Hang on to your hats folks, I shall now make an obtuse attempt to cram this into my chaos theory metaphorical framework, with the intent to posit that our American English language has become chaotic and undependable. Unexpected changes were commonplace in very complex systems, but these changes were thought to be the result of numerous influences combining in unfortunate ways. Early workers in chaos theory discovered that chaos could develop in very simple systems where deterministic elements could be isolated and acted on in controlled increments, an effect labeled extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Eventually they demonstrated that when chaos developed in systems that had been thought to have been steady state systems the progression from orderly predictability to chaotic behavior followed a precise mathematical process. This process of bifurcation was called the period doubling path to chaos, and is illustrated thusly.
"A bifurcation is the appearance of an additional pattern of behavior or sequence of states for a system. Generally we have successive bifurcations where we increase the value of some characteristic parameter. One can think of a per-son traveling down a road. The farther the traveler goes, the more side streets or alternative routes appear. In a sense the bifurcation introduces history. To know the state of a system at any time implies a knowledge of the paths taken or not taken." (Umpleby after Prigogine, 1980)
The theory of chaos maintains that this pattern of chaotic development occurs in real everyday life, and is not just a mathematical artifact. Perhaps ironically, the theory of chaos became a very strange attractor itself. Folks from widely diverse fields of interest began piling on the chaos theory bandwagon. Financial experts to social scientists to purveyors of various brands of spiritualism began to publish under the chaos flag. The biggest challenge to research in these myriad areas is the inability to isolate a single element to measure and a single factor to act on it.
Using words, with which we are all equipped, is simply my choice to began to demonstrate that chaos does exist, that it effects (presumedly) everything and we would do well to utilize our ability to perceive it in our view of the world. In the early 60's the civil rights movement was building up steam and black people were demanding to be allowed into the first standard deviation of the societal distribution. Although words and phrases unique to the African American population had been around since slavery, they were generally looked down on as lower class expressions and were ignored by the mainstream. At some point (some initial condition) these isolated phrases split off from the linguistic nether regions and began to develop into a complete language called Ebonics, more formally known as African American Vernacular English (AAVE).
In terms of my metaphorical application this would be called the first bifurcation of American English, or period one. [I am painfully aware that I am subject to being arrested for metaphor molestation with intent to mangle, to which I would be forced to plead no contest, but I am doing the best that I can.] Some word or phrase, for some reason, developed into a strange attractor eventually splitting into two separate American Linguistic Paths and perhaps starting American English on the road to chaos. The evidence that our American English has become chaotic takes many forms.
One example of this train to Chaosville is a function of technology. The last few decades produced such an avalanche of new devices, the use of which demanded such an influx of new words that the process by which words are admitted into the dictionary was too cumbersome to keep up. As a result, more and more of our activities required the use of language that had not been officially codified, thus could not be taught in the accepted setting of classrooms and usage textbooks. The water cooler and happy hour became the new arbiters of language. A corollary to this technological invasion required the development of entirely new languages whose primary use was to let us talk to the things we had invented.
The Internet led to a disharmonious interruption to the stately order of words. The speed of the devices we now have with which to communicate far exceeds our ability to use them. In other words we can't type fast enough, or accurately enough, to keep up. As a result a new organizational structure of language has developed in order to shorten the time to state something. Netlingo (which may be a trade name but it serves the purpose) is clearly a developed language, despite giving apoplexy to the scholarly guardians of syntactical propriety. Pompous eloquence has given way to alacrity. Much of Netlingo involves the use of acronyms, a set of single letters to stand for phrases, eg., the cautionary POS (parent over shoulder). Netlingo has even developed something akin to modern day hieroglyphics: Emoticons, Smileys. Netlingo is the first animated language. Moreover it is now considered a breach of etiquette to be overly concerned with misspelled words and grammatical errors.
Even before the '60's there were signs that standard American English did not meet all the communication needs of young people. Their developing individuality needed to have a separate linguistic structure, both as a means of communicating with each other and to insulate them from their elders. Early on piglatin served that purpose, but now the language of youth is a well organized linguistic structure. Interestingly, it rewards fluidity and adaptability rather than striving to become stable, so much so that even an attempt to name it results in yet another term. Youth language serves dual purposes, one is to communicate with each other, and one is to hide their communications from prying adults. Previously this function was utilized by spies, and the upper class of spies, diplomats.
The Period Three Implies Chaos (Li & Yorke) of American English came at the hands of our leaders. Lawyers and politicians have long been known as liars, so when they promised a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage but didn't deliver, we eventually learned to not take them literally, forcing them to develop another technique. The interaction between language and leadership began to change. resulting in another bifurcation on the linguistic road to chaos. Part of the meaning of words continued on the traditional, what I will call the Webster pathway whereby the words mean what they say they mean. This linguistic pathway still predominates in areas like contract law, and the words of the average citizen are still held to this Webster standard of meaning. Along the other bifurcated pathway, the language itself became the lie.
A precursor to language as lie came from a process that communication theorists call "god terms". God terms develop over time. Some term "catches on". As it is used more and more frequently its meaning expands. Eventually far reaching and complex issues are reduced to brief, definitive sounding phrases. The terms become thought terminating cliche's, once they are uttered the connotations of the phrase become automatically understood. The special words constrict rather than expand human understanding, eventually coming to be treated as unquestionable dogma. The rape of language by our leaders incorporates these god terms into their rhetoric, repetitiously coaching meanings out of the terms to support their otherwise unsupportable positions. Our current leadership has pushed this process way beyond that of their predecessors.
The original meaning of phrases is routinely used to turn complex issues into simplistic black-or-white ultimatums, often taken to mean exactly the opposite of the meaning of the words alone would imply. In terms of chaos the words in the purloined phrase no longer have predictable, or periodic, meaning. Examining the words in terms of their Webster definitions makes it impossible to arrive at the meaning attached to them by our leadership. Probably the most duplicitous, destructive and dangerous term hammered home by our leadership is this:
Support Our Troops.
The meaning of that term is really support my policies regarding our troops, because if you don't you will be responsible for their deaths, and you will encourage our enemies who will then attack our homeland and destroy our freedoms.
Webster check.
Support
n.
1. a subordinate musical part; provides background for more important parts
2. financial resources provided to make some project possible
3. the financial means whereby one lives
4. documentary validation
5. a military operation (often involving new supplies of men and materiel) to strengthen a military force or aid in the performance of its mission
6. aiding the cause or policy or interests of
7. any device that bears the weight of another thing
8. something providing immaterial support or assistance to a person or cause or interest
9. supporting structure that holds up or provides a foundation
10. the act of bearing the weight of or strengthening
11. the activity of providing for or maintaining by supplying with money or necessities
v.
12. put up with something or somebody unpleasant
13. establish or strengthen as with new evidence or facts
14. be behind; approve of
15. give moral or psychological support, aid, or courage to
16. support with evidence or authority : make more certain or confirm
17. support; of morale, theories, etc.
18. argue or speak in defense of
19. be the physical support of; carry the weight of
20. be a regular customer or client of
21. adopt as a belief
22. play a subordinate role to (another performer)
23. support financially in an enterprise
Lie detector test.
Try to fit any of the following within the meaning of any of these 23 definitions.
-Sending our troops into battle based on lies that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
-Sending our troops into battle in cumbersome chemical suits when there were no chemical gases.
-Sending our troops into battle expecting to meet strong resistance from Saddam's fanatically loyal troops and to be met with open armed gratitude by all the oppressed citizens of Iraq.
-Sending our troops into battle without the armor necessary to protect them from the nearest thing to a weapon of mass destruction they would face- - the homemade roadside bomb.
- Arbitrarily expanding their enlistments increasing the likelihood that they would be killed or injured.
-Forcing financial and emotional hardship on their families.
-Abandoning those who returned wounded to the uncaring, overcrowded, ill-funded VA whose primary function would be to deny service related responsibility for their illnesses.
- Making damn sure that none of the men and women so supported would be related to anyone in power.
The purpose of words, of language, is to communicate with each other. When those words, that language, has clear and continuing meaning, then language is periodic, predictable, dependable--- a steady state necessity to survival. When words can no longer be trusted to mean what they say they mean, then the language has become chaotic. While it is a matter I want to play with latter, one evidence that something has become chaotic is that its influence can be seen in unexpected places or conditions. The anxiety created by our mostly subconscious awareness that something is amiss with our language results in sublimated attempts to diminish the angst.
For example, the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement is by far the largest and perhaps most influential religious movement to originate in the United States. Some say it is the fastest growing religion in the world, although Islam also lays claim to that distinction. The most salient characteristic of these religious services is a process they call the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which is evidenced by speaking in tongues. Glossolalia has been described as God himself speaking through the person affected by causing them to speak in foreign languages unknown to the speaker or listeners. It is also described as a unique language known only to God. Whatever, the process seems to leave those affected with a profound feeling of joy and well being. Since the words are unknown there can be no duplicity or room for misunderstanding of the terms. The legitimacy of the phenomenon is not at issue here, just the suggestion that the prevalence of glossolalia might be related to a loss of meaning to everyday language, or perhaps it comes as a result of people feeling they don't have a voice in their government. Certainly it offers more excitement and personal satisfaction than listening to some stodgy and solemn service in the other churches.
Not being blessed with a heavy dose of gullibility, especially in terms of my own philosophy, it is caveat time. One of the things I am implying/wondering about is that all organizational structures have an evolutionary life cycle. When those structures reach a stage where the very center of the organizational structure becomes so dense that changes are virtually impossible, chaotic disintegration of the organizational structure becomes far more likely. In other words the organizational structure of everything eventually breaks down. The elements of the structures don't disappear they just shift to another attractor. The new structure that develops may bear little resemblance to the former one. I seem to be arguing that this disbanding/reorganization process is not a planned process-- that it can only occur spontaneously, and not by an internal process of reorganization. In the end, I don't think we can fix our Standard American English. (A leader with the egomaniacal audacity to effectively change the words support our troops to mean this is my policy, shut up and follow it or be labeled a contributor to terrorism, is not going to surrender that power voluntarily.)
I am afraid it is a little too late for us to go back to the beginning and decide that while words might be the best choice we could have made in order to develop communication between ourselves, perhaps we should have maintained other communication modes as a secondary backup. But we didn't, and other potential modes of communication were allowed to atrophy rather than continue to develop. Communication theorists tell us that 90% of the meaning of messages we receive from others we gain are from non verbal [vocal] cues. [ The percentages vary among researchers, and I am not convinced they have a way of measuring what they claim to be measuring. But it does seem obvious to me that we do get a lot of our information non vocally.] However, we threw all of our eggs in the words basket and non vocal messages never developed into an organized communication system, it never became a formal language. As a result there is not a widely accepted non vocal vocabulary. Facial expressions like happiness, anger, fear are well established, and a few gestures, thumbs up, the bird, the peace sign, but mostly gestures have been developed only in restricted environments, street gangs, secretive societies, etc. Whatever our excuse was it was not because non vocal potential to develop a complex linguistic structure is out of reach.
There is a fascinating example of the development of non vocal language by the deaf children of Nicaragua. Prior to the 1970's there was little contact between deaf children, or with adults outside their immediate family. After the Sandinista revolution, the newly formed Nicaraguan Government established centers to educate deaf children. Soon hundreds of deaf children were attending one of two schools for deaf children in Managua. The children had arrived at the centers having just a few gestures, "food", "drink", that they had developed within their own families. These home signs, or mimicas, differed from child to child and the children had no concept of grammar or syntax. The government teachers were not skilled in any of the existing sign languages so they attempted to teach the children lip reading in Spanish, but with very poor results. Once the deaf children started interacting with each other the teachers were amazed to see that through the process of signing to each other, they appeared to be developing their own language.
The complexity and richness of the new language grew rapidly, but was little understood by anyone except the children. In 1986, the Nicaraguan Government imported Judy Kegl, an American sign language expert from Northeastern University, to help them understand what the children were doing. Her research is the first and only documented study of the development of a new language. The initial group of children were shown to have developed a signed pidgin language, completely unrelated to Spanish, that Kegl was able to translate. The language followed what Noam Chomsky claims is an universal grammar. He and others believe that language instincts are an innate part of being human. Kegl's work seems to partially support this "nature" view of language, but she discovered it also has a strong "nurture" component.
The original class did not progress beyond their signed pidgin language, but when very young children were brought into the schools, they picked up the pidgin very quickly, however they used it in a more nuanced way than the older children. Kegl was able to observe first hand how signing proficiency of this second generation grew into a rich and complex language, far more developed than adult-engineered idioms like Esperanto. It is only when children are introduced to the language at a very young age that they become fluent in its use. Older children are able to learn only a crude version of the language.
I am afraid it is a little too late for us to go back to the beginning and decide that while words might be the best choice we could have made in order to develop communication between ourselves, perhaps we should have maintained other communication modes as a secondary backup. But we didn't, and other potential modes of communication were allowed to atrophy rather than continue to develop. Communication theorists tell us that 90% of the meaning of messages we receive from others we gain are from non verbal [vocal] cues. [ The percentages vary among researchers, and I am not convinced they have a way of measuring what they claim to be measuring. But it does seem obvious to me that we do get a lot of our information non vocally.] However, we threw all of our eggs in the words basket and non vocal messages never developed into an organized communication system, it never became a formal language. As a result there is not a widely accepted non vocal vocabulary. Facial expressions like happiness, anger, fear are well established, and a few gestures, thumbs up, the bird, the peace sign, but mostly gestures have been developed only in restricted environments, street gangs, secretive societies, etc. Whatever our excuse was it was not because non vocal potential to develop a complex linguistic structure is out of reach.
There is a fascinating example of the development of non vocal language by the deaf children of Nicaragua. Prior to the 1970's there was little contact between deaf children, or with adults outside their immediate family. After the Sandinista revolution, the newly formed Nicaraguan Government established centers to educate deaf children. Soon hundreds of deaf children were attending one of two schools for deaf children in Managua. The children had arrived at the centers having just a few gestures, "food", "drink", that they had developed within their own families. These home signs, or mimicas, differed from child to child and the children had no concept of grammar or syntax. The government teachers were not skilled in any of the existing sign languages so they attempted to teach the children lip reading in Spanish, but with very poor results. Once the deaf children started interacting with each other the teachers were amazed to see that through the process of signing to each other, they appeared to be developing their own language.
The complexity and richness of the new language grew rapidly, but was little understood by anyone except the children. In 1986, the Nicaraguan Government imported Judy Kegl, an American sign language expert from Northeastern University, to help them understand what the children were doing. Her research is the first and only documented study of the development of a new language. The initial group of children were shown to have developed a signed pidgin language, completely unrelated to Spanish, that Kegl was able to translate. The language followed what Noam Chomsky claims is an universal grammar. He and others believe that language instincts are an innate part of being human. Kegl's work seems to partially support this "nature" view of language, but she discovered it also has a strong "nurture" component.
The original class did not progress beyond their signed pidgin language, but when very young children were brought into the schools, they picked up the pidgin very quickly, however they used it in a more nuanced way than the older children. Kegl was able to observe first hand how signing proficiency of this second generation grew into a rich and complex language, far more developed than adult-engineered idioms like Esperanto. It is only when children are introduced to the language at a very young age that they become fluent in its use. Older children are able to learn only a crude version of the language.
Steady state. Individual elements
vary, but stay within the
strange attractor basin.
vary, but stay within the
strange attractor basin.
After first bifurcation
there are two seperate
basins.,etc.
there are two seperate
basins.,etc.
Here be
Dragons.
Dragons.
Continued >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>