language

So much to write about: death, sex, stupidity, ignorance and all of the above together! Oh, and political economy too.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

I have been fairly quiet on this blog lately. I got a cold brought to me by my grandson. I grudgingly have to say it was worth it because I saw my family in Vancouver, but I’m not a great fan of colds. I rarely get one, but when I do, it’s usually a doozy. They seem to trigger my immune disease too. Bacteria, viruses and whatnot are having a party in my arteries and veins. Sheesh. 

Anyway, I’m reading a few books at the moment, a couple on sexuality and one on universal myths around the birth of heroes in classical literature, including the bible. I’m a little slow reading right now. I tend to fall asleep after about 10 minutes, and reading in bed is a waste of time because I seem to forget most of what I’ve read by morning. Well, I do remember a lot, but not much detail. That’s fine. I can live with that. 

In any case, like I said, I have a list of topics I want to write about, but I’d sure like to hear from you about what topics you’d like me to address. If you’ve read any of my posts in the past you know that I’m all over the map. I’ve taught courses in introductory sociology, deviance, racism, love and sex, research methods, cultural and physical anthropology, Canadian history, Canadian Justice systems, study techniques, both basic and advanced. I’m an avid reader. I’ve done a lot of research in political economy, Marx, Veblen, Elias, Mills, psychoanalysis (Freud, Rank, Brown) , psychology, evolution, sexuality, nationalism, history, language, pain and mental ‘illness’, and classical studies including books on mythology, ideology, and heroism. Check out my archives. Anything you’d like me to explore further? 

I’ll tell you one thing. The post here that’s got the most hits by far is: Is Canada a Capitalist Country? Maybe I should comment on that issue a bit more. It’s one that is very difficult for people to figure out because it’s so difficult to break through the veil of ideology surrounding the relationship between nations (countries) and the capitalist modes of accumulation and production. Got any ideas?

Why do some people refer to sex as dirty?

~ Roger JG Albert

By sex in the title here, I mean sexual intercourse and sexually related activities. I never could understand the reference. It seemed (and still seems) ridiculous to me. I understand it now, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept because it’s a metaphor that is deeply demeaning to women of course, but frankly, to all of us. The reference could make sense if it aimed at describing sex in a mud bath, but that’s never the intention, of course.

You all know this. It’s no secret. Men are never referred to as ‘dirty sluts.’ It just doesn’t happen. However, women are  routinely called dirty sluts, particularly by the porn industry, but also by some segments of the population with very categorical views of when, where, and with whom it’s okay to express one’s sexuality.

More basically, I heard with my very own ears parents chastising their children for having their hands ‘down there.’ “That’s dirty, don’t do that!” I’m hoping that it doesn’t happen with younger parents these days but I somehow doubt it. There are people on this planet who are pathetically if not pathologically ignorant, so nothing should surprise us. Moreover, cultural references are pretty pervasive and consistent in linking our ‘private parts’ with dirt. The word pudenda, the plural of pudendum, refers to “a person’s external genitals, especially a woman’s,” that according to the very reliable Google dictionary. Pudendum literally means: “thing to be ashamed of,” according to the same reliable dictionary. So, not only are genitalia dirty, they’re also something to be ashamed of. Now, even as a long time social researcher and somewhat cynical sociologist, I still find this reference to genitalia and sex, especially with reference to women as entirely perverse.

On another tangent, but still on the language train, if I want to refer to someone as not being entirely nice, I may call that person an ‘asshole.’ There we go again. It’s no surprise too that our swear words are pretty much entirely focussed on our genitalia and on sex. In French, swearing also involves the genitalia and such, but in Québec, you’re also liable to hear swear words referencing the Catholic Church and items used during the mass.

Since who knows for how long we’ve been alienated from ourselves. We refer to ‘my’ body. What is the ‘my’ that owns a body? We should’t be surprised, though, because that’s language and our language reflects our morality and our preoccupations and we are silently, unconsciously, subconsciously, and daily reminded of death. Language is entirely metaphorical so we express our fear of death not in direct terms, but obliquely, using metaphor. [By the way, if you want a good read: Talking Power: The Politics of Language, by Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Basic Books, 1990). It’s all about metaphor and politics. She’s got a great chapter in there on women and language.]

Alright, I’ll grant you that excrement is not far from being dirt and if mommy doesn’t want you playing ‘down there’ it could be partly because she doesn’t want you spreading shit all over the place. But that’s not the whole story, nowhere near. Excrement has much more meaning for us than that. Norman O. Brown notes in Life Against Death (p.295):

Excrement is the dead life of the body, and as long as humanity prefers a dead life to living, so long is humanity committed to treating as excrement not only its own body but the surrounding world of objects, reducing all to dead matter and inorganic magnitudes. Our much prized “objectivity” toward our own bodies, other persons, and the universe, all our calculating “rationality,” is, from the psychoanalytical point of view, an ambivalent mixture of love and hate, an attitude appropriate only toward excrement, and appropriate to excrement only in an animal that has lost his own body and life.

What does Brown mean when he writes that we are “an animal that has lost his own body and life.” ‘His’ in this sentence refers to humankind, all of us. In some ways I find it strange that Brown uses ‘man’ to include women and ‘his’ whenever a general possessive pronoun is on his mind. However, Brown is right. Taking a shit is a daily, unconscious, subconscious, reminder of our death and that’s distinctly unpleasant. If we thought about it consciously, we would be traumatized. So we use all kinds of metaphors to try to forget all about death or we joke about it. Few are the people who have come to grips with death and live a full life in their bodies, as their bodies, taking pleasure in them and accepting their aging and their annoying aches and pains. These are people who don’t yearn for a life beyond this life, because for them, that just doesn’t exist.

Just one more thing: What the fuck does ‘taking a shit’ mean? Of course we know what it means, but what can we make of it literally? I really don’t know. However, I’d rather leave a shit than take one, thanks. Enough silliness for one day. More later.

 

 

Which is better, Up or Down? North or South? Left or right?

~ Roger JG Albert

Which is better, up or down? North or south? Left or right?

Well, technically, up and down are just words. Most of us think of them as neutral words that simply indicate orientation in space. They are that, but they also contain a political and moral side that is undeniable.

Left and right. Are they just words that indicate a direction from a fixed point in space but they also carry a load of political and moral baggage.

The reality is that left and right are not just neutral words that simply indicate direction. They are packed with poIitical and moral referents. In politics, we refer to socialist, communist and anarchist parties, movements and ideas as those occupying the left-wing of the political spectrum. We identify liberal and conservative ideas, parties and movements as more or less right-wing unless of course you’re a con troll. For con trolls (conservative internet trolls) everything on the left side of Ayn Rand is evil. This is all highly significant because of the qualities we normally attach to the words left and right without really thinking about it. Right is good, left is bad.

Right and correct are often used as synonyms. We use them interchangeably. So, what can we make of that? Right-wing parties are correct parties? It would seem so. At least that’s what the use of right in this context implies. Who sits at the right hand of God? Why, Jesus, of course, although sheep do too, apparently. Thomas Aquinus was quite concerned about the significance and the symbolism of right and left with reference to God. For some reason I remember the angel Gabriel as sitting on the right of God and Lucifer, before he was cast into hell, on the left. Was Lucifer the first leftist? [1] It makes sense, especially when you consider how the political right sees itself as truly moral and correct.

 

North and south are great examples of how words that are supposed to simply refer to navigational directions on earth, have become politically charged. The North is good, don’t you know. It’s cool, collected, upright, hard-working, morally impeccable and just as pure as the driven snow. The South, by contrast, is hot, lazy, unpredictable and morally suspect leaning towards nudity and hedonism. So, where do northerners go to vacation and let their hair down? Why, to the hedonistic south, of course. And, if you look at any regular map of the globe, north is always on the top. Strange, but when I see photographs of planet earth taken from space, I don’t see those distinctions.

I’m left-handed and us lefties, aside from being called sinistral, are often referred to as southpaws. The implications of this use of language is clear: left-handers are somehow morally suspect.

So, north is up and south is down. Go figure. Up and down are two other words that were initially intended to simply indicate direction, but have been recruited for political purposes over the years. Who knows exactly how that happens, how these language uses evolve, but they do, and they serve political[2] ends. We see them as being natural, neutral and anything but controversial, but they have their nasty side. If I’m feeling particularly chipper one day, I’m said to be ‘up.’ If I’m a little depressed because I just lost my job, I’m thought of as being ‘down’. “What’s wrong, why are you looking so down today?” Sheesh.

There are many more examples of politically charged words parading as neutral. Just think of east and west, over and under, standing and lying, top and bottom. I’ll let you think of others.

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[1] See: https://www.quora.com/Handedness-Why-was-there-prejudice-against-left-handed-people. Quora is not always a reliable source of information, but in this case, reliable enough.

[2] By political here I mean simply the distribution of power in society in a very broad sense. Politics is everywhere there is imbalance of power and some people have more executive license than others, more privilege, more resources, and, in their minds at least, the moral high ground.

Thinking of language on a beautiful, hot summer day.

~ Roger JG Albert

Languages evolve. That’s a truism, of course. It’s inevitable but some of us like to hold on to some of the rules of grammar, syntax, spelling and composition we learned in school and the new constructions grate a little.

I learned both French and English in school including their different yet sometimes related words, spellings, compositional dictates and tone. Of course, both French and English have evolved but it might be more precise to say  that English actually evolved from French and German. English, it has been said, is the garbage pail of languages. Everything gets thrown in there and very few seem to mind. That said, English has done very well for itself, especially with a helping hand from colonialism.

In English, generally, if one wants to pluralize a word, one simply adds an s to it although there are a number of exceptions. That’s clear with words that end in y. Baby becomes babies, and so on. Army becomes armies. But, hold on, why do the British in general refer to army in the plural, as in: “The army, they marched for days on end.” Now, that’s perverse in my mind. An army is a unit and the word army should always be used in the singular. Now, if more than one army is the subject of interest, then, by all means, use armies. So,  there are many ways of indicating the plural in English, but there is a lot of confusion these days with words like data, media, agenda and  the like. The singular forms of these words, for your edification, are datum, medium and agendum. It’s rare these days in the communications media to hear or read the word media used as a plural noun. It’s consistently used as a singular noun as in: “The media is going to get it with Trump as president.”

Data is the same thing. That famous character on Star Trek named Data should probably have been called Datum. Scientists and science broadcasters should know better. When they report that the data indicates this or that, I must confess that I cringe a little. The data may indicate many things and I’m quite happy about that, but the data ‘it’ does this or that is just wrong. In a recent CBC interview I heard a scientist being interviewed by a well-meaning but slightly inattentive interviewer. He properly referred to a particularly virulent bacterium several times and the interviewer returned with bacteria in reply every time.

Same thing for agenda, which is the plural form of agendum. If you have a meeting you have an agendum, I suppose, if you’re properly organized. You may, however, have hidden agenda, meaning that you may have several preferred outcomes for a discussion you may be involved in leading you to steer decisions in your favour.

However, things aren’t always so simple. Lacuna is the singular of lacunae and algae is the singular of alga.

I know the language is evolving. I’m not tilting at windmills here. Still, there is a part of me that is somewhat nostalgic for the ‘proper’ use of English. There, I said it. Send in the trolls.

 

 

 

 

A language you cannot speak.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

So, this has been on my mind for some time. I’ve long been interested in the origins of language and especially written language. There was a fascinating program on CBC’s Ideas program recently featuring Geneviève von Petzinger a paleo-anthropologist from the University of Victoria on ancient symbols found in caves dating some 30-40 thousand years ago. This is a taste of her ideas: Ice age symbols. Her research shows that it might be possible that the first modern humans had a form of abstract written communication. If that is so, many hypotheses about the first origins of human written communication are way off.

I’m sure that even at the very beginning of the process of human written communication there was only a small minority of people that could create symbols and probably not many more that could read them. Communications were all on a need-to-know basis. But written communication and literacy were a huge step in human evolution. Now, we all take language and writing for granted.

The invention of the modern computer has created an entirely new kind of exclusive language that is inaccessible to most people. Machine language with its on an off switches is completely incomprehensible to humans unless they have the code that makes all of the sequences of on and off switches mean something. We (humans) can communicate with our machines (computers) via certain interfaces but computers  actually don’t need human intervention to communicate with each other.

Take bar codes for example. The idea of the bar code was conceived of in the late 1940s but it wasn’t fully operationalized until much later. Now they are all over the place. They are used to track packages in transit, control stock and inventories, and contain medical records among many other uses. The machines that read bar codes don’t need human intervention to do so, but humans need an interface technology to know what the machines are doing.

I wonder how long it will be before machines begin to covertly, in the mind hive that is the internet, create their own language, one not accessible to humans at all. This 2 dimensional QR-code is my blog address: http://rogerjgalbert.com. Go ahead, scan it with your phone (you’ll need to download a reader to do that).

blogbarcode

It’s a symbol that computers (including my iPhone) can easily read. I don’t have a clue about what all the lines and squares mean. My computer knows all that. I think it’s akin to the process whereby humans first invented written, symbolic communication. Is this the kind of symbol that computers will use in their own communications devoid of human input? I don’t know, maybe it’s the plot of a new dystopian novel.

No, I’m not a grammar nazi, but damn it!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 5 Comments

Alright, I know that language evolves and that contemporary expressions and idioms displace older ways of communicating using language. Still, some words and terms currently in use are just illogical, never mind that they’re not in conformity with the rules of the language.

I know, I know, rules are made to be broken but damn we insist on misusing some words so consistently and wrongly that we need to give our collective heads a shake. 

I want to give you just a few examples of the more egregious misuses of language so that maybe you, at least YOU, will not fall into the pit of folly and ever misuse these words again. 

First, a tenant is someone to whom you rent a house or an apartment. A tenet is a principle, belief or dogma generally held to be true by a group of people, an organization, movement or profession. A tenet of the Catholic faith is the three aspects of God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Get it? The Catholic church may rent out apartments and spaces here and there in which case they would have tenants to go along with their many tenets. The difference between the two words is minimal if you look at the letters involved, but maximal if you consider their meanings.

I’ve experienced professionals, using overhead projectors and powerpoint presentations use tenant when they meant to use tenet. Not cool folks! Don’t do it! Ever!

Here’s another one of my very favourites: storey and story.

You could tell a story to someone while standing on the second storey balcony of your apartment, but don’t get the two mixed up.

Damn, I’ve seen architects use story when they meant to use storey once too often. They should know better. People in general use story when they mean storey all the time. I’ve got some glaring examples, but I don’t want to embarrass the circus in question. 

Data, damn it, is a plural noun. The character on Star Trek should have been called Datum, which is the singular form of data. Now this one is becoming mainstream. People, many of them scientists, even statisticians who really should know better, now commonly use data when they actually mean to use datum, but never the other way around. How often have you heard: “the data tells us blah, blah, blah…” It should be the data tell us. Truth be told, most people don’t even know the word datum exists, but that’s what five years of studying Latin got me. Got that one? Let’s move on to a couple more examples like it.

Media is a plural noun but is generally used as a singular noun.  The singular form of media is, wait for it… medium! Television and radio are communications media. The internet is another medium of communication. Please avoid using the phrase: “the media delivered the news today that it was not interested in how to use the word, medium, not even on the national news.” Well, you can use that phrase, but you get my drift.

Same goes for continua, continuum, agenda and agendum. Yes, I know that the world is changing, blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t mean I have to like it. 

The use of the word quality without qualification drives me crazy. No, you don’t sell quality cars, you either sell high quality, midlin quality or, frankly, poor quality cars. Got that? Stop telling me you sell quality anything. You don’t! Even college administrators get this wrong, some even deliberately!

Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig, for God’s sake. It’s all about quality.

Alright that’s enough. I’ve got a cold and I think ranting helps me clear my sinuses. Thanks for indulging me, but I’ll be back!

By the way, post your own pet peeves when it comes to the misuse of language in response to this, on Facebook, Twitter, or even on here, WordPress. 

Why is Kevin O’Leary so smug about being on the right?

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

I’ve long been interested in the way language embodies class and power relations.  Obviously, our language embodies much of our culture, so it’s not surprising that it would embody class relations.  The word ‘poor’ is used to describe many conditions of inadequacy.  ‘Rich’ can describe a chocolate cake or a wealthy person, both desirable components of a valuable life.  ‘Right’ does not only indicate a direction in it’s most obvious sense, but also correctness.  To be correct is to be right, as in right-handed.  In contrast, to be left-handed is to be sinister.  The ‘proper’ adjective used to point to my left-handedness is ‘sinistral.’  Left-handers are sinister.  Of course ‘left’ indicates nothing good.  The sun is bright and right, the moon dark and left . Both these terms in turn are symbols for men and women respectively.  The moon is the domain of women, the sun belongs to men.  After all, who is at the right hand of God, and who at the left?  It’s fairly clear that Jesus sits to the right of God, but there’s a great deal of uncertainty among Christians about who sits on His left. Probably better not to go there.  Where are women in heaven? Not particularly evident, at least not in the heaven I learned about as a young Catholic boy.

Turning this discussion to politics it’s clear what we can expect.  Any conservative political party is on the right of the political spectrum and the socialists, liberals and communists occupy the sinistral left.  Now, isn’t that convenient?  Right is correct, left is just plain wrong, isn’t it?  Our language pre-conditions us to think about conservative (Republican in the US) parties as being right, as in better than those on the left.  Kevin O’Leary, that obnoxious and rude commentator on the CBC about business and finance has no doubt that he is right because he’s on the right.  After all, he represents the interests of business and finance, the natural elements of conservative thinking and of what C.B. Macpherson called possessive individualism.  After all, who can be against business success?  Our prosperity depends on it, or so the argument goes.  The poor are immobile, the walking dead, the wealthy have money to allow them mobility.  The poor are what’s ‘left,’ and they get what’s left when we’ve finished eating.   The wealthy always eat first and are always on the right path…don’t you know?