Part 3 Within The Lab A Business Proposal
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An Immodest Proposal free porn video
Chapter 1
‘I saved you a seat,’ called out Chandra as she saw Vanessa walk into the classroom.
‘Thanks.’ Vanessa walked quickly to the desk that Chandra had indicated, put her backpack down between her own seat and her friend’s, and sat down with a relieved sigh. ‘The prof here yet?’
‘Not yet.’
Vanessa reached into her bag and pulled out a pen and a pad of paper.
A guy sitting behind the two co-eds leaned forward and said, ‘So… D’you girls believe stories they tell about this class?’
Vanessa turned around and smiled at the guy who had struck up a conversation. ‘I don’t know. I’m just glad that he’s later than I am.’
Chandra joined in. ‘It certainly looks interesting. I’ll say that much.’
‘Yeah, I guess you could say that. By the way, I’m Justin.’ He reached forward to shake the girls’ hands.
‘Vanessa.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Vanessa. And you are?’
‘Chandra.’
‘Enchanté’
Chandra giggled as he kissed the back of her hand.
After a moment, Justin glanced down at his watch. ‘Ya know what I hate? I hate it when the teachers can’t even make it to their own classes on time. I mean, it’s not as though they’re coming from someplace off-campus. Half the faculty have offices in this building. I mean, what the fuck?’
Vanessa nodded her head. ‘Exactly! What the fuck!’
‘I don’t care if this is the most interesting chemistry course this school offers. It doesn’t look good when the instructor’s late on the first day, ya know?’
Chandra and Vanessa scowled, staring at their new friend.
‘What? Was it something I said?’
Chandra said, quietly, ‘Um, Justin. I don’t know how to tell you this, but this isn’t Chemistry.’
‘Wait? What?’
‘It’s Linguistics. Linguistics 249. The Use, Misuse, and Abuse of Words,’ said Vanessa.
‘Oh. Well, I feel sheepish,’ Justin said. He stood up, picked up his satchel, and hoisted it over his shoulder. ‘It was nice meeting you two.’
Vanessa said, ‘Nice meeting you too,’ trying to suppress her own laughter.
Justin walked slowly towards the door, turning sharply on his heels before he actually left the classroom. He hit one of the light switches on the wall and the front half of the room was plunged into semi-darkness.
Turning to face the class, he said, ‘All right, class. I’m Professor Justin Wells. Welcome to Linguistics 249. Your official course manual calls this course… I’m sorry, Vanessa. What do they call this class again?’
Vanessa blushed, both at having been put on the spot like this and at the antics of their professor who had apparently pretended to be a student. Instead of answering, her thoughts drifted to whether or not anyone else in the class hadn’t believed him to be another student.
‘Vanessa? Don’t be shy!’
‘Oh, sorry, professor. It’s The Use, Misuse, and Abuse of Words.’
‘That’s a nice course name, but I prefer the much simpler…’ He retrieved a small black remote control, clicked it once, and a PowerPoint demonstration appeared on the white board at the front of the room.
The title slide had a single word on it: WURDZ.
‘I’ll start you guys off with a simple question,’ Professor Wells said as he looked around the room. ‘Does anyone see anything wrong with this title?’
There was a low murmur throughout the room before Chandra said, ‘You spelled it wrong.’
‘Oh. All right. Does anyone else think I spelled it wrong?’
A few people raised their hands, and the class gradually came to the consensus about the typo that appeared in large letters before them all.
‘Why do you think I spelled it wrong?’
A guy sitting a few rows behind Chandra and Vanessa called out, ‘It’s spelled W-O-R-D-S!’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Professor Wells, feigning ignorance and suddenly giving the air of someone who hadn’t realized the information he had just been provided. ‘But why?’
Everyone in the classroom looked around at each other, unsure of how to answer this question. Finally, a young woman in the back of the room called out, ‘But that’s the way the word is supposed to be spelled!’
‘Ahh! That’s how it’s supposed to be. The convention of spelling! Of course. But isn’t this class about the use, misuse, and abuse of words?’ He paused for a moment and added, ‘Now. You all knew exactly what I was saying with this title page in spite of the spelling convention, right?’
The students started nodding slowly, with a few members of the class mumbling, ‘Right.’
‘So I just misused the word ‘words’ and you still understood what I was saying. One thing you’ll learn in this class is that sometimes it’s not as important ‘how’ you say something as long as you can convey the proper meaning of what you’re trying to say. Now. Would anyone disagree with me when I say that the way it’s presented here, as W-U-R-D-Z, is probably closer to the actual pronunciation of the individual letters than the convention I knowingly defied?’
A few students shook their heads but everyone remained silent.
‘This is because the written language changes much more slowly than the spoken language. The human tongue is naturally lazy and tends towards things that are easier to pronounce. The written language is much more disinclined to change because,’ he gestured towards the girl who explained the spelling convention, ‘there are conventions in written language that we are all somewhat bound to uphold.
‘In this class, we’ll be talking about using, abusing, and misusing words. When and why it’s done, how it’s done, and the consequences of doing it. We will be defying conventions and, as a part of a class experiment, we’re going to see how — if at all — we can influence change in the language. So there are a few things we need to be mindful of.’
He clicked on the remote in his hand and the PowerPoint slide changed to read ‘Words are metaphors.’
‘First,’ he said loudly before returning to his normal tone of voice, ‘Remember that all words are metaphors for whatever concepts they represent. If a language needs a word, it will likely either acquire the word from another language or just invent it on its own. The English language is particularly good at doing both of these things. Over time, the meanings of words can and will change.’
He looked over the classroom and saw his students scribbling down his message. He smiled broadly and paused until the pens started to slow down. He clicked the remote again. The next slide said, ‘Nothing is off-limits.’
‘Second! We must be willing to embrace taboos and shatter conventions. We cannot do this unless we embrace words we might not like. Knowing where a word comes from and why it exists must be the first step. Let’s use an easy example. Think of the name ‘James’. That’s a good, formal name, right? But the familiar version of the name is ‘Jim.’ Can anyone think of an offensive word that underwent this same vowel shift? Long ‘A’ to short ‘I’?’
There was a low mumble throughout the class but either no one knew, no one wanted to hazard a guess, or anyone who knew was too afraid to admit to knowing.
‘All right. I’ll say it. The Spanish word for black is ‘negro.’. And the ‘E’ of that word is the same vowel sound as what we saw in ‘James’. So there was a familiarizing vowel shift from that, that gave us the word ‘nigger’. Of course it’s a hateful word today but at its heart, I don’t think it always was. It was almost a friendly word when it first started out in the language.’
He clicked on the remote again and the next slide appeared on the screen. ‘Minimize ambiguity.’
‘Finally! An important point that bears making in terms of the actual study of language is that, as long as you can express what you actually mean, the words themselves become secondary. You can say something using five words or fifty words. As long as your meaning isn’t lost in the words, they’re both cor
rect.’
He turned the lights on and faced the classroom, smiling broadly. ‘So let’s have fun with this! That’s about it for today. Please pick up your syllabus for this class up here on my desk on the way out. My office location and hours are at the top of the syllabus, but I would like to warn you that my office is fairly small, so I don’t think I can actually receive more than two students at any given time. More than that, and you’ll probably need to wait outside the office until the student in front of you leaves.
‘So, without further ado, have a great week everyone! I’ll see you all next week.’
The students all stood up and filed out of the classroom, picking up copies of the syllabus on their way out. When Vanessa and Chandra approached his desk, he smiled at them. ‘I hope you two didn’t mind my little ruse at the beginning of the class. I like to do that kind of stuff, especially when we talk about defying convention.’
‘Not at all, Professor, or, should I say, Justin?’ giggled Chandra.
Vanessa nodded her agreement.
He laughed. ‘See you two next week, unless you want to talk to me in my office before then.’ He winked at Vanessa as he picked up his satchel and walked out of the room.
Chapter 2
Vanessa posted the syllabus for her Linguistics class on the cork board above her desk in her dorm room. She let out a sigh as she thought of the handsome teacher who, she wouldn’t admit to anyone quite yet, impressed her tremendously. Here was a rulebreaker, a trendsetter, an iconoclast. And whatever else she might say, she really had thought he was just another student, so at the very least, he looked young enough to be a student.
She made a note of his office hours. He was in his office on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, which meant that if she could make the time, she might be able to see him in his office the following day. Should she go see him this early in the semester, or should she wait?
She replayed his first class over and over in her head. If she was going to stop into his office, she would need some kind of excuse, some pretense for going, and wanting to get a closer look at his well-chiseled face and physique really wasn’t a good enough reason.
He talked about the tongue being naturally lazy. What did he mean by that? She got that the spoken word changes more quickly than the written word. After all, there’s no shortage of words that aren’t pronounced anything like the way they’re spelled. In some cases, different people will pronounce the same word differently. But actually being lazy? That didn’t make sense to her. She decided that she’d use this point as her excuse to go down to his office.
She decided to do some research into that but the only information she could find of any real consequence was a condition referred to as ‘Lazy Tongue Syndrome,’ which apparently is a problem where people (usually children just learning to speak) can talk but are not fully understood.
She sighed and decided that yes, this was a fairly good excuse to go see Professor Wells. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too transparent.
Chapter 3
Vanessa glanced down at her watch as she got off the elevator in the building that housed Professor Wells’s office. 10:45 am. She mused that showing up about midway through his office hours, she wouldn’t seem too eager. She hadn’t told anyone — not even Chandra — that she was planning on going down to see him, but it felt like time dragged in getting to this point. She wondered if anyone noticed the bounce in her step as she walked down the corridor towards his office.
When she arrived, his door was closed, so she decided to loiter around some of the nearby desks. She saw an administrative assistant, made a note of her name, and asked, ‘Hi, Emily. Is Professor Wells meeting with someone right now?’
‘I don’t think so. He usually keeps his door closed.’
‘But his office hours are…’
‘Right now. Just go up and knock.’
She walked up to his door and made a fist so as to knock, but she paused to read the cartoons taped to his door. In one, the scene was a bar, with some guy talking to a girl. His mouth is open and the caption below it read, in quotes, ‘Do you understand the difference between cunning linguistics and fallacious logic?’
A second cartoon was a picture of a bedding store whose name is ‘Nothing Really Mattress.’
A third cartoon had the appearance of a backyard party or barbecue, but all of the attendees wore medieval clothes. One person has a quote balloon that reads ‘Joan of Arc burned my steak.’ A second person, standing next to him, warns, ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full. It’s how rumors get started.’
A fourth cartoon was a scene of what appeared to be a meeting in some kind of a board room. One person is standing, with a quote balloon saying, ‘… And so we should try to move away from references to the so-called dead white males in order to be more inclusive.’ Someone sitting at the table has his hand up, his quote bubble has him saying, ‘Does this mean that Shakespeare should be barred?’
A fifth cartoon was clearly intended to be a wedding scene, with the bride very visibly pregnant. Many of the guests around the church wore clothes that were reminiscent of Japanese nobility and a lot of people carried long, thin swords. The caption below it read, ‘Shogun Wedding’.
Vanessa laughed loud enough for a voice to call from behind the door, ‘Is someone out there?’
She cautiously pushed the door open and stepped in. ‘Sorry, Professor Wells. It’s just me.’
‘I remember you. You were one of the girls I punked in my Words class yesterday, right? Chandra?’
‘Vanessa, actually. Chandra’s my friend.’
‘Ooooh! Sorry.’
‘That’s all right.’ She felt somewhat dispirited that he didn’t remember her name, but decided not to say anything.
‘I take it you like my cartoons?’
‘I thought the shogun wedding one was the best.’
‘Yeah, I liked that one. I think all of those cartoons say something about me and what I like and don’t like.’ After a short pause in the conversation, he added, ‘I’m sure you didn’t come down here to talk about my cartoons. What can I do you for, Vanessa?’
She took a deep breath and reminded herself of what she’d been planning on saying for the better part of the past day. After a short pause, she said, ‘I’ve been thinking about something you said yesterday and I don’t really understand it. What do you mean when you say that our tongues are lazy? I googled the phrase and all I could find was something on Lazy Tongue Syndrome, which is when people speak but their words aren’t really understandable as the words they think they’re saying.’
Professor Wells smiled and let out a hearty laugh. ‘Please. Sit down.’ He gestured towards a chair near his desk. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’
She sat down, crossed her legs, and said, ‘I’m all right. Thank you.’
He sat down and looked Vanessa directly in the eye. She smiled and met his gaze for a moment before she looked away.
As she looked away, he diverted his gaze somewhat lower and smiled broadly. He then decided that this girl would be his first real follower of the new term. She seemed like a good candidate, both because she seemed friendly enough the day before, and now, with her acting somewhat flustered.
Soon, he broke the silence with a cough. ‘Lazy Tongue Syndrome is a medical term that’s really an extreme manifestation of something that’s true for all of us. When you speak, your tongue will always try to make sounds that are relatively easy to make, and words that have sounds that are likely to change in pronunciation in some capacity over time.’
‘How do we know that?’
‘That’s easy. You can figure that whenever the spelling of a given word was established, that’s by and large a representation of how it was pronounced at the time. How are you feeling? So if we don’t pr
onounce the word the same way, it’s probably because our collective tongues have gotten lazier. The middle day of the week. Do you know anyone who actually pronounces it ‘wed-nes-day’? No! You pronounce it either ‘wens-day’ or ‘wends-day’. How are you feeling? And you can see words evolving even today. The place where you go to study or to borrow books. Some people might still pronounce it ‘li-bra-ry’ but others might say ‘li-bear-y’. That ‘br’ sound in the middle of a word isn’t easy for us Americans to pronounce. How are you feeling?’
Vanessa opened her mouth to speak but the professor cut her off. ‘And it’s not unique to the English language but different languages might have different definitions of what might be considered ‘easy.’ How are you feeling? How many consonants will a French speaker actually pronounce if they happen to be the final letter of a word? How are you feeling?’
‘Ummmm’
‘C, R, F, and L. That’s it. And R isn’t universal. So how are you feeling?’
Vanessa took a deep breath but was cut off by the teacher again. She casually uncrossed her legs and placed her hands on her knees.
‘Russian’s a fascinating one. Almost all vowels are interchangeable in their pronunciation if they’re not accented. And where we might add a voice to some consonants at the end of our words — for example, pronouncing the letter ‘s’ as though it were a ‘z’, Russian goes the other way, taking the voice out of those same consonants. How are you feeling?’
‘I’m…’
‘So our tongues tend towards what’s easy and comfortable. And when different people pronounce the same word differently, that’s a sign that the language is evolving. Take the word ‘n-u-c-l-e-a-r’. How are you feeling? Some people pronounce it the way it’s spelled and others pronounce it ‘nu-cu-lar’. Both are right, of course. Neither pronunciation is a sign of anything other than the place where they first learned how to say it. How are you feeling?’
Vanessa closed her eyes and her head fell forward.
The professor noticed this and smiled broadly. She’s just about ready, he thought. ‘The Spanish have an interesting one as many of them speak the ‘s’ sound with a lisp. Some Spaniards themselves attribute it to a speech impediment to a king about a hundred years ago or so, but there’s no evidence for that. It’s more likely that it was that old lazy tongue at work again. How are you feeling?’
Her head bobbed up and down. He leaned forward, placed his hand underneath her chin, and pushed her head back so that he could see her face.
‘Well, Vanessa, it seems as though my induction worked well. I kept asking you how you’re feeling so much that it pretty much shut your mind down and pushed you into a very deep, relaxed trance. Adding confusion to the mix sometimes can do that. You feel very safe, very secure, and very comfortable. You know you can trust me, just as plainly as you know which hand is your right hand and which is your left. So I want you to relax and sink a little deeper into your trance. You are comfortable, secure, and warm. Just sink a little deeper and let your mind go. You have no worries, no cares, and no fears in here.’
Vanessa sighed deeply.
‘Safe secure and warm,’ repeated the professor. ‘Safe, secure, and warm. You know you can trust me, and you have no secrets to keep from me. Just keep drifting deeper and deeper. Calmer and more relaxed. Very comfortable. Deeper and deeper.’
She opened her mouth slightly.
‘Now, Vanessa, I’m going to ask you to open your eyes, and when you open your eyes, you will just see a gray haze in front of your eyes. But opening your eyes will help you sink even deeper and deeper. So on the count of three, you will open your eyes and stare blankly into the gray haze. You’ll feel safe and secure in this haze. One.. Two… Three… Open your eyes.’
She opened her eyes as instructed. There was a vague, distant quality to the look on her face. He stood up and waved his hand in front of her eyes and she didn’t flinch or otherwise acknowledge the movement. ‘Very good, Vanessa. Now, when I ask you a question, I want you to be able to speak freely and honestly. You can trust me and there’s no reason for you to hide the truth. Do you understand me?’
Latisha
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