Greg Woodhouse wrote:
> I'm intrigued by the linguistic metaphor (or more than
> a metaphor?) that John Gage and Andrew Ho seem to be
> suggesting. It occurs to me that medical terminology
> (and I'm speaking as a non-physician here) is a
> language of sorts, complete with syntax, semantics
> (and pragmatics?)
>
It is the language one speaks and writes in. The question
is should it become something else, i.e. an artifical
construct composed of basic elements, constrained to quite
specific meanings and constructions. Your musical analogy
provides me with another opportunity to expound on this
theme. It's quite possible that we could create a medical
language that's like 12 tone serialism, very harsh on it's
audience and practictioners.
......
>
> It is not unlike music where we "hear"
> tones, beats, chords, measures, phrases, cadences,
> resolutions of chords, themes, voices in counterpoint,
> etc. Without musical knowledge, meaning the ability
> "perceive" all this complexity, music would be a vast
> jumble of noise to us.
>
I have to disagree here. Music was far more than noise from
the very beginning, before we had any cognitive structures
and analysis. Just because you know an alphabet of music
and a grammar for construction doesn't mean you can write
music than can be perceived as music. It was the advent of
the 12 tone serialists that really proved this point, and
for most of those constructions, you really do need to
understand the components to 'hear' the music, so to speak.
The modern day turn towards sacred music and minimalism is a
turning back to the fundamentals of music, dance (movement
through space) and spoken language.
