rewriting . . . . again

new focus . . . hopefully it makes sense


To better understand how fans of videogames participate in play, two online game fan communities will be discussed as literate spaces that provide additional space for fans to explore game play.  

cooties . . thats right it all started with cooties

Today I went to an organic farmer’s market on campus, part of the green initiative at ASU. While there my friend and I purchased a tamale boat to share. When we mentioned we would be sharing, the seller offered to split it for us. We declined saying we don’t have cooties, we’ll be fine. At this point it became apparent that the seller was not a native English speaker because he became confused by the term ‘cooties’ thinking we were saying ‘cuties.’ He then said that was a new word, what did it mean. So there the two of us stood trying to explain cooties. We said it’s like an imaginary germ, often seen between five year old girls and five year old boys. This confused him even more, so he asked his young assistant to explain it to him. She struggled just as much, also saying it’s a way of referring to germs.


With a word like cooties, the word looses all meaning out of context. To children on the playground, the word has HUGE significance. To non-native English speakers communicating with adult native English speakers, the word seems out of context, out of place, and just confusing. Idioms, sayings, quotes, all have the same contextual tie, and when used out of context or with individuals who can’t make the connection back to a previous context the terms lose all meaning. This is one of those cases where our brains process so much information in such a short period of time that we never have to consider context when placing word definitions. We run through all the possibilities subconsciously and adjust our definitions of words while the speaker continues to add context through language.