6.3 Homework

Next week’s topic is Metonymy. Please read Deignan (2005). There is not going to be a regular live session on Monday. Instead I am offering you two choices. Either do a homework assignment with me in small groups in a live session or do it on your own and send me a little summary. Here is what we’ll do.

Brand names: We will look at brand names such as Microsoft, Apple and Google and analyse their use with a focus on metonymy. The aim is to explore, query and download corpus data for further annotation. Which brands exactly we will decide together.

There will be four sessions from Tuesday to Friday each between 16:00 and 18:00. I’d say no more than 6 people per group. I’ve prepared 4 channels on Discord for every day. Just write “dibs” in the channel for the day you’d like to join.

This is an offer since interaction with such a large group is difficult. So use it! :) For those who decide to do it on their own or did not catch a spot, there will be specific instructions on the assignment next week.

6.3.1 Tip of the day

Use spreadsheets! I encouraged you to create simple graphs in the last homework. That required that you enter some numbers into something like Excel, Calc or Google Sheets. We will benefit from spreadsheets throughout this course, but this is not where their utility stops. Being able to do some quick formulae and vlookups in Excel are common skills used outside Uni.

Especially for teachers, I believe, spreadsheets are an essential skill: for grades, averages, homework, quick stats on exams, lesson planning, Sitzplan (oh memories :D), what have you. If you know your way around Excel, you can speed up your tax returns (Steuererklärung) a lot, too. Many teachers end up working as freelancers. For a freelancer (and anyone else really), gathering your receipts, bills and pay slips neatly arranged and categorized as data in a spreadsheet can save you endless amounts of time and even money.

This is not where it stops though.Timetables and To-Do-Lists are also neat to do in a spreadsheet if you need more fine-grained control over the layout than the clunky online calendar you are probably using. Here are some things I have used spreadsheets for in the past: notes, training log, travel plans, shopping lists. You could even use them for recipes or counting calories if that’s what you’re into. I’ve since moved past Excel and use only plain text files. If I need to do some maths or stats I use .csv and R. That would be the ultra-nerd level so don’t be scared of a spreadsheet ;).

References

Deignan, Alice. 2005. A corpus linguistic perspective on the relationship between metonymy and metaphor. Style 39(1). 72–91.