Task 2. The Way We Are

Ex. 1. Identifying aspects of communication. Read the story “The Way we are” by D. Sedaris and get ready to dwell on the main elements of the communicative episode described in the text.

The Way We Are

Of wildflowers and weeds

By D. Sedaris

In Paris they warn you before cutting off the water, but out in Normandy you’re just supposed to know. You’re also supposed to be prepared, and it’s this last part that gets me every time. Still, though, I try to make do. A saucepan of chicken broth will do for shaving, and in a pinch I can always find something to pour into the toilet tank: orange juice, milk, a lesser champagne. If I really got hard up, I suppose I could hike through the woods and bathe in the river, though it’s never quite come to that.

Most often, our water is shut off because of some reconstruction project, either in our village or in the next one over. A hole is dug, a pipe is replaced, and within a few hours things are back to normal. The mystery is that it’s so perfectly timed to my schedule. This is to say that the tap dries up at the exact moment I roll out of bed, which is usually between ten and ten-thirty. For me this is early, but for Hugh and most of our neighbors it’s something closer to mid-day. What they do at 6 A.M. is anyone’s guess. I only know that they’re incredibly self-righteous about it, and talk about the dawn as if it’s a personal reward, bestowed on account of their great virtue.

The last time our water went off, it was early summer. I got up at my regular hour, and saw that Hugh was off somewhere, doing whatever it is he does. This left me alone to solve the coffee problem – a sort of Catch-22, as in order to think straight I needed caffeine, and in order to make that happen I needed to think straight. Once, in a half-sleep, I made it with Perrier, which sounds plausible but really isn’t. On another occasion, I heated up some leftover tea and poured that over the grounds. Had the tea been black rather than green, the coffee might have worked out, but, as it was, the result was vile. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d try more than once, so this time I skipped the teapot and headed straight for a vase of wildflowers sitting by the phone on one of the living-room tables.

Hugh had picked them the previous day, and it broke my heart to think of him, marching across a muddy field with a bouquet in his hand. He does these things that are somehow beyond faggy and seem better suited to some hardscrabble pioneer wife: making jam, say, or sewing bedroom curtains out of burlap. Once, I caught him down on the riverbank, beating our dirty clothes against a rock. This was before we got a washing machine, but, still, he could have laundered things in the tub. “Who are you? ” I’d said, and, as he turned, I half-expected to see a baby at his breast, not nested in one of those comfortable supports but hanging, red-faced, by its gums.

When Hugh beats underpants against river rocks or decides that it might be fun to grind his own flour, I think of a couple I once met. This was years ago, in the early nineties…

The New Yorker. 2007, February 19 & 26

1. What prevents the story-teller from mindless processing one morning?

2. Does the story-teller and Hugh represent the same person prototype?

3. Identify the speech community presented in the communicative episode under consideration. Does the story-teller “fit in”?

4. Dwell on the gender stereotypes reflected in the story.

Ex. 2. Discussion. Express your opinion about the following. What are the pros and cons of mindless processing?

Ex. 3. Follow-up. Analyse the communication from the point of view of the participants’ perception. Make use of the following notions: person prototypes, personal constructs, scripts.

Ex. 4. Problem-solving. Describe a typical representative of some category of people (e.g. a typical professor, a typical housewife, etc.). Include into your description traits, patterns of be­havior, and role relations characteristic of this person. Read out your description to the whole group without saying which person prototype it illustrates. The task of your group mates is to guess which prototype the description fits.

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