Podcast 9/14/10 Interpretation

The beginning segment of this podcast was themed around political communication. Although on the surface, the theme of the segment was the success of Iran’s leader through his communication, the true meaning was the need for language in the political world. They were talking about how leaders in the political world can be more successful if they learn to speak to people as they would to their neighbors, in their own language and dialect. The more language you know, the more people will want to understand and listen to you.

                The next segment was about global culture transforming and changing so that an entire group of people’s way of life may cease to exist. This means perhaps another dead language, another dead culture, another dead civilization. The changing world affects not only the Earth’s looks, but also the inhabitants on our planet, and our way of life. This is why the study of different endangered cultures is so important. If we don’t take the time now to study them, we’ll have to use past evidence to find out more, once they’re already gone.

                The third segment was about the attention that the current general public will pay to a foreign film. About 20-30 years ago, foreign movies like “Beautiful Life” were extremely popular and made millions in the box offices. Current trends show that movies that aren’t in English aren’t as popular anymore in the United States. This could be due to the different public mindset, the quality of the movies, the promotion level, and many other things. Foreign films are a great way to entertain and a great way to spread language through the world. The hope is that foreign films will make a comeback and help to further educate every human in the world.

                The final segment was a listener contribution, focusing on confusion when speaking a secondary language. The language Urdu uses the same word for “right,” as they do for “straight,” which can definitely cause problems when giving directions. The point of this segment was to show the differences and similarities in other languages, and what gets confusing. It seems to me like it would be very difficult to speak a language like Urdu, or live in a country that speaks it.

~Megan Greig