I'm writing this entry on Monday, 28 Apr 08, for posting on Thursday, 1 May 08. Really, I pretty much wrote this whole blog arc on Friday, 25 Apr 08, while sooting in an airport sapping some coffee. I'm exploring language, what we've lost and gained in our ability to communicate with others of our own species, in this arc.
Part 1 dealt with lost verb tenses, part 2 with declining nouns and part 3 with modern English's -- heck, modern society's -- inability to let people change over time.
Here we continue with the social implications of letting people change over time, a demonstration of how social linguistics forms. If we recognized that people change over time, and that the person standing in front of me today isn't the same person who stood in front of me yesterday, that some of yesterday's person is gone and there are parts of today's person I've never encountered before, ...
People could only be punished for what they do right now, in the present, at this moment. Bringing someone or some organization to trial for something they did years ago would be laughable; the person being brought to trial isn't the same person, the company isn't the same company, as the person or company that committed the crime. Our legal system would fail.But think a bit of what changes before that; when the individual becomes more important than the act, much of crime is gone. People wouldn't steal cars, shoes, jewelry. Nor would they murder to get such things or cover up what they were doing.
Ah, but they would want to be like Torg the Good Hunter. And we know language started changing when people started thinking they would be as good a hunter as Torg if they only had Torg's favorite spear. Lots of people knew Torg was a good hunter because Torg was Torg and it was Torg's nature to be a good hunter. It didn't matter if Torg didn't have that special spear because Torg's ability as a hunter was a part of Torg, not Torg's spear.
(mare to fallow)
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
Upcoming Trainings:- This is Your Brain on the Internet at Emetrics SF on 8 May 2008
- Know How Someone Is Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less Half-day training at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 13 June 08
- San Francisco Emetrics Marketing Optimzation Summit, 4-7 May 08
- International Communication Association's Communicating for Social Impact, the 58th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association at Le Centre Sheraton Hotel, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 22-26, 2008
- SUNY Marketing Professionals Conference at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 11-13 June 08
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