The effects of words

I know I haven't kept up with this blog but I was thinking about the effect words have on listeners and so I thought I would share this short story. At work today I didn't feel like I had done anything extraordinary for a library patron but I was still pleased to hear " Thanks, you have been delightful". I am still thinking about how much it meant for me to hear this patrons gratitude for the ordinary customer service I provided. I thought now how is language the most dangerous of possessions in this instance and then I though that it was the effect that the words I heard today had on me and could have on others as well. I know this isn't very deep or maybe even enlightening to hear but it was just a thought I had about language.

"In the Land of Invented Languages," "Blissymbolics," and the new Radiolab episode, "Bliss"

The first story in a recent episode of Radiolab ("Bliss": http://www.radiolab.org/2012/dec/17/) follows a character named Charles Bliss, who is one of many subjects in this book...:

In the Land of Invented Languages: Adventures in Linguistic Creativity, Madness, and Genius (by Arika Okrent)

(Previously titled: In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried To Build A Perfect Language)

...Charles Bliss turns out to be an incredibly interesting character who, after having experienced the Nazi propaganda machine and the concentration camps, decided to create a universal language that he thought would cure the world of all its social ills. He published his ideas and a guide to learning his universal language in this book:

Semantography (Blissymbolics): A Logical Writing for an Illogical World

"Bliss believed that war was often caused by the misuse of language, and he believed it could be overcome if we could create a way to communicate the truth without the trickery of words. Having lived through the hell of Nazi concentration camps, he set about creating the perfect language, based on symbols and logic." (Quote taken from the Radiolab website.) 

It is an extremely fascinating story that takes a bit of a sad and ironic turn. I highly recommend listening to it! http://www.radiolab.org/2012/dec/17/

I'm just about to order and read the Arika Okrent book...the Charles Bliss book is now a rare out-of-print book -- maybe I'll find a copy of it one day. Anyway, check it out!

Organic Chemistry Notes

Here are the Organic Chemistry notes that I made:

Chapter 7 Quiz

Chapter 8

The Evolution Of Symbolic Language. 

Reading from Eva Hoffman’s excellent book “Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language”, I came across this passage and had to share it:

"When my friend Penny tells me that she’s envious, or happy, or disappointed, I try laboriously to translate not from English to Polish but from the word back to its source, to the feeling from which it springs. Already, in that moment of strain, spontaneity of response is lost. And anyway, the translation doesn’t work. I don’t know how Penny feels when she talks about envy. The word hangs in a Platonic stratosphere, a vague prototype of all envy, so large, so all-encompassing that it might crush me - as might disappointment or happiness.

I am becoming a living avatar of structuralist wisdom; I cannot help knowing that words are just themselves. But it’s a terrible knowledge, without any of the consolations that wisdom usually brings. It does not mean that I’m free to play with words at my wont; anyway, words in their naked state are surely among the least satisfactory play objects. No, this radical disjoining between word and thing is a desiccating alchemy, draining the world not only of significance but of its colors, striations, nuances - its very existence. It is the loss of a living connection.

The worst losses come at night. As I lie down in a strange bed in a strange house - my mother is a sort of housekeeper here, to the aging Jewish man who has taken us in in return for her services - I wait for that spontaneous flow of inner language which used to be my nighttime talk with myself, my way of informing the ego where the id had been. Nothing comes. Polish, in a short time, has atrophied, shriveled from sheer uselessness. Its words don’t apply to my new experiences; they’re not coeval with any of the objects, or faces, or the very air I breathe in the daytime. In English, words have not penetrated to those layers of my psyche from which a private conversation could proceed. This interval before sleep used to be the time when my mind became both receptive and alert, when images and words rose up to consciousness, reiterating what had happened during the day, adding the day’s experiences to those already stored there, spinning out the thread of my personal story.

Now, this picture-and-word show is gone; the thread has been snapped. I have no interior language, and without it, interior images - those images through which we assimilate the external world, through which we take it in, love it, make it our own - become blurred too. My mother and I met a Canadian family who live down the block today. They were working in their garden and engaged us in a conversation of the the “Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?” variety, which culminated in their inviting us into their house. They sat stiffly on their couch, smiled in the long pauses between the conversation, and seemed at a loss for what to ask. Now my mind gropes for some description of them, but nothing fits. They’re a different species from anyone I’ve met in Poland, and Polish words slip off of them without sticking. English words don’t hook on to anything. I try, deliberately, to come up with a few. Are these people pleasant or dull? Kindly or silly? The words float in an uncertain space. They come up from a part of my brain in which labels may be manufactured but which has no connection to my instincts, quick reactions, knowledge. Even the simplest adjectives sow confusion in my mind; English kindliness has a whole system of morality behind it, a system that makes “kindness” an entirely positive virtue. Polish kindness has the tiniest element of irony. Besides, I’m beginning to feel the tug of prohibition, in English, against uncharitable words. In Polish, you can call someone an idiot without particularly harsh feelings and with the zest of a strong judgment. Yes, in Polish these people might tend toward “silly” and “dull” - but I force myself toward “kindly” and “pleasant.” The cultural unconscious is beginning to exercise its subliminal influence.

The verbal blur covers these people’s faces, their gestures with a sort of fog. I can’t translate them into my mind’s eye. The small event, instead of being added to the mosaic of consciousness and memory, falls through some black hole, and I fall with it. What has happened to me in this new world? I don’t know. I don’t see what I’ve seen, don’t comprehend what’s in front of me. I’m not filled with language anymore, and I have only a memory of fullness to anguish me with the knowledge that, in this dark and empty state, I don’t really exist."

I was just me in my car cuzin

With the tunes turned up

And that shit of being was better than

Drugs

All the fucking drugs in the whole world

Oh hell yes I was filled with the Holy Ghost

Where did swearing get its taboo status?

Me and my brother were having a debate about swearing, but we both got to the point where aside from it being a social stigma, and a taboo word, we didn't know why (or where) it got its status. Did a group of people get together and outlaw words? Where did these roots of obscenity get their place. I honestly don't know and it sounds like a worthy challenge for the blog. I also had the thought of where did other languages get the taboo words? Each society has a list where did they come from?

Body Language - Lapham’s Quarterly

Just read this great article from the new issue of Lapham's Quarterly called "Means of Communication."

It is a great magazine, and a particularly great issue. Check it out!

Body Language - Lapham’s Quarterly

God, the Afterlife, and the Scientific Method

I would like to know whether the traditional religious convictions which hold that “God exists!” and that “there is an afterlife!” are created using the scientific method to interpret subjective data.  As I understand the situation of knowledge in relationship to the scientific method, the certainty generated by using the scientific method to reliably predict future events is only reliably possible when using objective data.  If that is so, religious convictions which hold that “God exists!” and that “there is an afterlife!” must embrace a greater degree of faith because they seem to be based on using the scientific method with subjective data.  But, as a starting point for this journey, is it necessary that the scientific method only be used with objective data for the purpose of reliably predicting future events? Who’s perspective on this matter is trustable and why?  Moreover, which method do religious people consciously think they are using to produce convictions that “God exists!” and “there is an afterlife!”?  Is there any credible way to see such convictions based on a method other than the scientific method?  And again, who’s perspective on this matter is trustable and why?

Lexicon Valley

So, I was listening to NPR's show "On the Media" and this segment came up unexpectedly...it was great!

• 

Back by popular demand, here's another installment of Mike Vuolo's "Lexicon Valley." In February 2010, the last living speaker of Boa died, and with her, the logic, culture, and history of the ancient people. Mike and Bob discuss the death of languages and why their passing matters. http://www.onthemedia.org/2011/jul/29/lexicon-valley-episode-2/

Our 'Love Affair' With Euphemisms - All Things Considered

Our 'Love Affair' With Euphemisms

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All Things Considered

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February 7, 2011

In Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms, author Ralph Keyes explores the power of words and our power over them. Keyes tells host Robert Siegel he's always been interested in the intersection of language and culture, and how the way people talk reflects changes in society. Nothing, he says, does that more than euphemisms.

Related NPR Stories

'Pushing Up Daisies' And Our Passion For Euphemisms Dec. 14, 2010

Science Friday: Jonathon Keats and "Virtual Words"

via sciencefriday.com

"Do you ever 'tweet?' Does your texting vocabulary include the ultra-brief, but oh-so-useful, 'k?' In this segment, we'll talk with Jonathon Keats, author of the book 'Virtual Words.' Keats, a conceptual artist, also pens Wired's 'Jargon Watch' column. We'll talk about how the rapid pace of technology is creating new words and how new ideas drive new language."

Guests:
Jonathon Keats
Author, Wired magazine's "Jargon Watch"
Virtual Words (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Conceptual Artist
San Francisco, California

download mp3: http://public.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/totn/2010/12/20101224_totn_01.mp3

On Language and Living

A scene from Godard's "Vivre Sa Vie."

NY Times: John Cage's Piece 4' 33"

December 14, 2010, 12:06 PM

Just in Time for the Holidays: Cage Against the Machine

By BEN SISARIO

The musicians crowded into a London studio, dozens of them, to record a song for charity. Waiting for their cue, they held guitars and drumsticks, and stood at attention by the microphones. Then the producer gave the count: “Quiet in the studio: one, two …”

And then silence. Exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds of it.

The musicians, including British pop stars like Billy Bragg, the electronic act Orbital and the band Enter Shikari, were there to perform John Cage’s famous tribute to nothingness, “4’ 33”,” as part of a project cheekily called Cage Against the Machine whose goal is to send an unlikely song to the top of the British pop chart at Christmas.

Last year a Facebook campaign helped the anarchist American rock band Rage Against the Machine reach No. 1 with “Killing in the Name,” and now another Web effort is behind Cage Against the Machine. A single is available on iTunes (you can even buy an EP with seven “remixes” of studio chatter and other random sounds), with proceeds going to five British charities.

“Music is made up of more than just formal notes and arrangements,” Julie Hilliard, one of the organizers, told the musicians as they prepared for their silent take. “Here today we are doing something special. We are stopping and appreciating the space between things, the unintentional sounds that make up our world.”

A video of the recording sessions can be seen above or here on YouTube.

Poetry and Philosophy at the Crossroads

http://www.nhinet.org/ricci20-1.pdf

Perfect Language

I just remembered there was a quote I read that reminded me of our class. I don't remember who said the quote or exactly how it went, I think it was Peter Benchly - author of Jaws. Anyway whoever it was, they were talking about language and they said something to the effect of the following:

I have terrific understanding of language and its power and so I say nothing...

Alex's Dream

This is something that I made a while ago. It's an interpretation of what he said about his dream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK2Ms_U3PqY

Discovering one's own language: another throught

From "The Clouds Should Know Me by Now" (the Buddhist poet monks of China from the past 700 years)

...Maybe we're in a position now to see that this is what's so compelling in 1500 years of Ch'an poetry. The best poems push no doctrine or dogma, there's no jingo, no proselytizing. The Buddhism is carefully hidden away in tight five- and seven-syllable lines. (This metric pattern, according to Yunte Huang, "is intimately related to the translations from the Sanskrit Buddhist texts. It was the encounter with an alphabetical language--Sanskrit--that made the Chines realize for the first time that a Chinese character was pronounced by a combination of vowel and consonant.")

This came back to me from having recently read it, after Alex told of finding Sicilian to be a written language--his own language, complete.

Ch'i chi (864-937 C.E.)

Don't dye it, don't pull it out,

let it grow all over your head.

No medicine can stop the whiteness,

the blackness won't last out the fall.

Lay your head on a quiet pillow, hear the cicadas,

idly incline it to watch the waters flow--

The reason we can't rise to this broader view of life

is because, white hair, you grieve us so!

So much of the poetry takes me to a deeper tranquil and very awake place. But this one shows the abiding sense of humor that surfaces in many of the poets' work. Wanted to share.

Def Poetry Jam - Alicia Keys - POW

I have been a fan of Def Jam poetry for awhile. I can't help but think of what Alex did on Wednesday and it ties into what Alicia Keys says in this session of Def Jam Poetry. Here is Alex, trying to go above and beyond language just as our earlier readings have suggested. Here is Alicia, speaking of the prisoner she is to words as well. But as Alex, at least, makes the effort to rise above the convention and restrictions we are flooded with, Alicia speaks of a character that finds defeat through the standard and norms of society. This character does not want to offend, does not want to turn anyone away, but in doing so she builds the bars that make her a prisoner. Alex, though some of us may not understand how it all works, does not build any bars or forge any chains. Alex is a guerrilla in the revolution...

Productive Questions/Assignments

Part 1: Essay

Due by noon on December 13

Write about at least 3 specific works by Alex Caldiero (at least one each from the performance, the film, and the book) in the context of at least 3 specific works we read and discussed in the sections called "the shape of the shapeless: undermining the limits of language" and “the first casualty of war is language” – at least one work from each section.  About 6-7 pages.

Draw on notes you have taken during discussions of the texts in class, read the authors’ works closely and carefully, and think rigorously and creatively about the questions you are answering. Don’t write personally about the questions. Don’t simply associate other things with what you read. Instead, use passages from the texts to establish patterns of ideas. What is the author saying in these passages and how do they relate to passages from other texts and authors? That’s your most basic task, to lay out what the text means. Do not stop with paraphrase. If you do, you’re just repeating. Your job is to analyze what you find/what you read, to make sense of the ideas, to find patterns in the texts that you can show to have meaning related to the meanings of other texts.

Part 2: Prepare your Notes and Scraps for evaluation.

On the same day, December 13, hand in your notes/scraps. Include:

1.  All the notes you have taken in the second half of the class, notes you have made about (on) each of the texts we have read and discussed, notes you have written to others about this material, all other notes taken or written or drawn for or about this class.

2. All the scraps you have collected, references to the various topics, complementary materials, essays, articles, etchings, clippings and so on related to language in general and specifically, in short: the rich collection of materials you have made in response to our readings and discussions. If you have posted to the Languagescraps blog, note what you have posted.