Hard News: A Full Sense of Nationhood
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I disagree with your point about 'dropping rules that are essential to disambiguation' being a no-no
Ben, this just don't seem right, you seem to be conradicting yourself and that is not your style at all. Are you feeling a bit flustered with all this hot weather?
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And only 18 IANALs, would you believe.
For a while I thought IANAL meant "I am being delberately pedantic"
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"I am being deliberately pedantic" in correcting my own spelling.
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Emma, I was actually joking right back at you. Cheers for lightening the mood.
Jack
On the other hand, using a machine makes you much better at using the machine.
Indeed, and by analogy, using writing made us much more effective at using writing and doing things that can be done with writing, which is one hell of a lot more than with oral history (since that also exists concurrently anyway, so there's direct comparison).
the most energy-efficient transport mechanism ever invented
Heh, ain't they just awesome. Walking and running still have their place, though. I bet I can outrun your bike going up a steep hill, on foot. And ain't stairs a bitch for cyclists?
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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.
I did, and I thought it was lovely since I was fully expecting you to go in a whole 'nother direction with it - because yes, we know each other only as members of this community, where we some time fulfill the roles of 'pron gal' and 'Italian gastronomy guy'.
(Although we're so much more than that of course. Especially Emma.)
(I love PAS.)
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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?
Good question. Although we've had a few decades of of academic thought dedicated to solving such problems by promoting the supremacy of the text, lately it seems to have gone the way of brutalist architecture.
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How about when the writer is dead, or otherwise unavailable?
Oh, the author is dead anyway. Didn't you get the memo?
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we some time fulfill the roles of 'pron gal' and 'Italian gastronomy guy'.
And I nominate Ben for "Knowledge Bro"
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Ben, I'm not getting into the finicky details here, but you seemed to have missed my point - despite their invention of the printing press our scurvy-ridden Euro forebears were still marking off scary regions on their maps while the "inferior" oral technologies of our Polynesian forebears were enabling widespread voyaging.
Sure, the respective technologies had their own pace of change and limits, but it's not a given that at every point in time writing rather than speaking stories gets better results. That's all I was saying, but it's highly relevant right now as technologies begin to allow the permanent storage and search of speech, vision and dance, not just written text.
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Gio
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.
Sure. But clear communication is also incredibly valuable, and doesn't disallow your meanderings. Insisting on meandering does, however, harm clear communication.
Steve
Ben, this just don't seem right, you seem to be conradicting yourself and that is not your style at all. Are you feeling a bit flustered with all this hot weather?
I think I get your point here, that "dropping rules that are essential for disambiguation" is by definition causing ambiguity. Poorly worded, apologies. What I meant to say, and have actually said several times (hence your accusation of contradiction), is that rules that are essential for disambiguation are few and far between. You can disambiguate by avoiding those sentence structures completely. This can be done perfectly easily in comprehensible, grammatical English, and usually should be done, unless you have artistic purposes in mind.
3410
How about when the writer is dead, or otherwise unavailable?
Then we're stuck with their ambiguity, whether they were grammatical or otherwise. I think the standard thing to do is try to find other references to the same ideas by the author.
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3410,
Oh, the author is dead anyway. Didn't you get the memo?
I did, but decided that it meant something else.
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Ben, the various social and situational signals sent by language choice (e.g. of the social group and social identity of the language producer; of the participants' roles; of the producer's assumptions about the audience's prior knowledge; of the emphasis required for the purpose of the event; of the formality level judged socially appropriate for the situation [itself dependent on the purpose and social evaluation of the event]) act, not so much as optional additions to, but rather as multipliers on, referential meaning. They are always there.
Even the deliberate choice of a "neutral" style is, still, a choice of style, which itself will send social signals, or at the very least result in social inferences by comparison with what isn't marked (e.g. by not marking degrees of familiarity between participants, the inference becomes "he's not really my friend" [at least in this context]).
Any attempt to build a language without such signals would result in a language that could not be used in most real social situations. (Esperanto has been as successful as it has because it is mainly used for very limited types of public social interaction -- but even so, it has had to develop some such signals.) -
Sacha, full credit to the prehistoric Maori forefathers for their use of oral history. I do think they'd have got further if they could read and write, though. As in, literally further. Oral history was pretty awesome for sailing around the Pacific, but to sail around the whole world you need maps, rutters, etc.
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And I nominate Ben for "Knowledge Bro"
That's too big a title for one guy who doesn't really know much.
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3410,
"Nor is it hard to ask for clarification of accidental ambiguity...
How about when the writer is dead, or otherwise unavailable?
Then we're stuck with their ambiguityDon't you get tired from moving the goalposts so often?
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But clear communication is also incredibly valuable, and doesn't disallow your meanderings.
Actually, it kind of does, insofar as it rests on an ethos that is very pervasive and not always tolerant of difference. But different cultures have different habits of mind, which are sometimes reflected in their languages, not just in their use of language. You seem to advocate for the directness of English as a good thing, and I wouldn't disagree. But other languages allow me to do things that English is not very good at, and I like that.
Insisting on meandering does, however, harm clear communication.
That's a brilliant example of what I'm talking about. We equate information with knowledge, and clear communication with good communication. But there is another word you can apply to communication: rich. And it doesn't always go the same way as clear.
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Ben, the idea of a single global language is monstrous. Right now, languages are dying out at a scarily high rate - one every two weeks. It's estimated that almost half of the 7000 languages spoken today are in danger of extinction. They are irreplaceable repositories of human thought, history, and knowledge, and to want to wipe them out in some misguided drive for efficiency beggars belief.
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Ben, I agree with Linger that the complexity you seem determined to remove is always part of communication and cultures. I'd also suggest more care about how you use terms like "pre-historic".
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to sail around the whole world you need maps, rutters, etc
Ummm... no, I think I'll let Emma deal with this one.
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We equate information with knowledge, and clear communication with good communication. But there is another word you can apply to communication: rich. And it doesn't always go the same way as clear.
I'd go further and say communication is about understanding - and there's always more to that than mere information.
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linger, my turn to be a pedant. What do you mean by multiplying referential meaning? I can only see addition. If what you are saying is true then the meaning of a sentence could grow more rapidly than the length. I don't see how this is possible. If I make 3 verbal points, with 3 other signals, I don't get 9 points out it. I get 6. What am I missing here?
I'm not suggesting that language should lose its ability to signal. It's far, far, far simpler than that. I'm suggesting that we could all speak at least one language that everyone could understand in general. Of course we can never speak one language that everyone can understand about everything. The language I speak to my business partner is most likely 30% unintelligible to even my other colleagues, because we have known each other so long that we have an extensive list of private usages of words, phrases, anecdotes etc. These things enable us to communicate very rapidly together. But we all speak English, and can convey even the most complex ideas with 100% precision, if we try, and the listener also tries. These English speakers are scattered around the globe, and many of them are not native speakers. But the ideas get through, and that's good for all of us.
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The two parties interpret the significance of the written word quite differently in Quebec's early meeting of cultures in the movie Black Robe - first 2 mins of this clip:
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Actually, it kind of does, insofar as it rests on an ethos that is very pervasive and not always tolerant of difference.
Communicating clearly is extremely tolerant of difference. It's something that people of difference usually prefer.
I would never advocate the death of other languages. I don't think that we should stop studying Latin, just because we don't speak it. Well, most of us don't. Similarly with Maori. But it is a tremendous advantage to Maori that they can speak English as well.
That's a brilliant example of what I'm talking about. We equate information with knowledge, and clear communication with good communication. But there is another word you can apply to communication: rich. And it doesn't always go the same way as clear.
No, and that's when you're welcome to use all old-school techniques you love so much. But when you want to communicate clearly with as many people as possible, that's when the 'universal language' comes in. And that is exactly what I want to do an awful lot of the time. I also like communicating unclearly and poetically, non-verbally, or not at all, too. But these options need not be mutually exclusive.
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Yes, they're not mutually exclusive - unless you seek to universally apply rules that only work for one of them. Get it?
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Ah, yes. As soon as I imagined Chrissie Hind's voice sing "something is lost..." it fell into place.
It's one of my few, useless talents.
(The use of that comma up there is totally relevant to this thread, btw. If I hadn't inserted it, I would be saying 'I have a lot of talents, only a few of which are useless'. As opposed to what I mean, which is 'I have only a few talents, and they are all useless.' All hail the comma!)
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