Self-study and classroom lessons based on newspaper feature stories

This column is for self-study or classroom use and gives guided help with reading the wide variety of writing styles and topics that appear as feature articles in the Bangkok Post. The lessons include background information, skill-building practice and vocabulary explanations.

May 18, 2004

And your point is ...?

INTRODUCTION

Our feature this week is an unusual one because not much of it is true! Dave Barry writes a regular humorous column for the American newspaper The Miami Herald which is reproduced in the Bangkok Post in our Outlook Section. Here, he looks at ‘outsourcing’ which means to contract employees in foreign countries to provide services for your own. For non-native speakers, Dave Barry’s style is quite difficult to understand but, with a bit of explanation, you will be able to laugh along with him.

The main point of Dave Barry’s column is to take a humorous look at something topical. In this example, he makes fun of the idea of ‘outsourcing’ (a topic often referred to in the current presidential election camapign) by using exaggerated examples of how it works – do you really believe that your plane is being piloted by a 10 year-old Indian girl eating a lollipop? Hopefully not! But by suggesting this, he makes the whole idea of outsourcing sound ridiculous.

Another technique he uses is sarcasm. This is when you say something but really mean the opposite in order to make fun of something or someone. For example, you might say “I’m so excited!” about something which is quite boring. Sounds weird but it is commonly used, especially by native speakers. Can you find an example of sarcasm in the feature? Look at the third paragraph from “You youngsters won’t believe this…” onwards. Barry states the obvious and it is, in fact, something that we should believe. He uses sarcasm to make fun out of the way young people see the world today – usually from behind a computer or TV screen without having to make much effort.

At the end, Barry makes a joke by pretending that he too will be affected by outsourcing – he will outsource his column to someone who doesn’t really know how to write. In fact, it seems that he already outsourced the last sentence!

If you want to read more by Dave Barry, you can log on to his website : www.davebarry.com

OUR STORY FROM THE BANGKOK POST

The source of
America's discontent

Anything we can do they can do further away

DAVE BARRY
Before we get to today’s column, I have an important announcement regarding outsourcing.

“Outsourcing” is a business expression that means, in layperson’s terms, “sourcing out”. It’s a trend that started years ago in manufacturing, which is a business term that means “making things”.

You youngsters won’t believe this, but there was a time when Americans actually made physical things called “products” right here in America. Workers would go to large grimy buildings called “factories” where they would take a raw material such as iron ore and perform industrial acts on it, such as “forging” and “smelting”. By the end of the day, as you can imagine, they smelled terrible, but they had turned the ore into something useful, such as a locomotive, or a toaster, or (this was not a big seller) a toaster-locomotive.

Today, of course, we don’t make anything. If you give iron ore to modern American workers, it will get into their Starbucks mocha latte, and they will sue you, and they will win. The making of things was outsourced decades ago to foreign nations such as Asia. Today, we Americans are dimly aware that our TVs, computers, cell phones, underwear, dentures, cartoons, etc., must come from somewhere, but we have no real clue who is making them, or how. We have enough trouble figuring out how to remove the packaging.

After we stopped making things, America became a “service economy”, which is a business term meaning “an economy where it is virtually impossible to get service”. But now even our service industries are being outsourced. Take, for example, “Technical Support”, which is the department you call when you are having a technical problem and need to be placed on hold. Today, when you finally get through to a human, he or she is often in a different country. This is good news and bad news:

THE GOOD NEWS IS: The foreign Tech Support people are smart, educated, and eager to help, and they speak fluent English.

THE BAD NEWS IS: They speak it in such a way that you understand only about every fifth word.

But we might as well accept it: Outsourcing is here to stay. And it's happening everywhere, including industries that would surprise you:

When you order a hamburger at a Mc-Donald’s drive-thru, the person who’s taking your order is actually located in the Philippines. Your hamburger is physically cooked by workers in China, then transmitted almost instantaneously to the US via a high-speed Digitised Beef Patty Line (DBPL). All of this happens in less time than takes you to pick your nose. (And soon even that will be outsourced.)

When you take a commercial airline flight, the plane is actually being controlled from India by a 10-year-old girl holding a remote-control joystick in one hand and a lollipop in the other. The “pilot” in the front of your plane is a retired security guard whose sole responsibility is to notice when the plane starts shaking, and make an announcement that you are experiencing turbulence.

The point is that everything is being outsourced. In a few years, the only industry left in the United States will be “reality” television. A lot of people think this is bad. Congress recently tried to pass a law against outsourcing, only to discover that all federal legislation since 1997 has actually been produced in Taiwan.

So outsourcing is here to stay. Which leads me to my announcement: Starting today, I will no longer personally write my column. It will be produced by foreign humour workers, who, rest assured, are highly trained. You will notice no dropoff in quality as you continue to enjoy the wacky hmogrins of fblsevry lftht hvfrsmnyrs aqdrfltns not making this up rltngn alrtrds a good name for a rock band.

SOME VOCABULARY HELP

layperson
someone who is not an expert

grimy
dirty

locomotive
train

mocha latte
type of coffee

dentures
false teeth

eager
willing

drive-thru
fast food joint where you can be served in your car

instantaneously
happening immediately

turbulence
rough weather that rocks a plane

reality television
TV programmes which show real-life events

federal legislation
national government laws

• This lesson was prepared by Neil Stoneham,
an experienced secondary school teacher and trained journalist.

Read our other feature focus columns here.

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And your point is ...?

INTRODUCTION

OUR STORY FROM THE BANGKOK POST

The source of America's discontent

The source of
America's discontent