I may have mentioned this before but I think it's an important point, so you'll have to bear with me.
Regular readers (all five of you), may have noticed a new section to my blog. Namely the 'Word of the Week', I'm doing this largely to highlight cool words that I find and to expand my own vocabulary. Why should I want to do such a thing? Well.... The English language, or any language for that matter, is a seriously flawed tool. We have words that sound the same but mean different things, or different words that mean the same thing... Frankly it's amasing that we can have any sort of meaningful communication.
However, until someone comes up with a technological means to share our thoughts directly; we're stuck using language with all it's little foibles and pit-falls. If you've ever tried to have a philosophical, religious or political argument with someone, then you've probably ended up arguing about the meaning of certain terms (like 'reality', 'god' or 'communism') instead of dealing with the issues themselves. A lot of this cannot be avoided: basic words get co-opted as jargon by various disciplines, often meaning vastly different things depending on the context or who you're talking to.
Some of these troubles can be avoided if all participants in a discussion have a good grasp of the language they're using. If we have a large vocabulary to chose from, we can select the words that best encapsulate the subtle meanings and emphasis of the idea we're trying to convey.
So if you've found, heard or used a cool word recently, drop me a mail or post a comment and I'll share it here.
In The News:
A Robot In Every Korean Kindergarden By 2013 - I think that with the state of education in South Africa and the quality of teaching in rural schools, a slightly more advanced version of these things would be a massive boon to this country.
Real Time Holograms Beam Closer - So cool.... "Help me Obi-Wan Kinobi, you're my only hope".
50th Anniversary of SETI Commemorated With New Observing Project - the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence has been running for 50 years... wow.
Implanted Retinal Chip Allows Blind People To See - a new wave of cyborgs are about to hit the street... cool.
Precognition study at Cornell University - and it's coming up positive...
Word of the Week:
Specificity (noun):
The quality of being specific rather than general
E.g.: add a desirable note of specificity to the discussion
E.g.: the specificity of the symptoms of the disease
I hope you enjoyed this weeks post, as always if you liked it: post a comment and tell your friends. See you next week.
-Odd
"It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water"
-Franklin P. Jones
few comments...
ReplyDeleteI think communication without language would be boring. Language is expressive and creative. The fact that you are able to make words mean what you want them to mean just adds to it's beauty.
And I know that you, of all people, would agree to that.
I suppose it would make certain forms of communication better (the languageless* communication). A good example would be debates where two people are arguing over some topic or the other, but at the same time I think if the definition of a word is getting in the way of a good debate (yes a good debate. I love good debates. I will argue on the sides I don't agree with just for a good debate, okay, and also to expand my mind into different points of view) I would assume that the people involved with the debate probably don't know what they are really arguing about. I picture a drunk theology student debating with a stoned philosophy student over the existence of JR "Bob" Dobbs. Maybe my example is a rather exaggerated hyperbole (I am providing you with examples of bad language, as a hyperbole already implies exaggeration) but I think you know what I am trying to say.
and, here is a video I found on the interwebs yesterday, watch it. I will watch it again.
[http://vimeo.com/15412319]
*and another wonderful example, languageless is not a "real word", but who cares, you know what I mean by it. I love making words up. My favorite word I have made up is decladment, which I define as the process of getting undressed.
Languageless is a perfectly acceptable word, anyone reading it can immediately grasp it's meaning. Creating new words is what makes English great, it's a constantly evolving language, which is why the majority of the world uses it (unlike French which they try to keep as static as possible).
ReplyDeleteLanguage as art is indispensable from the human condition... and i'm not saying we must discard it... just augment it with a more specific mode of communication.
Any debate about non-physical phenomena (physical phenomena being translatable into mathematics) would be greatly enhanced by an exchange of ideas rather than words.
Thanks for the comment, your feedback makes this blog a joy to write... and I must find a way to work 'decaldment' into casual conversation sometime this week... awesome word :)
wow... that video is Awesome!! Sugoi!
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing me to it.
Maybe all debates/arguments should be done in Latin, or anything where words have solid, immutable meaning.
ReplyDeleteOr we learn newspeak and doublethink.
newspeak was designed to fudge the meanings... we're looking for something more specific... and Latin wouldn't work for two reasons.
ReplyDelete1) it's a dead language... so no one can use it to the degree necessary
2) it's still a language, so has all the pitfalls of the all the others.
We need something new... a completely new method of communication... just don't look at me to invent it.
I understand what you are saying.
ReplyDeleteThe newspeak was a joke, if we had political debates in newspeak then we know we have problems.
I really don't think you can use anything besides language. Even if you made up a language for the purpose of having debates, it would be a language.
And people could not argue on the existence of [G|g]od using numbers... although next time I see you I think we should try.
sounds like fun ^^ it's a plan.
ReplyDelete