Monthly Archives: April 2020

Tamales in Christmas

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 77
Occupation: NonE
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/26/2020
Primary Language: Spanish

Main piece: 

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the informant and interviewer.

Interviewer: Can you tell me about the tamales? When you make them for Christmas? 

Informant: Oh of course! Well you know how it works. Everyone has to contribute in one way or another. For example, your mom and sister help me with the preparation and you and your dad put the money. And that way everyone puts their share. 

Interviewer: But isn’t there like a myth where if you get mad, the tamales don’t cook? 

Informant: That’s very true so don’t you dare get mad. 

Interviewer: But why? What happens? Or how do they not cook? 

Informant: They just don’t, don’t you remember 2 years ago we had to start over because your mom got mad and they didn’t cook. 

Interviewer: Oh yeah but maybe that’s just a coincidence? 

Informant: No it is real. And if you get mad you have to dance or they won’t cook. 

Background: My informant here was my grandma who’s staying with us during COVID-19. She was born in Guadalajara, Mexico but lives in the U.S. with us for the most part. She has been helping us make tamales every year for Christmas. She says that when she was younger, her family would circle around a table and each person a specific task in making the tamales. 

Context: I sat down with my grandma and asked her about this myth. I didn’t tell her it was for a project but I just brought it up and then recorded the interview above. The setting was first in the kitchen and then proceeded to the living room. 

Thoughts: I’ve heard of this myth in Mexico before from other family but my mom and grandma tell it to us all the time around christmas time. Getting mad is very bad so I usually just go to my room to avoid anything of the fuss. I don’t think it’s true. Maybe if you get mad, you don’t have the same desire or mood to cook and it’s easier to mess up. But I don’t think it has a direct relationship but I find it cool that it’s a very common myth in Mexico. 

Indrid Cold

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/29/2020
Primary Language: English

Text:

Informant: Ok, so this guy. Oh my god. I’m obsessed with him. I love him. Basically, in West Virginia — the same place my boy Mothman is from– this guy got into a car accident. He was saved from the wreckage by this guy who had a really creepy smile. He just kept smiling. The guy who crashed his car was like “Woah who are you?”, and creepy smile guys was like “My name’s Indrid Cold”, but Indrid Cold didn’t use his mouth. He told the guy telepathically. The reigning theory on this guy Indrid Cold/ The Smiling Man/ The Grinning Man is that he’s come from a race of aliens who all smile and grin. He was the one to try and first contact Earth. I heard about him on a podcast years ago, and I’ve been obsessed with him ever since. While I don’t know if he was an alien, I know deep in my heart that he existed. 

Context:

I asked a group of friends to share what they knew about cryptids. This was one of their replies.

Thoughts: I’m considered myself fairly well-versed in the world of cryptids, but upon learning of Indrid Cold I learned that there were ones I had never heard of.

“Spaghetti Code” as Computer Science Lingo

Nationality: Jewish
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

Informant: Spaghetti Code is exactly what it sounds like, usually, I’ll use Spaghetti Code when I need to get something working, and I don’t give a shit what it looks like. It usually works, but it breaks pretty easily It is completely unreadable but it gets the job done. 

Interviewer: In what context would you use this? 

Informant: Say I have a lab due tonight, and I have an hour to do it and I just need something to pass the cases so I just code something really half-assed and someone asked me if I did the assignment, I would tell them “yeah, I did it but it is all spaghetti.” 

Interviewer: Where did you learn it? 

Informant: Sophomore year through word of mouth, friends just kinda started using it around me so I picked it up. 

Background

The informant is a good friend and housemate of mine, and is a junior at USC studying Computer Science and Computer Engineering. He is originally from Manhattan Beach, CA and has been coding ever since highschool. He has had several internships with different computer science companies such as Microsoft and is very involved with different coding clubs on campus. 

Context

When I asked my informant how his assignment went, he described it using this term. Being something I have never heard before, I brought it up during our interview and asked him to describe it and provide some more context as to when he would use it. 

Analysis

I think this example of folk speech is a very colloquial and humorous way for computer science students to describe their work and relate to one another. It is a great indicator of the quality of their code, and provides imagery that is usually not present within the lingo and world of computer science. Especially for a subject and major that can harbor a lot of stress, it is also an indicator that could have arised when students did not have the time or effort to put in quality work into their coding assignments but still needed a way to get it done. 

Legend behind Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival

Nationality: French/ Chinese
Age: 23
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 2/25/2020
Primary Language: English
Language: French, Mandarin

The following story was told to me by my friend:

So in China we have the Mid-Autumn festival, as I am sure you have heard of, the mooncakes are famous. But, what a lot of people do not know is the myth of how it came to be. It all became long ago. There is a princess who lives on the moon in her moon castle with her little bunny. And as it goes, on the full moon -the 15th day of the month on the Lunar calendar- the princess could see Earth at its fullest. Every full moon she would look down at earth and she would always look at this one farmer and she eventually fell in love with him from afar. So one day, she went down to Earth and disguised herself as a human. Her and the farmer fell in love and she was happy on Earth. Then one day her brother noticed she was missing, so he searched for her and found her on Earth having married a mortal human. Outraged, he came down to Earth, and took her from her lover since it was a disgrace that a god would marry a human and he took her back to the moon. There, he imprisoned her in her castle and she could no longer see her lover. Eventually, the other gods felt bad for her because she was so very sad. So they made the agreement that in Autumn on the full moon she is allowed to go down once a year to visit her lover. So, the festival happens on the full moon on the 15th in Mid-Autumn every year and it is all about reunion and time with loved ones. 

Background: 

The informant is ½ Chinese and ½ French. While she spent the first 13 years of her life in Paris, she moved to Shanghai for high School to reconnect with her Chinese heritage. This story is one of her all time favorite stories from Chinese culture that her grandmother would tell her. She holds it very close to her. 

Context: 

The informant is a good friend of mine, and the conversation was held organically as she was reminiscing about things she loves about her culture one night over dinner at an Italian restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. 

My thoughts: 

I found this to be such a cute and lovely legend to how the festival came to be. Another one of my friends loves the Mid-Autumn festival. He is from Vietnam though, and while he never mentioned this moon princess story, he also loves the festival and what it signified for him and his friends and family spending time together. I love how this festival brings up such good memories for many of the people I have spoken to and it shows such a wholesome lineage between cultures.

“Karen” as a folk term

Nationality: Jewish
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

Interviewer: What does “Karen” mean?

Informant: Karen is an internet slang word to describe a  very entitled, middle-class white woman. Or a boomer white woman. They are often blonde and they often have very short haircuts. They usually like to speak and the managers, and then proceed to yell at the entry-level employees who have no control over the matters. 

Interviewer:Where did you pick it up?

Informant: Maybe a year ago, scrolling through Twitter. 

Interviewer: do you use it frequently?

Informant: Yeah, especially when making jokes with friends or memes on the internet, haha.

Background

The informant is a good friend and housemate of mine, and is a junior at USC studying Computer Science and Computer Engineering. He is originally from Manhattan Beach, CA and has been coding ever since highschool. He has had several internships with different computer science companies such as Microsoft and is very involved with different coding clubs on campus. 

Context

The group of individuals at my house tend to send each other a lot of memes and use internet lingo throughout the house as different jokes. “Karen” is one that this informant uses very frequently, so during our interview I asked him to describe it in his own terms. 

Analysis

This term of folk speech is a perfect example of how internet lingo and culture has permeated into everyday verbal communication. Many of these terms are associated with humor and generational differences, as seen with this one which is intended to poke fun at individuals from an older population. This shows the rift in values and morals between generations, and displays how everyday names can be transformed to carry much more weight and meaning.