I think last week's
entry was probably my most successful thus far, at least in terms of
the amount of feedback I received. This was awesome, because I like
thinking about and discussing these things and I've had quite a few
of those conversations over the past week or so. However the flip
side was that I was made to feel rather silly. Almost everyone I
spoke to pointed out a flaw in my reasoning or a very obvious
reference that I'd missed. For instance, I hadn't noticed how
relevant 1984 was until it was pointed out to me (luckily just in
time) and I only recently got pointed in the direction of
Whorfianism,
which I'd somehow skipped over entirely. It's a little humiliating,
realising how little I know about a subject I've been specifically
writing about, but actually, I'm choosing to see this as a positive
thing. I think there are many of forms of ignorance that only really
go away when you put yourself out there such that people can see how
little you know and, for me, this was definitely one of those times.
I am now just a little better informed.
In this entry I'm going
to build on what I talked about last week to look at how the
development of language may be effecting that of society.
Interestingly, even last week before I knew about it, I was moving
away from Whorfianism (simplifying a little, it says that thoughts
and ideas are almost synonymous) and towards a more organisational
way of understanding words. That a new word is like a filing cabinet
for your head, suddenly you have a new place to put all of the things
which fit into some category, say, dogs. This means that not only
can you more easily talk about dogs, but you can also relate them to
other things in your head with a lot less difficulty. You are saying
'dogs are like wolves' rather than 'these 5 small animals with four
legs, which I remember are all quite similar, are like wolves'.
Words don't allow thought but they do effect it, allowing it to be
much more agile and precise.
In the newspeak of
1984, Orwell suggest that this could be used to limit thought. That
by removing certain words you could prevent people from rebelling or
even discussing rebellion. Not only is that a singularly negative
way of looking at this idea, but I also think it's a little flawed.
New words have always come into existence throughout human history so
even a limited vocabulary wont stay that way for long*. The process
through which this creation of words happens is what I'm going to be
mulling over in this week's entry.
An interesting example
is the fluidity of language during Shakespeare's time. At this time
the printing press was only just starting to have an effect, with
more people reading than ever before. This meant that most words had
no definite spelling, the first dictionary didn't arrive until 1755
and even the Shakespeare himself had no single way of spelling his
name (he himself used several different versions).
Of course spelling isn't everything, but what I'm getting at is that
there was a tremendous uncertainty in the language and this was a
period when many aspects of it underwent tectonic shifts. There was
huge scope for new words to come into being. In fact, if we return
to Shakespeare, he is often credited with adding over 1700
words to the English language. If we accept that new words, even
just a little, alter the way that we arrange things in our head, then
it's exciting to think just how big of an effect 1700 new ones might
have, just how many new ideas might be suddenly within reach.
Obviously this is a
hand wavy theory, there would be no way to prove this. Even if we
could easily map the development of language over time, it would be
next to impossible to show that it was having any effect. However,
if I can persuade you to put down your scientist hats for a minute
and just enjoy the idea, it's easy to see how it might do, to get a
feel for how big an influence this might have had on the development
of human society. There's the old idea of steam
engine time, that many inventions simply seemed to have a time,
coming into existence at the same time on opposite sides of the
world. Perhaps in some small way this, and even larger social
changes, are brought about by language.**
The reason I brought up
the fluidity of language in Shakespeare's time is because I believe
that we are currently in a similar situation. The advent of a huge
number of new forms of communication means that we are speaking to
each other in an ever increasing number of different ways. Mostly
this is through the likes of Facebook, text messages, Twitter, all of
which heavily favour brevity. This has led to the modern
abbreviations like lol, rofl and wtf ('laugh out loud', 'rolling on
the floor laughing' and 'what the fuck?'). These new words allow new
ways of speaking, for instance it wouldn't previously have been
normal to finish a sentence by stating that you are laughing out
loud, even in a purely text format like a letter. Equally these
words are still in flux, for example, while there is a clear
interpretation of what 'lol' means, there is no consensus on
different forms of that word (every source I checked for the title of
this post suggested a different form for the past tense). There are
also a whole series of emotional additives, in the form of ascii
faces such as :), :P and :O (smiley face, cheeky face and shocked
face respectively). Though not really words, these are hugely useful
and ubiquitous to the point that I genuinely find them useful in
determining the intent of a statement (“You are an awful person.”
and “You are an awful person :P” read completely differently to
me). My point is that I think now, more than at any other time in
the past two hundred years, we are on the verge of a huge expansion
of the dictionary, of our every day vocabulary.
Of course a lot of
these words are quite utilitarian, simply condensing emotions or
feelings which were found to be needed. There is a whole other set
of words which I would expect to see emerge soon, dealing with how we
relate to all of this new technology, with the new concepts and
situations which it brings up in our lives.***
When I started this
entry, my imagined conclusion was that I would show how potent the
current state of language is and then evangelise carefully adding
words to lead society in a better direction. I have a tendency to
err on the side of optimism and, in retrospect, I think in this case
I was doing so to an extreme degree.
The trouble is that
words and their meaning (particularly very potent ones) are almost
always taken from the control of their original creator long before
their meaning has fully taken shape. This makes it entirely
impractical to alter the course of human history by intentionally
creating words (no matter how attractive that concept might be to a
romantic such as myself). Of course that doesn't stop people trying,
the best example is in the political sphere, where phrases like 'job
creators', 'pro-life' and 'broken Britain' are constantly being
coined in an effort to rewire how we see the issues (I don't know if
it works, but there sure are a lot of people trying). There's also
the whole issue that, assuming we could create popular and carefully
crafted words, what would we alter. Even something which seems
innocuous, say, a word which makes you see everyone you meet as
friendlier and more human, could have all sorts of unplanned knock on
effects (devaluing friendships perhaps).
Sadly then, I am
backing away entirely from my enthusiasm about social engineering
through words. However, I still think that it is incredibly exciting
that we live in such a time of change, there is so much potential for
society to change in our lifetimes. Additionally, I rather like the
idea that there's an opening for a Bard of the 21st
century, perhaps our circumstances are crying out for a new
Shakespeare, I'd rather like to see what a totally modern Hamlet
equivalent might be like.
*[Of course an
omnipresent and brutal dystopian police force can put a stop to that
process in Orwell's world]
**[I'm taking the idea
quite far here, but I like to do that with unprovable but interesting
ideas. I just find that, although you're proving nothing, it can be
fun to let your mind live in that world for a while and see where you
end up]
***[My favourite
example of this is 'Eternal September' (the original meaning of which
can be seen here),
which is used to refer to the ever present nostalgia that users of
any internet community feel for the time when they first joined,
before all the subsequent people arrived and lowered the quality (a
sense which, for anyone who spends a lot of time online, can be hard
to shake)]
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