The New Media

Last week the Oxford English Dictionary announced it would no longer be printed again.  I have never used the OED in person and, like apparently countless others, find the on-line version much more convenient and less straining on the eyes (unlike the print version you do not need a magnifying glass to make out the on-line version).

On the one hand this heralds some new and )mostly) positive advancements.  More people have access to the internet, either in their homes or in libraries and schools, and the vast amount of information that goes along with it.  Also, the English language now changes at a rate that makes printing a dictionary illogical because of how soon it would become obsolete.

However, I always have found the printed page of these huge old books and the physical presence of reference sections comforting.  You do not get the sense of the immense history of these words and the tradition you are inheriting when you are not pulling a 30 lb. book off the shelf.  You do not get the same sense of the interconnectedness of language when you cannot scan down a page and see a list of words which all come from the same root.  You cannot leisurely flip through the pages, looking for nothing in particular but knowing there are treasures on every page.   Our use of the dictionary will now be subject to the same forces as the rest of modern technology-it will be economical, purpose driven, and isolating.

As an interesting side note, the reason I was a week late in commenting on this story is because I was having computer problems last week and so was without regular access to a computer all week.  A printed book also cannot have problems with its motherboard leaving you without access.

is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished

I recognize that I am a day late with this, but yesterday I did not have a spare moment to get down my thoughts on the day. I apologize for the delay.

My Guy Fawkes Day, as is my custom, culminated in a viewing of V for Vendetta. I know I mentioned the movie in last year's post for the day, but on this viewing something very different struck me. While there is plenty of violence in the film (as is to be expected I guess, in a movie by the Wachowski Brothers based off an Alan More comic book), V never recommends violence as a widespread social panacea and in fact never recommends that anyone beside himself, whom he seems outside of the system and as not full part of the world, use violence. For your reflection here is part of his television address to London, I realize it is a little long, but it is fascinating:

Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.

V makes two points here; first, injustice demands action or we are complicit with it. But his other point which underlies the first one is that, we cannot recognize justice, we cannot stand up for truth without deep contemplation. The authors here have spoken repeatedly about the power of words but it is a point worth repeating--we must be constantly intellectually engaged with the world. In 1984 one of the government's primary tactics in controlling the populace is redefining words--a practice which goes on both intentionally and unintentionally in our world. As Alan More says, "…Text-messaging or The Sun, these are perfect Orwellian ways of limiting the vocabulary and thus limiting the consciousness…" The real revolution is not V blowing up a building. That, as he says, is a symbol. The real revolution, what V is in fact urging the people of London to do and what hopefully follows the action of the film, is the people once again begin to think, to question, to challenge and thus to rediscover the Truth.

it is how I was written

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. The world was spoken into being and with it came the story which each of us lives.

I loved the movie Inkheart to a degree that bemused all the people I made watch it with me, many of who failed to see the charm. The most captivating part for me was the character of Dustfinger, and only a little bit because he was played by the fabulous Paul Bettany.

Dustfinger is an unusual protagonist for a fantasy story--he has some magic abilities but these do not elevate him, his is not a hero or a villain just a little bit of a coward, and he is caught up in the action of the story totally against his will and his sole desire is to get home. In short he is incredibly human.

Yet along with this he is perfectly cognizant of being a character in a work of fiction. He fears meeting his author because he does not wish to know how his story ends. He is fully mindful of his character flaws, telling another character he is a coward because it is how he was written. Rising above this is something that he struggles with throughout the movie--when faced with his character flaws he insists that that is not all he is. Later, upon meeting his author and inadvertently having his fate revealed to him is reaction is telling the author "You don't control my fate. I'm not just some character in a book. And you are not my god!"

We too are characters within the story of salvation and, as we are marked by original sin, already have part of our character written out for. Yet, like Dustfinger we have free will and are not just characters--our fate is in our own hands.

I also loved the visual of the half read out characters with words covering them--literally with their story on their face.

The domination of the lingua franca

The is something in a country's language that resonates with the character and ethos of its people. There is something in the sound, the cadence how many synonyms a language has for a word that is indicative of how that people see the world. As Henry Hitchings says in The Secret Life of Words: How English became English:

Every language has a character. Our relationship with our own language can be complacent, but when we speak a foreign tongue we sense more keenly the "characterfulness" of that language, the peculiar way it channels history and culture, its special version of the world, its distinctive textures and codes. Different languages seem suited to different areas of experience. Tradition has it that Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, preferred to speak French to diplomats, Italian to ladies, German to stable boys, and Spanish to God. English he seems to have used sparingly--to talk to geese. Nicholas Ostler, in his Macro-history Empires of the World, sketches 'some of the distinctive traits of the various traditions: Arabic's austere grandeur and egalitarianism; Chinese and Egyptian's unshakable self regard; Sanskrit's luxuriating classifications and hierarchies; Greek's self-confident innovation leading to self-obsession and pedantry; Latin's civic sense; Spanish rigidity, cupidity, and fidelity; French admiration for rationality; and English admiration for business acumen.' This type of generalization is attractive, albeit limiting, and hints at a deeper truth: that our languages hint at the nature of our world, and the history of their development is a history of consciousness.

The Economist published a study this past week about endangered languages. According to their study 34.5% are in some degree of danger of extinction while another 3.7% having gone extinct since 1950. At this point, with the process of globalization so entrenched in modern society and the majority of the Internet and media outlets in English, I am not sure what can be done. Yet the world will be a poorer place without the haunting vowels of Welsh or the sharp consonants of Yiddish and history, character, idiosyncrasies, and peoples the invoke.

When I use a word it means precisely what I want it to.

"Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning. A meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination."--Virginia Woolf

Symbols vs. Allegory

Of all words that have begun to lose their meaning and to be conflated in modern society the ones that have been bothering me most of late are symbol and allegory, which it seems people have begun to use interchangeably.

Allegories are man made constructs--a one-to-one correlation between two things. They are simple and contained within their subjects. That is why when, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when people kept telling the Pevensie children that Alsan was not a tame lion I only half believed them. It is true within the constructs of the story and they way they meant it, Alsan couldn't be called or beckoned. Yet at the same time the reader could expect him not to be too terrible or do anything unexpected because he is confined by being an allegory. Aslan can be depended on not to do anything Christ wouldn't.

Symbols are much wilder things, which point to something else, not as a correspondence but as an illumination of its mystery. Chesterton gets to the heart of this paradox with his customary wit and insight in his essay "The Heraldic Lion," saying: "For all the mystical animals were imagined as enormously big as well as incalculably fierce and free. The stamping of the awful unicorn would shake the endless deserts in which it dwelt; and the wings of the vast griffin went over one' head in heaven with the thunder of a thousand cherubim. And yet the fact remains that if you asked a medieval man what the unicorn was supposed to mean, he would have replied 'chastity.'"

Symbols are not human constructs in the same way allegories are, but rather are a way to illuminate a mystery already in existence and to point to a truth that humans have only partially grasped. In the case of the unicorn this truth is that Chasity is not an absence or a lack of something, but instead something powerful, alive and flaming. I believe that elsewhere Chesterton made the comparison to Joan of Arc--something pure with the power to shake the world.

In the Renaissance a philosophy called The Doctrine of Signatures gained prominence. Essentially what this said was that everything in creation was created for a purpose with and end in mind and God "signed" each bit of creation to let man know its purpose. While not being as literal as looking for ear shaped plants to cure ear infections, this is what symbols do. They help unlock the secrets of creation by pointing to meanings beyond the superficial and illustrate a world full of mystery and wonder.

Is it written in the stars?

Words don't just tell the story-they can complete a deed, or they can begin one. The telling of a story can be part of the action itself. In the Anglo-Saxon world a deed was not complete until it was reported. That is why in Beowulf there is the recap once Beowulf returns home--he had to bring the story with him and report, else his task was not yet done. In this retelling the person is immortalized and the deed kept alive. If a persons deeds are great enough, they will be retold again and again, their tale preserved in stories and song. As Cohen says in The Last Hero, "I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive ... A song can keep someone immortal."

Stories take on a life of their own, gaining a certain truthfulness regardless of the actual facts of the events they are reporting. They have the power to strike fear or to inspire, to teach or to caution. Every great person eventually fades from memory but the story endures, even if only in bits of popular wisdom or folklore.

"'In the olden days," she said, "when a hero had been really heroic, the gods would put them up in the stars." THE HEAVENS CHANGE, said Death. WHAT TODAY LOOKS LIKE A MIGHTY HUNTER MAY LOOK LIKE A TEACUP IN A HUNDRED YEARS' TIME. "That doesn't seem fair." NO ONE EVER SAID IT HAD TO BE. BUT THERE ARE OTHER STARS.'"

According to Genesis, the world was begun with a Word. The world then is the greatest story, which is constantly being told through peoples words and deed.

To Entertain Immortals

Words do indeed have power, each containing a meaning, allowing us to communicate. This is what allows us to preserve knowledge of all sorts: facts, songs, stories, and legacies. Words have the power to immortalize. Galileo says "looking to things even more stable and enduring, others have entrusted the immortal fame of illustrious men not to marble and metal but to the custody of the Muses and to imperishable literary monuments." He places this honor only under having a portion of the heavens, a constellation of stars, named after oneself because he believes only that is more enduring than having ones name and deeds preserved within words. 

This can be either a blessing or a punishment to men, depending on the deeds they perform throughout their lives. Compare the legacy of Julius Caesar to that of Brutus, Peter to Judas, Gandhi to Hitler. Each is remembered to this day for the choices he made during his life. This increases the accountability men have for their actions. Many discoveries and victories are the result of men searching for glory, trying to transcend their brief lives by having their accomplishments remembered. It is a constant concern of leaders. For what will they be remembered? It is  a guiding force in the back of every mind, affecting every choice, for with each man is creating his own legacy. 

Not all things are preserved in a truthful or accurate way. Often, the victor gets to tell the story. But even so, writers have a great responsibility - they must tell the story.

Not even Orwell could have dreamed this up

"…Text-messaging or The Sun, these are perfect Orwellian ways of limiting the vocabulary and thus limiting the consciousness…" -- Alan Moore

Words and Meaning

I am amazed at how well Aloysha's comments about exclamation marks dovetailed with this weeks quote of the week, and a little worried that he thinks like Alan Moore. However, they both have a very good point--words have power and the ability to offer freedom, but only if we allow them.

Language is not static, influxes of new groups of people add new words to a language while technological innovation and new discoveries or theories in the sciences or social sciences necessitate new words to express them. Great poets and writers also craft words to fit their meaning, enriching the English language. The problem then is not that language changes, but rather the speed at which it is currently changing and the fact that it seems to be contracting rather than expanding.

Modern trends in slang have been to over use adjectives, thus stripping them of their weight and power. Awesome is a prime example--no longer is it reserved for things that do truly inspire awe but is now used to describe everything from new shoes, to a card trick, to not having any homework. Weird, whose root means fate, used to refer to something that seemed out of the ordinary in either a supernatural sense or a fateful sense. Now it is any deviation from the status quo, or worse, anything which makes us slightly uncomfortable. The devaluation of language has been exacerbated by instant messaging and text speak which encourage people to boil down feelings and emotions to acronyms or emoticons. This limits the range of feeling which a person can express--instead of being sad or melancholic or disconsolate or morose or despondent or forlorn or upset, all of which have a slightly different shade of meaning, you are now :(

While this is not a government conspiracy and there is no big brother watching your every move, George Orwell, in the appendix on Newspeak in 1984, best expressed the effect of pairing down language. He says, "the purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. . . . Countless other words such as honour, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, science, and religion had simply ceased to exist. A few blanket words covered them, and, in covering them, abolished them."

Replacing vast swaths of words with a single one or overusing words until they have lost all nuance and retain only the most basic of meaning limits people ability to express themselves. This is turn, limits freedom for, as Orwell pointed out, if you cannot vocalize an idea or a feeling you cannot share it and so it becomes dead. If words are the currency of thought devaluing them is detrimental to all of society.

We shall overcome their power!

First off the title of this post has an exclamation point in it. This is in the attempt to demonstrate the passion with which the line is being said. But I think that, at least in my eyes, this mark of feeling has been altered from what it should be and has been transformed into something on the verge of being superficial. This exclamation mark therefore fails to capture my intended meaning, which causes me to Wonder why? It is a truly remarkable symbol, one meant to evoke a feeling of power and wonder. Yet this feeling can be excitement, joy, anger, and courage, or it can simply be used to show increased volume. Even when one simply looks at it the exclamation point is incredible, unlike any other symbol. Come to think of it, all the letters of our language are remarkable. Each being different than the others and representing a different meaning with its own distinct sounds and distinctive characteristics. But how we view these letters are derived from our experience with them; how they are used in reading and writing. When we listen to intelligent people and read eloquent and thoughtful works we are influenced. This is the power of words. The power which all the distinct letters are able to create when put into words. Words which arranged are capable of unbelievable things. Therefore I deem that the ways in which I have seen the exclamation point being used are what has led to its loss of value. And the way to remedy the situation, to give ! back its grandeur is to use it intelligently and passionately. The exclamation point must be reclaimed!

I have no idea where that last paragraph came from, I simply wrote. But now on to the actual subject of this post; art. Both Enjolras and Robert Owen Hood have recently spoken on the subject, so I feel obliged to do the same. Art is the closest representation of dreams. It is the attempted perfection of persons, and the aspirations of all people. Art gives us an opportunity to portray things in the way which they actually appear. "Artists use art to tell the lies that politicians try to cover up." It is where we create, it is one of the ways with which we can we make a difference in this world. And we must choose to make a difference, we must choose to fight. People must take initiative and change. We must vote and we must care or we shall fail our potential. We will cease to create and art will die. We must care about events such as that of yesterday; November Fifth, and like Guy Fawkes we must try to make a difference.