Re: Politics and the Constructed Language

On Dec 15, 2007 2:56 PM, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
> I should note I haven't read Orwell's essay (or at least no more
> of it than you quoted).  Our initial poster might have provided
> us with a link.
Sorry. It's easily googled and when I read it I just took the first
ghit. Since I don't know that that's the best one to refer to (e.g.
perhaps it's missing illustrations or formatting?), I didn't include
the link.

> JQ:
> <<
> The only
> real difference is that if you want to obfuscate and be vague in
> Ithkuil,
> you have to do it overtly rather than covertly.
>  >>
>
> I suppose this is an important difference.  You can be intentionally
> vague in English, but if one doesn't know the cues, one won't be
> able to see how it's done.  In Ithkuil, even if you don't understand
> the meaning, one should be able to tell that the speaker/writer is
> intentionally being vague (i.e., this can't be hidden), and so they'll
> be able to say with certainty that they're a jerk, whereas in English,
> it'd be a guess, at best.
I'm inclined to strongly agree here.

IME, obfuscation and manipulation is a matter of misdirection; it
really does have to be covert to work well.

A somewhat contentious point where this is relevant in modern
cog.ling. research is whether framing has a strong biasing or priming
effect *even if the listener is consciously aware of the framings
being used*. Frankly, I don't know whether this has been answered
well; I've only seen research about unconscious priming, which seems
to work pretty well. (John & other cognitive linguists in the audience
- do you know anything on this?)

In Ithkuil/Ilaksh - or in any other language that tries to address
this, or in the hypothetical - how obvious is it what frames someone
is using (e.g. as a classic example, "pro-life" vs "anti-choice" as
two ways to frame the "same" position), how well they match factually,
etc?

Could it be made equally obvious and explicit when someone chooses to
frame something one way vs another, so that it's cognitively salient
(rather than stealthed) when listening to the message?

My guess is that if Ithkuil does make all of this necessarily explicit
- including vagueness - then it may well fit.

However, I would wonder whether this might be vulnerable to language
change via laziness, where people would simply start (as a cultural
thing) *defaulting* to the vague versions, in which case it would
become unremarkable. Perhaps speakers would just not think enough to
fully specify everything they can, and certain grammaticalizable
features will start to drop?

Similar example: If I say that I and my partner went to a holiday
party, I am necessarily either a) covertly saying that I am in a
non-heterosexual relationship, or b) covertly saying that I support
such. "Partner" just isn't a neutral term to use pragmatically, even
though semantically it is.

I'm not sure whether this is possible to prevent, nor what the
analogous natlang trends are here.

John, any thoughts there? How much have you attempted to engineer
language change in Ithkuil or Ilaksh (or, as it were, "pre-wash" the
languages)?

Thanks,
- Sai

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