> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> What we need to understand may only be expressible
>
> in a language that we do not know
[snip]
I am rather more optimistic on the potential of
language, although if you mean by "a language that
we do not know", the results of childrearing and
schooling in terms of individuals' language
skills, then I would agree.
One of the genuine advances of the personal computer
is that it removes a great disincentive to
getting one's words exactly right: the drudgery
of recopying words one does not intend to change.
Uniform printed editions removed the disincentive
to correcting text that, under manuscript conditions,
"correcting" a manuscript by writing a new one
would likely introduce new errors in the copying process.
Word processing software eliminates the tedium of
recopying everything to change anything in one's text.
--
If persons were educated to the expressive possibilities
of the English language, instead of dulling
their minds on Dickens, perhaps the postmodern
conceit that communication is impossible
would appeal less to the PhD products of
our Prestige Universities who don't really have
any idea of what it would be like to have
something to say (or even to think).
After graduating from Yale in the same class
(although, obviously not in the same "class"!!!)
as George W Bush, it was several years
later when, in reading Hermann Broch's
_The Sleepwalkers_ (not to be confused with
Arthur Kroestler's book by the same title!!!),
that I saw why words might deserve to exist,
and I found my own voice. "Oh.... *This* is
what language can be about and what it can do...."
So my expectation that language's gross under
market valuation will rise any time soon
is not much. Invest your semiotic capital
in the postmodernist linguistic bubble.
Get a big enough semiotic credit line
(AKA PhD w/tenure) that you too can
explain to fawning graduate students how
communication is impossible (even while
you blithely deploy the denotation of
your American Express card to pay for
("if there is such a thing as paying for...")
dinner at a 5-star restaurant ("if there
is such a thing as dinner...").
What a person cannot say, they
can, at best, see through a glass darkly --
although they can even see vaguely
only because they can at least put *that*
into words.
So vast is the extent of the Logos, that no matter
how far you search, you will not find its limit
anywhere. (Heraclitus)
The herd of mankind is two-headed, thinking what is
is-not, and what is-not is, together.
(Parmenides)
If you want to read something that trumps Richard
Nixon's "I am not a crook", read "Deconstruction in a
Nutshell", where you will find Jacques Derrida
explaining that he honors
the Immortals of the Western Canon whom
he Honors like every other Normal University
Professor who defends with his life the
academic establishment,
so he finds it difficult to understand why
people think he says things like that meaning
is impossible. It's a shame George W Bush is
a Republican, since Derrida could be his speech
writer -- a post Derrida would probably enjoy
as much as Robert Bork would have enjoyed the
intellectual feast of being on the Supreme Court.
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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