Re: Reactions to the secret vice (was: Steg's wonderful sig.)

Dan Sulani wrote:

>     You know, I can see how a person might term conlanging
> as arrogance. In our discussions of the nuts and bolts (and
> phonemes and morphemes) of lang and communication,
> we tend to forget that language also is a shared _belief_
> system.
>     One wouldn't go into a community of staunch religious
> fundamentalists and happily proclaim that one belongs to
> a group of people that finds fun in making up all sorts
> of new religions, some of which may be wild and wierd!
> "Arrogant"  might be the _least_ thing said about you!
I think this is precisely how the average linguist looks upon
what we do when we proclaim it to them.  With, as you say,
some justification.  And the average historical linguist and
philologist, with whom I deal every day in my day job.

>     Let's not forget that most people _are_ language
> fundamentalists! One's lang is who one is (and who one
> _isn't_!) At some level, most people aren't aware of the lang they
> speak --- they just speak; it is the natural truth. (Those
> who are multilingual may switch from system to system
> but each system is its own truth.) I can see it as arrogance
> in the extreme to try to come up with a new truth," since the
> only real one already exists (and _I_ speak it!)". And
> since it thus can't be done, it's even foolish to try!
>     In other words, when describing what we do to non-conlangers,
> I think that language's social and identity functions should
> be taken into account as well as the grammar and
> communication aspects.
>     (Question: Sally, does your friend read any fantasy or
> science fiction literature? Or does it have to be about
> "real" people? If real people, does he read about them
> in other cultures and times, or must they be only about
> the culture he knows? Some people won't read literature
> outside their belief system for similar reasons as above.
Okay.  That in itself is a little harsh.  Some of our fiercest critics
come from the "fantasy crowd," Dan.  I told everybody the story
of my trip to Albacon where a fellow writer calmly denounced the
whole obsession of language invention as completely uninteresting
and wasteful.  Why invent languages down to the very participle when
you could be spending that time writing about your fantasy worlds in
exquisite novels that millions of people could understand and would
earn you money?  YOu know, she's got a point.  I've pondered it.

But the charge of arrogance came not from a novelist, but a medievalist.
He's a friend and a very fine scholar.  He's from Britain, and he has
an eloquent tendency towards skepticism which he expresses openly
and joshingly.  He's a very VERY fine Anglo-Saxonist, but I don't
know what he reads for pleasure.  I don't know him that well.  He
is not at all unimaginative; he just expresses that imagination in
respected scholarly ways, and I expect he loves to read a good mystery
or fantasy novel with the best of us.  But his response was the unique
one; no one else thought it was "arrogant"; just uncool and laughable.
My friend studies dead languages, as do I, and I think he thinks that
to be professional one should give one's major attention to the field--
that is, to the constant refinement of Latin, Old English, and German
philology in order to maintain his standing and his ability to teach.
As well as keeping updated in current criticism in Old English.  He
has often admired my ecclecticism and open-mindedness, and I have
often admired his concentration and publication credits.  He has a
point,
and I am very loath to reveal that I engage in this activity because
it is precisely the "why aren't you learning or MAINTAINING real
languages"
that could be leveled at someone like myself who is a professor by day
and a conlanger by night.  I have to be careful, and I work extra hard,
which is I disappear sometimes for months, and why I write to you all
under
a nom de plume.  I'm not terribly famous as a scholar, but I do have to
wear two hats as it were.  Anglo-Saxonists can be notoriously
conservative and focussed--and openly critical of anyone who rocks
the boat or tries to do anything as strange as this for any concentrated
length of time.  Popular culturalists, however, and the whole crowd
of postmodernists of which my department is filled, would see this as
immensely exciting... so long as I theorized it and didn't really DO it.
Whether or not Eco has made up any languages, he has chosen not to
reveal it
to the world at large.  One of our linguistics professors, however, is
very open to the idea!  And that's because he has a conlang student!
Between his student and me, he has to be open-minded!  <GGGG>

But I would hope that the rest of us can also be open-minded of our
skeptics and our critics.  My friend thinks "language" and, like me,
he is immediately put in mind of years and years of learning how proto-
Germanic turned into Old English, Old High German, Old Norse, etc. etc.
And all that ghastly Latin!  (pace, Ray.  I never liked it!!!  Never!
Individual passages in Latin, individual authors, but never in toto)
He is hyper-aware of the building blocks of language and language
change.  And language dimension.  I don't fault him at all.  I think
I would find myself a little silly if I heard me confiding in me about
this.  <G>  Not everybody has to drop to their knees in amazement and
joy when they hear we are doing something like this.  At the same time,
it galls me when I hear criticism of it.  Arm chair psychologists
indeed!

Sally
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SALLY CAVES
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Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
"The gods have retractible claws."
                                from _The Gospel of Bastet_
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