Category Archives: language

Hit by a Hard Word [Free Verse]

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How is being hit by a hard word
 different from being hit by 
  a brick or a bat?

To burn, the spark of a hard word
  must find some kindling inside
   the recipient, elsewise it can't ignite. 

If someone points at me and screams:

"YOU ARE SUBPAR AT ALGEBRA!"

I remain unwounded.

[I'd like to say that it doesn't burn
  simply because it's true, 
   but the truth or falsity of hard words 
   is -- perhaps sadly -- not a major
   ignition factor.

 The kindling is a thing that sits inside one --
  something that makes one care,
   probably a complex mélange of factors.

 The truth of hard words? 
   That is an outside factor.]

Even if I were to discover that,
  to the person who issued the insult,
   there is no greater disparagement 
   than to cast aspersions upon a 
   person's middle school-level
   mathematics competency, 

I would remain unwounded. 

If I were to feel any sort of way
  about uncovering that knowledge,
   it would be to feel sort of bad 
   for the person who issued the taunt.

Now, how to burnproof one's soul,
  that is the question?

Orwell’s Politics and the English Language

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Politics and the English LanguagePolitics and the English Language by George Orwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available online at The Orwell Foundation

In this essay, Orwell decries a scourge of weak writing in the English language, writing marked by cliched phrases, imprecise descriptors, meaningless words, and pretension. In short, he tells us that writing is becoming simultaneously more verbose and less meaningful.

While the essay isn’t as fun to read as George Carlin’s rants on the same subject, it’s a clear and well-organized discussion of this flaw. Orwell presents the problem, offering examples of random unreadable passages and discussion of where each goes awry. He also contrasts a clear and concise Biblical passage with how its message would sound translated into this corrupt modern form of the language. (That’s the most comedic portion of the essay.) Next, Orwell offers writers simple questions they might apply to making their writing less bloated and more impactful. The key insight of the essay is that thought corrupts language, but language also corrupts thought.

The essay is almost eighty years old, but the problem persists — particularly among politicians, a class of people who love to both sound impressive but without saying anything definitive, anything that might pin them down. That said, since Orwell we’ve developed new linguistic afflictions unique to the internet age, and the essay could probably use updating. Still, it’s an excellent place to start one’s reflection on what’s going wrong in the English language.

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Metaphor & Misnomer [Free Verse]

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"in the trenches"

what a circuit 
 that phrase has taken:

from the Western Front 
 of World War I, where the trenches 
 were cold, claustrophobic places
 of mud and creeping mustard gas;
 harbor & prison for shell-shocked
 souls at wit's end

to become used by businesspeople &
 politicians to describe metaphorical fights...

but there are no metaphorical fights,
 they should be called metaphorical games

games have winners & losers,
 but not the living & the dead
 & the dying & the disabled &
 the permanently disturbed

it feels like a frivolous bit
 of linguistic creep as fighters
 now stand on cold, wet feet 
 in muddy trenches
 in Eastern Ukraine

talk of salespeople or 
 grassroots political organizers
 as "in the trenches" 
 misses the point that everyone
 in trenches is a soldier --
 be they a salesperson
 in the metaphorical "trenches"
 of calmer days.

BOOK REVIEW: The Information by James Gleick

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The Information: A History, a Theory, a FloodThe Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Information is one of those topics that remains obscure not because it’s rare or hidden, but because it’s everywhere and the term is used for so many purposes it’s not thought of cohesively. It might seem like a book on this topic would be hopelessly boring by virtue of the fundamental meta-ness of the material. Instead, Gleick had a vast sea of topics and stories involving intense stakes for humanity from which to choose, e.g.: how did we learn to communicate and advance said capability until it was arguably the most important feature of our species, by what instructions are people “assembled,” might the most fundamental layer of reality be informational, and – in recent decades — will our species drown in flood of cheap information?

Given the vast sprawl of the subject matter, organization becomes a crucial question. In a sense the book is chronological, presenting humanity’s experience with information in more or less the order we came to think about the subject. I think this was a wise move as it starts from what most people think of when they think of information – i.e. language and its communication. That makes it easier to wrap one’s head around what comes later, and to see the conceptual commonalities. This approach might seem self-evident, but an argument could be made for starting with information as the word is used in Physics (as addressed in Ch. 7 – 9,) an argument that that approach is more fundamental and generically applicable, and while it might be both of those things, it wouldn’t be as easily intuitively grasped.

I found this book to be fascinating and easily followed — even though it covers some conceptually challenging topics, it does so in an approachable manner. It is over a decade old, but holds up well – though I think there is much more to say these days about the detrimental effects of information overload, a topic discussed at the end of the book. I recommend it for nonfiction readers.

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BOOK REVIEW: Introducing Semiotics: A Graphic Guide by Paul Cobley

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Introducing Semiotics: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...)Introducing Semiotics: A Graphic Guide by Paul Cobley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Semiotics is the study of how symbols and signs are used to represent various things and actions in language and communication. This brief guide traces the subject from its origins with Saussure and Pierce (late 19th century) to the present day. It’s not a well-known discipline and overlaps with others (e.g. information science, linguistics, etc.) so as to further obscure it’s boundaries. It’s generally considered a sub-discipline of philosophy.

I’ve read several titles in this series. This one had the fewest and longest chapters – i.e. most of these books have sections that are only a page or two long, but here the sections were generally several pages long. The book looks at differences between American and Soviet approaches as well as discussing the Prague School and the influence of prominent philosophers on the subject.

I felt that I learned something about this obscure subject, though – I must admit – knowing so little of it, I can’t say that I would have recognized if there were any glaring oversights or mistakes in the book. As should be expected of such a concise introductory guide, it’s readable and not difficult to follow. However, it can be dry; though I suspect that’s difficult to avoid, given the subject matter.


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BOOK REVIEW: Introducing Wittgenstein: A Graphic Guide by John Heaton

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Introducing Wittgenstein: A Graphic GuideIntroducing Wittgenstein: A Graphic Guide by John Heaton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

This concise guide offers a sketch of the life of the early twentieth century philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, focusing on the evolution of his philosophical thought. As with other volumes in the series, it begins with biographical background of ancestry and youth before turning its focus to the ideas for which the subject gained fame, occasionally shifting back to more biographical focus to discuss impactful moments from his life. Wittgenstein served in World War I and had a somewhat strange academic career.

Wittgenstein had his hands in a lot of pots, studying the philosophy of logic, ethics, science, mathematics, language, and the mind. The book provides brief summaries of key ideas such as language games, family resemblances (as applied to groupings other than families,) philosophy as a form of therapy, the ubiquity of tautology in logic, the illusion of self, etc. In many cases, the ideas cut across neat boundaries as where questions of language, perception, and the nature of the self may overlap. I found I got the most out of Wittgenstein’s thinking on language and its limits. While some of the ideas were strange, others were illuminating.

This book provides a fine guide for the neophyte looking to be introduced to Wittgenstein’s work. Philosophers will likely find it lacking in depth, but few will find it too complicated or arcane. If you wish to learn more about the life and philosophy of Wittgenstein, it’s worth checking out.


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POEM: Mundane Magic

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The girl cast an incantation —
and as her words bore fruit —
they burned her as a witch.

-Blaming the woman
-Blaming her magic
-Blaming a Devil,

But granting amnesty to the words.

What human endeavor is unswayed
by the force of words?

What marauding army was sent off
without a flurry of furious words?

How many Generals have tried
to match the grace of the St. Crispin’s Day Speech?
And though they fail,
their words aren’t without kinetic effect.

What lost cause found victory in words
spewed by a red-faced coach
in a half-time locker-room?

Hasn’t the stab of careless words
been felt more deeply than a dagger?
— splitting up couples, if not Empires.

It may be true that words don’t kill people,
that people kill people,
but when did anyone ever get lethally worked up
in the absence of a well-sequenced string of words?

POEM: Burdened Words

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Some words are words; some words are garbage trucks.
They carry steaming piles of dumpster lumps,
and all the rained refuse the dim can chuck.
Becoming too laden to make the Dump.

 

And that poor word is broken down in funk.

Literally: the Dumbest Poem Ever

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He held half-baked ideas in
his twice-baked brain.

He’d grab his umbrella when they
shouted, “Make it rain!”

–the umbrella he should have left for a
friend stuck home under the weather.

But his glasses were bent out of shape, and
he was hell-bent for leather

So, he couldn’t find his coat, nor gloves,
nor ass-less chaps.

And, thus, was running better late
than never — perhaps.

He couldn’t afford to miss the boat
that had sailed, my friend.

He needed his job, ’cause a penny
earned was one he’d spend.

When told he was skating on thin ice,
he maxxed out the AC.

All his blessings were disguised too
well for him to see.

He’d thought he was okay when told
he had stiff competition.

–the nuns taught him to fix that with six
Hail Marys and an Act of Contrition.

But they said his co-workers were
really on the ball.

He’d have gotten a Pilates chair,
but was afraid to fall.

When he heard the new guy was up-and-coming,
he got up and left.

He wanted to be thick as thieves so he
went out for a supply closet theft.

POEM: Divining Meaning

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Imagine standing on the train platform,

listening to the distant approaching train,

and you hear a voice say —

unprovoked —

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to shove you.”

I predict you would take two steps back before you try to divine meaning.

And when that speaker objects, saying,

“Brother, you misheard me. I said I’m NOT going to shove you in front of the train.”

He’ll not have improved his credibility through clarity of negation,

especially if he gently lays a fraternal hand upon your shoulder.

It’s like being told to not think of a white bear.

An inseparable seed of murder is sewn into those words.