Gina, thanks so much for being providing today’s post. String of Lights is honored to have you here. So that our reader might get to know a bit about who’s writing today, I hope you won’t mind answering a few questions.
1. Let’s start with the obvious. What’s your dissertation about?
It centers on taking a multi-disciplinary approach to analyzing the syntactical structures of early medieval notarial documents from the Monastery of Sahagún, León, Spain. Specifically, my project aims to contribute to the philological debate on the issue of diglossia concerning the spoken language in early medieval Spain, by considering factors such as orality, the written word, and medieval literacy when applied to evidence such as notarial documents. Notarial documents, a neglected genre of linguistic analysis, provide a rich source of syntactic variation in the evolving language of Late Latin to Romance to Old Spanish, a potential mirror of the spoken language of the day.
2. What kind of linguistics is that? Structural? Social?
More than anything I would say it is philology, but since I stress the need for an interdisciplinary approach, I would say my thesis is “historiculturalphilologicalinguistic.”
3. Cool! That's so YOU! In addition to being a “linguini” you’re also an artist (and quite a good one). How has doing art helped you achieve that work-life balance we always hear about in grad school?
(You are kind, thank you) I always heard of the lack thereof in grad school, and I am no exception in experiencing that lack. I just know that when I do my art, I experience a kind of satisfaction that greatly differs from anything academic.
4. OK, linguistics and art are important parts of your life. But let’s move on to your current passion. Can you write a brief reflection on yoga?
Yoga is my life. It provides the base of my existence and feeds into all areas of my life. The body is the portal to the soul is the portal to the Divine.
5. Anything else you'd like our reader to know?
Yes, you are an awesome blogger/writer, Val, not to mention an all-around neat person!
Aw, shucks, ma'am...I meant about you- not about me! But since it's my policy to not edit my guests' posts...
And speaking of my guest's post, here it is. [umm...it's a little bit about me, but it's a cool story, and well-told by Gina]
Bag-O-Cash
Valerie's delivery of the humungous (omg, Facebook "spell-check" red-underliner, get a clue--"humungous" IS spelled correctly) bag of recyclables to my truck today merit the telling of this story. Valerie was driving from campus to my house when she started thinking, "gosh I sure wish I had a bigger bag of recyclables to give Gina for her worthy cause of becoming a life-changing Bikram Yoga instructor..."---okay, this is paraphrased a bit---, when ALL OF A SUDDEN, she had to screech her car to a halt because out of the blue appeared a HUMUNGOUS bag of recyclables. She saw the gentleman with the rolled-up blue jeans continue on his bicycle pedaled journey, as she used her "teacher voice" (her words, meant, I assume, to imply the raising of the volume and broadening of the range) to call out to the man, "hey, I will pick up the bag for you, hey, your bag, heyyyyyy......" The man just kept pedaling, so she picked up the bag and stuffed it into her car, with the line of traffic waiting behind her, and immediately began the search for the man who disappeared. However, even after her most valiant attempt, Valerie did not reach this recycling cycler. So, as fate would have it, she went on to deliver her little shopping bag full, along with the new addition of the humungous bag-o-cash. This was Serendipity at its best.
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