More about work as I get ready for a break

Yesterday I went to Martinez for another writing day and, well, didn't get much writing done. Sometimes that happens. In the morning I worked on an article about how students learn to indicate source use in their writing, and in the afternoon I worked on Flipper (my next book), but in both cases I did more stirring around of words than actual writing. It's a normal stage for any project but can still be pretty frustrating. In this case it was fine, because I've met all  my summer deadlines except Flipper (more about that shortly) and can afford to flounder for a bit.

In the afternoon I was working on the part of Flipper where I explain that communication is not a simple, linear transfer in which we encode meaning into words, then others decode the words and get the same meaning. That view of communication sees language as being like a telephone or other technological device:

I was trying to show that it doesn't actually work that way, for a variety of reasons. One is that a word might mean one thing to you and another to me. Another is that even the same words, exchanged by the same people, mean different things in different contexts.

In trying to illustrate this point, I found myself on a cartoon-making site. The next half hour didn't do much for Flipper, but it was awfully fun. First I created this:

(The setting is meant to be a soda fountain, where one really could order a grilled cheese sandwich.)

Then this, with the same guy saying the same thing, and meaning the same thing by it, but getting a completely different response:

Then this, where the relative power dynamics become clear:

I spent about 10 minutes trying to put the judge behind the bench before I remembered that I was supposed to be writing a book and not making cartoons. I went back to stirring words around for a bit, but then realized my first examples didn't really demonstrate how words can mean different things to different people -- they just demonstrated the context determines what is and is not appropriate to say -- so I created this:

The call number is for this.

And then, just because I could, I added this (which illustrates  nothing but my lack of focus by that point):

As for the deadline, I plan to use an early version of Flipper in a class this fall (starting September 21st). Plenty of time.