because the stakes are so small
Thursday, 22 November 2007 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtExtemporaneous Maxim For The Day: The only thing more depressing than contemplating having to leave academia is contemplating having to stay in it. Today was interminably infested by a staff meeting followed by full post-exam board meeting. These are professional English academics. What they can do to simple communication is quite astounding: adumbration, distraction, obfuscation, indecision. Also drawling, kvetching, and fainting in coils.
I am reminded, in fact, forcibly of a recent Language Log post by Geoff Pullum, which gave me one of those small, perfect moments of recognition and resonance. I quote at length, because I'm too enervated by academia either to think up or to type anything original:
The darned Discworld character quiz is vascillating between nominating me as Havelock Vetinari and Nanny Ogg. Am miffed. What about my inner Granny Weatherwax, she asks plaintively??
Last Night I Dreamed: I met Ursula Le Guin at a signing in a bookstore somewhere. She most gratifyingly knew who I was, which she explained was because of the extremely small size of the sf critical community in South Africa. Later we took her out for ice-creams, finding the car in the underground parking lot with, for some reason, the Bastard Ex-Boyfriend From Hell at the wheel.
I am reminded, in fact, forcibly of a recent Language Log post by Geoff Pullum, which gave me one of those small, perfect moments of recognition and resonance. I quote at length, because I'm too enervated by academia either to think up or to type anything original:
You know, just between you and me, I sometimes worry that there is a naive view loose out there ... that language has something to do with purposes of efficiently conveying information from a speaker to a hearer. What a load of nonsense. I'm sorry, I don't want to sound cynical and jaded, but language is not for informing. Language is for accusing, adumbrating, attacking, attracting, blustering, bossing, bullying, burbling, challenging, concealing, confusing, deceiving, defending, defocusing, deluding, denying, detracting, discomfiting, discouraging, dissembling, distracting, embarassing, embellishing, encouraging, enticing, evading, flattering, hinting, humiliating, insulting, interrogating, intimidating, inveigling, muddling, musing, needling, obfuscating, obscuring, persuading, protecting, rebutting, retorting, ridiculing, scaring, seducing, stroking, wondering, ... Oh, you fools who think languages are vehicles for permitting a person who is aware of some fact to convey it clearly and accurately to some other person. You simply have no idea.He forgets the most important thing. Language is for playing with.
The darned Discworld character quiz is vascillating between nominating me as Havelock Vetinari and Nanny Ogg. Am miffed. What about my inner Granny Weatherwax, she asks plaintively??
Last Night I Dreamed: I met Ursula Le Guin at a signing in a bookstore somewhere. She most gratifyingly knew who I was, which she explained was because of the extremely small size of the sf critical community in South Africa. Later we took her out for ice-creams, finding the car in the underground parking lot with, for some reason, the Bastard Ex-Boyfriend From Hell at the wheel.
