a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
user-inactivated  ·  3976 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Children Who Need To Check Their Privilege - So today I sat my six year old cousin down to...

It's blinkered to say language is solely for "convey[ing] ones [sic] meaning in the cleanest, most concise way possible." That sounds like language according to a mirthless bureaucrat (well, anyone who prescribes rules about language using the word "always" sounds like a bureaucrat). I think ambiguities should be welcome—the mot juste may sometimes be the word that is more fanciful than it is pragmatic.

It's true: language is first and foremost for communication. But there's obviously a sensuous, frolicking side to it, a side that shouldn't be overlooked (watch master wordsmith Stephen Fry elaborate). It was fun to see this blog post dubbed "a poe"; quite a bit more fun than to read countless others who gabbed about it's legitimacy as "satire" (how dreary!).

Most of the nonce words in Finnegans Wake don't exist because they are "beneficial to the language". To the contrary: Joyce invented words out of sheer playfulness. Quibbling with that impulse seems to me like dourness or, worse, pedantry. That's all I am saying.