Class discussion on Wednesday made me wonder about the devolution, not only of language, but of cultures. Isn't it common for every generation to believe that the next generation is somehow "less" than they are - whether it be work ethic, music choices, moral standards, or language? Why is this perceived as devolution rather than just evolution? It seems true that teenagers don't express themselves with the same word banks as their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, but does that inhibit communication? In their own ways, aren't they creating new and different ways to communicate in a time that almost demands expediency of communication? In terms of evolution, wouldn't a student be left behind if he chose to use an ink well and pen rather than a blog? If this is true in the manner of communication, wouldn't it also be true, to a certain degree to the words used to communicate?
Thursday, February 1, 2007
devolution
Class discussion on Wednesday made me wonder about the devolution, not only of language, but of cultures. Isn't it common for every generation to believe that the next generation is somehow "less" than they are - whether it be work ethic, music choices, moral standards, or language? Why is this perceived as devolution rather than just evolution? It seems true that teenagers don't express themselves with the same word banks as their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, but does that inhibit communication? In their own ways, aren't they creating new and different ways to communicate in a time that almost demands expediency of communication? In terms of evolution, wouldn't a student be left behind if he chose to use an ink well and pen rather than a blog? If this is true in the manner of communication, wouldn't it also be true, to a certain degree to the words used to communicate?
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That's an interesting suggestion, Melanie. T.S. Eliot writes, in the Quartets, about a general (mis)understanding of words as a medium to express...something? In Burnt Norton "words" first action is to echo.
Now, I don't know what that means, but I find it extremely interesting. Here's the link to 4Q, an 'accurate' online text.
http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/norton.html
The next thing "words" do is "move." (BN:5:1).
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.(BN:5:1-7)
Is TSE suggesting that words have animate life, like you and me? And the same goes for music? Or are words immortal, and is speech doomed to death? Words echo, words move, and words reach. And then he seems to suggest that the form and pattern of words (is this grammar?) are what will reach the stillness of a jar. The real jar? Wallace Steven's jar?
Anecdote of the Jar
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
(http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-ancedote.html)
*I have no idea what Stevens is saying here.*
I don't want to sound mystical, but maybe language is adequate at every moment of its inception. For example, Melanie, your generation’s lingo is sometimes stereotyped as “un-cool,” or naïve by us much hipper kidz. Why just look at the grace and facility with which Charity operates her MacBook Pro in class, whizzing through cyberspace and its digeternal vastness, while you are sitting there rubbing ink and charcoal on a piece of paper! *LOL*
But no, seriously, my nephews have only known digital access to the internet, I remember 14.4Kb/sec modems. I grew up with the onomatopoeia of analog connections, a noise almost gritty effort to access what today is a silent transition. The cyberworld is now only a whisper away. What is gained and what is lost? They say in war that when a shell goes off by your ear that buzzing you hear for days afterwards, that slowly fades away, is the death of your ability to hear that frequency; it is a dirge, in essence, a “swan song” to what you will never again be able to perceive.:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::On the other hand, the fluency of the younger generations playing off our language, are learning how to swim in a world of chaos. To navigate, so to speak, images that are, more and more, literally flying at them. As you suggest, maybe it is communication that our young are possessed with, in their slangish techno-comfortable vocabulary.
In Kirk’s class last semester there was a continuing anxiety about the rise of text-messaging and its ill-effects on cultivated, gilded language. What have we lost of Hamlet when his “To be or not to be” becomes 2BRNOT2B? Or are we forgetting our time? We now have the almost instant capability to reproduce the plays of Shakespeare, in Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branaugh, Leo DeCaprio versions.
At any rate, there’s the connection of the jar poems!
Ok, I’m going to get some sleep now. I’ll try to come back to this and see if I can make more sense to you, but more importantly myself. g’night.
Wow, Wayne, that is a lot for my brain to comprehend. I may have to read your comment several times.
I was intrigued by what you said about the shell going off, the intensity of the sound in essence destroying your ability to hear that sound again. I think words may be just the opposite - they are are life-giving because they allow us to create meaning. Rather than destroying some capacity, they open connections to other words, other meaning. Hmmm..
Also, I would like to say, you little whippersnapper, that disrespecting your elders (see also: my generation) would have gotten you a good hide tanning back in my day. Today, I would just have to open a can of whoop-ass.
I like the bit about the jar moving perpetually in its stillness...
Sound waves never stop so every word or sound ever created in an enclosed space will always be there.
Do the words die or just our ability to "hear" them?
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