Personal journal
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A diary or journal is a book for writing discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. Such logs play a role in many aspects of human civilization, including governmental, business ledgers, and military records. In more personal diaries, the writer may detail crushes or complaints.
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Diaries by type and function
Diaries run the spectrum from business notations, to listings of weather and daily personal events, through to inner exploration of the human psyche, a place to express one's deepest self, or record one's thoughts and ideas.
Some use the words "diary" and "journal" interchangeably while others apply strict differences to journals, diaries and the practice of journaling (dated vs. undated, inner focused vs. outer focused, sporadic entries vs. regular entries, etc.). While traditionalist preferred the use of the term diary, the current preference (based on book and article titles) is to use the word "journal." The phrase "journaling" is often used to describe such hobby writing, similar to the term "scrapbooking."
Some diarists think of their diaries as a special friend, even going so far as to name them. For example, Anne Frank called her diary "Kitty". There is a strong psychological effect of having an audience for one's self-expression, a personal space, or a "listener," even if this is the book one writes in, only read by oneself. Friedrich Kellner, a justice inspector in the Third Reich, thought of his diary as a weapon for any future fight against tyrants and terrorism, and he fittingly named it "Mein Widerstand" - "My Opposition." The German word Tagebücher (a literal translation being 'day book') is normally rendered as diary in English, thus leading to what are really work books being included as diaries; the notebooks of the Austrian writer Robert Musil being an example of this.
Social aspects
As known forms of personal information management, diaries and personal journals are part of the culture and may be appropriated by individuals in imitation of what they observe. However, social influence can play a large role in this process. Schools or parents may teach or require diary-keeping. There are husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, etc., who have journaled in various forms of tandem. There are numerous examples of diarist families as well, including those of Sir Walter Scott, Bronson Alcott, Leo Tolstoy and Henry James.
History
The word diary comes from the Latin diarium ("daily allowance", from dies, "day", more often in the plural form diaria). The word journal comes from the same root (diurnus, "of the day") through Old French jurnal (modern French for day is jour).
The oldest extant diaries come from East Asian cultures, pillowbooks of Japanese court ladies and Asian travel journals being some of the oldest surviving specimens of this genre of writing. The 9th century scholar Li Ao, for example, kept a diary of his journey through southern China.
Sales of "page a day" diaries go back hundreds of years (Letts, for example, is over 200 years old). At first, most of these books were used as ledgers, or business books. Samuel Pepys is the earliest diarist who is well-known today, although he had contemporaries who were also keeping diaries, such as John Evelyn. Pepys also was apparently at a turning point in diary history, for he took it beyond mere business transaction notation, into the realm of the personal.
Until, it seems, around the turn of the 20th century, with greater literacy and industrialization throughout the globe, particularly the Western world, diary writing was mostly limited to the members of the higher social classes. In the West, at least, a high proportion of historical and literary figures from the Renaissance to the 20th century seem to have kept a diary.
Tristine Rainer's 1978 The New Diary expanded awareness of diary-keeping as a literary genre, particularly among feminists. Acknowledging key figures in the resurgence of diary writing such as Carl Jung, Marion Milner, Ira Progoff and Anaïs Nin, she identified techniques that people use either spontaneously or have employed in their daily writing to explore themselves and their experience of the world. Rainer's idea, as expressed in the title, is that a diary is much more than a dry record of weather or daily events—it allows the writer to communicate deep and often spiritual realizations. Social historians were particularly interested in this, as it expanded greatly the number of historical texts available to them.
In the United States during the 1990s, various K-12 educators used a variety of journals across subject areas to encourage and document student progress, including pre-literate picture journals and "math journals" to aid in developing mathematical concepts in an individualized way, in accordance with Lev Vygotsky's concepts of instructional scaffolding. Another popular adaptation of the diary is the personal use of time management tools such as the Filofax or Franklin Planner.
Appeal
Qualities that some find appealing regarding diaries include that anyone can write one; the only educational prerequisite is literacy, with proper spelling and grammar not required.
The word "diary" has fallen into disrepute in recent decades. The modern Western stereotype of a diary is a record kept by teenage girls, usually concerning such matters as school, parents, and immature attempts at romantic liaisons. For many years, the only inexpensive diaries on the market featured pastel covers with naively romantic cover art and flimsy locks and keys, thus perpetuating this illusion. However, this type of diary and the accompanying cultural associations did not exist until the 1940s. Many people now prefer the word "journal" so as to avoid this stereotype and to expand the diary's use beyond a mere catalog of events.
Keeping a record of one's daily life provides the diarist with a tool with which to "time travel" to times gone by, providing a snapshot of past thoughts, feelings, and life events. In this case, the diary or journal can be used not only as a tool to fuel nostalgia, but also as a cure for nostalgia; if one feels nostalgic for certain times gone by, then he or she may use the journal to see his or her perspective of those times as they were being experienced, perhaps casting light upon negative features that the diarist had previously overlooked due to idealism.
