ESOTERICON

Not Dead Yet...

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 22:39:06 GMT

Thanks for the friendly nudge, lifeofreilly. Always good to get some external motivation to buckle down and post, since clearly I'm not exactly managing to impel myself to it! :)

Been living the life of a hermit, of late. Work is consuming as always, though excitingly much less chaotic and personally exhausting. (For those with the access, minions make a HUGE difference in one's productivity! (Especially when they're wielded as a sort of shield standing between you and those who want a piece of your time. )) Further, as some of you know, catgrrl and I have been working for aeons to get our future house to a live-in-able state, and that is finally coming to some fruition. Or at least, it's getting very very close to some sort of point of completion (Very Exciting!). Otherwise, plenty of other incidental events clamor for seeing to, and at the end of it all, one is exhausted and just wants to curl up on the couch.

Hopefully in the near future there will be time enough for some of the socializing like I feel like I remember happening once upon a time. I feel like it's somehow familiar and yet a dream of days of yor. Wine and roses, etc. Yet, Spring is upon us all and hopefully more reason to venture out (and the energy to do so). Until then, feel free any of you my dear friends, to nudge away and prod me to action or something looking less dead. As the Mad Arab pointed out: That Is Not Dead Which Can Eternal Lie, For With Strange Aeons Even Death May Die.

Ba Ba Ba

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:39:18 GMT

八八八 is something you can hear sheep saying all the time. That's because, I assume, they're serious about prosperity and numerology. Otherwise, I would guess they'd just say 發發發.

恭喜发财, everybody!

Uphill. Both ways. In the snow.

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:51:22 GMT

I try hard to cultivate within myself the flexibility of attitude towards current trends and social changes and the like that is stereotypically lacking from the more geriatrically inclined minds out there. And yet, living as I do in the city in which I grew up, after a long hiatus between adolescence and true “adultiness” mind you, I find myself bemoaning the changes which I feel directly inhibit my preferred lifestyle. Now, don't get me wrong, this town has really turned itself around from the state it was in while I was a juvenile (delinquent) here in the early '90s. The reversal of the decay of the magnificent Downtown and the neighborhoods I grew up in are astounding, and I would never want those things to revert to the state they had been, even if it meant I could actually comfortable afford to live in those now hyper-cool neighborhoods. Further, I'm really not at all bothered by the mass influx of be-sunglass'ed-hipsters which now roam the once-violent streets (circa-80s-Beirut-violent), with impunity, astride their fancy fluevogs and Vespas.

No, with none of that do I take issue.

What I'm speaking of, obviously, is the ever growing dearth of coffee houses with hours of operation exceeding 10pm in the evening! Now, if you are counted among those who know me well, you'll realize that this is a direct impingement upon my Way of Life(tm)! So, cue the gruff old-fogey voice for me as I say “What is wrong with the coffee house operators in this day and age?!” Now, for a little background, it used to be that back in the Grand Olde days before Starbucks co-opted the concept of the coffee house, that there was no shortage of espresso-slinging establishments in my local haunts, most of which closed no earlier than 1am! In those great times, you could be under the legal drinking age and still had a comfortable variety of really cool places that you could stay out late at. One of the firsts for me was a marvelous establishment called The E Bar (or The Espresso Bar). This was the establishment that introduced me to cappuccino and mocha, long before these things were generally known by the public at large. Combined with the fact that it wasn't a place that you could easily find unless you already knew where it was, hidden away in a dead-end alley in Old Town, and the open mike events, local artwork on the walls, and general mix of interesting clientele that were the hallmark of such joints; you have a place that felt like home to a teenager in art-school!

When did they start disappearing? I can't say for sure when the turning point was. But, many of these places (such as The E Bar or Grounds Zero) quietly disappeared while I was still away in the Misty Northlands. Others (such as Buster's and Kaldi) simply pruned their hours to an ever greater degree, ultimately leaving little, if any, time between when I would be able to escape from my mid-week, work-related obligations and the close of their doors. Sigh. And, furthermore, this continues. One of the newer spots in the local vicinity (Sẅork) is within spitting distance of the local college (not to mention being located in one of the Up-And-Coming Neighborhoods(tm) with a far greater than average volume per-cubic-foot of coffee-guzzling emo/hipster/rockers, and yet they too have rolled back closing-time to 10pm from 11pm on most days. What the hell goeth on here? I mean, is there some lack of patronage by the collegiate masses or the über-kewl in the more wee hours? From what I've observed therein at closing time, the answer would, in fact, be no.

I have no answer to this, nor can I conceive of any satisfying explanations. Feel free to suggest them as my restless mind seeks closure.

There is at least some glimmer of hope, for the establishment from which I write this message/lamentation (the dully named “Seattle's Best”) has hours that run to 11pm! (Gasp!) During the week, no less. And, free wi-fi (suck on that, Starbuck's!). Plus, it's conveniently located by the train line that I commute to work by. So, we'll see how long this lasts, but so far it's a delight. The future seems somehow brighter already...

しばらくだね！

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:32:06 GMT

新しいノートブックコンピュータが買ったので、何かをすぐ書かなければならないし、まだここに日本語で書くことがない。それじゃー、やっぱりこんな字が読めるしか出きないが、たぶんだれか読める。しかし、日本語の文法は全然下手だから、どちらでもいいと思う。そーして、今英語でね。

Anyhow, yeah, new notebook! Therefore, I'm now drunk with multi-language-input power along with the flexibility and comfort to inspire me to actually compose (and post) to my live journal. I mean, sure, a mere 77 week hiatus in posting may seem significant to some, but time is meaningless to me. That is to say, I am completely incompetent and dealing with it. Time, that is.

So, if I can keep up the enthusiasm, I look forward to posting about all the crazy crap I want to rant about to whoever it is that might be listening (or, reading, rather).

じゃ、またあとで！

The Rigorous Art of Journalism

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 01:56:59 GMT

Among my many questionable habits is that of following the newspapers. There was a time not too long ago when people I knew would hold up names of news publications of the US such as the hallowed New York Times, as a paragon of Journalistic Integrity and So Forth. Yet, while I certainly enjoyed the works of fiction that certain authors, publishing under title of "journalist", these papers had unwittingly had in their employ, and while I greatly enjoyed The New York Times' extensive self-exposing article on the subject from some years back - which was, incidentally, adapted into a darling episode of Law & Order too! (Always a sign that you've "made it" if it can be called that...) - I still can't help but feel rather skeptical of the veracity of their "facts".

Like when I was just reading this article about the quake in Hawaii, in the New York Times and something struck me about this passage:

"The most costly earthquake in the United States, the North Ridge earthquake, just outside Los Angeles in 1994,..."

Now, perhaps it is a crime of ego... or hubris, or perhaps an Angelenocentric perspective, but, honestly, do they employ fact checkers at their Fine Publication? By way of verifying my take on reality I did a couple of quick searches on Ye Olde Internet and found within seconds that, yes, someone isn't doing their job. Now before you go blaming the fine people of "North Ridge" (wherever that is), or if your aptitude for fiction is on par with the above-quoted Fine American Institution, allow me to perorate briefly on the geography of the San Fernando valley, or Camelot for those in the know.

There was an earthquake of some significance in Los Angeles in 1994 (all of us fortunate enough to have experienced that one can I trust attest that, yep, that certainly happened), but it's epicenter was in Northridge, not far from California State University at Northridge. There's even a convenient reference attesting to this, from the proverbial horse's mouth, that anyone who has vaguely heard of the internet could probably find on Google in roughly 2 metered shakes of a lambs tail... if they cared to. Not to make the point too forcefully, but when I tried a search for "North Ridge" in Google Maps, it helpfully asked if I hadn't really meant Northridge, California. Moving on, no matter how the fine citizens of the San Fernando Valley voted on the issue of Valley Secession in the election a few years ago, Northridge is not technically "Just Outside" Los Angeles, any more than Arkansas is now "Just Outside" of the United States.

So, why should I care? Am I being too picky?

Well, I realize it's not really "cool" these days to make a big deal of distinguishing fact from fiction, but if this is the degree of accuracy one can expect of all "facts" published by the New York Times, how should we feel about it as a trusted source of information? These days rationality and logic are rapidly becoming irrelevant in public discourse and debate, and when television "News" outlets are more voiceboxes for propaganda and disinformation , it would be nice not to be confronted with this sort of thing in publications I want to be able to trust.

Am I me?

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 07:32:48 GMT

So, here's a neat exchange I had recently over email, and I thought it would be of interest to others. And so, I share...

Stephen:
seriously man, i need you to weigh in, on that whole grammar argument I'm having regarding "It is I" vs "It is me."

Arcanafex:
Where? On LJ or something?

Stephen:
no man just tell me which is right and why.

"That is me" or "That is I"
"This is her" or "This is she"

I know that "This is she" is a commonly used phrase (like if a stranger on the phone asks for my mom by full name, she'll respond "this is she"). But "That is me" is also commonly used (Who is that in the photo? That's me). I argue that because I/he/she/we are nominatives they cannot logically go after a verb. That's the domain of the accusative form me/him/her/us. So while colloquial speech of course defines the natural part of language even if it is illogical, the technically correct form of an English sentence is subject - verb - object, thus "that is me," and not "that is I," thus "this is her" and not "this is she."

What do you think?

Arcanafex:
The answer probably won't be very satisfying, but basically both are correct.

Here's why: Your reasoning about the use of nominative versus accusative is spot on. Except that it only really applies to normal verbs, and "to be" is sort of exceptional in pretty much every language. It's what's called a copula or copular verb, and it's often really almost more of an auxiliary verb than a full fledged verb. In fact, a lot of major languages (ones you've heard of even!) don't have a copular verb at all. Like Russian and Indonesian, for example.

The next question then is why the hell are there two more or less correct phrasings?! The answer is the legacy of our forebears that came up with "schoolbook grammar" that thought that the way to make English more classy would be to make it more like Latin.

Historically then, "This is her" or "It's me" is the more English (meaning more Western Germanic, or at least Anglo-Saxon, specifically). Whereas, "This is she" or "It's she" is the classy way to say it, which is based upon of the Victorians' desire to make English emulate Latin.

Now, in Latin, Greek and many of those old-timey Mediterranean languages, both Subject and Object positions in a copular clause take the Nominative case. These languages treat the copula as more of an auxiliary and less of a verb. The Germanic take on the copula has been to treat it as more like every other verb and so the Subject position takes Nominative case, and the Object position takes the Accusative.

Basically, at this point both are equally part of the language. The Nominative-Accusative construction is the standard, familiar, non-formal register. The Nominative-Nominative is basically just the formal, high-register construction. The interesting thing is how speaking to a stranger on the phone is understood by most of us to still be a very formal situation, until we establish that we're talking to someone that's somehow more on a peer level with us.

Here ends the lesson.

A Full Year

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 02:34:49 GMT

Organizing a wedding, getting married, honeymooning in Tahiti, traveling around Northern California, a new job, a promotion, a friend's death, a funeral, Burning Man, Pirate Encampment, etc. Not necessarily in that order.

There are those times when life's events get to happening to a degree that I am distracted from all else. Most of this year has been such a time. Now that I'm getting into the home stretch though, I'm finally feeling like I have the enthusiasm to get back to things like writing. Here, in particular. And, I feel my hiatus is now done. Until my next one.

Chicken Scratch and Monkey Noises

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 08:54:47 GMT

So, yes. It's been a while since I've written. And, coincidentally, that's exactly what I've been wanting to talk about! (the subordinate predicate (i.e. writing) not temporal qualifier)

Writing is a big part of English these days. If you're involved enough in the world of English to be reading this journal, you've probably noticed this. In fact, it's such an integral part of the native English speaker's conception of their language that it appears to have overtaken the spoken medium in perceived socio-cultural importance. This is as opposed to, say, about 700 years ago when most people couldn't read or write English at all... or anything else for that matter. These days, the average English speaker seems to have a lot of trouble distinguishing between the language itself and the written system we use to render that language graphically. Like in this line here.

And now a here's a quick digression about writing, and writing systems, if you're unfamiliar with the concept. When most native Angloglots here in The States think about how writing works, in my experience evidently the first thing that comes to mind, and often the only thing, is spelling and spelling rules. And I can't tell you how marvelously "funny" I find all the jokes people make about how I must expect perfect spelling from them upon learning of my Linguist identity. *heh*.

Anyway, writing. As you may know, a writing system, or more academically an orthography, at its core is simply a method by which a language is rendered in graphic form (most usually). Now there have been a variety of approaches to rendering a graphic (and thereby slightly less ephemeral) representation of language over the last several millenia, but in the grand scheme of things they don't differ too greatly from each other, despite what conspiracy theorists & misty eyed idealists might tell you. Most importantly, though, is that there is no writing system that exists exclusively of a specific language. For a long time it was believed that Egyptian writing somehow directly recorded ideas (and hence gave rise to the very misleading term "ideograph") and some people still seem to believe this (cf. above re: conspiracy theorists, et al, &c). Some people believe this is also the case with the Chinese writing system. Unfortunately those people are wrong. What these scripts record is the language spoken by the people using it. In fact, you could (with a little trouble) devise a method of writing either of these languages in the script of the other. You could even use either of them to write English! Anyway, hopefully I've made some sort of point, since I'm tiring of this digression. Let me try to blunt it slightly; Writing is just a set of symbols and rules for their combination whose purpose is to represent, more or less accurately, a given language.

You may recall (I know I do) a point in your life when you couldn't read English. This is because while children pick up an actual language pretty much automatically upon exposure, they have to be taught to read and write. Ironically, this also has lead an awful lot of people I've talked with to believe that they in fact learned English in school as a result of instruction. While I don't feel like going into the very fascinating topic of the gestalt of vectors through which a child acquires their languages, I'll just say with some hand-waving that this ain't how it happened. English instruction in elementary school mainly imbued you with two skills: how to symbolically represent English in abstract graphical form, and how to distinguish the dialect generally called Standard English from the one you were misguidedly using up to that point. Lesson the first is usually most remembered for "spelling" and Lesson the second is usually euphemistically called "grammar", although I would characterize it more as a combination of ideological indoctrination and word selection. Now don't get me wrong, there are aspects of these lessons that every educated person ought to have a strong control of these, at least the parts that genuinely are skills. What that boils down to, skill-wise, is how and where to use what letter or punctuation. (e.g. 'then', 'effect', and 'who' vs. 'than', 'affect', and 'whom', respectively). And if my former students from the University of California (the top 10% of California's Youth) are any indication, most people's control of these skills is vague at best. But! This does not mean that they do not have a strong control of the language! Nor does it mean that they cannot speak eloquently or clearly. All it means is that they don't have the rote-memorized conventions of representing this in graphic symbols down. And this, my friends, is where ideology comes in.

Every culture has its particular ideological quirks regarding the languages used in that culture, although, many of these should more accurately be described as myths and social stigmas. As for the ideological indoctrination from school, that goes to at least part of the issue that leads us as impressionable youths to develop complex neuroses regarding our use and control of the English language. For only in English speaking culture do many adults believe that because they don't remember all those usage rules they were taught in grade school, they don't really speak the language. Or, at best, they do it wrong or badly or some crap like that. This is where we come to the social supremacy of the English's written variety, and my conclusion.

Now, the ideological prejudice paramount in English is a predisposition to extreme monolingualism. This may be starting to change, locally to California at least, in recent years, but for a long time, it was believed, overtly or not, that you couldn't be a real native English speaker unless English was the only language you spoke natively. This even went so far during the 70's that some parents were told it was actually damaging and confusing for children to be bilingual. That you should use just one language with them while they were grown up, or some other nonsense. (And it is nonsense. But that is a topic for another time.) This same sentiment carried over into discussion of English dialects too, in such a way that to a more or less extreme degree popular ideology is that there is one and only one right way to speak. What this is really saying is that there is one right dialect (Standard English, or Oxford English, or so on), and all others are degenerate forms of that one perfect one, or just plain antithetical to nature. The parallel with fundamentalist monotheism is probably not an entirely unwarranted comparison to make, but again, that's another discussion. The problem is that any language is a composite of many dialects, and to deny their existence is to deny reality. But, what about the writing thing? Well, Standard English as we know it in The States, is just one such dialect which happens to serve as the academic and formal dialect. Because writing is often done in a formal or academic setting, it should be no surprise that the writing system was designed to mainly represent accurately that particular dialect (although this is simplifying the real story a bit). It doesn't mean that there haven't been developments of convention for representing other dialects, it's just the outcome of historical developments was for that to be the default dialect for writing. This isn't unique to English either. It's just a fact of the necessity of having a widely recognized convention for the writing system that leads to the selection of a specific single dialect of the language in question. French uses the Parisian dialect, Japanese uses the Tokyo dialect, and Chinese uses the Mandarin dialect. There are ways to represent others, but they are all based off of the primary one. However, the problem in the English speaking culture that isn't problematic in these others is that we've stopped making the distinction between the written dialect and the spoken ones. Because we don't make a distinction between how we speak versus how we write, and describe the differences therein as one of right versus wrong instead of using dialect A versus dialect B, it should be no surprise that most people have a difficult time knowing how to feel about not speaking the way you write. The truth is that they are and should be seen as two different and separate things, and while a person should be able to have a strong control of when and how to use Standard English, in both written and verbal form, that should never be seen as somehow precluding the equally strong control of African American English Vernacular, or Surfer English, or Ozark English, or what have you. Any given normal person has the capacity to control an unlimited set dialects and languages, and people ought to take pride in this fact.

Brilliant words

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 20:41:59 GMT

I have been mulling over, lately, all the things I want to dissertate (or expostulate) on in regards to popular ideological myths held be the broader American culture in regards to language (which, in truth, doesn't often go much beyond the mythology surrounding English). It is often commented on in academic Linguistics circles that prejudice surrounding (or relating to) language is the last publicly acceptable form of racism. My hope is that this last statement will become abundantly clear (if it isn't already) after I lay out what I hope will be a series of gripping entries on the aforementioned subject.

As something of a prelude to what very well may challenge what many hold as incontrovertible popular opinion on English and language and grammar and all the rest, I recently found this marvelous quote attributed to one of my favorite modern intellectuals, that I think is wonderfully apropos:

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
- Albert Einstein

What is this crazy thing called ... love?

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 08:34:37 GMT

I'd like to take this moment to acknowledge the genius of the writing of some of the cartoons of our age. The specific creations that I deeply feel everyone should be acquainted with being Futurama (taken before its time), Family Guy (risen like Lazarus from the grave) and American Dad (the ugly duckling with a shakey start that has since come into it's own). Obviously the latter two share a lot of writing power in common, but they do in fact have fairly different formats when you get into it.

I was especially tickled with the most recent American Dad in which they dealt with sex ed in Junior High School curriculum and, I think, had one of the most ingenious rambles poking fun at the American inability to get over it's puritanical embarrassment with sexually related subjects. It is in this context that Stan (the eponymous 'dad') reveals that he feels his son is too young, at 14, to learn about "Nature's dirty little secret". I think this is my new favorite expression of the miracle of the "birds and the bees". It's matching ground at points now with Family Guy.

Futurama is of course the other most brilliant show that was so sadly overlooked in its time. And I, my dear friends, am as much to blame as anyone. It was only through the grace of Adult Swim that I have realized the horrible error of my ways. But now I know. This is a show that more than any other I know of has the sorts of dialog, routinely, that seems to be specifically written for the formal Linguists in the audience (or anyone whose had their share of Semantics and Pragmatics). For example: In a fit of pique over lack of acknowledgment from the news for a daring daytime robbery of a public pool, Bender hurls Frye's beer through the television. Frye then replies, indignantly, "Bender! Now what am I supposed to watch and drink all day?!". This is just one of many examples of winks to those of us who've learned more about math, comp-sci, physics, and linguistics than man was meant to know.

Also in the genius of Adult Swim programming: The Venture Bros..

Also, there have been the most amazing commercials airing lately! slowbob, you should take note: www.getgoatz.com apparently for all your X-treme platform jumping training needs, and www.whatisadat.org, an informative site about the very serious condition ADAT, also known as Third Dimensia. Who knew?

Switch it up

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 07:03:33 GMT

I grew up in a linguistically diverse environment. English was pretty much the only language spoken in my home, but I had the "fortune" of attending school in the LAUSD (that's the Los Angeles Unified School District) in Highland Park and Eagle Rock. Anyone who's shared in the environment of this school district or one of its neighboring districts with me will know what I mean by linguistic diversity. English was just one of easily a half dozen or more languages that I heard enough of every day at school to be able to recognize each of them by their sound. A few I recall off hand: Tagalog, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, Armenian, Thai and Vietnamese.

But the thing I thought was really cool was this trick you'd hear multilingual kids using with each. While speaking one language, some of another would get tossed in; sometimes tossing in just a few words, sometimes whole phrases, sometimes whole sentences. Most people didn't pay much attention to this sort of thing, and mostly when anyone did mention it (like teachers or the administration) it was just to give it a disparaging title like "Spanglish" or "Chinglish" or something-else-'glish. The really cool thing about it, as I saw it though, aside from sounding really cool, was that if you didn't know both the languages being used, you couldn't really follow the conversation.

In linguistics, this sort of phenomenon is call Code Switching, and is pretty common to any multilingual or multi-dialectal community. The thing to realize, which is what the disparagers of this practice clearly missed, was that this was not the conflating or confusing of multiple languages into a single "mongrel" language. The thing is, the natural human condition for the majority of its history, linguistically speaking, is a multilingual one. In fact, children have essentially no limit on the number of languages that they can learn just by being exposed to them, and once acquired they have no trouble distinguishing them from each other. Incidentally, the belief that a multilanguage environment will confuse a child and interfere with their ability to learn any one language well is a myth, based primarily on deeply flawed hypotheses developed in the 60's and 70's. Luckily these sorts of ideas are beginning to finally fade out, at least among the parents I know. So, the point of this ramble is just that kids don't mash their languages together, and things like so-called "Spanglish" or the like are not a degeneration of our "Precious", "Unadulterated" English. But then those of you who are polyglots already know this.

By way now of flagging myself as a complete nerd, I just wanted to briefly share my enjoyment of the dialogue in the series Firefly, from the pen of Joss Whedon. This is the only American show I know of that has made extensive use of Code Switching, in this case using English and (somewhat mangled) Mandarin. What in fact is really accurate about the way that it is used in the show (whether this was intentionally done for accuracy or just as a convenient way to avoid censorship) is how the switch-language is employed primarily within a specific semantic sphere (profanity, for instance). It in fact reminds me a great deal of how my English speaking friends and I would code-switch in while we were studying in Japan, between English and Japanese. When you get going at it, it actually comes quite naturally to just jump back and forth to whichever one comes to mind first. Plus it makes you sound cool.

I guess I want to just leave off where I plan to pick up again a bit later with the whole conceptual myth of the "fragility" of English or what have you, and the idea that it must be carefully tended to and protected by Guardians-Linguistic-Purity-or-Whatever, lest it be mongrelized and debased by monstrous children, teenagers and foreigners. Language is a lot more robust than it's given credit for, but likewise it is the natural state of a living language to change over time. There's a word for perfectly preserved, petrified languages. Dead.

What's the deal with this whole 'language' thing, anyway?

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 07:02:46 GMT

It ain't easy being a linguist. I'll just let you all know that right off. Mainly this stems from one very salient fact which is that language is about as central to human existence, and I mean day to day functioning on a profoundly basic level, as is ... oh I dunno ... breathing. Sure it's not central to your biological functions as breathing is, but just think for a moment about how deeply language pervades your reality. If you're not using it to speak or write or read, chances are you're still thinking, at least partly, in whatever language you're most comfortable using. Maybe even others. And I for one can't recall a time that even while asleep, in my dreams (when I recall them), I wasn't using language. It's everywhere in our lives. It's a defining characteristic of being human. It's the badge of membership in our cultural identities. There is no "normal" person that doesn't know at least one language with native ability.

On top of this, by nature, the human language ability is biologically (or neurologically, more properly) a black box system. It's one of those systems, like your respiratory/circulation system, that just works, without any need for conscious awareness of 'how' it's working needed on the part of the user. But, and I can't stress that enough, unlike breathing, people have spent centuries, millennia even, projecting their folk rationalizations and untested cultural ideologies and stigmas onto language and its nature (and especially its use). This, I think it's safe to say, is a direct result of centrality (described above) of language to how we interact with our fellow humans. Breathing, on the other hand, is much more a personal sort of thing.

So, then, what's so tough about being a linguist? Well, first off simply the fact that due to the nature of education (at least in places like the United States of America) people generally are entirely (and profoundly) ignorant of what linguistics is, let alone what linguists are. I'll save that description for another time, but suffice it to say that if you tell someone you're a physicist, even the most uninformed person has some idea that this implies you're a scientist and that you somehow do science that involves "physics" (whatever that is). But I've never heard from any of my physicist friends of this sort of statement being followed up by a lines like "How many laws of the universe can you recite?" or "You know, I've got a theory of the universe..." or "I better not violate any laws of nature while around you!" and so forth. Countless times, though, upon mentioning 'linguist' I've heard "How many languages do you speak" or "You know I've got a theory about language..." or "I better not make any grammar mistakes around you!" et cetera ad nauseum. Basically again it comes down to that while people know what physics is in a vague way, it's not something that is generally a conscious part of their day to day routine, unlike language.

So. Language. Well here's the thing, a theoretical linguist studies languages like a physicist studies nature. Scientific method, formal description, the whole shebang. The average person, though, has only this abstract idea of language, informed by their own musings, by their culturally instilled stereotypes and prejudices and stigmas about languages and its usage, and what they've heard others say about it all. Many people, even brilliant and/or extremely well educated people, that I've met haven't even ever thought of language as something that could be studied in that way. And this is what makes it so hard to be a linguist: people think about language on an emotional level, and have generally been indoctrinated in an ideology about language and language use by their culture for so long and on so deep a level (especially since virtually everyone else in their culture holds to these beliefs on some level) that they cannot bear to have those views contradicted. All they want is for this "linguist" (whatever that is) to be an authority who will confirm for them the "truth" of their personal beliefs about language and the validity of their gripes about the way other people use language. But the fact is that the majority of the popular traditional views held about language, dialects, its history, and its usage are mainly folklore, prejudice and pseudo-science.

Imagine how difficult it would be for my dear astrophysicist friend today to talk about his work when asked if the great majority of the populace held the view of the universe and reality of Galileo's contemporaries. Every conversation would end up being spent mainly on just overcoming misinformation and trying to convince them to be open to a different world-view, and who knows how they would ever be able to get around to any of the astrophysicists actual research. How quickly would you get frustrated if you were that physicist. While this is a bit exaggerated, the analogy is, I think, pretty accurate. The fact is that the view of language that you likely got in grade school, all that so called "text-book grammar" and the notion that there is one and only one right way to speak English (let alone write it) along with all those stigmas about colloquial speech or slang, is basically a Victorian world-view, and is more or less unchanged since the Victorian era.

That's what's tough about being a linguist; having every conversation about the subject to which you've dedicated years, be primarily concerned with having to figure out a gentle and diplomatic way to tell a person that everything they believe about language may be wrong. No one likes to be told they're wrong.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum...

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 19:47:22 GMT

I have been recently marveling at how just how many people there are in the world, let alone in my immediate vicinity (give or take 100 miles). More specifically, what fascinates me about this is how many countless organized groups dedicated to very esoteric interests and even entire careers that people spend their lives on that I have been, or continue to be, completely unaware of.

I think the first time I realized this was when, at about age 11, I was in Canada somewhere near or in Quebec, and attended my first "tractor pull". I don't recall the exact details, since this was some time ago, but I went with a curator (or maybe the curator) of the Natural History department of the National Museum of Canada (where my father was working at the time) whose son I was friends with. I guess they were really into it or something, but it was totally new to me. Even the entire idea that such a thing existed was pretty surprising at the time to me, let alone that there were all these hundreds (or maybe thousands) of people there that were also obviously really into it too. Into it enough that the participants had gone and built these crazy-ass monster tractors for the purpose of towing some odd sort of continuously-increasing-resistance-sledge-o-rocks contraption. Well, no you know about it too. Looking back on it, I'm surprised that at that age my musing on it was not just "wow I had no idea that something like this [community] existed", but rather "wow! there are things things like this and entire groups of enthusiasts out there that I had no idea existed".

Sometimes these revelations of the existence of communities bring forth wonderment on my part, like the first time I came across an issue of The Conspiracy Journal or Ancient America which are in effect magazines (although this may be too flattering to the former publication) dedicated to epistemologies that are so highly developed and divergent from what I would consider the "real" world as to be completely beyond the point of even the common ground necessary to discuss the subject objectively with their adherents. All one ( or at least I ) can do is marvel at the brilliant wackiness of the whole thing. Especially the entire set of implications that a magazine dedicated to this world-view exists. And is sold on news stands!

So, did I mention that I'm a member of a pirate crew? Yep. I've been a member of the Rum Runners, or more properly Cap'n Jack's Rum Runners, for over four years. In fact I just got back from our encampment, which predictably, involved a lot of imbibing of rum and other spirits. Sure I suppose it may make it less odd to explain that this encampment was within the context of a whole "Pirate-Faire" sort of thing, but then we are a crew that does stuff outside of that, and we're really outsiders to (if not outright outcasts of) the rest of the "faire" community. Yahrr? Ahrr. So, what sorts of interests or activities do you partake in that nobody would really guess to see you out in public at a restaurant or coffee house or walking down the street?

Incessus Magnus Ex Obscuritas

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 00:00:55 GMT

Here is the first line.

That done, here is my explanation: I have, it seems, finally caved into years of peer pressure, or alternately I've finally decided my voice could no longer remain [digitally] silent. Or something.

In any case, joining with legions of social and ideological allies, I hereby let myself forth onto the digital print media world of words printed digitally in the here apparent format! What do I intend to do now? Well, I want to talk about stuff. Not necessary the stuff that happens to me, in the literal sense, but about the stuff that I find relevant to my current existential angst state. Judging from past experience, that will probably be subject matter that relates to Language, Reason and Philosophy. These are things with which I could describe myself as being obsessed. I suppose, though, in that vein I might be more specific by way of specifying: Language and Linguistics, Physics, Science, Skepticism, Ethics, Morality, Government and Society, Religion and Thought. I do so love me some Thought.

But if I may be less dramatic or something for a moment, in reality this is not so much intended to be some kind of high-minded mission statement as reminding myself there's a lot I want to blather on at length about. And generally I don't want to openly impose upon my generously tolerant friends by taking up their "real" time with this stuff. So, I change contexts in which I can ramble/rant/blather/drool/etc and then receive simple commentary. Hoorah.