language
Spike and spon
The pernicious issue with pangrams
The language itself has been weaponized
It’s quite difficult, to fight back against the seeming wisdom of axiomatic “truths,” when the language itself has been weaponized through the power of pattern. Through rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, and consonance.
The last time I was in England was at the invitation of Nomensa, to give a talk at a conference wherein I encouraged the audience to discard an axiom that I feel has done users of the English language more harm than good through endless and glib repetitions.
Like “Curiosity Killed The Cat,” “You Are Not Your User” sounds so good that we keep on saying it, without appreciating what we’re reifying through repetition. The pleasure of repetition, the pleasure of pattern matching, the pleasingness of Kuh Kuh Kuh consonants on the one hand, and of the round vowelly Yuh Yuh Yuh on the other make these things we say seem true because they sound and feel so good to say.
The fire of oak logs
The fire of oak logs which burned day and night for six months became the focal point of our family life.
...It is inevitable that the English word "home" cannot be translated directly into French. The nearest equivalent in French is the word foyer, the hearth.
Nominalization
The English language provides bad writers with a dangerous weapon called nominalization: making something into a noun.
Instead of affirming an idea, you effect its affirmation; rather than postponing something, you implement a postponement.
"Comprehension checks were used as exclusion criteria” would be better said as “we excluded people who failed to understand the instructions.”
“There is not any anticipation there will be a cancellation” would be better as “I don’t anticipate that I will have to cancel.”
Zombie sounds, unlike the verbs whose bodies they snatched, can shamble around without subjects. That is what they have in common with the passive constructions that also bog down these examples.
The arbitrariness of the sign
A key difference between verbal language and the modernist ideal of a visual “language” is the arbitrariness of a verbal sign, which has no natural, inherent relationship to the concept it represents. The sound of the word “horse”, for example, does not innately resemble the concept of a horse. Ferdinand de Saussure called this arbitrariness the fundamental feature of the verbal sign. The meaning of a sign is generated by its relationship to other signs in the language: the sign’s legibility lies in its difference from other signs.
The demand of a new word
Why are these phonosemantic classes enough, and we need neither more nor less? Why are these consonants enough, and we need neither more nor less? What determines the need for a new word? How is this demand ‘felt’ by a language? How did the metabolic pathways of American English recognize that ‘jerk’ and ‘twerp’ and ‘punk’ and ‘nitwit’ and ‘dork’ and ‘ass’ and ‘goon’ and ‘twit’ and ‘dodo’ and ‘bum’ and ‘nerd’ and ‘dunce’ and ‘turd’ and ‘boob’ and ‘chump’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘bastard’ and ‘prude’ and so on and so forth simply were not equal to the task? We had to add ‘turkey’ and ‘squirrel’ as well?
Scooting over
There is at this point no evidence that acquired characteristics can be inherited. It is held that all changes to a genome are random, and cannot be subject to any higher principle. However, when a word is used in a new context, as it is whenever we say something new, a new sense is permitted. This does affect the phonosemantic structure, the linguistic DNA. Words in the vicinity of this word ‘scoot over’ to make room and allow themselves to be influenced by its philosophy. The language itself is now different.
We must go with them
"You cannot make what you want to make, but what the material permits you to make. You cannot make out of marble what you would make out of wood, or out of wood what you would make out of stone. Each material has its own life, and one cannot without punishment destroy a living material to make a dumb senseless thing. That is, we must not try to make our materials speak our language, we must go with them to the point where others will understand their language."
— Constantin Brancusi
The receiving end
At times it helps to rephrase an observation in line with a perspective from the receiving end of technology. When my colleagues in the field of cold-water engineering speak of "ice-infested waters", I am tempted to think of "rig-infested oceans". Language is a fine barometer of values and priorities. As such it deserves careful attention.
The language of art
Everything points to the conclusion that the phrase 'the language of art' is more than a loose metaphor, that even to describe the visible world in images we need a developed system of schemata.
You're Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary
An Essay by James SomersBook from the Ground: From Point to Point
A Novel by Bing Xu- z-z-z
In Defense of Browsing
An Essay by Leanne ShaptonThe feeling of fortuitous gratitude at coming across unexpected information is something most of us who’ve done any research, have experienced — that kismet of finding the perfect book, one spine away from the one that was sought. In the field of art and image research, this sparking of transmission, of sequence and connection, happens on a subconscious level.
…Why is the vernacular image still being dismissed as ephemera? Why is its study not being prioritized? All languages are alive, but visual language is galactic. Keywords are not eyeballs, and creating rutted pathways to follow is the antithesis of study. A century of visual language, knowledge, and connectivity is marching toward a narrow, parsimonious basement of nomenclature. The NYPL takes a step backward if it models its shelves and research on a search engine. Spontaneity is learning. Browsing is research.
There Is No Word
A Poem by Tony Hoaglandwhat I already am thinking about
is my gratitude for language—
how it will stretch just so much and no farther;how there are some holes it will not cover up;
how it will move, if not inside, then
around the circumference of almost anything—how, over the years, it has given me
back all the hours and days, all the
plodding love and faith, all themisunderstandings and secrets
I have willingly poured into it.Idiolect
A DefinitionIdiolect is an individual's unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
An idiolect is the variety of language unique to an individual. This differs from a dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among a group of people.
Tortured phrases
An Article by Holly ElseIn April 2021, a series of strange phrases in journal articles piqued the interest of a group of computer scientists. The researchers could not understand why researchers would use the terms ‘counterfeit consciousness’, ‘profound neural organization’ and ‘colossal information’ in place of the more widely recognized terms ‘artificial intelligence’, ‘deep neural network’ and ‘big data’.
Further investigation revealed that these strange terms — which they dub “tortured phrases” — are probably the result of automated translation or software that attempts to disguise plagiarism. And they seem to be rife in computer-science papers.
Poison sniffers
An Article by Austin KleonChristopher Johnson says “prescriptivists” or “Cute Curmudgeons” — people who are interested in only policing usage and grammar rules — are “linguistic poison sniffers.” They turn language into “a source of potential embarrassment rather than pleasure.”
Johnson sees his job as getting people to love and appreciate language by being curious about and paying attention to “what makes language delicious.”
This reminded of Olivia Laing’s distinction between identifying poison and finding nourishment.
Everywhere you look these days, there are lots of poison sniffers, but very few cooking a delicious meal…
What happened when I stopped using Emojis
An Article by Clo S.In March 2021, I went through a fun self-imposed experiment: no emoji for 2 weeks. Not on social media, not in private messages, not even as Slack or Discord reactions. No emoticon either: the goal was to communicate without illustrations, only with words. I did a semi-rigorous (a.k.a. half-assed) diary study, taking notes on my feelings and behaviour.
What 80% Comprehension Feels Like
An ArticleOne of the major principles of extensive reading is that if a learner can comprehend material at 98% comprehension, she will acquire new words in context, in a painless, enjoyable way. But what is 98% comprehension?
The Nature of Order
Levels of Scale
Scale refers to how we perceive the size of an element or space relative to other forms around it. All things – a tea cup, a building, language, entire eco-systems – consist of smaller components. It is the relationship of the smaller elements which determines the character and degree of life of the whole.
Objects which contain a high degree of life tend to contain a beautiful range of scales within, which exist at a series of well-marked intervals and have clearly recognizable jumps between them. To have good levels of scale, it is extremely important that the jumps between different scales of centers not be too great or too small.
Strong Centers
The idea of a center is at the heart of all that creates life within an object. But rather than the traditional view of an isolated geometry in space, a true center is defined not only by its internal cohesion, but by its relation to context. A strong center can only occur when other centers are intensifying it.
Like levels of scale, the concept of strong centers is recursive. In something which is alive, a strong center is made of many other strong centers, at different levels, which in turn make us aware of the whole they compose.
Boundaries
The articulation of a form depends to a great degree on how its surfaces are defined and meet at edges. The effect of a strong boundary is twofold: First, it focuses attention on the center, further intensifying it; and second, the boundary unites the center which it surrounds with what is beyond.
For the boundary to accomplish both of these tasks – to separate and to unite – it must have a degree of presence as strong as the center which it bounds.
Alternating Repetition
The principle of repetition orders recurring elements in a composition according to their proximity to one another, and by the visual characteristics they share. Elements need not be perfectly identical to be grouped in a repetitive fashion; they must merely share a common trait of size, shape, or detail characteristics allowing each element to be individually unique, yet belong to the same family.
When the repetition within a group of elements occurs parallel on a number of different levels, an alternating rhythm of centers forms, one series of centers intensifying the other.
Positive Space
Positive space refers to shaped space. Where an element occurs in space, the element not only exists with its own shape, but it also acts to define the shape of the space around it. For something to be whole, both the element itself and the space around it must engage one another, each intensifying the other. When this occurs, every single part of space has positive shape as a center – there are no amorphous, meaningless leftovers.
Every shape should be a strong center in itself, which is in turn made up of other, smaller centers.
Good Shape
Shape is the principal identifying characteristic of form, resulting from the specific configuration of a form’s surfaces and edges. Good shape happens when the surfaces and edges of a form have strong centers in every part of themselves.
A good shape, even if complex, can usually be broken down easily into more simple shapes. A good shape tends to contain a high degree of internal symmetries, an overall bilateral symmetry, and a well-marked center. The good shape also creates positive space around it, is very strongly distinct from what surrounds it, and has a feeling of being closed and complete.
Local Symmetries
Symmetry, or the balanced distribution of equivalent forms or spaces about a common line or point, can organize elements in architecture in two ways: an entire organization can be made symmetrical, or a symmetrical condition can occur in only a portion of the building or object, at any scale. The latter case is what we refer to as local symmetry.
Overall symmetry in an object tends to look mechanical and lifeless, usually due to the fact that local symmetries are absent within the overall form. However, when there are local symmetries, centers tend to form and strengthen the whole.
Deep Interlock
Forms which have a high degree of life tend to contain some type of interlock – a “hooking into” their surroundings – or an ambiguity between element and context, either case creating a zone belonging to both the form and to its surroundings, making it difficult to disentangle the two.
The interlock, or ambiguity, strengthens the centers on either side, which are intensified by the new center formed between the two.
Contrast
Works of art which have great life often have intense contrast within: rough/smooth, solid/void, loud/silent, empty/full. It is the difference between opposites which gives birth to something. Contrast is what often gives other principles their degree of life – the intensity of the boundary, the markedness of the alternating repetition.
Contrast strengthens centers by making each a deeper entity of itself, and thereby giving deeper meaning to both. It is, at its simplest, what allows us to differentiate. But meaningless contrast remains meaningless. It is only when centers are actively, mutually, and meaningfully composed that it acts to deepen the whole.
Graded Variation
Gradients must arise simply because in the natural world, things vary in size, spacing, intensity, and character. All living things tend to have a certain softness. One quality changes slowly, not suddenly, across space to become another.
In something which has life, throughout the whole there are graded fields of variation, often moving from the center to the boundary or vice-versa. We are able to read the character of a larger center often because of the gradation of smaller centers across the larger form.
Roughness
Roughness is the odd shape, the quick brush stroke, the irregular column size or spacing, the change in pattern at the corner – it is adjusting to conditions as they present themselves with meaning, but without ego or contrived deliberation.
Though it may look superficially flawed, especially with human perception accustomed to mass-produced regularity and perfection as a goal, an object with roughness is often more precise because it comes about from paying attention to what matters most, and letting go of what matters less.
Echoes
When echoes are present within a design, all the various smaller elements and centers, from which the larger centers are made, have a certain sameness of character. There are deep internal similarities, or echoes of one another, which tie all the elements and centers together at various scales to form a cohesive unity of being.
The Void
Objects or elements which have the greatest depth, which actively draw the senses in, have at their heart an area of deep calm and stillness – a void bounded by and contrasted with an area of intense centers around it.
When an element becomes all detail, its own constant buzz tends to dilute its overall strength. Like a musical wall of sound, it pushes against our perception to produce a flat field-like state. Conversely, it is the pause which allows us to interlock with a piece of music and feel its depth. The presence of void, at many scales, provides a contrasting calm to alleviate the buzz and strengthen the center.
Inner Calm
Living things tend to have a special simplicity, an economy developed over time in which all things unnecessary, or not supporting the whole, are removed. This does not preclude ornament, as even in nature ornament has its very necessary place. What simplicity does is cut away the meaningless attachments to an element, the things which often distract and confuse its true nature. When this is done, an object is in a state of inner calm.
Not-Separateness
Not-separateness is the degree of connectedness an element has with all that is around it. A thing which has this quality feels completely at peace, because it is so deeply interconnected with its world. There is no abruptness, no sharpness, but often an incomplete edge which softens the hard boundary. The element is drawn into its setting, and the element draws its setting into itself.
Not-separateness is a profound connection occurring at many scales between a center and the other centers which surround it, so that they melt into one another and become inseparable.