is reflected Lacs experiences throughout his memoir. Lacs journey began when his family settled on Western Avenue in Hollywood, California. Pa has high expectations on Lac because Pa has a hard time adapting to a new culture, and difficulty finding jobs. So Pa wants Lac to mature beyond his age, and become independent. But the only way Pa knows to help Lac achieves that goal is based on his past experiences through brutal discipline and tough love. During one of the their usual tutoring sessions, Lac experiences extreme physical and emotional abuse from Pa. Pa abuses Lac emotionally with his words, and physically with the bamboo stick because Lac is not performing up to Pas standards. La describes his fathers temper as a firecracker with a testy fuse(62). Lac list and endless list of weapons choices that his father uses to beat him. These weapons include plastic rod from mini blind, spatula, rice bowl, a radio antenna, and a wooden yardstick. Despite Pas efforts, Lac feels like it didnt help him become any smarter from the beating. He feels like Pa wants him to become a man even though he havent finish the third grade yet. He realizes his relationship with his dad as The small doses of nurturing that Ive learned to wait for and cherish are no more. Like sandy cliffs along the seashore, theyve eroded away with time. At this age, Lac needs nurture from his father just like any other children waiting for their parents to nurture them. And when their parents are not fulfill their childrens emotional needs, then children will give up. That is the sign of emotional abuse that Lac had encountered in such at a young age. One evening, during dinner time, Lac once again experience physical abuse from his dad. Pa beaten and threaten to kill Lac because he refuses to feed the dog. As Lac re-lived through that intense moment feeling confuse and hopeless, I run the evenings events through my head over and over again, trying to figure out what the hell just happened to me. With no reasonable explanation to be found(161). Like a quicksand(162), Lac feels like he would never lived up to Pas expectations because of harsh criticism from Pa, even though he has tried his best to impress and striving to meet Pas expectations, yet that still is not enough to satisfy Pa. Lac recalls The harder I try to get to the top, the more Im sucked back down by his unrelenting criticism(162). This behavior is more common among Vietnamese parents, but not so much in Westerns societies. According to Perception of Vietnamese Fathers Acculturation Levels, Parenting Styles, and Mental Health Outcomes in Vietnamese American Adolescent Immigrants by Nguyen, Peter V, under PARENTING TYPOLOGY section. In general, the authoritative parenting method of parenting has higher levels of self-esteem, well-developed sense of self, and independent and confident qualities. However, the author discovered that this type of parenting may have more negative effect on the Vietnamese children because of the culture clash that they face every day. Vietnamese American children living in a heterogeneous U. S society are exposed to the Western style life outside of their homes and must abide by the traditional Eastern culture at home. In Lacs case, this parenting typology shows that its only hurt Vietnamese adolescent more than helping them to achieve independent and confident qualities. I think Vietnamese parenting method can be excessive for their adolescents. It is more harmful for their children development then helping them, and could impact on the outcomes of their decisions making in life. For example, like the â€Å"Rats† gang in Lacs memoir, these individuals also dealing with harsh criticism and brutal discipline just like Lac . One of the gang member said Thats why we thugs. Nobody wants us and we want nobody. We rats dirty, hungry, and looking for something crazy to get into. (161) This rebellions behavior causes by their parents authoritarian method. That make them feel unwanted and abandoned because of the way that their parents is treating them. But I believe this can be improved through levels of education, two-ways communications, and counseling. After all, Lac has survived through his painful childhood life and became a successful man as Pa has envisioned, when they moved to United States. Work sited list: Perceptions of Vietnamese Fathers Acculturation Levels, Parenting Styles, and Mental Health Outcomes in Vietnamese American Adolescent Immigrants Author:  Nguyen, Peter V Publication info:  Social Work 53. 4 (Oct 2008): 337-46. I Love Yous Are For White People Author: Lac Su Chapter 4. p62 Chapter 10. p161-162

Frankenstein by Shelley, Mary.

Frankenstein by Shelley, Mary. Hidden LoveFrankenstein Love is an aspiration based on admiration and benevolence. To love another is to admire them and to have a warm attachment to them. Many things in one's life have the ability to cloud or cover up feelings of love. Such things as rage, hate, ugliness, and revenge. Despite these negative feelings and thoughts, love is present in every being, every animal, and anything that possesses the beautiful thing we call life.There is an excellent book titled Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, that displays the use of unseen love to drive a creature to destruction, murder and, devastation. Can such a being who has committed so many acts of wretchedness contain such a feeling as love? Some people think that for such a being that love is not possible to obtain, and others will agree, but argue that although it may be impossible to obtain love from something, it is easy and very possible to have love for something.Promotional photo of Boris Karloff from The Bride ...Throu ghout the whole novel, the monster talks of revenge on the doctor for making him live with his ugliness and being rejecting by people because of it. Even the doctor was frightened and ran away when he first saw his creation's hideous looks and monstrous body. Right off the bat, the doctor could have killed the fiend and rid himself of it forever, but he didn't. He knew that for him to kill this thing, it would be like killing his own beloved child. Seeing the reaction of Frankenstein and the other humans, the creature vowed to hunt down and destroy Victor for bestowing such looks upon this creature's body. What the monster was looking for was love, and he never found any, but he had plenty. The monster loved Victor for letting him live. The monster...

Movie analysis of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Essay

Movie analysis of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) - Essay Example In the movie, several filming techniques became exemplified for the success of its production. This report seeks to give an analysis and a review of the film â€Å"Bonnie and Clyde† (1967). It will also give an insight of the filming techniques adopted in the movie. Review Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker’s story inspired a debate. This represented a wide spectrum to most people because their characters trended from stealing, to robbery, to killing and committing crime! The film intended to give a romantic and a comic feeling of the violent gangster films. This couple became historical counterpart to their own struggles, To begin with, Bonnie was a waitress, she was so bored with her job. Clyde stole Bonnie’s mother’s car to try and search for quick money. They lived in Texas and decided to run away with the stolen car outside the town. The duo's crime spree gear up once they hooked up with a gas station attendant, C.W. Moss, then with Clyde's brother and hi s wife, a preacher's daughter and decided to go into robbing. The car was parked parallel to the getaway, within a twinkle of an eye Clyde shot the bank manager directly on the face, robbed the bank and sped off unknowingly. The gang found themselves in a hot pursuit by the law enforcement, which included the Texas Ranger. They finally locate Bonnie, Clyde and C.W. of whom they thought they had escaped, not long before, they were found hiding at the house of Ivan Moss. According to Richard Barsam, an author of â€Å"Looking at Movies† he mentions that the film was formally set in the past rather than the present. For most of us, most of the time, movies are a break from daily obligations; it is a form of escape, entertainment, and pleasure. The use of Motion pictures depicts a lot, coherently it shapes the way we view the world. Apparently, there is much more to movies than to meet the casual eye or ear, for that matter, they seem odd and aberrant to the general society (Bars am 146). Analysis Bonnie and Clyde are not only a well-crafted film by a first-time director it also touches on a number of fundamental cinematic elements. The film shows significant social and environmental issues vital to all Americans at the beginning of a new era. Hope, fear, hatred, dread, humor, guilt, and loathing became eminent in this film by using the best filming techniques bearing in mind significant elements concerning cinema. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are lead actors in the film. They play a crucial role by blending in with all the elements. This enables the viewer get the actual essence and better understanding of the film. Camera Movement This film brings about much-needed reform in a nation, but true reform will always require more than Hollywood can offer. Nevertheless, to minimize the power of the mass media to generate sympathy, concerns, and demands for reform are to ignore reality. For that reason alone, it is pertinent to note how the producer of this fil m used camera movement to depict a sense of realism in the film. The film has numerous action scenes and camera movement such as panning which is essential in bringing better acknowledgement of the film. A pan is the horizontal camera movement. When a camera pans, it turns left and right. Panning is normally for a very wide panorama that does not fit with the camera frame. In the first robbery scene of the film, a pan reveals the point of view of lead actors Warren Beatty (Clyde) and Faye Dunaway (Bonnie)

Bacteria resistance to antibiotic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Bacteria resistance to antibiotic - Essay Example For instance, antibiotics are used in the treatment of bacterial infections, like pneumococcal pneumonia or staphylococcal infections in the bloodstream. Diseases like influenza, HIV, and herpes are caused by viruses, and antiviral drugs are antibiotics or antimicrobial drugs, which are used to cure diseases caused by viruses. However, the same antibiotic cannot be employed against different bacteria because a single antibiotic cannot fight all types of bacteria. Accordingly, scientists have developed more than fifteen classes of antibiotics drugs. These drugs vary from each other in their chemical structure and action against each bacterium (What are antibiotics?). Bacteria have become antibiotic resistant, due to the evolution of various mechanisms over a period of time. These mechanisms modify the chemical structure of the antibiotic drug, render it inactive, and remove it from the cell. Some of these mechanisms modify the target site of the antibiotic drug and prevent the bacteria from being recognized by the drug. The most prevalent method is to make the antibiotic inactive by modifying the structure of its enzymes. Bacteria modify the existing cellular enzyme, by changing the chemical reaction with the antibiotic to divert the drug from attacking it. Several bacteria transform the target site of the antibiotic drug (Todar). Bacteria exhibit an astonishing capacity to develop resistance to antibiotics. This is a live demonstration of evolution. There are several reasons for bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics. The most common factors include excessive use of antibiotics, discontinuance of medication, before the completion of the course prescribed by the doctor, use of antibiotics as growth enhancers for animals, and an increase in international travel (Purdom). In hospice care, many patients undergoing treatment for a particular ailment develop some other disease, on account of bacterial

Discussion Forum Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Discussion Forum - Article Example Certain definite steps are required to be pursued for the purpose of successful implementation of the relevant process of EMR. It offers significant information related to diverse eruption of diseases and their treatment throughout the entire nation. Introduction In the past, physicians and medical staff used to record the details of patients in papers. Presently, maintaining particulars of patients through papers has been changed to electronic method of recording. This is commonly conducted through Electronic Medical Record (EMR). It is believed that automated or computerized way of medical documentation will prove to be an apposite method for synchronizing as well as enhancing the healthcare related services delivered to the patients. EMR has been observed to bring in a new technological revolution to the healthcare industry. It is considered to be a legal form of record about the details of patients (Boulus, n.d.). Overview of Electronic Medical Record An Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is a process of storing information of the patients with the assistance of computers. It comprises all the basic information that is supposed to be required for treating as well as nursing the patients. It stores information about the patients which entails both clinical as well as demographic information for future references (Garets & Davis, 2006). It is beneficial to have an EMR in a medical facility as it helps in accessing information from any computer. It involves less time as information can be updated and retrieved speedily rather than keeping records in papers. Therefore, it can be stated that it is a safe medium of storing information of the patients quickly. It provides valuable information about a patient to the doctor at any time for better decision-making as well as for the benefit of a patient. Thus, it creates prospect for doctors to gain a detailed comprehension about a patient through exchanging and sharing information (Shortliffe & Barnett, 2004). The effec tive execution of EMR includes eight steps which are as follows: Firstly, it needs to be ensured that the accurate form of EMR is chosen at the healthcare centre. It needs to be thoroughly checked that the right technology has been installed by the technicians who are trained and specialized in it and are willing to provide support after installing that software. The concerned EMR service provider should offer it with a guarantee which would assist in protecting the investment of the investor installing this technology (Sappington, 2009). Secondly, selecting and choosing a team leader who has a positive attitude is considered to be the following step. The team leader should be enthusiastic in reminding the staff regarding EMR implementation and its related efficiencies. The predetermined objectives related to the application of the system needs to be made apparent to provide a lucid comprehension of the related expectations to the staff (Sappington, 2009). Thirdly, for structuring a plan regarding the installation of an EMR, a conversation needs to be held with the service provider about the application of the mentioned system and the kind of training that needs to be offered to the staff. The installation of the system should be done in idle hours so that the regular operational process remains uninterrupted. Additionally, training should also be provided by the professionals in

Brave New World Compared To Utilitarianism

Brave New World Compared To Utilitarianism The story Brave New World presents us to the future world A.F (after Ford) where the government institutionalizes the advantages of technology to the fullest. The reader is informed that human beings are no longer produced naturally anymore. In A.F, technology is used to generate identical boys and girls and place in to classes where they are programmed to be the most efficient at what they do. The utilitarian view and Brave New World both claim that individualistic views are irrelevant. Both the utilitarian and the philosophy of the world state both promote the greatest good principle. On the other hand Mill would oppose to Brave New World because it does not take up that course of nature and or is not based off real human experiences. Mill opposes to social arrangements. The foundation of the world state in Brave New World reveals similar philosophy to the utilitarian view, but not completely. In the sense of Brave New World and the utilitarian view, both cases take a stand point that reject individualisms. In Brave New World, there is no room from individual views or thoughts. In fact it is impossible for any case to even create their own thought. From the second they are obtained from the test tube, babies are conditioned to have limited thoughts and ideas. They are conditioned to only the progression of their function once labeled into the five categorize of castes. For example the Delta caste, once the babies reach the age of eight months, they are conditioned to hate flowers and books. Babies were placed on the floor where they could see a flower and book across the room. The director waited for the babies to show signs of happiness while playing with the flowers and books. A signal was given in which released a terrifying noise accompanied by an electric shock. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossible for deltas to like flowers? (Huxley, 22) The D.H.C replies by explaining that if the delta class was conditioned to like the nature (flower), less time would be spent in the factories where they are most efficient. A love of nature keeps no factory busy. (Huxley, 23) I like to compare the brave new world to a business or a team. The old saying that reflects the brave new world could be said like this, Theres no I in TEAM. The brave new world is programmed around profit and efficiency just as a business is structured around supply and demand. In order for the world state to obtain its social goal of social stability; every caste has to work in concordance of their function. Therefore with each caste being conditioned / taught their function at any early stage will set aside or leave no room for their behavior to act out of concordance. In other words castes are conditioned to fear anything else then what their duty is. That is the secret of happiness and virtue- liking what youve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny (Huxley, 16) By obtaining their objectivity of social stability will then reinforce or create a happy community. This principle in terms refers to Mills greatest happiness princi ple. Both Brave New World and the utilitarian view share the greatest happiness principle. Both Mill and Brave New World reject the importance of individualism. It is wrong to make all individuals happy because it is nearly impossible to obtain such a thing. In doing so it would disrupt the natural balance of experiences. This is where Brave New World and the utilitarian view have their differences. In the utilitarian view Mill provides to tell us that individuals need to experience pain and pleasure. Huxley sets up a perfect world where no pain is experienced. Mill takes into account that it is nearly impossible conceal people from pain. If we did try to conceal humans from pain this would distort humans nature itself. This is very important to a utilitarian because the ultimate end of happiness/pleasure come through pre existing experience. This is why Mill claims we should not have social arrangements. In the philosophy of Brave New World, alpha through gamma castes are given reason to why they should behave in a particular form or matter. Mill would oppose to the brave new world. I think mill would argue chapter two of the book where babies are being conditioned to fear books and nature. Mill would come to say that social stability comes through the natural course of what humans learn through their own experiences. In other words, mills view of human nature itself should conduct people to work together. The brave new world would seem non-natural to Mill. Another difference between Brave New World and the utilitarian is on the topic of pleasures/happiness. In Brave New World, Huxely creates his perfect world where everyone is happy, but happiness is never defined. Brave New World only accompanies one type of pleasure, which is a bodily pleasure. In the utilitarian view, Mill distinguished between two types of pleasure: intellectual pleasures and bodily pleasures. This is to disprove that Brave New World practices a perfect utilitarian standpoint. When answering the question to whether Brave New World practices utilitarianism the answer is yes and no. However it does highlight the fundamentals of utilitarianism. Both Brave New World and utilitarianism do reject individualism and also formulate around the greatest good principle. It is more important to have general happiness for the greatest amount as it is to reach to social goal of social stability which creates for a happy community in Brave New World. But Brave New World lacks the course of nature. A utilitarian does oppose to social arrangement. It is important for humans to have their own experiences through the course of nature. Another aspect that Brave New World is missing is pain and the variety of pleasures. Brave New World only allows for one pleasure (bodily pleasures) and has an absence of pain. Where as a utilitarian can experience two types of pleasures (bodily and intellectual) and also experiences pain. Therefore Brave New World does not practice perfect util itarianism.

Linguistics and Interjections Essay

In Western philosophy and linguistic theory, interjections—that is, words like oof, ouch, and bleah—have traditionally been understood to indicate emotional states. This article offers an account of interjections in Q’eqchi’ Maya that illuminates their social and discursive functions. In particular, it discusses the grammatical form of interjections, both in Q’eqchi’ and across languages, and characterizes the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections in Q’eqchi’ in terms of a semiotic framework that may be generalized for other languages. With these grammatical forms, indexical objects, and pragmatic functions in hand, it details the various social and discursive ends that interjections serve in one Q’eqchi’ community, thereby shedding light on local values, norms, ontological classes, and social relations. In short, this article argues against interpretations of interjections that focus on internal emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. p a u l k o c k e l m a n is McKennan Post-Doctoral Fellow in Linguistic Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H. 03755, U.S.A. [paul.kockelman@dartmouth.edu]). Born in 1970, he was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B.A., 1992) and the University of Chicago (M.S., 1994; Ph.D., 2002). His publications include â€Å"The Collection of Copal among the Q’eqchi’-Maya† (Research in Economic Anthropology 20:163–94), â€Å"Factive and Counterfactive Clitics in Q’eqchi’-Maya: Stance, Status, and Subjectivity,† in Papers from the Thirty-eighth Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (Chicago: Linguistics Society, in press), and â€Å"The Interclausal Relations Hierarchy in Q’eqchi’ Maya† (International Journal of American Linguistics 69:25–48). The present paper was submitted 1 vi 01 and accepted 27 xii 02. 1. A longer version of this article was presented at the workshop â€Å"Semiotics: Culture in Context† at the University of Chicago in January 2001. Chris Ball, Anya Bernstein, John Lucy, and Michael Silverstein all provided very helpful commentary. This article also greatly beneï ¬ ted from suggestions made by Benjamin S. Orlove and several anonymous referees. Western philosophy and linguistic theory have traditionally considered interjections at the periphery of language and primordially related to emotion. For example, the Latin grammarian Priscian deï ¬ ned interjections as â€Å"a part of speech signifying an emotion by means of an unformed word† (Padley 1976:266). Muller (1862)  ¨ thought that interjections were at the limit of what might be called language. Sapir (1921:6–7) said that they were â€Å"the nearest of all language sounds to instinctive utterance.† Bloomï ¬ eld (1984[1933]:177) said that they â€Å"occur under a violent stimulus,† and Jakobson (1960: 354) considered them exemplars of the â€Å"purely emotive stratum of language.† While interjections are no longer considered peripheral to linguistics and are now carefully deï ¬ ned with respect to their grammatical form, their meanings remain vague and elusive. In particular, although interjections are no longer characterized pure ly in terms of emotion, they are still characterized in terms of â€Å"mental states.† For example, Wierzbicka (1992:164) characterizes interjections as â€Å"[referring] to the speaker’s current mental state or mental act.† Ameka (1992a:107) says that â€Å"from a pragmatic point of view, interjections may be deï ¬ ned as a subset of items that encode speaker attitudes and communicative intentions and are contextbound,† and Montes (1999:1289) notes that many interjections â€Å"[focus] on the internal reaction of affectedness of the speaker with respect to the referent.† Philosophers have offered similar interpretations. For example, Herder thought that interjections were the human equivalent of animal sounds, being both a â€Å"language of feeling† and a â€Å"law of nature† (1966:88), and Rousseau, pursuing the origins of language, theorized that protolanguage was â€Å"entirely interjectional† (1990:71). Indeed, such philosophers have posited a historical transition from interjections to language in which the latter allows us not only to index pain and express passion but also to denote values and exercise reason (D’Atri 1995).2 Thus interjections have been understood as a semiotic artifact of our natural origins and the most transparent index of our emotions. Such an understanding of interjections is deeply rooted in Western thought. Aristotle (1984), for example, posited a contrastive relationship between voice, proper only to humans as instantiated in language, and sound, shared by humans and animals as instantiated in cries. This contrastive relation was then compared with other analogous contrastive relations, in particular, value and pleasure/pain, polis and household, and bios (the good life, or political life proper to humans) and zoe (pure life, shared by all living things). Such a contrast is so pervasive that modern philosophers such as Agamben (1995) have devoted much of their scholarly work to the thinking out of this tradition and others built on it such as id versus ego in the Freudian paradigm. In short, the folk distinction made between interjections and language 2. D’Atri (1995:124) argues that, for Rousseau, â€Å"interjections . . . are sounds and not voices: they are passive registerings and as such do not presuppose the intervention of will, which is what characterizes human acts of speech.† Proper maps onto a larger set of distinctions in Western thought: emotion and cognition, animality and humanity, nature and culture, female and male, passion and reason, bare life and the good life, pain and value, private and public, and so on (see, e.g., Lutz 1988, Strathern 1988). In this article I avoid such abstracting and dichotomizing traps by going straight to the heart of interjections: their everyday usage in actual discourse when seen in the context of local culture and grounded in a semiotic framework. I begin by characterizing the linguistic and ethnographic context in which I carried out my research and go on to relate interjections to other linguistic forms, showing how they are both similar to and distinct from other classes of words in natural languages. Next I provide and exemplify a semiotic framework, generalizable across languages, in terms of which the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections can best be characterized. Then I detail the local usage of the 12 most commonly used interjections in Q’eqchi’ and show the way in which they are tied into all things cultural: values, norms, ontological classes, social relations, and so on. I conclude by discussing the relative frequency with which the various forms and functions of interjections are used. In short, I argue against interpretations of interjections that focus on emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. Linguistic and Ethnographic Context While I am attempting to provide as wide a theoretical account of interjections as I can, thereby providing a metalanguage for speaking about similar sign phenomena in other languages, I am also trying to capture the grammatical niceties of Q’eqchi’ Maya and the discursive and social particularities of one Q’eqchi’-speaking village in particular. Before I begin my analysis, then, I want to sketch the linguistic and ethnographic context in which I worked. Q’eqchi’ is a language in the Kichean branch of the Mayan family, spoken by some 360,000 speakers in Guatemala (in the departments of Alta Verapaz, Izabel, and Peten) and Belize (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980). 3 Lin ´ guistically, Q’eqchi’ is relatively well described: scholars such as Berinstein (1985), Sedat (1955), Stewart (1980), Stoll (1896), and Chen Cao et al. (1997) have discussed its syntax, morphology, phonology, and lexicon, and I have detailed various morphosyntactic forms (encoding grammatical categories such as mood, status, evidentiality, taxis, and inalienable possession) as they intersect with sociocultural values and contextual features and as they illuminate local modes of personhood (Kockelman 3. Typologically, Q’eqchi’ is a morphologically ergative, head-marking language. In Q’eqchi’, vowel length (signaled by doubling letters) is phonemic; /k/ and /q/ are velar and uvular plosives, respectively, and /x/ and /j/ are palato-alveolar and velar fricatives, respectively. All other phonemes have their standard IPA values. 2002, 2003a, b). This article is therefore part of a larger project in which I examine how intentional and evaluative stances are encoded in natural languages and the relations that such stances bear to local modes of subjectivity. Alta Verapaz, the original center of the Q’eqchi’-speaking people who still make up the majority of its population, has had a unusual history even by Guatemalan standards. In 1537, after the Spanish crown had failed to conquer the indigenous peoples living there, the Dominican Friar Bartolome de Las Casas was permitted to  ´ pacify the area through religious methods. Having succeeded, he changed the name of the area from Tezulutlan (Land of War) to Verapaz (True Peace), and the Dominicans were granted full control over the area—the state banning secular immigration, removing all military colonies, and nullifying previous land grants. In this way, for almost 300 years the area remained an isolated enclave, relatively protected by the paternalism of the church in comparison with other parts of Guatemala (King 1974, Sapper 1985). This ended abruptly in the late 1800s, however, with the advent of coffee growing, liberal reforms, and the inï ¬â€šux of Europeans (Cambranes 1985, Wagner 1996). Divested of their land and forced to work on coffee plantations, the Q’eqchi’ began migrating north into the unpopulated lowland forests of the Peten  ´ and Belize (Adams 1965, Carter 1969, Howard 1975, Kockelman 1999, Pedroni 1991, Saa Vidal 1979, Schwartz 1990, Wilk 1991). In the past 40 years this migration has been fueled by a civil war that has ravaged the Guatemalan countryside, with the Q’eqchi’ ï ¬â€šeeing not just scarce resources and labor quotas but also their own nation’s soldiers—often forcibly conscripted speakers of other Mayan languages (Carmack 1988, IWGIA 1978, Wilson 1995). As a consequence, the past century has seen the Q’eqchi’ population spread from Alta Verapaz to the Peten and ï ¬ nally to Belize, Mexico, and even the  ´ United States. Indeed, although only the fourth largest of some 24 Mayan languages, Q’eqchi’ is thought to have the largest percentage of monolinguals, and the ethnic group is Guatemala’s fastest-growing and most geographically extensive (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980). The two key ethnographies of Q’eqchi’-speakers have been written by Wilk (1991) and Wilson (1995), the former treating household ecology in Belize and the latter upheavals in village life and identity at the height of the civil war in highland Guatemala during the 1980s. In addition to these monographs, there are also a number of dissertations and articles on the history (King 1974, Sapper 1985, Wagner 1996), ecology (Carter 1969, Secaira 1992, Wilson 1972), and migration (Adams 1965, Howard 1975, Pedroni 1991) of Q’eqchi’-speaking people. The data for this article are based on almost two years of ethnographic and linguistic ï ¬ eldwork among speakers of Q’eqchi’, most of it in Ch’inahab, a village of some 80 families (around 650 people) in the municipality of San Juan Chamelco, in the department of Alta Verapaz. At an altitude of approximately 2,400 m, Ch’inahab is one of the highest villages in this area, with an annual precipitation of more than 2,000 mm. It is also one of the most remote, access to the closest road requiring a three-hour hike down a steep and muddy single-track trail. Its relatively high altitude and remote location provide the perfect setting for cloud forest, and such a cloud forest provides the perfect setting for the resplendent quetzal, being home to what is thought to be the highest density of such birds in the world. Because of the existence of the quetzal and the cloud forest in which it makes its home, Ch’inahab has been the site of a successful eco-tourism project the conditions and consequences of which are detailed in my dissertation (Kockelman 2002). While the majority of villagers in Ch’inahab are monolingual speakers of Q’eqchi’, some men who have served time in the army or worked as itinerant traders speak some Spanish. All the villagers are Catholic. Ch’inahab is divided by a mountain peak with dwellings on both of its sides and in the surrounding valleys. It takes about 45 minutes to hike across the village. At one end there is a biological station kept by the eco-tourism project and used sporadically by European ecologists, and at the other there is a Catholic church and a cemetery. In the center there is a small store, a school for primary and secondary grades, and a soccer ï ¬ eld. The surrounding landscape is cloud forest giving way to scattered house sites, agricultural parcels, pasture, and ï ¬ elds now fallow. All villagers engage in corn-based, or milpa, agriculture, but very few have enough land to fulï ¬ ll all of their subsistence needs.4 For this reason, many women in the village are dedicated to chicken husbandry, most men in the village engage in seasonal labor on plantations (up to ï ¬ ve months a year in some cases), and many families engage in itinerant trade (women weaving baskets and textiles for the men to sell) and eco-tourism (the women hosting tourists and the men guiding them). Dwelling sites often contain a scattering of houses in which reside an older couple and their married sons, all of whom share a water source and a pasture. The individual families themselves often have two houses, a relatively traditional thatched-roof house in which the family cooks and sleeps and a relatively new house with a tin roof in which they host festivals and in which older children and ecotourists may sleep. Because of eco-tourism and the inï ¬â€šux of money and strangers that it brings, there has been an increase in the construction of such tin-roofed houses, and, as will be seen, many of my examples of interjections come from such construction contexts. My data on the use of interjections among villagers in Ch’inahab comes from 14 months of ï ¬ eldwork carried out between 1998 and 2001. The data collection con4. Before 1968, what is now Ch’inahab was owned by the owner of a plantation. Q’eqchi’-speakers who lived in the village of Popobaj (located to the south of and lower than Ch’inahab) were permitted to make their milpa in this area in exchange for two weeks of labor per month on the ï ¬ nca (Secaira 1992:20). Only in 1968, when a group of villagers got together to form a land acquisition committee, were some 15 caballerÄ ±as (678 ha) of land purchased from the owner  ´ for 4,200 quetzals (US$4,200). This land, while legally owned by the entire community, was divided among the original 33 villagers as a function of their original contributions.