WANDERER wrote:
Speaking with the personal experience of a man that has lived both in North America and Europe and as a person that has a working understanding of three languages, I have noticed certain peculiarities in the usage of language by peoples from different cultures, even when often speaking the same language.
I recall once receiving a reply to one of my posts, in which I made the metaphorical or poetic assumption that the Universe denies us its secrets, from an individual that sarcastically challenged me by wondering how the Universe denies us anything.
“Does the universe have a consciousness?” Retorted my accuser
More recently I was asked to explain what I meant by “subjective interpretations” by someone who either didn’t comprehend or thought he had caught me in a linguistic blunder, reminiscent of the “Letter from Yale” post [which I enjoyed thoroughly] and he, wanting to “put me in my place” due to my “pompous” attitude, according to him, challenged me to explain what I meant by “subjective interpretations”.
I’m also frequently dismayed to be accused of rhetoric by people that find my usage of words in a poetic or allegoric fashion, as a sign of guile, pretentiousness or dishonesty.
Putting aside the motivations or the honesty of these challenges I find a distinct difference in how language is utilized by peoples from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
In Greek, French, Italian, for instance, language is used poetically, where metaphors, similes, allegories and symbolisms of all kinds are drafted [oops another metaphor] into the service of free expression.
In Anglo-Saxon tradition, language takes on a more stringent, particular character where precision is more appreciated than artfulness, language is stripped from all its color and the bare essentials are only demanded.
In North-American cultures, even though in most cases an individual is forced to learn and understand a single method of verbal communication {most often English}, I am always faced with a total lack of comprehension or linguistic flexibility.
Here, due to British influences I guess or the effects of Postman’s conclusions in “Entertaining ourselves to Death”, language is used more like a shallow mathematical construct, adhering to strict rules and formulas, where any divergence from the rule is looked down upon and taken as a sign of verbal retardation or, at best, pompousness.
The unimaginative, bland usage of the written or spoken word leads, in my view, to inflexibility in comprehension, where the literal interpretation of words is only understood and concepts are limited by the inefficiencies of verbal communication.
Through the usage of everyday language like an art-form in itself and not just the raw material restricted for more acceptable artful pursuits such as poetry or literature, inevitably leads to the expression of ideas using more than just words {images, feelings} that stimulate the imagination and results in a mind, with more creative options of self-expression and a better grasp of nuance and verbal detail.

In ancient Greece rhetoric was taught by the special few to those possessing the funds to pay the exuberant amounts required to be instructed in the art of verbal persuasion.
Many philosophers were themselves students of rhetoric and linguistic expression.
Today the term “rhetoric”, like “cynic”, “liberal” and others, has taken a negative definition meaning, empty words devoid of significance.

Knowing how language expands or limits conceptual understanding and the disdain many show towards artistic expression that requires effort, not only from the one doing the expressing but also from the one interpreting the expression, what does the unimaginative utilization of language, the lack of metaphorical technique and the restricted vocabulary of many in the west say about us and our culture in general?
In the “Letter from Yale” thread we were faced with students that mistakenly assumed that just by placing long, rarely used terms in successive order with no cohesion, purpose or conceptual unity is enough to appear knowledgeable.
What does it say about the education system and the learning of language in our society and where does this verbal retardation come from and lead to?
Should we take out the shovel and start digging western civilizations last resting place or is there still hope?
If there is hope could it possibly be found in the roots of western civilization itself? If not where?
Has “modern” western dislike, disrespect and weariness of intellectual thought-often culminating in caricatures of intelligent persons as being socially retarded, loners, existing in dark rooms reading books continuously and possessing no human interactions or intimate relationships- been the product of a Democratic equalitarian system and a Christian moral tradition wanting to flatten everyone into an amorphous blob of uniformity where any sign of difference or superiority is mocked, defamed and cut down to average size? {In this case also linguistic superiority}

Your thoughts below.

darkcrow wrote:

I think what you are saying is that you prefer the language of literary art to the language of science and philosophy. The two are quite different.