Document 1 : Selfie : the new

autobiography ?
There are groupies, ussies, shelfies but selfobsessed portraiture isnt just a modern
phenomenon.
We typically think of a selfie as a photo taken
by and of oneself, whether in a mirror or by
holding a camera at arms length. Hence the
name. But a recently recounted anecdote from
Mark Liberman, a phonetician at the
University of Pennsylvania, suggests some
people are extending it. He wrote : In front of
the window of a sweet shop in Peebles, a small
town about an hours drive south of Edinburgh,
an elderly American woman approached a
gentleman she didnt know and holding out a
cell phone, asked : Would you please take a
selfie of my friend and I in front of this
window ? []
Lest you think its only older people who are
using the term selfie to mean something like
photo of the camera-owner, probably to be
posted on social media , a recent example
from the photo-sharing website Tumblr shows
another possible meaning of the word. It
features a painting of Henry VIII with the
caption art museums are actually just full of
renaissance selfies . So, a selfie doesnt have
to be a photographic, social-media version of a
self-portrait : Henry VIII, after all, wasnt an
artist (unlike Van Gogh he wasnt painting
himself) ; and he wasnt on Facebook. Rather,
he was the one who commissioned the
painting, just as the tourist asked the linguist to
take a picture of her in front of the sweet shop
[..]
We can think of the extended meaning of selfie
as more like the meaning of autobiography,
although in a different medium. [] And its
also not inconsistent with the spirit of an
autobiography to include a description of the
friends and family members of the subject. In
fact, it would be a strange autobiography that
didnt mention a few other people.
Getchen McCulloch, The Independant, April 2,
2014

Portrait of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein,

1540
1. Introduce the document (type of
document, topic )
2. Find the different definitions of the
selfie that appear in the text.

3. Discuss and give your own definition

of the selfie.
4. Is the selfie a new phenomenon ?
Yes/no ? Why ? Justify your answer.
5. Read the last paragraph again.
What is the extended meaning of
the selfie ?

Document 2 : The selfie's

screaming narcissism masks an
urge to connect
What greater testament could there be to the
"me generation" than the rise and rise of the
selfie? Appointed by Oxford Dictionaries'
editors as the word of the year after a 17,000%
increase in its usage, the selfie is surely the
ultimate emblem of the age of narcissism. Like
the doomed figure of ancient myth, we cannot
stop gazing at our own reflection. This July,
there were an estimated 90m photos on
Instagram the go-to platform for the selfie
with the hashtag #me. And that figure will be
far, far higher now.
At first glance, everything about this
phenomenon reeks. It is self-centred in the
most literal sense. Not for nothing is the word
just a breath a mere "sh" away from selfish.
What's more, it's selfishness of the most
superficial kind. It's not just about me, me, me
but how I look, look, look. It invites judgment
based on appearance alone. You post a picture
of yourself and wait for the verdict, your selfworth boosted by a happy spate of "likes", or
destroyed by the opposite a resounding
silence. At least on Twitter, people are
judgmental about each other's wit or ideas,
rather than their hair.
To understand the sheer scale the depth, if
you like of this superficiality, look no further
than this Tumblr dedicated to selfies at
funerals, including the image captioned: "Love
my hair today. Hate why I'm dressed up
#funeral".
And yet condemnation cannot be the only
response to a phenomenon this widespread,
which clearly delights so many tens of
millions. The informality of the word "selfie"
suggests something true about these instant
self-portraits: that they don't take themselves
or their subjects too seriously. To quote the
artist Gillian Wearing: "The word 'selfie' is
brilliant. It really encapsulates a time: instant,
quick, funny. It sounds ironic and throwaway."

It is also true that, while the technology may be

new, the instinct it satisfies is not: since the
dawn of civilisation, humans have yearned to
depict themselves and their faces whether
through cave paint, clay or, today, the
megapixels of a smartphone.
Above all, and this might be the selfie's
redeeming feature, they are not designed to be
looked at solely by the subject. The selfie's
usual purpose is to be transmitted by social
media with "social" being the key word.
They may be focused on the self, but they also
express a timeless human need to connect with
others.
In that respect, the selfie is like so much else in
the digital world all about "me," but
revealing a sometimes desperate urge to find
an "us".
Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 19
November 2013
1. Introduce the document (type, topic
)
2. Say what the selfie is a symbol of
3. The article refers to the doomed
figure of ancient myth . Can you
identify that myth. Then, explain
why Jonathan Freedland refers to it.
4. Explain the link Jonathan Freedland
makes between the words selfie
and selfish .
5. Find what the author reproaches
people for taking selfies.
6. Is this phenomenon new ? Explain.
7. Find what this phenomenon really
means about peoples needs/desires.