Some notes on language
November 6th 2006 16:27
When an Australian says that New Zealand is a shitty accent, it can be quite an unsubjective claim. The accent apparently has symbolism to an Australian ear: perhaps it calls up specific reference (just as English RP can remind you of stately drawing rooms), or else the sound itself is unpleasant, has symbolism without clear reference, in similar fashion as some people will describe French as euphonious and German as guttural.
-- All this, yet an English or American ear can barely tell the difference.
As soon as an Asian speaks with an Australian accent, it's phase shift: the rules of engagement morph, the assumptions change.
Previously, this person is alien or inscrutable; you don't know what bizarre thing they'll do and you don't know how to act towards them. But as soon as the front-shifted vowels and nasalization leaves their lips, then all their mannerisms and body language are interpreted differently, are given framework. You relax. Because when we're raised in a culture, we learn to do, we learn to hold our faces certain ways, move in certain ways, we learn what means what and what's acceptable and what's not.
And yet, you really don't know what inscrutable depths and depths are buried behind a face. The accent is misleading.
A native speaker is quite sensitive to the unnatural word, the statistically unlikely word. He/she can detect when the longer word, or the more exotic, is used in place of the familiar, but without adding anything, and with disregard for the additional meanings brought.
I don't know how often I've seen it. There's probably a medical term to describe it. A kind of insensitivity to words combined with a proclaimed love for them. So it's not just pompousness, because it needn't be caused by conceit.
It's being crazy without the insight that you're crazy. And I pray I never become that. Though it seems to me that the only thing that anchors you is community, which is arguably the only thing you must escape from.
Handwriting is natural: typeface is not. Speech is natural: but your recorded speech is not.
When you hear words in your mind, you know them. But on page, on tape, they're another's voice, their implications mysterious. They're open to interpretation in a way that they weren't; and they have a likely interpretation, based on a statistics game; and they are vulnerable to common meanings.
J has a good memory for names, whereas I, I sometimes forget my own.
I often forget my birthday.
In fantasy stories there are old wizards and deities and ancient monsters, who talk about how they've gone by many names, and who will savour a word remembering they were called that.
... a curious unattachment to something that's supposed to matter. But perhaps it is better without names -- being empty of self-concern, and trading identity for flux.
There's definitely the sense, when I write, of trying to force language -- of using the instrument -- of pushing it and testing its expressiveness. One of the implications is that language is insufficient to intention, that there is more to say than can be said.
… trying to build a house with straw, or to use a shoe as a hammer -- trying to fulfil some purpose with the limited tools you've got.
I don't mean to suggest that language communicates a thought. What I'm suggesting is that the limitations of poetry -- making your words fit ten syllables and five stresses -- is a good metaphor for all aspects of language use. "Achieving an effect" -- that is, physical cause and effect -- is a better description than "communicates" -- making this slide steep enough for a ball to roll down; making that end heavy enough to outweigh this; pushing that block hard enough to move it.
You've never read Kant, but it's my intention, and it happens to be the case, that my interpretive dance causes you to think of the whole of the Critique of Pure Reason.
So is this "communication"? And is it different from any other?
Is cause and effect enough to replace the old concept?
What does a dictionary tell you? After reading a word's definition, can you competently use it?
"Gamin" gives me "streetkid, urchin", but in what sense a streetkid, urchin? Mannerisms? Appearance? How often is the word used metaphorically, and how often literally?
Until I am familiar with actual use, I cannot use.
The battles waged every day over reputation, honour, the associations of proper nouns, are essentially the same battles waged over many concepts -- that is, these are wars over meaning. And how a word is used goes directly to power interests.
… Words like "terrorism", "female", "proportionate", "reasonable" -- key concepts, indispensable, and necessarily vague -- they have this social, open-to-negotiation, open-to-struggle dimension built in.
"What's reasonable?" -- Well, it's perfectly reasonable to ask a jury and find out.
We avoid language, we censor, lest we perpetuate attitude, mentality. We avoid racist and homophobic jokes. We think twice about masculininty as a norm. It's this intention that's at the heart of political correctness.
The mechanism might well result in net gain. But repression has its own effects. And one might wonder if taboo can lead to reinforcement or transference.
My mind is cultural detritus. Through what I say, and through its logic of connection, you see my time. Language is response. There is a reason, when I sit down, that I say anything at all, and there is a reason for one specific word to follow another.
The cliché is what writing fights against, constantly, but it is the cliché against which one writes, because of which writing has value. And it is the cliché that is the most pure entrance into a culture's mind.
Art is that which uses logic against logic, which pushes beyond the cliché by way of the cliché.
"The classical Chinese word was very different from an abstract sign representing a clearly delineated concept. It was rather a sound symbol which had strong suggestive powers, bringing to mind an indeterminate complex of pictorial images and emotions. The intention of the speaker was not so much to express an intellectual idea, but rather to affect and influence the listener. Correspondingly, the written character was not just an abstract sign, but was an organic pattern -- a 'gestalt' -- which preserved the full complex of images and the suggestive power of the word.
Since the Chinese philosophers expressed themselves in a language which was so well suited for their way of thinking, their writings and sayings could be short and inarticulate, and yet rich in suggestive images. It is clear that much of this imagery must be lost in an English translation."
-- Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, 1975
And perhaps one should ask: but aren't all nouns, in any language, the same as the Chinese word?
-- All this, yet an English or American ear can barely tell the difference.
***
As soon as an Asian speaks with an Australian accent, it's phase shift: the rules of engagement morph, the assumptions change.
Previously, this person is alien or inscrutable; you don't know what bizarre thing they'll do and you don't know how to act towards them. But as soon as the front-shifted vowels and nasalization leaves their lips, then all their mannerisms and body language are interpreted differently, are given framework. You relax. Because when we're raised in a culture, we learn to do, we learn to hold our faces certain ways, move in certain ways, we learn what means what and what's acceptable and what's not.
And yet, you really don't know what inscrutable depths and depths are buried behind a face. The accent is misleading.
***
A native speaker is quite sensitive to the unnatural word, the statistically unlikely word. He/she can detect when the longer word, or the more exotic, is used in place of the familiar, but without adding anything, and with disregard for the additional meanings brought.
I don't know how often I've seen it. There's probably a medical term to describe it. A kind of insensitivity to words combined with a proclaimed love for them. So it's not just pompousness, because it needn't be caused by conceit.
It's being crazy without the insight that you're crazy. And I pray I never become that. Though it seems to me that the only thing that anchors you is community, which is arguably the only thing you must escape from.
***
Handwriting is natural: typeface is not. Speech is natural: but your recorded speech is not.
When you hear words in your mind, you know them. But on page, on tape, they're another's voice, their implications mysterious. They're open to interpretation in a way that they weren't; and they have a likely interpretation, based on a statistics game; and they are vulnerable to common meanings.
***
J has a good memory for names, whereas I, I sometimes forget my own.
I often forget my birthday.
In fantasy stories there are old wizards and deities and ancient monsters, who talk about how they've gone by many names, and who will savour a word remembering they were called that.
... a curious unattachment to something that's supposed to matter. But perhaps it is better without names -- being empty of self-concern, and trading identity for flux.
***
There's definitely the sense, when I write, of trying to force language -- of using the instrument -- of pushing it and testing its expressiveness. One of the implications is that language is insufficient to intention, that there is more to say than can be said.
… trying to build a house with straw, or to use a shoe as a hammer -- trying to fulfil some purpose with the limited tools you've got.
I don't mean to suggest that language communicates a thought. What I'm suggesting is that the limitations of poetry -- making your words fit ten syllables and five stresses -- is a good metaphor for all aspects of language use. "Achieving an effect" -- that is, physical cause and effect -- is a better description than "communicates" -- making this slide steep enough for a ball to roll down; making that end heavy enough to outweigh this; pushing that block hard enough to move it.
***
You've never read Kant, but it's my intention, and it happens to be the case, that my interpretive dance causes you to think of the whole of the Critique of Pure Reason.
So is this "communication"? And is it different from any other?
Is cause and effect enough to replace the old concept?
***
What does a dictionary tell you? After reading a word's definition, can you competently use it?
"Gamin" gives me "streetkid, urchin", but in what sense a streetkid, urchin? Mannerisms? Appearance? How often is the word used metaphorically, and how often literally?
Until I am familiar with actual use, I cannot use.
***
The battles waged every day over reputation, honour, the associations of proper nouns, are essentially the same battles waged over many concepts -- that is, these are wars over meaning. And how a word is used goes directly to power interests.
… Words like "terrorism", "female", "proportionate", "reasonable" -- key concepts, indispensable, and necessarily vague -- they have this social, open-to-negotiation, open-to-struggle dimension built in.
"What's reasonable?" -- Well, it's perfectly reasonable to ask a jury and find out.
***
We avoid language, we censor, lest we perpetuate attitude, mentality. We avoid racist and homophobic jokes. We think twice about masculininty as a norm. It's this intention that's at the heart of political correctness.
The mechanism might well result in net gain. But repression has its own effects. And one might wonder if taboo can lead to reinforcement or transference.
***
My mind is cultural detritus. Through what I say, and through its logic of connection, you see my time. Language is response. There is a reason, when I sit down, that I say anything at all, and there is a reason for one specific word to follow another.
The cliché is what writing fights against, constantly, but it is the cliché against which one writes, because of which writing has value. And it is the cliché that is the most pure entrance into a culture's mind.
Art is that which uses logic against logic, which pushes beyond the cliché by way of the cliché.
***
"The classical Chinese word was very different from an abstract sign representing a clearly delineated concept. It was rather a sound symbol which had strong suggestive powers, bringing to mind an indeterminate complex of pictorial images and emotions. The intention of the speaker was not so much to express an intellectual idea, but rather to affect and influence the listener. Correspondingly, the written character was not just an abstract sign, but was an organic pattern -- a 'gestalt' -- which preserved the full complex of images and the suggestive power of the word.
Since the Chinese philosophers expressed themselves in a language which was so well suited for their way of thinking, their writings and sayings could be short and inarticulate, and yet rich in suggestive images. It is clear that much of this imagery must be lost in an English translation."
-- Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, 1975
And perhaps one should ask: but aren't all nouns, in any language, the same as the Chinese word?
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Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
Great post. My dilemma was in leaving a comment or not, because commenting is going to reduce the clarity of what I have just gained from reading your post.... I have read some Kant and loved his work, although his critics say he came it at the "flat Earth' period of philosophy...?
I loved your observations of accents and dialects...
A great read, thanks.
Lilla...
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Kant's not thought of as flat earth at all. You'd barely be able to read a philosophy paper without seeing a citation to him somewhere.
Never read him myself though -- not properly anyway.
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I assumed you meant by 'his critics say he came it at the "flat Earth' period of philosophy' that the criticism of Kant is that he's antiquated.
Is that what you thought I thought you meant?
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
...sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this, I'd forgotten... and got busy with matters of doctrinal import....
No, what i mean is that [from what I've read] those who were probably jealous of him... or for whatever nefarious motivation people have for slamming peers to the ground and belittling their efforts to rise ... they said that inevitable progress was about to be made anyway.
Like the progress in thought about the world being flat until someone like Galileo pushed the point with such logic and simplicity - the hob-knobs had to pay attention or begin to look complete fools if they kept pushing the old dogma... ie "Ooh my Gaud m'lord, the propaganda is becoming transparent... which is to say, within this they undermined Kant’s brilliance by stating that his revelations were nothing more than obvious conclusions drawn from those who went before him… greatly detracting from what he himself added to the cause…
For Kant, as for such populisers as Voltaire, the watch word was Autonomy..
Phew… I’m glad I got that out…see what you mean about forcing the language when you type..*lol*
….thanks for the workout…
Lilla…