Sunday, April 4, 2010

Language's AIM

[2:24] Person 1: im in a funny mood

[2:25] Person 2: funny how?

[2:27] Person 1: just been thinking alot.

very strange.

HAHA

[2:28] Person 2: I liked what you were saying last night about perception. How perception clouds any sort of universal understanding through language.

but Kindler's always like "the red that I see isn't the red you see"

but actually the red I see probably is the red he sees

[2:30] Person 1: unless you're colorblind

[2:31] Person 2: the variation in people's bodies is actually pretty small

thats why colorblindness is a big deal

cause almost nobody is.

it makes me think about structuralism

words in a language given meaning by their relationships to other words in the language

when you wanna know what a word means you go to dictionary.com or type "define:" into google

and then you get other words telling you what that word means

[2:32] Person 1: it reminds me of a piece that david carson did



[2:34] Person 2: that's really cool

the structuralists think that languages form their own meaning

so normally you think of the word red as a representation of some spectrum of light

but they say that the meaning of the word red is only in its relationship to other words in english

thats why its sometimes hard to translate things between languages

like esprit de l'escalier

or schadenfreude

[2:37] Person 2: some people say that everything we can think is determined by our language

[2:36] Person 1: as confusing as this will sound

i feel like it is impossible to characterize some things, such as emotions and sensations by words

but unfortunately that's the main form of communication

[2:37] Person 2: not confusing at all.

1 comment:

  1. This post originally had "Girl" and "Boy" as the two speakers, mostly because I couldn't think of an easier way to disguise AIM addresses. However, using "person" was suggested to me as a solution to avoid any preconceived notions related to gender roles.

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