|
epitome of incomprehensibility
|
"That's really interesting. Any chance of sending me a copy?" said the man with a friendly smile, blue eyes sunken in his roundish face. The 211 bus was coming to its terminus and I'd just closed my laptop; he was sitting sort of diagonal to me, on a seat facing forward while I was sideways.
"What, this?" I gestured at the closed laptop. "No, sorry, I can't. It's a student essay." I'd enlarged the page so I could correct it more easily, and my seat neighbour had apparently read it along with me.
"Yes, I gathered - I was reading it for the last twenty minutes." He smiled again and the skin around his eyes wrinkled. Old stoner type, I stereotyped, as if I were that much younger and the bus didn't smell like pot in the first place (did it?) "It's a fascinating topic, the internet and identity."
I didn't feel much intruded on, more amused: my pace must have been frustratingly slow for an onlooker. "Yeah, I guess. He's using kind of pretentious words, but he has a good overall...overall idea."
He laughed. Pretentious words, yes, some people in academics are like that, or think they have to be like that.
"It's an essay for a sociolinguistics class."
"Figures. So-ci-o-lin-gui-stics." A friendly eye roll.
"Mmm, well, that part itself isn't too complicated: social plus linguistics."
"But it's fascinating. Like how someone could have one identity in one online space and another somewhere else."
"Mm, yeah."
And I got off the bus, and there was no impetus to run away, but not to walk together either; we talkers drifted apart. Different walking speeds.
The essay had nuanced and well-explained arguments but not enough examples or citations. I gave it an 83%.
My conversation: 87%, as far as conversations with strangers go.
|
230427
|
