Gender Relationships in the Film Love Jones Essay -- Papers Movie Film

Gender Relationships in the Film Love Jones Using the movie Love Jones I will talk about the characteristics of male/male and female/female relationship as they are portrayed in the film. Then I will talk about how different the female/male relationship is and focus primarily on their communication styles. There is some harsh vocabulary included in my essay but only in quotations that I have taken from the movie itself to communicate what was going on in the scenes I have chose to talk about. Female/female relationship Josie and Nina Nina is one of the main characters in this movie and Josie is her best friend. A scene where their friendship is characterized is one where Josie and Nina are riding in a cab. Josie gets upset with Nina (briefly) when she finds out that Nina has had sex with Darius (the other main character) on the first night they went out. The haste in which they have had sex does not bother her as much as the fact that Nina does not tell her. This example is a direct correlation to one of the themes of women?s friendship that intimacy is cultivated through dialogue. This suggest that women build closeness in their friendships dialogue and by Nina not telling, it breaks the code of intimacy in a way. The establishment of a new relationship something like this that is an important part of Nina?s life, and excluding Josie from that is what is troubling her. Even though I do not believe that to be true in this example, that can be argued as a reason Nina doesn?t share. So, once Josie gets over the initial shock of the news, she wants Nina to tell all the details ?how big, how long, everything!? The two women then begin to discuss the sexual relationship as only women can do. Nina says, ?It was lik... ...*in toasted oats? and mumbles some more stuff on the way out of the house. The next morning, Nina is gone without any words of goodbye, but the engagement ring that Marvin had given her was left on his pinky when he woke up to an empty bed. In this scene there are a few places where the communication styles were conflicting. Nina wanted Marvin to be open and welcoming when she came home from work. He was abrasive and demanding, which was not what she wanted at that moment. Also, he was telling her what to do. He wanted her to sit around at home and not work and it was no conducive to her plans. My analysis of these Female/Male relationships is that there is so many problems in them because the ways of communicating are conflicting. I think that in part the break down can also be because people are not willing to try to make the individual situations work.

Mini Case Starbucks Essay

1.How did Starbucks create its uniqueness in the first place? Starbucks create its uniqueness by offering premium coffee beans, thus creating an amazing image. Every store is a unique place with a wide range of products and a special homely ambience, emphasized by relaxing music and comfortable seating furniture. Other than that, customers can use the free wireless hotspot or just visit with friends. The high quality of the products connected with a fair price attracts many coffee lovers. Starbucks also offer a wide range of products for example 30 different blends of coffee and first supplier of beverages â€Å"to-go†. The special flavor of the coffee beans in every Starbucks reflect the high standard of quality by providing high quality beverages and food, combined with superior customer service in a friendly and welcoming environment. They can create unique experience among their customer, thus will increase their loyalty level. 2.Was Starbucks’s uniqueness a VRIO resource? Did it help Starbucks gain and sustain a competitive advantage? Why or why not?  YES Valuable : Starbucks is competence in creating a unique customer experience the world over. This is becaue they are not only paying for a cup of coffee or tea but also can enjoy the good ambience. Rare : The Starbucks possess the resource or can or can perform the capability in the same unique way. It also on the path to competitive advantage when it possesses a valuable resource that is also rare. Starbucks build its initial sign through barista and through its ambience where music and comfortable chairs and sofas cannot be find in other places. Costly to imitate : Their potential competitors seems like hard to produce the same idea as what they do. They might able to open a coffee house business but with no baristas and other uniqueness. Organized to capture value : Starbucks have an effective organizational  structure and coordinating systems to fully exploit the competitive potential of its resources and capabilities. So, Starbucks has gain and sustained competitive advantage. 3. Why and how did Starbucks lose its uniqueness? Starbucks lose its uniqueness when baristas used to grind beans throughout the day whenever a new pot of coffee had to be brewed which was at least every eight minutes. Many baristas began to grind all of the day’s coffee beans in the morning and store the rest of the day. Baristas now use push-button machines to make espresso drinks. That stores no longer smell like coffee and that every store looks cookie-cutter. 4.How is Starbucks attempting to re-create its uniqueness? Do you think it will be successful? Why or Why not?  Starbucks attempting to re-create its uniqueness by introduced many new products such as instant coffee. These new products undercut the integrity of the Starbucks brand for coffee purists. They also challenged the baristas who had to wrestle with an ever-more-complicated menu of drinks. With over half of customers customizing their drinks, baristas hired for their social skills and passion for coffee, no longer had time to dialogue with customers. The brand experience declined as waiting times increased. Moreover, the price premium for a Starbucks coffee seemed less justifiable for grab and go customers as McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts improved their coffee offerings at much lower prices. Second, the early adopters who valued the club-like atmosphere of relaxing over a quality cup of coffee found themselves in a minority. To grow, Starbucks increasingly appealed to grab and go customers for whom service meant speed of order delivery rather than recognition by and conversation with a barista. Starbucks introduced new store formats like Express to try to cater to this second segment without undermining the first. As a result, Starbucks is successful in creating their uniqueness because since then they are able to increase their outlets for more than 18000 stores around the world in 2013. 5.Explain Starbucks’s ups and downs using (a) strategic activity systems and (b) the dynamic capabilities perspectives. What implications can you draw? (a) Strategic activity systems is the conceptualization of a firm as a network of interconnected activities. – grinding beans – second home – friendly service – relaxed atmosphere – beverages ( desserts, sandwiches), books, music – more than 30 blends of coffee (b) Dynamic capabilities perspective is a model that emphasizes a firm’s ability to modify and leverage its resource base in a way that enables it to gain and sustain competitive advantage in a constantly changing environment. The implications can we draw from this is :- (i) Starbucks forgot what made it unique (ii) Intangible resources were forgotten (iii) Lost appeal that made it special, its unique culture 6.What recommendations would you give Howard Schultz? Support your arguments.

Examples of Linguistic Conversion or Zero Derivation

In English grammar, conversion is a word-formation process that assigns an existing word to a different word class (part of speech) or syntactic category. This process is also known as a functional shift or zero derivation. The rhetorical term for grammatical conversion is anthimeria. Examples ofLinguistic Conversion Lets not Rumsfeld Afghanistan.(Senator Lindsey Graham, quoted in Time magazine, Aug. 24, 2009)Boyes spent the night with Mr. Vaughan, and they breakfasted together in the usual way upon bacon and eggs, toast, marmalade and coffee.(Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, 1928)One writer who went on a tour of New Yorks Harlem district was shown the place where Adam C. Powell was funeralised. Another letter detailed an American friends eagerness to see the Prince of Wales coronated. On a flight to Boston, flight attendants promised passengers they would soon beverage, but later, because of adverse weather conditions, they said they were unable to complete beverisation. Asked about this trend, one American quipped: Any noun can be verbed.(Kevin Courtney, Con Text Verbing. The Irish Times, March 18, 2008) The Strategy of Conversion Consider sentences such as:- Henry downed a pint of beer.- Melissa went to town and did a buy.English, we note, lacks a simple means of saying to do something in one fell swoop. This may be why the word down can be converted into a verb to mean drink down in one gulp, and the word buy into a noun which, when combined with the verb do, means go on a single massive shopping spree. This type of fast-moving, thorough activity may represent a change in the pace of life, which is in turn reflected in the language since we increasingly make use of conversions--the conversion of one part of speech into another.(Jean Aitchison, Language Change: Progress or Decay? Cambridge University Press, 1991) Shakespeare's Conversions Shakespeare was the conversion expert. I eared her language. He words me. Some of his conversions seem really daring. Even the name of a person can become a verb. Petruchio is Kated. But all he was doing was tapping into a natural everyday usage that is still with us.(David Crystal, The Story of English in 100 Words. St. Martins Press, 2012) Which Came First? Almost all the examples [of zero conversion] are of shifts between noun, verb, and adjective. In some instances the direction of the shift is clear. We have had the noun text for a long time, but it has come to be used as a verb only recently with reference to sending messages full of abbreviations via mobile/cell phone. In other instances, we might hesitate to say which part of speech came first, as with plot, for instance. Was it a noun first or was it a verb first?(Barry J. Blake, All About Language. Oxford University Press, 2008) Conversion and Meaning Meaning is crucial to the system of word-classes, [...] as it is to the recognition of instances of conversion. Even if it were not for the homophonous noun plane carpenters tool, we would not wish to relate to plane smooth a piece of wood and a plane aircraft by conversion, because their meanings are not sufficiently close. What is a sufficiently close meaning (and how it can be defined) remains an open question. A slightly dubious example is to bank turn an aircraft and a bank side of a hill which, despite their etymological relatedness, may no longer be close enough semantically for us to wish to say that the same relationship holds between them as between to bridge and a bridge. Somehow, then, we need to operationalise the notion of related in meaning to a sufficient degree to allow us to recognise potential instances of conversion.(Laurie Bauer and Salvador Valera, Conversion or Zero-Derivation: An Introduction. Approaches to Conversion/Zero-Derivation, ed. by L. Bauer and S. Va lera. Waxmann, 2005) Pronunciation: kon-VER-zhun (a/k/a functional shift, role shifting, zero derivation, category shift)