(no subject)
Jun. 20th, 2009 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lhexaPortions of two comments from a discussion about terminology on Rax's journal.
For anything except humanity, I love to learn new categories and distinctions, no matter how technical, specialized or academic. When it comes to humanity, though, I much prefer the chaos of natural language.
But shorthand descriptions to express ideas within an in-group aren't necessarily harmful... Many of these things are terms used by actual people trying to describe their lived experience simultaneously with being categories and distinctions.
Well, the distinction I'm using here is not between categorizing and non-categorizing language, but between technical language and (what I might as well call) natural language. All the usual caveats about dualism apply, but when speaking to you I hopefully don't need to recite them.
Keeping in mind the distinction between meaning and sense (sense is what a person means by a word, meaning is what it means independently of any one person -- a word can have multiple meanings, and each meaning can have multiple senses), I think the distinguishing aspect of technical language is that its terms each have only one sense. Plenty of technical words eventually become natural (and here you see one problem with the adjective "natural"), by acquiring further senses: this is part of Putnam's "semantic division of labor." Once they do so, assuming I notice they do so, I'll use them without qualms. But in human activity and identity, even when a person unquestionably fits in some category, that person will fit into the category in a distinct, individual manner. The multiple senses of natural language allow one to acknowledge and often describe this individuality (in what sense is this person charitable, or cynical, or difficult? In what sense is he a Christian, or a dragon, or a philosopher?); technical language, however, does not allow this. I value that individuality, and the acknowledgment thereof, very highly (perhaps too highly), so that's why I avoid technical language in describing humanity and human beings.
I have a pet theory that all new words (and all new meanings of words) come into common (natural) use from either technical language or metaphor. (Slang, by my definition, is a form of technical language. Which isn't even all that questionable a statement according to the more common sense of "technical", that is, specialized language prevalent only within a certain community.) My preference falls heavily on the metaphor side, which partly accounts for the fact that I scorn any community's specialized language when it comes to describing myself: I already have a world's worth of things to use as metaphors of myself.
For anything except humanity, I love to learn new categories and distinctions, no matter how technical, specialized or academic. When it comes to humanity, though, I much prefer the chaos of natural language.
But shorthand descriptions to express ideas within an in-group aren't necessarily harmful... Many of these things are terms used by actual people trying to describe their lived experience simultaneously with being categories and distinctions.
Well, the distinction I'm using here is not between categorizing and non-categorizing language, but between technical language and (what I might as well call) natural language. All the usual caveats about dualism apply, but when speaking to you I hopefully don't need to recite them.
Keeping in mind the distinction between meaning and sense (sense is what a person means by a word, meaning is what it means independently of any one person -- a word can have multiple meanings, and each meaning can have multiple senses), I think the distinguishing aspect of technical language is that its terms each have only one sense. Plenty of technical words eventually become natural (and here you see one problem with the adjective "natural"), by acquiring further senses: this is part of Putnam's "semantic division of labor." Once they do so, assuming I notice they do so, I'll use them without qualms. But in human activity and identity, even when a person unquestionably fits in some category, that person will fit into the category in a distinct, individual manner. The multiple senses of natural language allow one to acknowledge and often describe this individuality (in what sense is this person charitable, or cynical, or difficult? In what sense is he a Christian, or a dragon, or a philosopher?); technical language, however, does not allow this. I value that individuality, and the acknowledgment thereof, very highly (perhaps too highly), so that's why I avoid technical language in describing humanity and human beings.
I have a pet theory that all new words (and all new meanings of words) come into common (natural) use from either technical language or metaphor. (Slang, by my definition, is a form of technical language. Which isn't even all that questionable a statement according to the more common sense of "technical", that is, specialized language prevalent only within a certain community.) My preference falls heavily on the metaphor side, which partly accounts for the fact that I scorn any community's specialized language when it comes to describing myself: I already have a world's worth of things to use as metaphors of myself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-09 06:00 am (UTC)