Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Linkstorm: Your Use of Language is Neither Cunning for Fit for Sex Puns


I don't think I've mentioned the "We Say Gay" thing before. I'm a little late linking it because it got passed, and luckily, the passed version doesn't ban everyone in schools from saying the word "gay." It only bans if from being in lesson plans, which isn't quite as bad, but still isn't so great.

[Caption redundant]

Banning the word, even in this narrow context, smacks of close-minded people trying to pretend that something doesn't exist so they don't have to deal with it and they can keep whistling in the dark while what they call evil continues marching on around them.

Also a pretty big fan of pretending that homosexuality doesn't exist.

Putting aside the issue of the lazy morality that makes ignoring a problem easier than addressing it, language should never be static. Language should never exclude. Language should adapt and absorb and assimilate.

I do lament the loss of Aboringinal Languages, Ayapaneco, and Navajo. Not because of anything unique to those languages, but because they represent an imporant human diversity created by language. I have no hope of a future of humanity dominated by a handful of dominant languages.

New languages are something I like. Scientists have developed a rudimentary language to create two-way communication with dolphins which is totally awesome. Yes, Esperanto didn't work out so well, but Klingon certainly has.

Even learning about how we learn about languages is important. If words are connected too loosely while trying to understand them, nothing happens. If they're connected too tightly your choice of computer-based diagnosable mental illness may result. The assimilation of language and meaning are fundamental to the human experience and understanding that better will always provide a return on our investment. The same cannot be said of being exclusionary, and certainly not being exclusionary for political reasons.

Even disjunctions, those irritating, distracting "er"s, "ah"s, and "um"s that punctuate language can actually help children learn to speak better. Those are not bugs, those are features.

Not a feature.

Yes, some words may be unpleasant, but they and the concepts they represent exist. We cannot simply expunge everything we don't like from our experiences and pretend like it does anything but make our world that much smaller. Life is a series of unpleasant experiences punctuated by brief periods of closeness with others, as well as other nice moments that aren't necessarily sexual at all.

The insistence that we faciliate the willful ignorance of others is nothing short of astoundingly self-centered and should be rigidly opposed and mocked for the absolute childishness that it is.

Whenever there are words we don't like, it would be preferable to simply banning them or crying about them to take a cue from an actual wordsmith and just be a fucking grown-up about it. Guys, every time a British person gets in some verbal fisticuffs with an American and wins, a bald eagle dies. Don't be that guy.

But hey, if you aren't so great with words, or just aren't that smart don't speak.

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