Re: Complexity, Languaging & Design LO863

jack@his.com
Fri, 21 Apr 95 07:42:27

Subject: Re: Complexity, languaging and design LO839

Mike McMaster suggests - somewhat opaquely I think - that "... a shared
linguistic domain is one where language can become commensurable, where
meaning can be transported across vocabularies and where differences can
meet to create new linguistic possibilities that didn't exist before."

I can't pretend to fully understand what Mike is saying here, but it
sounds to me like a semiotic equivalent of Esperanto. In the same way
that Esperanto has failed to become a universal tongue because it does not
contain a "shared linguistic domain", the suggestion that language "can
become commensurable" points to communications which are exactly the
reverse of the the effect Mike describes - the creation of new linguistic
possibilities that didn't exist before. These possibilities and their
creation are, in my opinion, inherent in the gift of language itself, and
is expressed in the "newness" of every utterance as well as the incredible
diversity of languages that groupings of people have created. Indeed, the
impact of our culture on human languages has been as devastating as our
impact on the environment, and I fear that we will suffer the consequences
of the diminution of linguistic diversity sooner and more profoundly than
the loss of species in the biosphere.

--
Jack Hirschfeld                  A kiddly divey too, wouldn't you?
jack@his.com