Tongue twister

Hi folks, just a short post today. I've started reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves, that book published a few years ago that caused a whole bunch of stir, mainly by drawing out reclusive sticklers such as myself from our grammatical-fanatical (and solitary) caves and into public society, obsessions and all. In the first chapter, Truss, the author, distinguishes the descriptive from the prescriptive (sometimes also called the "normative") stance with respect to language. A descriptive account of language seeks merely to catalogue how the language is actually used, whereas a prescriptive account makes a claim about how the language ought to be used.

Before delving into the main issue I'd like to treat here, namely the relationship between linguistic evolution and prescriptive accounts of usage, I'd like to briefly discuss the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive accounts. It seems at first glance like the distinction is a nice clean one, but further scrutiny makes the case far less clear. In assembling a descriptive account, one cannot simply dump every single usage in a pile and say, "See, that's how we use it." Every single usage, each and every data point of linguistic behaviour, is simply not available to us. What this situation forces us to do is select data that we consider to be typical or normal, and simple description there is tinged with the normative: one selects one's data points because "they are the normal ones" to which others are supposed to live up (or up to which the others are supposed to live, if one really wants to be stickly about it). The data points one doesn't select are abnormal, there's something particular about them that makes them bad choices, and the evaluation process that leads to these decisions is not a purely descriptive one. Anyway, all that's to say that descriptive accounts are not so easily distinguished from prescriptive accounts as it may seem.

On to the meat. One major criticism of prescriptive accounts of language is that they prohibit or impede the evolution of language. Whether we want language to evolve or not is another matter, and probably not even an important one because we're powerless to stop it anyway, but the question of how prescriptive accounts can leave room for linguistic evolution is, I think, an interesting one. But is the criticism appropriate, do prescriptive accounts actually impede evolution. I actually think not. Conceived one way, a prescriptive account stipulates how one must use the tools of language, point final, and such a conception of prescriptive accounts might well impede evolution of languages. However, a more nuanced understanding of such accounts might disengage the problem: I propose that we instead conceive of prescriptive accounts as offering us a set of rules not about how apostrophes (for example) must be used, but how an apostrophe, used according to such and such a rule, conveys such and such a meaning. (Some questions may arise as to whether this account is still prescriptive, or whether it has lapsed into description. My response is to just repeat that the whole distinction is messy and simply not respond to such questions at all.)

The prescriptive account gives us a set of rules about how punctuation, used "correctly," conveys sense in a particular way. However, one can intentionally deviate from the "correct" into the "incorrect," and thereby explore new ways of expressing meaning. The new usages deviate intentionally and meaningfully from the standard and appropriate usage: it is always with reference to the accepted standard that a new usage can open up a new space to articulate meaning in a novel way, or so I'm claiming here. There is no incorrect usage without reference to a standard of correctness; there is no novelty without reference to established practice.

So what does this account, if one finds it at all attractive, mean? There certainly are practical implications. It means that we do not need to abandon prescriptive accounts; instead, I'm calling for us to re-orient the way that we think about such accounts, and then to adopt them whole-heartedly. Never will I believe that correcting a child's grammar would stifle their linguistic creativity: it is only with an established familiarity with the "old" rules that anyone could go on to innovate something interestingly new.

Herein also lies the kernel of my disdain for hipsters: my understanding of hipsters is that each one is trying to innovate her or his own counter-culture. As soon as something is established, it is uncool, passé, and discarded. What seems to be missing here is twofold. The first missing element is that a new culture must evolve out of an existing culture if it is to be at all meaningful. And I don't mean that it won't be important unless it evolves out of another culture: what I'm saying is that in order for it to understandable, for it to even contain any meaning as opposed to being merely a system of empty symbols, it must evolve out of an existing culture. So the complete abandonment of any and every cultural reference point as soon as it becomes established is a quick way to make a (counter-)culture completely meaningless.

The second missing element is dialogue amongst those who are establishing the counter-culture itself. If we each have our own culture, then the meaning is entirely personal to us, and we therefore are not able to communicate it to anyone else. (We may not even be able to communicate it to ourselves, though that's a more complicated argument that I'll save for another time. If you're interested, have a read through Cassirer's The Myth of the State, or my paper "Fight, Flight, and the Frontier of the Future," in which I treat that section of Cassirer's work.) Some may not see that communication is an important part of culture, but I think that kind of position is pretty weak, especially once we get onto the topic of the specifically linguistic aspects of culture. For a language to hold no communicative potential, which would be the case if we all had our own linguistic counter-cultures, would really neuter language in some substantive and undesirable ways.

In any case, these are simply some thoughts on the matter, and with the return from the criticism of hipster culture to the issue of language, we get back to where we started, which seems an appropriate place to stop. As always, I look forward to your comments and hope you're having a wonderful weekend.

Auto-Pilot

Hey folks, a couple of week ago, I posted a piece on anonymity in the big city. Here's a quick follow up, which I actually wrote in December of 2010, so again this is a piece coming from the archives. I hope that you enjoy it, and I look forward to your comments, as always.

Auto-Pilot

            Many years ago, a man named Henry Ford invented the car. Now cars were great things, taking people from place to place quickly and smoothly. Of course, when I say “people,” I mean rich people. Cars were not very affordable when they first came out, and they still aren’t really, though there are two cars for every three people in America these days. However, as not everyone can afford their own car (some people have more than one, just to keep the stats up you know) someone decided that they would invent a really big car for everyone to share. These big public cars, affectionately known as “buses,” would drive a scheduled route through town, picking people up in one place and dropping them off elsewhere.

In the olden days when you wanted to get off the bus, you’d simply walk to the front, turn to the driver and say, “I’d like to get off the bus at the next stop, please,” and the driver would smile at you, pull the bus over and let you off. Buses soon became very popular, picking people up all over the place and getting absolutely packed, so much so that it wasn’t always possible to wade through the human sea to ask the driver to let you off. In response, an ingenious person invented the rope and bell system: when you want to get off the bus, you need not apologetically and excusingly wade all the way to the front and ask the driver. Rather, you can just pull one of the ropes running along the walls of the bus and a bell will ring, indicating to the driver your intention to dismount. Peace and order reigned, and buses everywhere functioned smoothly. People would get on and off the bus with impunity, merrily pulling ropes and ringing bells.

However, buses have fallen on dark times. So often these days I get on a bus and I’m the only one on it, or nearly so. On such occasions, there I sit at the front of a nearly empty bus, which is invariably fullest at the back with people burying themselves in a cell phone or a personal music player of some non-descript description. And when those anonymous back-dwellers want to get off the bus? There’s plenty of space for them to walk to the front and ask the driver to (please) let them off at the next stop, but instead they usually stay at the back and retain their anonymity by pulling the rope and getting off without a word.

            A bus driver is a person, and it’s not tout a fait égal (not all one) to the driver whether you ask them personally to let you off or whether you just ring the bell. Sure, they’ll get the point either way, but that’s not the point. They are strangers, but they are people, too, and as such it makes sense to address them personally rather than impersonally and indirectly. It’s like looking at someone when you talk to them: it’s just common courtesy, and shows respect.

But the rope and bell system has fundamentally altered the nature of the bus driver in the minds of many. The driver is now a function, an automaton, as much part of the mechanism of the bus as the gas pedal, the brake or the bell. Obviously it doesn’t matter to the function how you input the “dismount” command, and so why should we bother addressing the function personally?

            We patrons of the bus systems haven’t been the only ones to embrace the difference either. When I’m on an empty bus, I sit at the front; I make no effort to isolate myself from the unknown Other who sits nearby. In fact, I even make a point of asking the driver to let me off. And that’s where the transformation of the bus driver is fully realised: asking the driver to let me off gets me a very strange look more often than not.

            Not only do the riders of the bus see the driver as part of the inhuman mechanism, but the drivers themselves seem to also. Very odd. Less odd is that bus drivers and patrons are frequently frustrated with one another. Any cock-ups are lost in the ever-widening gap between them, always blamed on the other, and more out of misunderstanding and lack of compassion than anything else.

Danish cartoons

As many of you probably are aware, the central author that I'm treating in my dissertation is Ernst Cassirer. He was a fascinating man; though principally a philosopher, he was also well versed in history, art, literature, science, many languages, etc. In that respect he may have been the last true Renaissance man. One of his fields of interest, and this is what I'd like to deal with today, was mythology. Specifically, I'd like to deal with his enquiries into the phenomenological basis of myth, because I think that it provides a useful tool for understanding the outrage that Muslims felt in response to Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. So let's get into it.

The kernel of mythology is this: pars pro toto, or, "the part for the whole." Whereas in our usual way of thinking, the part might suggest the whole to us or act as an indicator towards the whole, mythical thinking actually treats the part as the whole itself. That is to say, whereas we treat a few drops of rain as just part of the storm, mythical thinking actually treats these drops as having the whole storm contained within them. This might help us to understand voodoo rituals, of which Cassirer's work is full of colourful examples: for instance, in some cultures it is believed that one can murder a man by stabbing a knife into the man's shadow. The shadow is not a representation of the man; the shadow, as a part, actually stands for the whole man, and therefore one who has power over the shadow has power over the man himself, in this instance the power to kill. (Reading this example of shadow murder the first time, I could think of nothing other than the opening of Peter Pan, when Wendy is sewing Peter's shadow back to him.) Another example: some tribes forbid women and children from washing their hands while the men are out on the hunt, which becomes easily understandable when we realize that to make the tribe's hands slippery during the hunt would allow the prey to slip through their fingers. The part of the tribe back home stands for the tribe as a whole, so if those at home wet their hands, then the prey will slip through the slippery fingers of the hunting party.

The next part of the argument is about the inclusion of words in myth, or, word magic. We can have mythical power over something by dominating any part of its being; what part that is holds no relevance, and extends as far as the names of things. While we commonly now distinguish between the thing itself and the name by which we call that thing, such a division is not yet present in mythical consciousness. This is why to mythical consciousness it is so important to pronounce rites in just the proper way. If we do not pronounce the rite properly, we will not invoke the proper power of the god, and will therefore not accomplish the goal we wish to bring about. Worse still, the god may take the mispronunciation of the name (or the misperformance of a dance; remember, language is not strictly distinguished from substance or action here) as a sleight, and therefore bring terrible wrath upon us. In some cultures, a sick man will change his name in order to trick Death into thinking that he is someone else. For examples of the mythical power of the word in our own culture, one need only think of the book of Genesis. God says, "Let there be light," (Genesis 1:3). God creates the beasts and has man name them; He gives man dominion over them. The naming and the domination are not unrelated facts, if one takes Cassirer's theory to heart.

Of course, the most important word associated with anyone or any thing is the name: the name is therefore a central way to call upon a god, and the name has power over the god. In Egyptian mythology, we hear the tale of Isis, who tricks Ra into divulging his name to her, and she thereby has dominion over him and all the gods under him. The Grimm Brothers found a similar tale in Germany, the tale of Rumpelstilzchen, who will spin straw into gold for the miller's daughter (thereby saving her life) only if she can find out his name. In the book of Exodus, God does not divulge his name to Moses at the burning bush. "If the people ask who sent you, tell them 'I am' sent you." God is pure being ("I am"), he has no definite name, as any such definitive character in name would be a delimitation of His power. Furthermore, if such a name he had, to give it to Moses would be to open himself up to subservience. (I've heard through the grapevine that if one reads about the ten plagues that befall Egypt in Exodus, this can actually be read as a mythical battle between the one God of the Hebrews and the ten most important gods of Egyptian mythology at the time.) In the times of the Roman Empire, slaves were not allowed names because they had no power. Their name needed to remain empty.

A physical part can stand for a whole, any linguistic part (such as a name) can as well, and, most importantly here, so can an image. For example, the Pythagoreans would straighten their bedding immediately upon getting up, in order to prevent that their image left in the sheets might be used against them. Tattoos in primitive cultures are not merely decorations, they're incantations and links to magical powers. And in Islam we find an injunction against producing images of the prophet Muhammad. We can now understand this injunction probably better than we did before: any such image would hold power over Muhammad, who is held to be the last and most important prophet sent by God. For someone of lesser dignity, such as ourselves, to hold power over someone so important in the eyes of God would be a travesty. Perhaps this allows us to understand the outrage in the Muslim world in response to the Danish cartoons. These cartoons were not controverting an empty law, a law for its own sake; when we start to understand the structure of myth, this Islamic law starts to make a lot of sense, and we can begin to understand why there would be such a law. (There is also a general ban on pictorial representation and icons in Islamic religion, not limited only to those of Muhammad, but I see this not as a contradiction to my interpretation here, but rather as a confirmation thereof.)

One last thing before I sign off: one of the reactions to these cartoons in the Muslim world was to produce another set of cartoons that were basically meant to tug at the sensitivities of Western world. For example, one cartoon depicted Hitler in bed with Ann Frank, smoking a postcoital cigarette while he says to her, "THAT will give you something to write about in your diary." Obviously, the idea there was just to be hurtful, but it certainly isn't a response in kind to the Danish cartoons. To produce an image of Muhammad is not just offensive, it isn't just a cultural faux-pas of making light of a travesty in someone's past: it's blasphemy, it's for the profane to claim power over the holy. A response in kind would have been some claim to power over God. Perhaps a bumper sticker like: "Jesus is just a migrant worker who picks my oranges." (Actually, there are probably many such workers named "Jesus.") Or if they really wanted to get a reaction, perhaps an attack on the real God of the West: "Money is my bitch."

Anyway, I hope that this discussion has been somewhat lucid, at least a little bit interesting, and with luck not too inflammatory. Thanks for reading, I look forward to your comments.



P.S: If you're interested in the full details of Cassirer's account, check out Language and Myth, a short and accessible read on the subject. For those who are more ambitious, have a look at The Philosophy of Symbolic forms, vol. II: Mythical Thought. And Cassirer's last book before his death, The Myth of the State, is a fantastic read treating the mythical and philosophical ingredients put together by the Nazi party to bring the German people under their influence, though his discussion of the phenomenology of myth is much more limited in that text.

P.P.S: Once more, a plug for Philopolis Guelph, which is a festival that offers activities where we explore philosophical ideas in a practical context, just as I've tried to do here. There are still spots up for grabs if you're interested in presenting, or just come out and join in the discussion. Submission deadline is August 26; event itself is October 12–14.