Sunday, October 21, 2012

8:3 pantomiming

Where & When: I found the word, pantomiming, when I was reading an article from The New York Times with my 9th graders.

"Bonnie Ousley found Greg lying on his stomach, refusing to speak or even look at her. She sat on the edge of the bed and began stroking his back. In the telling, Greg slid into present tense, pantomiming his mother’s caress. 'And she keeps saying: ‘What’s wrong, honey? What’s going on with you? Talk to me. Just talk to me’' ” (Anderson, 2012).

Anderson, S. (2012, July 19). Greg ousley is sorry for killing his parents. is that enough?. The new york times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/magazine/greg-ousley-is-sorry-for-killing-his-parents-is-that-enough.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Definition: Communication by means of gesture and facial expression.


In Context: When the actor felt that words could no longer express the words he wanted to say, he started pantomiming the story.

Level Familiarity: As far as I know, I have never heard this word before.

Reflective Commentary: I decided to define this word for one of my words this week because I had never heard it before and because I was unsure of its meaning after using context clues. Based on the word in the sentence from the article, I can kind of see how it means communication by facial expression and gesture. Now that I look back and reflect on the sentence from the article, it does make sense in the context. But I do wonder if he was pantomiming his mother's caress on himself or the interviewer? I suppose this is a good word to know. Instead of saying that he was communicating by facial expression, you could simply say pantomiming. The only problem is that I don't know if a lot of people would know it's meaning and thus could get confused. But if they know how to break down the word to understand its meaning, you can see the word mime in it. Mimes do not speak and communicate by hands or facial expressions. So if you are able to interpret that from the word, it would be easy enough to understand.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment