Re: Lighting Some Flames: Towards conlang artistry

Tell me why I should want Conlanging to become (considered as) a serious
art.

                                                 Andreas

Jesse Bangs wrote:
>To All Who Care About Conlanging:
>
>The conlang community, both on this list and off, has been growing
>steadily in the past several years, and it has just gotten another big
>burst of growth from the release of the LOTR movies in the U.S.  We now
>have a famous, visible patriarch in the person of JRR Tolkien, at least
>one professional member, Mark Okrand [sp?].  Quenya and Klingon have
>entered the common parlance as names of languages, and they have a
>growing body of L2 speakers, a subculture, and media presence.  Add to
>this the hundreds of conlang websites that may be found in the Internet
>and the presence of this community itself, and it seems that conlanging
>may be on the verge of breaking into mainstream awareness and acceptance.
>  The "secret vice" has been out of the closet for a while, and it may
>soon be into the limelight.
>
>Yet there are still major obstacles to conlanging's acceptance as an art
>form, both within the community of conlangers and without.  The obstacles
>from without include prejudices against conlangs as real languages, the
>"nerdy" perception that conlangers have (and often cherish), and distrust
>from the linguistic community.  These problems have been addressed and
>rebutted before, so I won't do it again here.  Only time may remove all
>of those problems.  However, the obstacles from conlangers themselves are
>greater, and can be addressed immediately.  Of these problems, the one
>that I wish to address here is the lack of a critical perspective within
>the conlang community.
>
>It should not need to be proved that some art is better than others.  If
>we as conlangers wish to gain acceptance for our art, then we need to
>acknowledge this and allow for the judgement that some conlangs are
>better than others.  We need a serious body of *conlang criticism*.
>Currently, this is almost entirely lacking on the Conlang list.  When
>someone posts texts or grammatical sketches, the responses are generally
>entirely congratulatory, or they are concerned only with correcting
>technical errors or confusions within the grammar.  Often there are no
>responses at all.  While technical accuracy and consistency are
>important, it's outrageous that this is where our critique stops.  We
>need to move beyond the foundation of technical accuracy and allow for
>the artistic analysis of our conlangs.
>
>Of course the objection is "by what criteria?"  It's clear that we can't
>all agree on one style of phonetic beauty, much less on which syntax,
>morphology, or vocabulary is best.  But this is, in fact, exactly what we
>expect.  The study of the history of art, music, or literature is a long
>series of redefinitions of what is proper, what is better, and a constant
>critical re-evaluation of everything that's gone before.  This
>chronological tension is an essential part of the formation of
>literatures and arts, and if conlanging is to be an art instead of a
>hobby, then it must also expect this.  The important thing is that
>conlanging start to have a critical apparatus within which the artistic
>merits of conlangs can be evaluated and where different schools of
>thought can define and defend themselves.
>
>The thing to do, then, seems to be to start such a school, and simply get
>down to the business of evaluating conlangs as works of art.  I therefore
>announce the founding of the Naturalist school of conlanging, which
>regards the following three things as values:
>   *  Naturalness, as the name implies.  We prefer languages that resemble
>natural languages, that could fool a linguist examining them into
>thinking that they actually existed somewhere on the globe.  Auxlangs and
>philosophical langs are anathema because their very nature goes against
>this value.
>   *  Complexity and completeness.  No natural language is completely
>regular or completely simple, so neither will our languages.
>Furthermore, we seek to describe and develop our languages as completely
>as possible.  Those who make dozens of half-finished sketches are
>creating the equivalent of commercial jingles.  We seek to create
>symphonies.
>   *  Creativity, defined as difference from your native language.  If
>your native language is Chinese, your target should be Ancient Greek.  If
>your native language is English, your target is Dyirbal (tonal, ergative
>Australian language).  Those who speak Italian and are only interested in
>Romance-style conlangs earn no respect in this area.  Those that seek to
>challenge themselves and their learners are applauded.
>
>Of course this won't be popular with everyone, especially not when I
>start telling people why their conlangs suck.  Why should it?  If you
>disagree with me, form your own school.  But by all means, we have to
>start allowing for the critical analysis of conlangs to make them into an
>actual art form.  As a side effect of this, we also have to start taking
>each others conlangs seriously--putting in the time to understand and
>evaluate them.  Like everyone else on this list, my time is limited and I
>can hardly take the time to look at every conlang that comes my way.  But
>I intend to start taking time to look closely at the conlangs of others
>and myself and seeing how well they hold up to the Naturalist values.  I
>also intend to post my critiques to the list.  Hopefully, we're mature
>enough (as individuals and as a community) to take and give criticism
>without resorting to whining and hurt feelings.  And once again, if you
>don't like it form your own school.
>
>Responses, comments, counter-flames?
>
>
>Jesse S. Bangs     Pelíran
>jaspax@ juno.com
>"Skin and tragedy always attract a crowd."
>     --Pedro the Lion



_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com