an English question
By dufresne
@dufresne (137)
China
June 4, 2009 10:40am CST
In the two sentences "I think I've heard some references to Cybermodernism, if you want to investigate some of the work that's being created in mixed media literature." and "If you run into any problems, just stop by during my offce hours. Maybe I can give you some references or at least a sounding board.", do the two "references" in the sentences above have the same meaning? I think the latter means "advice", but ironically I can't find such an entry in dictionary. And I'd like to know what is a "sounding board" in the second sentence. Thank you!
1 person likes this
2 responses
@scarlet_woman (23463)
• United States
6 Jun 09
the first reference-in this sense,it means "mentions of",as if people were discussing it.
the second reference-i think in this one they mean "people he can talk to that he trusts"
sounding board-
it does mean advice in a sense..
think of it as a bat bouncing radar off an object.
you bounce an idea off somebody to get their opinion.
@egdcltd (12059)
•
4 Jun 09
In these cases reference in that context means a direction to a book or passage where information can be found, on, in this case, Cybermodernism or whatever the subject is of the second sentence.
A "sounding board" in this case would mean a person who you could bounce ideas off in order to judge their worth.
