Hard News: A Full Sense of Nationhood
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On the subject of good signs, Galbraith's toilets (gents)
Toilet out of order,
We apologise for the lack of convenience.Ahh, wordplay.
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I'm with Joe: "oh, really?"
Not sure if this is a diss. Not sure what is meant at all.
Of course something is lost in the process. Something is lost in the process of using a machine of any kind - your natural ability will atrophy. That's not usually a good reason not to use the machine, unless you have atrophied to a dangerously weak level. Walking up stairs instead of using the lift might do you some good, but I really don't think running to the CBD from an outer suburb every day is necessary. Nor is using your memory for things that can be written down. It might have some advantages, but it has a hell of a lot of disadvantages too.
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Not sure if this is a diss. Not sure what is meant at all.
Refuse to explain. You must make an effort to understand.
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these things are not always necessary for understanding what someone is communicating
I'd say that depends largely on whether we are communicating about just doing stuff or about other matters like being human and the beauty of life. Or the prospect of a pub with no loo.
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The more complex the situation, the more complex the language. As the world became excessively complex so did the language. It gets to the point where the language becomes too cumbersome to fit its purpose.
And yet, we all use it just fine.
I disagree with your point about 'dropping rules that are essential to disambiguation' being a no-no. Ambiguity is so easily avoided without arcane rules. This thread has been full of carefully constructed ambiguities, but none of them have convinced of the need for the particular grammar marks given. In almost every case the standard heuristic my high school German teacher taught me, to cope with failing to know the right word or grammar, applies easily. "Sag es anders". Say it differently. It really works. If it's ambiguous, the way you tried to say it, don't rely on grammar to bail you out. Say it plainer. Say it a different way. Say it 2 ways, or 3 ways. Use an analogy, if the idea is complex. It's really easy to use plain language, and really hard to learn the intricacies of arbitrary grammar, so the choice is really a no-brainer.
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I'd go as far as to say it would be a splendid topic for a PhD, except it's been done.
I'm going to go ahead and call pwnage on this.
Because in writing you lose the marvellously subtle and not so subtle cues of verbal intonation.
Again often, but not always. Or again, these things are not always necessary for understanding what someone is communicating.
Oh but, as someone who's been moderating discussion boards and administrating web communities for long enough to feel old and jaded (and then about another decade, because that takes a couple of months), we lose SO much, so often.
At BW, I'd say about a third of our dispute resolution work boils down to this. Person A says (ie writes) something to person B, who interprets it as an insult, and responds 'in kind'. We end up with a full-blown barney with both sides convinced the other person started it, and they're both right .
So we try to find all kinds of ways to convey our meaning more clearly without all the non-verbal clues we absolutely rely on in face to face communication. As my friend Sayana says, you can say anything on the net as long as you add a smiley you slutty cow :).
F'r'instance, google tells me that IMO + 'in my opinion' yields 850 hits at System. I don't think the phrase is that common in face to face communication, because people can 'just tell' how adamant you are about something.
So, every cue you can cram into your writing makes your point, your tone, everything, more comprehensible to your readers. If you put the onus on your readers to work to understand you, you're going to spend a lot of time saying 'no look, that's not what I meant'. That's not a 'moral obligation', it's just a matter of practicality.
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Refuse to explain. You must make an effort to understand.
Ho ho. Fine then, you will be misunderstood, by your own insistence. Is that they way you like it?
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Person A says (ie writes) something to person B, who interprets it as an insult, and responds 'in kind'. We end up with a full-blown barney with both sides convinced the other person started it, and they're both right.
Ta, Emma - seen it, done it. And Google says we have racked up about 400 uses of IMHO here - so on average we must be twice as opinionated as we are humble. Heh.
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I disagree with your point about 'dropping rules that are essential to disambiguation' being a no-no. Ambiguity is so easily avoided without arcane rules...
Now you're just being silly. If a rule is essential to disambiguation, it's not an arcane rule, it's a useful convention for communication.
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Is that they way you like it?
I'm going to phone a friend for this one, Ben. Emma, are you there?
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I'm going to phone a friend for this one, Ben. Emma, are you there?
Yes I am, Gio, and no that's not the way you like it. There's not enough mascarpone for a start.
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3410,
And Google says we have racked up about 400 uses of IMHO here - so on average we must be twice as opinionated as we are humble. Heh.
Probably even more so if you factor in instances of "IMNSHO"?
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Now you're just being silly. If a rule is essential to disambiguation, it's not an arcane rule, it's a useful convention for communication.
In case you hadn't noticed, that is the very point I'm disputing. I'm saying that basically no rule is ever needed for disambiguation. You can disambiguate another way. It's not hard at all to speak clearly. Nor is it hard to ask for clarification of accidental ambiguity, which happens all the time, no matter how many rules you have. To insist that as much information as can possibly be crammed into a sentence should be crammed in, is to make sentences incomprehensible until the 25th reading (like so much academia I've read over the years). Did having to read something 25 times, and look up the grammar rules in a book somehow make the utterer a good communicator? I put it to you that it did not, that it harmed more than it helped. On the flipside, when the meaning was clear, but there is some violation of some rule or other, is that person a poor communicator? I don't think so.
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Yes I am, Gio, and no that's not the way you like it. There's not enough mascarpone for a start.
Hmmm private jokes. The ultimate in communicative clarity.
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But the point of course is that in pre-literate societies minds were trained in all sorts of ways to cope with the lack of the capacity to jot things down. Plato famously wrote that the invention of writing would weaken the mind and lead to the decay of culture, and if nothing also he had certainly anticipated that something would be lost in the process.
I agree something is lost in the process, but something is gained (is that song lyric?). Plato was wrong, and as Ben said, we probably wouldn't know what he or Socrates thought if it hadn't been written down.
Pre-literate societies were trained in ways to cope without writing, but you aren't suggesting that oral history is as effective as written at storing information? I'll read your thesis eventually, though.
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really hard to learn the intricacies of arbitrary grammar
Yeah, its so random whod think wed understand theirs a reason ;-)
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(is that a song lyric?)
Are you thinking of The Pretenders' 'Hymn to Her'?
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Hmmm private jokes. The ultimate in communicative clarity.
No, that's not a private joke. (I feel a clanging sense of doom even as I type this.) Gio and I have had very little offsite communication - some, but not much, and certainly none that affects this joke. Which I actually thought was pretty, if not painfully obvious, but I could well be wrong. That's what happens with written group communication - or multi-player Notepad, as someone called IRC.
Now, I feel comfortable enough with my knowledge of Giovanni, gleaned through this forum, to make this joke and feel that he'll understand how I meant it, and I can predict how he'll take it. Others will vary in their ability to interpret it depending on how long they've been around, how much of Gio's and my stuff they've read, and if they understand our feelings about porn and Italian food.
It was also an attempt to lighten the tone in the forum, because the more uptight people are, the more likely they are to interpret, say, a completely innocent joke as a personal attack, or miss sarcasm.
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Something is lost in the process of using a machine of any kind - your natural ability will atrophy.... I really don't think running to the CBD from an outer suburb every day is necessary.
On the other hand, using a machine makes you much better at using the machine. I couldn't run 40k a day if you paid me, but I'll quite happily use a machine (the bicycle, the most energy-efficient transport mechanism ever invented) to do it on my commute. And there are plenty of machines that are designed specifically to improve your natural ability - they're often found clustered in places called "gyms".
Yes, I should stop being a smartarse.
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On the flipside, when the meaning was clear, but there is some violation of some rule or other, is that person a poor communicator? I don't think so.
Not necessarily, especially in informal situations, on that we agree. But I don't think it is useful to brush off every rule as "arcane" if it serves a purpose.
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Pre-literate societies were trained in ways to cope without writing, but you aren't suggesting that oral history is as effective as written at storing information?
Not as effective, no, but differently effective. And efficacy in itself is such a loaded term. It could lead one to infer for instance that English is perfectly situated to become a lingua franca because it's so streamlined and (comparatively) easier to learn, whereas languages from pre-literate societies that have, say, nine or more markers for gender as opposed to just three, or that have different modes of address if you're dealing with one person, two people or many people, are overcomplicated and unsuitable for an already complex world. But that approach in itself is borne out of our pre-wired love of quick and direct information, that must be rapid in order not to interfere with productivity or slow down progress. And I don't need to tell you that there is more to life than that, and that subtlety, meandernig arguments, taking them to get to your point whilst attempting to articulate contraty perspectives, are things of some cultural value.
Which is not to say that Plato was right, of course. But he anticipated discussion that we are still having about the impact of new ICTs on memory and culture.
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Are you thinking of The Pretenders' 'Hymn to Her'?
Ah, yes. As soon as I imagined Chrissie Hind's voice sing "something is lost..." it fell into place.
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instances of "IMNSHO"
33.
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And only 18 IANALs, would you believe.
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3410,
Nor is it hard to ask for clarification of accidental ambiguity, which happens all the time, no matter how many rules you have.
How about when the writer is dead, or otherwise unavailable?
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