Re: "Coming out" about conlanging to people in Academia [was Re:Caryatic]

"Coming Out" is what I had in mind when I made the
radio interview.  As I am making my current academic
project a study of inventing languages, I will have to
decide whether I am an ethnographer "outside of" or
"inside of" the phenomenon.  It will be curious to
expose myself next semester if I decide to do a
colloquium talk.  My first academic exposures have
been at small conferences: my recent talk was at the
Medieval Institute, where it was received with
excitement and puzzlement.  "But what's the point?"
asked someone.  "Why do it?"  "For creative
satisfaction?"  I said.  "For the love of syllable painting?"
One uninhibited woman in the audience decided to
mimic what she thought was a "made up language":
quixhphtlatphhhhh! she said.  "Why do you think a
made-up language wouldn't sound human?" I asked
her.  "Or beautiful?"

I told you guys a year or so ago about another academic
response:  "how arrogant!"   A department colleague
did not want to believe that I was doing anything as
complicated as Tolkien.  How could I be like Tolkien?
There must be some flaw.   My more eccentric department
colleague loved the idea, and quoted me passages from
James Joyce.  Only my linguist friends at the UR have
been open to the idea.  You may recall Doug
Ball who was briefly on CONLANG.  I shared a
private tutorial with a linguistics professor in which
Doug expanded his language Skerre.  I'd love to teach
a class on the invention of languages, and since we have
inter-department clusters, here, we could cross-list it
with English and Linguistics.  YES!

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://moby.curtin.eud.au/~ausstud/mc/0003/languages.html

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