Coñotations by Paolo Manalo (Poem) - Analysis

1. I’m like tripping right now I have suitcase fever.

2. Dude, man, pare, three people can be the same.
3. Except he’s not who he says he is, pare. He’s a sneeze with Chinese
blood: Ha Ching!
4. Naman, it’s like our Tagalog accent, so they won’t think we’re all
airs; so much weight it means nothing naman.
5. Dude, man, pare, at the next stop we’ll make buwelta. So they can see
we know how to look where we came from.
6. It’s hirap kaya to find a connection. Who ba’s puwede to be our guide?
7. Dude, man, can you make this areglo naman?
8. Make it pabalot kaya in the mall. So they can’t guess what you’re
thinking. That’s what I call a package deal.
9. Who says ’coz should be shot.
10. Only kolehiyalas make tusok the fishballs. Us guys, dude, pare, we
make them tuhog.
11. Talaga, she said she’d sleep with you? Naman pare, when she says
talaga, it means she’s lying.
12. Hey, wala namang like that-an.

Analysis, Meaning, Critique:

Coñotations is a poem that appeared in Jolography, a poem collection by

Paolo Manalo that was published in 2003 by the University of the
Philippines Press.
 It's a poem that copies the form and style of a listicle.
 A listicle is an article that lists things. Here's a few examples of
listicle article titles:

- The 101 Greatest Novels of All Time

- 7 Things You Should Never Say in a Romantic Date
- 15 Reasons Why You Should Leave the Philippines and Live Somewhere
Else

Listicles have become very popular online and majority of online media
outlets use them for their articles. You could say that Paolo Manolo used
the same format to craft his poem Coñotations. Whether he did it this way
intentionally or otherwise, the fact remains that the poem has the form
and style of a listicle. It's basically a listicle in poem form.

Manalo invented a new word - coñotations - which is the title of the

poem. It's the offspring of two words that Manalo forced into marriage.
Conyo and connotations. Conyo is a label used to tag Filipinos who speak
Tagalog-English. It's also used to refer to the "kind of speech" produced
when someone speaks in Tagalog-English. It's often called conyo talk or
conyo speak. Conyo or conyo talk is also attached to a stereotype - those
who speak conyo are people from the middle class and upper class in the
social structure.
A key to understanding this poem is the definition of the ENglish word
"connotation". The general definition for connotation is that it's "an
idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary
meaning." In philosophy, it's defined as "the abstract meaning or
intension of a term, which forms a principle determining which objects or
concepts it applies to." Read these definitions very well then go back
and read the poem with these definitions in mind. You should be able to
get the gist of the poem already.

In conclusion, the poem is a list of conyo talk and their hidden

connotations.

Questions and Answers for Discussion:

1. What does "suitcase fever" mean? This probably means attachment. The
person may be too attached to someone the way he's attached to a
suitcase.
2. Are all the speakers in the poem men? It does sound like that. The
words and phrases in the poem are mostly male lingo.

CoÑotations is another interesting piece that shows semantic transformations

through word interplay.
If we read the poem below, we will notice that each line has significant
meanings that people labeled as “coño” use in their utterances. By utterance,
I mean spoken discourse, the one that this group of individuals uses in casual
conversations. Code-switching and code-mixing are present in this poem, for
example lines 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12, where Filipino and English
words are used in the same sentence. This is what I refer to as the writer’s
style that forms an image of a world and creates other worlds filled with other
images. By introducing the audience in this kind of text, as readers, they can
relate to what is depicted in the text and eventually jumping from one world
to another with the use of the images found in the utterances.
Repetition of the words “dude”, “man”, “pare” and “he’s” also plays a
significant role in this poem. This may mean that the discourses in the poem
are usually spoken by male communicators. Look at the poem below and to
feel each line as you read it.

We can also observe that he words “naman” and “talaga” were used to

emphasize the meaning in each of the utterances through repetition. The

content words in Filipino found in numbers 5 (bwelta - verb), 6 (hirap -

adjective), 7 (areglo - verb), and 10 (kolehiyalas - noun, tusok - verb, tuhog -

verb) also helped in giving more meaning to the text. Transliteration also

functions as a device to give the readers an idea that the poem has a playful

mood and of course the interest will eventually make them interested in the

whole text. For instance, the fragment “…we know how to look where we

came from.” is a direct translation of the Filipino sentence “Marunong

kaming tumanaw sa aming pinanggalingan.” Therefore, this shows that the

writer also wants to tap the  readers prior knowledge of what the line is about

and also somehow depicts our culture. Cultural knowledge is particularly

important to the interpretation of conventional tropes especially metaphors

and metonyms (Friedrich and Ohnuki-Tierney in Palmer, 7). Together with

the situation and history of a particular discourse, cultural knowledge

provides the shared contexts that confer referential accessibility on discourse

topics and on this case poetry as a mode of discourse.

          
 G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 G6

ANALYSIS/ 20% 19 19 19 19 19 17

ANSWERS

GROUP 10 9 9 10 10 8

PRESENTATION

COMPREHENSION 15 14 9

TOTAL 45