Seeker Magazine

Semantics and Syntax: A Discussion.

by Brandon DeGeorge

A small story:

At Naucratis, in Egypt, dwelled one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose scared bird is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. It was he who invented numbers, and arithmetic and geometry, and astronomy, also draughts, and dice, and, most important of all, letters. Now the king of all Egypt at that time was the god Thamus, who lived in the great city of the upper region, which the Greeks call the Egyptian Thebes, and they call the god himself Ammon. To him came Theuth to show his inventions, saying that they ought to be imparted to the other Egyptians. But Ammon asked what use there was in each, and as Theuth enumerated their uses, expressed praise or blame, according as he approved or disapproved. The story goes that Ammon said many things to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts, which would take to long to repeat, but when they came to letters, "This invention, O king," said Theuth, "will make the Egyptians wiser, and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of memory and wisdom that I have discovered."
But Ammon replied, "Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.

-Plato's Phaedrus

Food for Thought
We've just taken a look at what the ancient Greeks thought about writing, or, at least the implications of trusting in the meaning of the written symbol, that represented a word. Could it be that what Ammon says about letters is true? Is it possible that we have lost something by relying too much on letters, and not enough on our brains? Do we learn better by instruction, and by application, than by reading, and rote?
It is obvious to say that not every word has the same meaning for everyone. Not only that, but think about the differences in meaning when you try to translate from another language. Every language has its own mode of thought behind it, so that the word "groceries", in English doesn't have the exact same meaning as it may in German. In fact, it doesn't. The German word for groceries, lebensmittel, means, literally translated, "stuff for living". Now, that is an approximation of what groceries are, but actually contains a few things that we, as Americans, wouldn't count as groceries. If that small difference in two words can be problematic in speaking with someone from Germany, imagine how difficult it could be trying to negotiate a treaty. It is though a second set of beliefs need to be learned before someone could really learn a second language.

Civil War
If you can imagine problems in trying to get a typically American idea across to someone who doesn't speak english, and has never been to this country, then think about problems internally. That is, dialects of American English, and also, for that matter American English versus European English. I mean, even when you look at the two different words for a smoke: cigarette, and fag. If you asked someone to give you a box of fags in America, they'd think you were pretty strange.
So, what about even the difference between areas of the country; north and south, east and west, and even city, and country, in some states, where the cultural makeup can be quite different. People in the north don't say "y'all" or call sneakers "tennis shoes" or have anything called "country gravy". It is right, however to agree that some terms used by southerners are understood in the north, but some aren't, because there just is no equivalent in the area. People across the nation have different living conditions, and those special conditions will spark its own lingo that everyone from the area knows and understands, but someone from out of that area may have no idea what a person is talking about.
To give an example, someone once asked me to get them a "greenie" from the bar. Now I had absolutely no idea what that person had meant, until I asked. "A greenie is a Heniken." She explained. "We called them greenies down in St. Thomas because it's the only beer that comes in a green bottle, down there." Oh, well that makes sense, but since I've never set foot on St. Thomas once, I didn't know.

Modern Romance and the Written Word
"My mistresses eyes are nothing like the sun," Shakespeare once wrote; a testimonial to the fact that his love wasn't that good looking, and what's more, her breath smelled, too. Everyone who is familiar with that sonnet knows its meaning, but just imagine what would happen to good ol' Bill if he were to write that nowadays-most likely a lawsuit for slander....go figure.
How can one be romantic, and politically correct at the same time? With some difficulty, it can be done, but I would think it takes some of the passion out of it. Think about it, if a man were to write a poem to a woman today, and say; "My darling, you are mine, and forever shall be." A woman's response to that might be; "You don't OWN me."..Already a misunderstanding, unless, of course the man actually wished to buy an sell her like a common good. Doubtful in this day and age, but sometimes you never know. I suppose one way to deal with this is through action, not words, but that can get you pegged, too. A Catch 22 situation.

PCU
If location can skew terms into local lingo, and cause problems, then political correctness is like the atomic bomb of all lingo. To purposely modify terms, so as to not offend, is very irresponsible. To call someone "Native American" or "Afro-American" may be more pleasing to some people's ears, but it isn't to others, and really only shows the differences between us, as if there was some need to categorize all of us, like we were all merely fruit at a grocery stand. I would think we need to show what we have in common, to bring us together, not separate us all for the sake of a few loudmouths in the minority.
So, what to do? It's not good to generalize about someone, since that can lead to problems, since the individual gets overlooked. We should look then, to the individual level, and start there, since everyone's opinions are different. If someone wants to be called something in particular (hopefully that will be their name, with any luck) then they should be called that. After all, we are all human beings, with different thoughts, and beliefs, and that is how we should look at people; we all belong to the great family that is Homo sapiens, and not "Asian" or "African" or "European". Those are only titles that generalize what piece of dirt that we came from, and rarely tell much about a person, if anything at all. Respect the thoughts of a person, and they will respect you back. There is no need for the pussy-footing quick-fix of political correctness when real honest character will do much better.

What Have We Learned?
Some say, that we have become less intelligent because of technology, that people have become lazy, and stupid from too much of the idiot box. It used to be that people learned things by simple memorization, and that now that we have all of these modern "methods", people don't really learn anything, anymore. Like we saw in the story earlier, people believe that if the busy work isn't done, then we will only appear to have learned what we know, and not truly know it. This is all the fault of words, since there is no one behind them, showing you their inflection, or anything else that might give you a hint about what a person really means.
We can see this problem at work in online "chat" rooms. Of course, there are little ASCII tricks that can be used to put inflection in things, but a lot of what someone is trying to say gets lost in the digital domain of bits and bytes. You simply can't put heart and soul into ones and zeros. At least, not yet..someone is probably working on that somewhere in some virtual time-dimension lab that only exists for them. Can it be that we are becoming a society of emotionless dullards that cannot truly express themselves because we never had to before? I doubt that is true, for now, but could be a possibility in the near future, and that is a scary thought.

Rap-up
It's obvious to say that there is nothing yet that takes the place of language, but even language is not a perfect medium for expression, since everyone has their own idea of what a word can mean. I suppose that that's okay, in its own way. We are human beings, and in being human, we are by our own definition, not perfect. We seem to be doing alright, given the fact that everything seems to be changing at the speed of light, and if for some reason, we can't get how we feel across to someone the first time, there's no reason to despair, there's always another way. Just something to keep in mind.
Siwrnai dda.
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Letter to the Editor:
Cherie Staples <SkyEarth1@aol.com>