This is what I postulate is propelling Human Superficiality.
Ignorance and language must become more silent or risk exposing itself.
Women beat men in arguments nowadays, because men are stupider than ever before, feminized.
It’s best for them to shut their mouths and resort to hyper-masculinity: “Me. Big. Muscles. Hit. Other. Men.”
At least these fucking tools will have some worth to society. Anybody who pretends to be wise is going to be wiped out through the Battle of Ideas–and I am glad for it.
You’re trying to second guess something you don’t know. If we cannot justifiably state the meaning of any given word, then trying to use words (philosophy) to get around the problem is like using a bottle of shower gel to try to open a safe.
Yes, violence. First comes violence, then comes the justification in symbols.
Sexist claptrap.
Just look at the number of people living now who have no access to the internet.
Meaning is always practical.
WTF?
What are these reasons? How does one measure this fragmentation?
Exactly. The meaning of a word is its use in language.
The meaning isn’t ‘behind’ the word. Again, you’re slipping into easy, but hackneyed metaphors, instead of using one that actually say what you want them to.
It’s only subliminal if you don’t notice it - The Antagonist (while I’m not a fan of blogs, his is great)
None of this is subliminal.
The meaning is more likely to be accepted in a highly redundant phrase. No dispute there. I don’t see how this is an ‘enhancement’ of meaning.
Lol - I literally laughed out loud at what you just said
Lol - I did not laugh out loud at what you just said
The two are not ‘relatively the same’…
On the contrary, user of pointless nicknames, try asking the little girls what they were actually texting to one another.
And the point isn’t that you can’t say anything with a single word - of course you can. The point is that the word have that particular meaning is contingent on it not having a whole series of other meanings.
I know. Which makes it all the more odd that you’d use such an oft-repeated metaphor as ‘language is getting more fragmented’. Now, I hear this sort of thing all the time, but you genuinely seem to believe it, so I’ve actually bothered to stop and ask you what you mean by it. Needless to say, you have not so far been able to tell me.
I contend this is because you’re not sure what you mean, which is why you’ve hijacked a cliched metaphor and slammed it in there in the gap in your understanding. Now, everyone does this, so it’s no personal criticism of you. I certainly mean no offence by it.
Now you sound like a management consultant.
I’m beyond the metaphors you are using, and see them as overused, worn out phrases that could mean anything. Your inability to say what you mean by this metaphor, and claims that you’re ahead of ‘the game’ despite using a common and largely redundant phrase, speak volumes for your actual belief here. I’m sure you can guess what I mean, though I’m not going to actually say it because I don’t want to insult you.
It’s existed for years, and is used so frequently that you can’t even tell me what it means anymore. I’d hardly call it ‘new’.
No apology required, except for patronising me with this apology and missing the point entirely.
So it’s new and not redundant, but used by 100 million little ‘fucking’ girls?
I think you’re confused here.
I neither go with the flow nor fight only when necessary. Your imperatives here again resort to overused, worn out metaphors. Can you see how it’s a tendency in your argumentation to fall back on this rhetorical tactic when challenged? Again, this is by no means particular to you. I’ve seen thousands of people do it. Derrida wrote entire chapters about Kant doing it. Orwell wrote an entire political-linguistic essay decrying it.
To me, fragmentation means split up into smaller chunks. For something to get more fragmented, it has to split up into smaller chunks than its in already.
What is it with you and males/females?
Language being larger doesn’t mean it is more fragmented. I still haven’t a clue what you’re on about.
Fragments are not just about shortened words, smaller chunks. Its about statements made without full sentences.
Rocks Fly. That is enough for a sentence with a noun and verb.
But try this.
Two Worlds.
Here we have a suggestion or implication of meaning with wide variety of potential outcomes. However it is not clear and precise. Either way the fragment is moving in on language landscape.
We know that language can be reduced to on-off signals. If it weren’t possible, we wouldn’t be on the net. But there is more to language than continued reduction into simple acronyms. Whether Shakespeare or quantum notation, a symbol and all its modifiers (more symbols) provides greater explanatory capability than simple abbreviations.
While the valley girls can reduce their conversation to simple fragments, so too do they reduce their ability to express a complete thought. But perhaps that is because they have no use for complete thoughts…
The purpose of communicating in a complex language was originally to promote cohesion of action within a group. Then it also got co-opted into a bargaining medium for social (and sexual) contracts between individuals.
We mustn’t forget though that the words that come out of our mouths are different to the ones that come out of our fingers. I for example, as I have discovered recently in an experiment in recording posts rather than writing them, am much ‘cleverer’ in the written format, than the spoken. Different areas of the brain are involved.
But with speech comes a whole other bandwith of gesture, posture, intonation and stress that you just don’t get on the net, or on the phone. Perhaps, thus rendered, netspeak and sms are naturally limited - and this fragmentation is in reality not a new form of meaning, but a trimmed-down efficiency drive in sub-conscious response to these limitations.
Hence smilies for example. instant emotive contextualization.
ie: these days, most of what people say to eachother is obvious - “be there at so-so time” - “did you see such and such” etc. And being obvious and therefore increasingly intuitive, hardly needs to be said at all, let alone said well or eloquently.
Okay, maybe I’m doing you the injustice of stereotyping you simply from the feminized man thread, but there’s hell of a lot immovable object/irresistable force action going on there.
Anyway, you use language well, whaddya think about ‘new-speak’ S-8-r…?
How do you know what I don’t know? We can “justifiably” state the meaning of a given word. Philosophy looks through words to get to meaning…
Violence itself is a symbol S1. Actions are symbolic. A physical taunt carries a “connotation” without the word.
Join the club?
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What are these reasons? How does one measure this fragmentation?
[/quote]
By measuring trends in language you can see the trend towards fragmentation rather easily. People reduce sentences into abbreviations with the same meaning. For example: “Billy, will you please take the garbage outside and dump it into garbage can?” → “Billy–garbage!” The reason this is happening is because of how language is evolving. Like I said, more meaning (content) is packed into “smaller” words/sentences/phrases (context).
Do you know what [meaning] means???
I am not convinced. The word “I” does not have less meaning the more it appears in a Google search or throughout history … it has more. Language and conceptual knowledge correspond this way.
It’s subliminal if one person notices it while another person does not. It’s a matter of context.
The more humanity becomes aware of conceptual knowledge, the more words they pack into a single concept. The concept of [self] expands in five dimensions because of this. More words, symbols, and meanings get packed into a single concept (or word of reference).
The nickname has a point–I don’t have to type as much to convey my meaning…
The little girls are texting emotional conversations to each other. I don’t have to ask them to know what they are doing.
That’s not true–it depends on how well people understand the different meanings and can correlate them appropriately under given circumstances.
Cliched metaphors have their usages. I’m just making specific points here.
I think you’re confused about “redundancy”. I don’t even know why you brought that observation up in this conversation.
Which is what language is doing… “LOL” = “laugh out loud (funny)”
“LOL” and other abbreviations are practically words. My roommate’s brother actually says “lol” as a word. Will you come and tell him that it’s not a word. He sure acts like it’s one and I’m willing to bet that you’d lose that argument against anybody. Words are created inter-subjectively. Only two people are needed to convey meaning through “words”.
If something is unknowable, then you can’t know it.
Using other words, and as such deferring the meaning of the ‘given’ word onto those other words.
Words are not transparent. Again, you’re using outmoded metaphors.
Violence is symbolic. But dead people remain dead. You can’t undo violence.
Eh?
Meaningless and impractical. Doesn’t actually demonstrate the point you think it does.
People have always abbreviated. We have no reliable record of whether they do it more now or not.
Than when? And what equipment/method are you using to make this measurement?
Do you?
It may have a more complex meaning, but it’ll still carry less information.
Language is conceptual knowledge. There nothing without text.
It’s a matter of perception, not context. Or rather, everything is a matter of context, so it’s meaningless to point that out in any given situation.
How does one pack a word? I mean, it’s not like packing fudge.
The concept of self is a grammatical trick.
And how does this relate to your overall metaphor of fragmentation? My impression is that it’d tend towards the opposite. The law of increasing entropy, to my knowledge, doesn’t apply to metaphysical constructs like language.
No, because rather than actually observe specific details, you’d rather cast generalities about and pretend there’s no problem with your overall theory.
Regardless, they still need to differentiate between words for any given word to have meaning. We don’t even need Derrida for this, it’s all in Saussure.
You can’t make specific points with redundant metaphors, because they don’t carry enough information.
What do you think I mean by ‘redundancy’? I’ve even linked you to a page explaining the background theory quite clearly, which itself links to a copy of the original paper. Short of copying it all myself and posting it here, I don’t know what I could have done to make it clear what I meant by that word…
Language is also inventing new multisyllabic words of more than 10 letters. You read a scientific or technical manual recently?
So do friends of mine.
Where did I say it wasn’t a word?
And a network of differential signification.
Terrific.
More ‘abbreviation’ than ‘fragmentation’ then…? As I said a few posts back, but you denied?
Meaning isn’t intended, or expressed. It doesn’t come from your soul or your self. It comes from a network of differentiation held between people. There is no private language.
Our argument has become too fragmented, so let us try to backtrack to our original disagreement…
I say that language is becoming exponentially “fragmented” in relation to population growth. You disagree and say there is no “fragmentation”.
The metaphor we have both agreed upon concerning “fragmentation” is that it refers to “breaking apart (into smaller pieces)”.
The whole of language stays the same size (whatever that is) in this context, but there are more “lines” and “cracks” all about.
Here is my main point: the word “lol”
Originally, “LOL” was created in reference to three words “laugh out loud”. It was made into a popular internet acronym (in video games I believe), because instead of typing “that was funny I’m laughing out loud!!!”, internet users found it practical to type only the acronym to convey the original meaning “that was funny LOL!!!”. Now, the acronym was used for a long time with more and more frequency (becoming “redundant” as you would say). Because of its redundancy, it trended toward becoming a new and popular “word”. And people actually say “lol” now as if it were a real word. And it is! It is now one word.
Originally you had three words: “laugh out loud”
Now, you have one word: “lol!”
The three words were broken apart and meaning transfered to a smaller piece… Fragmentation.
Not really, I just dunno quite what you mean by ‘fragmentation’.
Okay.
Language has a size?
Popular, yes. ‘New’, not at all. A highly redundant word cannot become new.
Indeed, an abbreviation. As it always was.
Well done, you’ve proven that abbreviation is possible in language.
Meaning isn’t held by individual words, as I’ve been explaining all along. I think it’s fair to say I’ve got as much explanation out of you as I’m going to, so unless you’ve got something new to add, we should probably leave it there.
instant emotive contextualization.