{"id":110,"date":"2016-09-15T13:00:46","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T17:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/?p=110"},"modified":"2016-09-13T21:55:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T01:55:00","slug":"engaging-with-utilitarian-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/2016\/09\/15\/engaging-with-utilitarian-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaging with Utilitarian Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Acheson\u2019s \u201cTricks of the Trade\u201d certainly struck me with its distinctive use of technical language. While several other authors we have read (see: Wallace and Conkling) have spoken casually, building narratives through anecdotes and flowery descriptions, Acheson\u2019s approach is utilitarian. His sentences are succinct and mainly focus on sharing raw information, rather than unpacking its implications. At a glance, the Maine Boats article reads similarly. \u201cEvolution of the Maine Lobster Boat\u201d might first appear as a simple laundry list of fun facts, but the historical nature of this text elevates its goals. Yes, this article is offering us some information. It then continues, though, to place these seemingly isolated facts and place them into the context of place (have we beat this word to death yet?). On top of this, Maine Boats has created a multimedia experience for us as readers, combining written narrative with historical photographs and a timeline structure. Here, we see the details described by Acheson made digestible. This, I think, illustrates our ultimate goal as digital humanities students: to take that which an outsider might think irrelevant (we could reflect here on our first class, when we acknowledged this course as \u201cweird\u201d) and make it engaging. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Acheson\u2019s \u201cTricks of the Trade\u201d certainly struck me with its distinctive use of technical language. While several other authors we have read (see: Wallace and Conkling) have spoken casually, building narratives through anecdotes and flowery descriptions, Acheson\u2019s approach is utilitarian. His sentences are succinct and mainly focus on sharing raw information, rather than unpacking its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5611,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[329829],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5611"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}